17 months

I am a day late on this report but that's because everyone in my family decided to throw up a lot over the last few days. Henry has been vomit free now for over 30 hours so the coast is clear but Justin is still on the mend.

Here's a few images over the last 72 hours:

Henry waking at 8:30 PM crying, we go in and dinner is floating all over his crib and on him

Justin taking a bath with Henry to get the vomit off and Henry pukes about 4 more times all over daddy. Daddy holds him and sooths him till it's all over. Daddy wins medal of honor.

Daddy gets puked on again in the laundry room--this time all down his back.

Daddy knocks over and smashes mommy's favorite lens in the world. The prized Canon 50 mm. We all try not to cry.

We finally all go to bed around 2 or 3AM when the vomit party is over.

Daddy wakes up very ill and mommy takes Henry to the grocery store with her to get jello, rice, bananas, crackers, popsicles etc. and realizes at the check out that she must have left her wallet in the car. Mommy and Henry run out to the car in the pouring rain and look for it. Can't find it anywhere so mommy and a very tired Henry wait in line at customer service to see if anyone turned it in. They did (Yay for good people!) and then we wait in the now very long line again to pay for the groceries.

Okay, 17 Months:

Henry has been sick 3 times in the last month (he first developed a cold on the airplane ride to VA, was sick with a cold there and then began to get better and then the day we got back he had a high fever that lasted days--so I count that as two separate illnesses) but sleep has been totally erratic. This is by far the most sickness we've had to deal with. He still has never had to take antibiotics so that's good, but I am pretty exhausted from all this missed sleep and fussiness related to not feeling well.

Before I had Henry I used to think kids who "stay at home" aren't as exposed to germs as much as daycare kids but that is soooooo incorrect. Henry goes to the children's museum, Family Connections, music class, grocery stores, library's, many different friends houses etc. each week. He is exposed to way more children and germs and so he gets sick just as often as a child in daycare, if not more.

As for eating, I've experimented more with giving Henry cow's milk and he no longer gets a rash but since he's been sick so much it's hard to tell if any of this is allergy related or not. I am going to put a hold on milk until he's been healthy for at least a week and then see if something happens. Otherwise, food is still consumed by him in mass quantities.

Henry now says a lot of words. I haven't counted them but new ones spring up out of the blue. Monday he started saying "mine" (great...) and he appears to know colors. He has a piano with different colored keys and if I say "press the yellow key" he does it. I taught him colors pretty easily. He has this ring toss with different colored rings and I would say the name of each color as we tossed it. It only took about a few days before he figured it out--but I've been saying color names since he was a newborn.

Signs come a lot easier to him now too. You can show him a sign for an animal or whatever and after you do it a couple times he catches on. We try to accompany signs with sounds and that adds an extra bit of fun to the process. Elephant is hilarious.

Henry began playing with Justin's Star Wars guys this month. It's really cute to see him run around with stormtroopers. He walks them on the floor, the cat, the couch. And if you give him something long and pointy he runs around with it like it's a sword. He holds it up high and jabs and twists it. I have no idea where he got that from. He's not seen much TV and I'm pretty sure the bits of Sesame Street he's seen do not have many sword fights.

We get a lot of hugs and kisses (accompanied with the sound MMMMMMMMMM) now without even asking. That is the world's greatest. And Uncle Karl and Aunt Rachel taught Henry to give bumps. So if any of my mom friend's are reading this, you better teach your kid bumps so you don't leave my son hanging. He likes to give bumps to everybody.