One and half years old

Yeah, we're behind, RJ is now 19 months, but we thought that the year and a half milestone was important to talk about.

For those of you who like stats:

Height: 34 inches tall (90th percentile)
- since his first birthday, he has grown 4 inches and jumped from the 50th to the 90th percentile in height!

Weight: 23.13 lbs. (25th percentile)
- since his first birthday, he has gained about 3 lbs. and jumped from somewhere between the 10-25 to the actual 25th percentile.

Head circumference
- we got a poor measurement somewhere, because his head clearly didn't shrink in the past 6 months. Anyway, the doctor didn't redo this one and honestly wasn't really concerned as his head appears quite normal.

Teeth
- RJ has 7.5 teeth with more clearly on the way. He has the top 4 front teeth his right top molar most of the way through and his left top molar just poking through. He also has his two front bottom teeth. We're thinking that those bottom teeth will be getting some friends soon! (Now at 19 mos. he has 9 teeth - 4 top front, 2 top bottom and 2 top molars and his bottom right molar) The doctor informed us that the water in Tracy isn't flouridated but that she doesn't recommend giving drops daily, but rather just once in a while to give him a little boost since flouride toothpaste isn't recommended for a toddler who can only spit when he wants to and not when mommy wants him to.

With physical development, he's right on track, if not advanced. She was happy to hear that he can kick a ball since it involves balancing on one foot. She was also impressed with the climbing ability that I described. And she even got to keep some of RJ's artwork since he drew all over the questionnaire that I had to fill out about what he eats and drinks and stuff.

Verbally, he's off the charts...literally. I mentioned that he uses well over 40 words (I lost count after 40 or so and it's probably at least doubled or tripled by now) and has started putting together two and three word phrases and she exclaimed, "That's not even on this chart!"

RJ also got two shots (MMR & DTaP), which he did not appreciate. As I was scheduling his 2 year old check up, he kept giving that particular nurse the evil eye - he was really pissed at her! Later in the day he also did not appreciate the Snoopy band-aids either. He kept picking at them.

We didn't vaccinate for chicken pox because I'm not comfortable with the vaccine being still relatively new - we don't know what the long term effects are yet, so we'll let it go a few more years. We will vaccinate RJ for chicken pox if he gets to age 10 or something and hasn't gotten chicken pox yet (it can be more dangerous for an older child or adult), but right now, even our doctor said that we didn't have to vaccinate him quite yet.

We also decided against the flu shot. I really expected more of a fight from our doctor on that one, but I'm just anti-flu shot for normal healthy people, and she was fine with it since he's generally healthy.

The bottom line is that we have a healthy, tall, skinny, and smart little boy in our lives.