18 months old!!! Where Did the Time Go??

Oh my! My baby girl is 1 year and a half old today. Where does the time go? I have so many emotions rushing through me as I sit down to write my thoughts out and update on Alexandra's progress. There is my first thought, I actually wrote Alexandra. Randy remarked to me the other day that we only call her Alex. We never call her Alexandra. Although my personal nickname for her is "Alex Ann". Randy's nickname for her is still, "Baby Girl". But I suppose she will always be our baby girl. Besides that I still call Riley, Riley Roo, when we are being silly.
This morning I took Alex in to the dr for her 18 month check-up. These mornings are always so crazy. Her appt is at 8. Then we rush like mad to get the kids dropped off and me back to work before my kids return from co-curr. This morning, my next door teacher Tiffany graciously kept an eye on my kids, sent my lunch count down, and sent my kids off to co-curr for me. I so appreciate it, because I don't have to take a half day or get a sub. Unfortunately our appt took a little longer than usual, so I was running late back to work. To make matters worse, I scheduled a meeting with our team this morning to plan a baby shower for my partner teacher, Melissa for next Friday!! What was I thinking???? Just add me to the forgetfuls of yesterday. Yesterday our team of 8 lost & found an ID badge, forgot a purse on the playground, and me forgot about the appt. CRAZY!!! That is what TAKS stress will do to you. Then because TAKS was not enough fun for this week, I left to go get the kids yesterday and returned to school at 5:15, then stayed until 7:45 making plaster of paris fossils for open house on Monday. OK, enough rambling about my life. Back to the my headstrong baby girl...

While at the dr, we found out that Alex is not progressing at a level that makes us all feel comfortable. She is being referred to an Early Childhood Intervention specialist. They will test her for speech delays. Alex simply is not talking like she should. She will say, "ma, da-da, na for nana, pa - for gampa, and ella for elephant. I have joked that she was simply lazy because her bubba will do all the talking for her, but our Dr is concerned that there is more. To add to that, she is not growing very fast. She now weighs 20 lbs 8 oz. (At 15 months, she was 19 lbs). She is 32 inches long. (At 15 months, she was 31.6 inches). After leaving the dr, I started crying. I know that my child is ok and nothing serious is wrong with her, but I still want her to be perfect. We all want our children to be the smartest, tallest, fastest, etc. So how do you deal with my child is not the best?? I guess we just have to learn to accept that they are healthy and happy and that is truly all that really matters.

As if I wasn't having a big enough pity party for myself, as we were leaving the dr both kids got a sucker to make the pain go away. Then a man and his little boy walk up. The little boy asked for a sucker, like the one that both of my children were eating. The man answered his son, "No we don't need to start any bad habits." Then he quickly covered with he is only 13 months old. Well I guess I get the award for the bad mother!

But my children love the suckers. Sometimes a mother just needs to make her children smile!