18 months

Health updates: Colin is no longer allergic to eggs, as we thought.  He had the first half of his flu vaccine after they determined he didn't have any allergies.  It was an exhausting appointment.  After they pricked his back in 4 different spots, we had to keep him from scratching at them.  He was mad!  We had an 18 month appointment, and he was 33" tall and 26.5 pounds, averaging about the 65th percentile.  About 4 days after his appointment, he started getting a lot of green gunk in his eyes, so we ended up back at the doctor.  He had a double eye infection and a double ear infection.  It's really fun trying to give an 18 month old eye drops, by the way.  He seems to be doing much better, finishing out his antibiotics now.

Now I need to try and remember what happened during the last month.  Maybe I'll work backward!  This past week we were on "Spring Break."  That's in quotes, because I did a lot of work over break to catch up.  Colin did get to go to the Children's Museum twice this week (first with his friend Jude, then with us both), and we became members.  We love having the world's largest children's museum fifteen minutes away!  Five floors of amazingness.  He loved getting to play in the Playscape, which is intended for the younger ones and riding the carousel.  He held on to the horse and just watched everything go by.

Running!

 Climbing the slide

 Pulling his bee friend

 Checking out the windy tubes

Playing with lightswitches

All the balls!

 Checking out the musical instruments

 Checking everybody out on the carousel

Loves his vestibular input

"Mowing" the grass.  He also mowed the inside of the house.

 Playing in the water

Best day ever!

We also got a chance to spend some time with my cousin Jennifer, when she was visiting from Texas with her boyfriend and son.  Colin took to Jennifer pretty quickly, especially because she fed him guacamole by the spoonful.  Colin LOVES guacamole.  I think Jennifer was ready to take him home with her, too.  He loved on my family members as usual, and enjoyed the wonderful food that Eddie made for us.  (Wasn't that nice of us?  To have these guests visiting and make them cook for us.)  

Colin got a chance to participate in a photo shoot for our national OT credentialing organization.  The organization wanted to revamp the photos on their website, and we did a pediatric session with 8 kids, which I was majorly involved in as well.  I was completely exhausted.  If he ends up on the website, I'll be sure to send you over there.  He was pretty well behaved, unless it involved sharing with any little boys.

As for Peter and I, we have had a chance to run a 5k obstacle course, have an amazing Valentine's Day dinner at a restaurant downtown that rotates so you get a view of the entire city, and go to the Big Ten basketball tournament for a couple of games.  We remain eternally grateful to my parents for always being willing to watch Colin for us!

I am about 6 weeks from being done with my doctoral work, and I graduate in about 2 months.  Yes!  I travel a lot in the upcoming months.  I leave for Baltimore at the start of April and Pittsburgh at the end of April.  We've been planning our Costa Rica trip, and we're excited to go to the beach with Peter's extended family at the end of June.  Colin is VERY into looking at pictures of people lately, so we're hoping to help him learn about some of the new people he'll be seeing.  He continues to learn new words every day, particularly animal names.  He surprised us with Eagle and Hippo the other day.  Over 100 words right now and getting more quickly.

I'll leave you with a few more pictures from recently.

Cute but crazy.  That about sums it up.