Loving Summer

This pic was taken on Thursday after my cousin Rebecca (left- she was the photographer), Jeremiah and I spent an hour or so swimming in my grandma's pool. Have I mentioned how much Jeremiah loves swimming?! He gets so excited every time we even walk by a pool. Put on his floaties and he's good to go, only staying on the steps for a moment or two before flinging himself into the shallow end. He is quite skilled at maneuvering himself around the shallow end on his own and has absolutely NO fear. He's already getting good at moving his arms and kicking his legs. I'm kicking myself for not signing up for mommy and me swimming lessons this summer- definitely next summer. Perhaps I'll be heading to the Summer Olympics in 18 or 20 years as a proud mother of an Olympic Champion? Watch out, Michael Phelps, Jeremiah Castillo is a champion in the making!

One of our home improvement projects this summer was having a sprinkler system installed in our front yard (our lawn is enormous and Louis was getting tired of spending 2 hours watering it with his hose). Our neighbor/gardener installed it last week and today I thought it would be fun if Jeremiah and I played in the water while the sprinklers were going. After the initial shock that water was coming out of them and knocking him down on the grass, Jeremiah had a ball. He loves getting wet and my little investigator had such fun figuring out exactly how the rainbird sprinklers worked, and playing with the mister sprinklers that were installed by the small patches of grass on the other side of our sidewalk. I wish my camera was working so I could have snapped some pics of him- he was holding onto this huge stick the whole time, and it reminded me of Moses with his staff, before parting the Red Sea. So cute! (Note to self: invest in a new digital camera before going to Colorado in 3 1/2 weeks). We played outside for an hour, gettig wet and eventually splashing in the puddles on the sidewalk and squishing our fingers in the mud. I really wish we had the sprinklers installed at the beginning of the summer rather than towards the end so we could have been doing this more often.

Jeremiah had his first checkup of the year on Thursday. I know, I was sitting on finding him a new pediatrician once we got our new insurance. I was getting so frustrated calling up new pediatricians only to find that as a new patient, we would have a 1 1/2-3 month wait before being able to get an appointment. A nurse at my OB's office reccomended one to me and we were able to get an appointment within 2 weeks. I LOVE our new pediatrician, she's so nice, so wise and has Jeremiah's best interest at heart. And she also understood completely when he flipped out as soon as we entered the examination room- my boy has good memory and HATES going to the doctor! He's the perfect height and weight (25 pounds, 32 inches). Dr. Ali recommended that he begin speech therapy because, at 20 1/2 months, he's saying less than 5 words, and mostly just says "mama," "dadda", and "go." Every once in a while he'll say another word, such as "amma" (grandma) or "abba" (grandpa) but he only says them once in a blue moon and then forgets about the word for quite some time, or never repeats it again. She knows that some k ids blossom at 2 years old, but there is a free program that gives children less than 3 years of age free speech therapy up until their third birthday,a nd she'd rather start it now than wait til his 2nd birthday in order to make the most of it, just in case. I'm hoping the Regional Center is able to fit him in fairly soon because I"m anxious for all the help we can get getting him to talk!

... and eat normally. She also is referring us to a nutritionist that will hopefully get him to eat something other than bread and cereal products, cheese and bread. My boy can't live on carbs alone... and he also can't push away new foods forever! One glance at something "different" and he throws a fit and pushes it away. Although Louis said he did eat a bite of bacon today at Ihop...

That's about all for now.! thanks for reading!