18 MONTHS

Grayson celebrated his 18-month birthday last week. I just can't believe he is now closer to being two than one. That is crazy!

The only real big thing with turning 18-months is the check-up. Grayson is finally in the 5th percentile for weight. He actually weighed 21 lbs, 11 ounces. He got three shots and did pretty well. The doctor was very impressed with all of his new words and said he was doing very well developmentally.

Grayson has lots of new words these days. Too many for me to keep up with. He knows all of his body parts, clothing items, etc. At school he is learning sign language (which we used at home before he could speak) and he is pairing the signs he has learned with the words often. He has also started to work on colors and is learning "orange" this month.

Grayson's favorite activities continue to be reading books and playing with balls. Recently we watched our first movie as a family. I thought it was probably a little early for Grayson but we were all home sick and it seemed like the perfect time for some cuddling and a movie on the couch. We watched Horton Hears a Who and Grayson actually watched a little over half of it. Later that same week Justin bought Stuart Little. Grayson LOVES it. We have watched it almost every day since. There is only one part that he doesn't like. The family cat jumps up and tries to eat Stuart before he knows that Stuart is a family member. EVERY time that part comes up Grayson cries. It is almost funny to see him respond in such a tender hearted way. I try to prepare him each time, "Uh-oh, here comes that mean old cat and he is going to try to get Stuart". No matter how much we talk about it beforehand, he jumps like it surprises him and cries.

Grayson was finally able to meet his new cousin, Jackson, this past weekend while we were in Greensboro for Uncle Jay's 40th birthday. Grayson really didn't seem too interested in Jackson other than being annoyed anytime Jackson had Nana's attention. Grayson will have to get used to sharing his Nana because he is likely to have lots of cousins on that side of the family.

Unfortunately Grayson has been out of school for the last two days. He had a fever on Monday. No flu, just some sort of virus. He has no other symptoms other than the fever. Hopefully he will be back to normal by tomorrow. Missing school means he is missing some of the halloween fun this week. He doesn't realize he is missing anything, but it breaks my heart to know that he is.

We are really looking forward to Halloween. Grayson is going to be a dinosaur and he is having friends over to go trick-or-treating. I think it will be a blast.