The Eye Doc

We went to the eye doctor today to get checked.....my reason for doing this is that the early intervention lady said she was concerned that he wouldn't "track" an object for her. She recommended a visit to the eye doc. So we went through that trouble....turns out for nothing. The nurse laughed when I told her what we were there for. She said at his age (8 weeks adjusted) he isn't expected to do that yet. She had his doctor check him anyway since we were there, and she said he healed really nicely from his December surgery and looks on track so far. I also told her he goes cross-eyed sometimes, and she laughed and said all babies do that and all parents freak out about it. She said all that is typical baby stuff. So I feel better about that, and we don't need to go back and see her until June.

Colt and his Chick

I can't tell you how much Colt loves that chick....he smiles at it, looks for it when I make it chirp...stares at it. He's in love. I stunned him with the flash in the bottom picture (whoops). He's sooooooooo close to rolling over.

Day with Grandma

Colt was spoiled rotten today by Grandma............he got whatever he wanted all day (to be held pretty much).

Exercise Time

Here is Colt doing his daily stretches on his blankie.

Happy Easter

Colt and his chick......

Pooped from all the activity~ Colt and his easter pals take a nap

Who are you lookin' at?

First I have to say- WHOOPS....I forgot to blog Friday. 168 days running and I forgot amidst the chaos of moving, and then Saturday I was too tired to move to find the laptop so I missed that day too. Anyway, we're all moved into the new house and doing well! Hope everyone had a safe and Happy Easter!

Good News

We saw our physical therapist today and she said he is looking really good and staying on track....no concerns as of yet. She showed me some ways to enncourage tracking with his eyes, and she was able to get him to do it a few times which really made me feel better b/c the OT and the Early Start people couldn't get him to do that and they freaked me out about it. But he did several times, so I feel a lot better. He was doing all of the reflex things he should be doing, and has good head control and movements. We have exercises to work on to encourage better neck control...but since he's only 6 or 7 weeks adjusted he's fine with where he is at. She's going to teach me infant massage next time. He did so good during his appt...didn't get too pissed off while we worked with him. It's a long appointment and a lot of work for him, but he did great!

Cooperation

Moving is a nasty word...even nastier with a baby! But Grandma came today to help with Colt and packing, and he napped really well so we got lots done!!

Evaluation Day

Colt had an evaluation today from the Early Start program. It's a program provided for low birth weight babies. They come out to assess him to see where he is at developmentally, create goals and assign him a teacher to monitor him. His teacher will come twice a week until he is three years old, and will see him for 45 minutes each session. She will give me tips and things to work on with him, to help him to catch up to his chronological age. He has a few things to work on for now such as language (weird I know), and tracking with his eyes. We're going to go get a vision check next week just to be safe, as our past few appts have been about the eye surgery and not his actual vision.

Smiles!

Colt has smiled! A real smile! Not just gas! He smiled at Kreg the other morning, but I wasn't sure if it was real. Grandma Margaret said he smiled at her too...and Grandma Mary got a few today! I'll try to get better pix, I was always a few seconds too late.

Packing

Colt was so good all day... it allowed me to pack more boxes to get ready for the dreaded move next weekend!

Rattle

Here's Colt "playing" with his rattle...even though I am pretty sure he has no idea what it is. He'll pretty much grab onto anything that touches his hand! The sleeping has been going great at night!! I feel like a human again :)

Catching Up

Here's Bob watching Colt sleep.

This has nothing to do with Colt, but I thought it was funny. Sushi LOVES Cesar Millan the Dog Whisperer. He sits and watches the whole thing.

Colt is almost 10 lbs now. He's 9 lbs. 12 oz. now. He is starting to catch up to where he is supposed to be, the doctor had his weight and height plotted on the curve and compared to when we got out of the hospital he's had a huge jump in the 5 weeks we've been home. We went to OT as well and they didn't tell us much, other than to work with him on tracking and reaching for objects. We'll go once a month for a check-up with OT and PT just to monitor him. But she said she didn't see anything to worry about. Turns out the two times Colt has rolled over were an "accident"....says the doctor. She tested him to see if he would do it with this weird leg cross thing she did, and she said if it was on purpose he would turn but he didn't. Oh well...technically it was a little early for that anyway (according to his adjusted age which is 6 weeks).

Woohoo!

Colt slept from 10pm to 10am....twelve hours! Wow! I couldn't believe it, and it actually freaked me out a little. I called the doc to see if that was okay (because she is super strict about his feeding schedule and weight gain) and she said we'll see tomorrow if he's gaining the way she wants him to but also that I should probably wake him after 10 hours. He sees the doc tomorrow and we also have occupational therapy which will assess fine motor movements.

More pics

Angel Baby :)

Colt's grumpy face......

Amazingly enough....Colt slept ten hours straight last night. I kept waking up to check on him because I couldn't believe it! Who knows if that was a fluke but we will find out tonight!

A couple of pics.......

I'll add more tomorrow....here are a few of his pics we had done. Three nights in a row of 5-6 hours of sleep......soooooooooooo happy about that!!!

Yeah!

Colt slept from 11pm to 4:30 am twice now....which was just plain awesome. I am hoping it is a trend!!! My fingers are crossed.

Baby Bird

Here is Colt yawning but it looks like he is a baby bird......well at least that is what we thought :) Colt's pictures came out really cute, I will have to see if I can get some on a disk so I can put a few here on the blog. Colt has been home now 5 weeks...crazy huh! So he is 6 weeks adjusted age and 6 months actual birth age. We see his ped on Friday!

Best Big Sister

Here's Colt and Kelsey hangin' out together...Colt has been seeing his sister a lot more often and he loves it!! We took him for photos today and Kelsey was a big help! Colt wasn't the most well behaved photography subject as he looked like he wanted to crawl off of the table. No cute sleepy newborn pictures for us!!!

Walkin'

We figured out how to walk the baby and dogs at the same time today (stroller and dogs......do not go well together, at least not mine. It was a bit of a disaster). This is Colt gettin' ready to go for a walk. He hung out in the baby bjorn carrier and loved it! Auntie Shell watched him for a few hours so I could pack some boxes...so they had a good time together!

Packin'

We didn't do much today.....we just packed boxes for our upcoming move!! Yuck!

Picture Time

I took a few cute pics today...here they are! Colt has been quite a happy baby.....back to the baby we knew in the hospital, so maybe he is starting to settle in nicely to his new home!

Day with Grandma

Colt was absolutely spoiled rotten today....Grandma Mary takes him on Tuesdays so I can run errands and get some things done. So that means he basically gets hugged and held all day long! He has been settling into a routine pretty well and sleeping pretty good at night.....can't wait until he sleeps through the late night feed! I think I did pretty good for his first night off of the monitor, I only got up once to make sure he was breathing!

Freedom!

Here is our good friend Jennie getting her "Colt Fix" as she so eloquently put it.

Colt is free from the monitor now......crazy and scary! We saw the pulmonologist today (fancy word for lung doctor for those of you like me who had no clue what that meant). He decided that since Colt hasn't had any episodes while at home, that he did not need it any longer. I know I have said that the alarm has sounded a few times, but when it did go off it was always during a feed and it was his heart rate slowing down for a few seconds. He always corrected it himself, never changed colors (I know that sounds scary) and didn't need any assistance of any kind. So those types of alarms were never a concern, just enough to make you jump when it went off. He hadn't had any apnea (stop breathing for 20 seconds) at all at home, and hasn't actually done that in probably three months so we don't need the monitor. I tried to convince him to let me keep it for a little while longer for my own sanity at night...but he talked me out of it. My reasoning was SIDS, because preemies have a slightly elevated risk of SIDS from term babies. But he informed me that a monintor would not save a baby from SIDS. Counter-intuitive you might say, as I did, but he said it would not help in that arena. Colt will get his first professional pictures done this weekend, it was a gift from our friends, the Kordicks (Thanks guys!). Hopefully I can post them on here when we get them back!

Big Sister

Here is Colt and his big sister spending some playtime together. Colt rolled over today on his tummy time mat, but we couldn't get him to do it again for a video! We see the lung doc tomorrow!

Happy Baby

Colt was in a pretty good mood today......was awake for awhile and didn't have any reactions to his shot!