Speech Progress and Random Nico Cuteness

Nico is doing amazing in speech. He has made so much progress, and I am so proud of him. It is wonderful that he enjoys going to speech and every Monday when we turn into the parking lot, he says "peech," with excitement. He runs into the clinic and wants to begin immediately, even in his therapist is not quite ready!

7 months ago when Nico was first evaluated, he received a standard score of a 72(85-115 is the average range; SD=15; mean=100), which is in the bottom of the "below average" range for his expressive language. The little man's receptive language was 105, so no worries there. In a clinical setting (as opposed to in a school setting), "patients" get re-evaluated every 6 months. So Nico was re-evaluated about three weeks ago and scored a whopping 85! He is now at the bottom of the "average" range and making tons of progress. However, he is my child, and I expect him to be functioning at least at the mean, so we do have a ways to go.

Nico is now finally bursting with language, and while it may not be the most intelligible, it is there with using the correct number of syllabus the majority of the time and his correct vowel sound usage is increasing! With the evaluation, we actually changed to a different therapist. We are still at the same clinic, but the new SLP is actually the owner of the place and specializes in children under 3 years old. She is GREAT with Nico and has really built a rapport with him in such a short amount of time. He responds so well to her and works hard during therapy time.

In the few weeks he has been with the new SLP, two and three word phrases have come into bloom! Nico keeps surprising us with various phrases he says. Ed and I just look at each other saying, "he did just say...!" To name just a few of those now common day phrases: "what's this," "where'd it go," and "I want more dat." The best part is that Nico gets excited when we understand what he is saying. He tries so hard and it is finally starting to pay off! I am hoping that we will be able to continue to go to therapy up until the age of three because his sessions are not only great for working on language, but social and cognitive skills as well.

2 Year Old Appt

Nico had his 2 year old well visit appt today with the pedi. This was pretty good timing because the little man has had this nasty cough for about a month and it just does not want to go away. He did great during the appt. He answered almost all the questions the doctor asked him (to the best of his abilities), including "how old are you?" Nico's lungs sounded good in spite of the cough and every other milestone for a two year old has been met!

Our little, or should I say big, man weighed 30lbs, falling into the 69th percentile, and is 33.5 in tall in the 17th percentile. Funny enough his head circumference is 18.5 in, which is in the 10th percentile! We have a short stocky boy on our hands. I have a feeling he will be shooting up and growing into those hidden tall Pennington genes he has in him.

Luckily, no shots were required at this visit! I was very happy that Nico would not have to leave the doctor office screaming his head off for once...then the doctor told me that at the 2 year appt they like to have lead levels check and test for anemia. Sigh. So we walked on over to the lab and had blood drawn. Poor baby, he started yelling and screaming before the nurse even touched him!

Thankfully, my brave little guy had a good rest of the day back at school where he was able to show off his "boo boo," and then since the weather was decent, came home to play in his own playground out back.

Wordless Wednesday

These pics are from befefore Christmas, but they are super cute and wanted to share them.

Nico-His 2nd Year of Life

To our little man with all the love in the world. Thank you for being you.



Mom and Dad- don't worry, your own personal copy of this as a DVD is in the mail.

Christmas video

I was going through and organizing pictures on the computer when I came across this little video I shot on Christmas Day. Just so you know know, this is not the extensive version that Daddy shot since my video was done using just the everyday camera and his was recorded with an actual video camera. Hopefully someday we will get all that figured out. Anyway, I thought I would share this short, but still cute video of Nico. You can hear him reply "ho, ho, ho" at the beginning when asked what does Santa say.

Happy New Year!

For quite a few reasons, we, in the Walden family are happy that 2010 is over and 2011is here. Typically, Ed and I are not big New Year's Eve kind of people and now with Nico here, it is hard enough for us to even stay awake until midnight. However, this year, we did it, we stayed up until 12:05 am!

New Year's Eve started with Nico's nursery coming down. The hard to find teddy bears playing sports wallpaper came a tumbling down furniture was rearranged and new big boy furniture is set to be delivered next weekend. This was pretty bitter sweet for me, but Nico did shine some humor in to the moment. When he saw everything from his room out in the hallway, he walked around looking at it all, saying, "oh no!" and "bye bears." It was precious. Here is a quick video of the transition.


That night, Ed and I started the evening off with reminiscing our Jamaican trip by drinking our rum based favorite: Hummingbirds. However, they taste even yummier when sitting by the pool and listening to reggae music.


What goes great with Jamaican Hummingbirds? Waffles of course!


With a fire lit in the fireplace, the three of us snuggled up in the living room, reading books, taking in the beauty of the fire and enjoying our New Year's Eve together as a family.



For the third year in a row, we started of the new year by heading to Trinity Park, even in the cold, for Ed to "go, go, go" in the New Year's Resolution 5K, where he came in first in his age group. As usual, Nico cheered his Daddy on, by yelling "go, go Daddy" throughout the race. Finally, after the race, we treated Nico to a movie and went to see Tangled, which was a very cute and quite humorous movie!


Here is a GREAT 2011! One filled with small surprises and lots of smiles.