The graduate

Ever since birth, M has been under the watchful eye of the Special Ed department of our school district. They have stopped in periodically to see on how his progress is going. They were pleased when he rolled over, nodded when he picked up his first toy, and smiled when he took his first steps.

Now, at age 2 and officially caught up with other two year-olds they cranked up Pomp and Circum-stance and dismissed him.


We have graduated from Special Ed!
And the future never looked brighter...

The other 2-year checkup

Being a NICU alumni, Mathias is enrolled in a long term study of outcomes among preemies. We recently went back for the two-year check at Children's hospital. Just as they did last year, they administered a test called Bayley to gauge development. At this age he's expected to master things like:

• Stacking objects on top of each other
• Pointing to correct images when asked things like where's the dog?
• Imitating behavior such as putting items in a cup
• Standing on one leg
• Kicking a ball
• Walking backwards

Mathias was quite a trooper through the whole ordeal, even though it took a long time. When the results were all tallied and charted, the report showed: M is developmentally where you would expect a 2-year old child to be. That is reassuring since he just turned 2!

Height and weight-wise we're holding at about the 5th percentile. But his growth trajectory is exactly as expected.

Everybody is happy!

The 2-word sentence

Having been a one-word-at-a-time communicator for a while it was only a matter of time...


We have had the first cases of one word being combined with another to create something greater than the sum of the two.

Case in point: the simple but crucial "I" and the less frequently used "pooped" being combined for a proud exclamation of accomplishment!