The 2-Year Check

Today at 27 months, 2 weeks and 1 day old Dexter had his 2-year check up with the health visitor and the verdict was as follows...

• He is 90.5cm tall which is 2ft 11.5 inches!!!!
• He weighs 14.77kg or 2st 4.5lbs
• There is no indication Dexter has inherited his daddy's colour blindness
• His speech is ahead of what would be expected at this age
• He has a "lovely temperament" and is the health visitors "star of the day" :D

*cue two parents beaming with pride*

Dexter @ 27 months

25-27 Months

So many small things happen day in, day out. And over a period of time it all equates to quite a significant change in Dexter and his development - although only updating the blog every three months means it can be easy to forget so much of what has happened :( But here goes, this is a rough picture of what's been going on from 25-27 months old....

Ok, so shortly after his second birthday Dexter went through a bit of a phase. When things didn't go his way we would end up with a Dexter shaped heap on the floor, kicking his feet and sobbing into the rug. "Oh dear!" we though... "is this the start of terrible twos???" Oh no, not the terrible twos. The timing would seem right. Other peoples experiences would suggest that this was probably what it was, and why would we be so lucky as to escape this dreadful stage? However, a phase was exactly what it was. Short lived. In hindsight it was probably more about him knowing what he wanted but struggling to express it properly. But Dexter's vocabulary seemed to step up a gear almost over night. He can now say up to four or five consecutive words at a time in a clear and understandable manner (that's quite an impressive sentence as far as a two year old is concerned)! and is learning more and more complex words by the day - he surprises us with some of the things he can actually pronounce. So once he was able to make us understand a bit more, the tantrums stopped. Phew!

Dexter @ 26 months

We attended Dexter's parents evening at nursery back in December in preparation for his move to the Jumping Frogs room. They showed us all his progress reports, lots of fun pictures of his daily antics and told us he is meeting or exceeding expectations in all areas which makes us very proud parents :) Since his move to the new room in January he has made loads of new friends. And being around older children means he is learning so many new things from them which is good.

Part of the progress chart they showed us stated that around this age he might start to show a preference for which hand he uses... and funnily enough we had started noticing this without even realising. We think he may turn out to be left-handed as this seems to be his hand of choice and most dominant hand in a number of activities:

Dexter can now also count from 1 to 5 without any prompting. If we're lucky he can make it up to 7 but more often than not the numbers tend to trail off or get muddled after this point! And recently, he started being able to correctly identify and say the names of an array of shapes too. His new hobby is pointing out shapes that he sees in day-to-day activities.

We began attending our first term of swimming lessons together last month and so far, Dexter really seems to be enjoying it. He is definitely gaining more confidence in the water. His new favourite thing is jumping in and he has even been 'swimming' under the water :D (You can read the blog entry here).

There have been lots of little tweaks to Dexter's personality over the last few months. He has a better understanding of things. He can say a lot more. He just seems grown up somehow. He is incredibly affectionate and loving. And much to my delight, still such a mama's boy.

We can't wait to see what the next 3 months will bring.......