I realized that I haven't been writing much about Verneri lately, so I guess I should fill you guys in on his latest developments etc. Yesterday I took him bright and early to the Neuvola (pediatric nurse and/or doctor) for his 18month check-up. He was a little rascal there, running around the Neuvola hallways and screaming of joy. Our new pediatric nurse here in Helsinki is so nice! I like her a lot more than the old fart in the Turku Neuvola. Verneri is growing according to the charts, he weights 10,7kg (sorry, I don't have the energy to convert that to lbs...you're gonna have to do that yourself!) and is 80,8cm tall. A little bit on the short side, but that's no surprise since mommy and daddy are on the short side too...;). After we had a chat with the nurse we went back to the lobby waiting for the doctor to call us in. The doc was a nice lady too. She examined Verneri and he didn't even cry or anything. Although, Verneri wanted to examine the stetoscope before he let her listen to his heart. The heartmurmur is still there, but it's diagnosed as harmless. Most likely it will go away with age as the heart grows. Otherwise he's in great health and growing and developing as expected.

As I wrote earlier, Verneri is starting to talk soon. Yesterday he tried to say "appelsiini" (an orange) after me, but it came out as "aplii". He understands almost everything that is said to him. He knows what are socks, shoes, toes, hair, hat, eyes, ears, spoon, etc... And this is really weird, but he has a real knack for numbers! I'm serious. He looooves numbers. When we were at the Sea Life aquarium, he didn't care about the fish, he had fun pointing at the numbers on the tanks. In the elevator, he screams out loud when the floor number buttons light up. We bought him a cardboard book of numbers and that's his most favorite book right now.  Whenever he sees the Keno lottery on tv, he runs screaming to the front of the tv, stands there pointing at the numbers and shivering, as if he's trying to tell us that there's somekind of a pattern or formula to those numbers. He's probably going to be a scientist (yay?)...I'm afraid he's favorite book is going to be "MAOL -taulukot" ( a source book for standard mathematics, chemistry and physics formulae). The math side is definitely from daddy. Let's hope Verneri also takes after him in musical aptitude.:)