So I realized the other day that I made Tommy a whole month older than what he actually is, he will be 21 months, this month. I changed the past blog to read 20 months, that way if I read it in the future it will be the real time line. I've been telling all kinds of people he's 21 months but he's actually 20. Oh well. I'm glad he's a month younger than I thought!
My pregnancy so far is going really really smoothly. Praise the Lord! I will be 20 weeks on Tuesday, so I'm halfway there! I can't believe it! We had an ultrasound this past Thursday morning, we did not find out the sex of the baby. And I'm glad we aren't finding out, it is fun this way. But I still kind of want to know. I want to know more with this baby than I did with Tommy! The baby looked beautiful! He/she has really long fingers. They did find one small thing during the ultrasound, it's called a choroid plexus cyst. It's a cyst on the brain, which sounds really bad but it's of no consequence to the brain or the baby's thinking. The cyst is located where the spinal fluid is held and in most babies the cyst disappears but even if it doesn't it will not harm the baby. However, this used to be considered a marker for Down Syndrome and with our history of Tommy having Down Syndrome we will do a special ultrasound to check for any other signs. Our OB does not think that the baby has DS, that's actually one of the reasons they looked at the hands and fingers, to see if they looked shorter (we found that out later). The doctor said she would be shocked if we had another baby with DS and is not concerned about the cyst but it's her job to have it looked into further considering our history. And we actually had planned to have the exact same special ultrasound done for the baby to check out his/her heart b/c of our history and our family history of heart defects. We had the special ultrasound done with Tommy too, and his heart problems didn't show up there. I read a statistic that only 1% of the babies with the cyst end up having DS. So we'll go have the ultrasound done on the 19th of this month, to see if the cyst is still there, and to check out our baby's heart. We are not worried, obviously it is something to think about but we know the Lord is in control and that there's no need to think too much into it until we find out more information.
So this week Tommy's vocabulary has more than doubled, in sign language that is. He now knows 8 signs (and I'm pretty sure this is the order he learned them in) more, daddy, all done, please, dog, eat, mommy, thank you. He also participates in the song, "If you're happy and you know it..." now and he claps his hands, stomps his feet, and pats his head! Tommy is just flourishing and it is such a joy to watch! He has just amazed us with how quickly he is picking up on things and learning to mimic us now. For the longest time he had NO, ZERO, NADA desire to repeat what we were doing, but now he LOVES it, b/c he gets praised when it happens! And he has also developed a little bit of an attitude/temper. When he doesn't get what he wants, especially when eating, he will start to whine/scream/cry. But so far he is responding really well and obeying when I sternly and loudly say, "STOP" and then he stops screaming and I look at him and praisingly say, "GOOD LISTENING!" and he starts smiling and is so proud of himself! I hope he continues to respond well to discipline, as well as responding well to praise! I'd much rather teach him how to behave properly by getting excited over him doing good then having to reprimand him, but I know it's good for him to know boundaries, etc. I do sound like a crazy person though when these times happen - b/c I have to change my tone and sound intentionally stern and then seconds later - smile big and happily say good job! Haha it's pretty funny, but hey it works...for now at least! And when this doesn't work I try to remove him from the situation to distract him, but if either of those don't work we've decided to do time out in his room, but so far we haven't had to do that.
In other news, we are still waiting on cousin Eli to be born! He could be here any day now, and we're all anxiously awaiting for Jeanne's phone call or text to let us know we need to be on our way! We've been able to skype a lot with Aunt Jeanne lately and Tommy loves to stand at the couch and listen and laugh at his aunt! He's been showing off his new signs and song skills!
That's all for now!
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