Charlie at the Children's Museum

A couple of weeks ago Charlie and I met some friends at the Children's Museum of Phoenix. The "under 3s" room is so baby-friendly that I could really just watch and take pictures. Charlie was entertained for hours. Even the bigger-kid rooms held his interest and had baby-friendly spaces. We got a membership, so we will be going anytime we want to get out of the house and escape the heat!

Charlie really liked this wooden wagon. I pushed him around in it too.

Fun with mirrors :)

So adventurous! He got up there all by himself...

We have on of these balls at home, but he was still fascinated...

He was SO serious about this...

These activities are so well designed; the kiddos find them on their own and figure out exactly what to do. It was so fun to observe and notice what Charlie was drawn too and how he played with stuff.

Looked down at Mama...

Playing with big-kid Levi.

So much cool stuff to look at and play with. I love this picture!

Observing the big kids, but sheltered in a baby space.

Looking at an interesting book in the baby space.

Charlie's big bash!

We are throwing a big party for Charlie and all of you! If you want to come celebrate with us, let me know! Email me at: s3az@hotmail.com

Our little crawler turned one!

Can you believe that it has been a year since Charlie was born? We can't! I love that his birthday is St. Patrick's day. We have definitely been bless with some Irish luck, haven't we? We had a small family party for Charlie. He didn't eat any cake, but got into the icing a bit. One of his (too) many gifts was his very own cushy chair. We can just picture Charlie curled up in his chair reading a book...

We have reached so many milestones in the last couple of weeks; it is amazing! We saw Charlie's pulmonologist last week and he told us that we could start treating Charlie like a normal baby! We are taking it very slow...we have eaten outside at restaurants a few times. It felt so strange and fun to include Charlie into our outside-the-house life. The Doctor also called the home health service to come pick up all of Charlie's monitors and oxygen tanks. We were keeping them on hand in case he got sick. We don't need them any more!! If Charlie gets sick his lungs should be able to handle it. It is really amazing how far we have come. I don't think we really believe it yet...I know that I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wonder if that feeling will ever go away?

We have been working on Charlie's crawling for a really long time now and we were starting to think that he may just skip it. We worked really hard on getting his tummy off the floor and yesterday he crawled on his own! Today he crawled even more and showed off for his physical therapist. He is also scooting along furniture and he showed her that too! She said "he really is a miracle baby..." yup. We are so blessed.

Now that Charlie is a year old I have been thinking of making this our family blog and blogging about what we all are doing. I mostly mother Charlie, but Chuckie always has a lot going on!

Thank you all so much for faithfully reading and supporting us through the last year. It really has meant so much to us!

Charlie's green velvet birthday cake!

Mesmerized by the flame and the frosting...

Charlie LOVES his ball from cousin Ethan.

Charlie's big boy chair!

Charlie getting into "his" drawer.

Second day crawling! He is making this proud/determined face in every picture!

We have a stander...

Charlie has been mobile for a while now. He is still perfecting his crawl, but he drags himself around really well :) He has started getting up on his knees and getting into things. He loves to play with his bucket car seat. Our job has just gotten a lot harder because Charlie has started pulling up to stand. He was hanging out with me in my (messy) office and he pulled up so he could play with a package of printer paper. He was so serious about it. It is really funny. He isn't very stable so he falls over a lot. Charlie is really starting to ham it up for the camera.

It is hard to document his activities. It looks like all he does is look at us and smile :)

We met with Charlie's developmental pediatrician. It was a great appointment! She thinks we should aim for Charlie to catch up to his actual age by 15 to 18 months. She also feels that we can now rule out any serious motor problems or developmental delays. Charlie may be clumsy when he grows up...but that should be about the extent of it. Preemies are at a higher risk of learning disabilities...but she told us not to worry about it for now. We are so excited! She really thinks we can relax now and just enjoy Charlie. We love just hanging out with Charlie...but we still take him to weekly therapy appointments and try to work with him as much as possible. He doesn't love to eat solid food, but we are working on it and his speech therapists aren't worried yet. We are in a really good place as Charlie approaches his first birthday!!

Charlie loves to pull things out of baskets...

One of Charlie's favorite toys...

Not the most stable position...

What I saw when I peeked under my desk...

So serious!

So big!!

Piano lessons from Daddy.

Piano playing on his own...

Crazy man ready for his bath!

An exciting couple of weeks!

Well, Charlie go his first cold a couple of weeks ago. We were really worried but it was very mild and only lasted a few days. We did check his oxygen with the pulse oximeter. He is so much bigger than the last time we used it, we needed extra tape to get the probe to stick to his foot. I took a picture of course. It is so poignant to see a chubby healthy Charlie with a pulse-ox! He was so sick and so small for so long with that pulse-ox attached. It turns out we had nothing to worry about. Charlie was pretty patient with us sticking that thing on his foot. His lowest O2 reading was 96 and was usually higher. So, we had nothing to worry about. Still, we love having the ability to assess his condition at home!

Charlie has started to pull up on things. His physical therapist and occupational therapist are happy with his progress. We still have therapy at least once a week and we try to work with him a lot at home. He is so proud of himself when he does something new! We are having a lot of fun with our growing boy. Charlie weighs 16 pounds now! He outgrew his co-sleeper so he has just started sleeping in his room in his crib. He is doing pretty well with it. I did snap a cute picture of Charlie snoozing in bed with Daddy...

Speaking of Daddy...Charlie and his Dad have a very special and close bond. They have so much fun hanging out together. I am so glad that Chuckie was able to postpone starting his MBA program by a year and really gets to spend a lot of time with Charlie. Charlie and I are going to miss spending so much time with him!

Charlie feeling sick but being patient with the pulse-ox on his foot.

So proud of himself for pulling up on the stool!

Charlie's first time in his crib. He loves to look in the mirror when he wakes up!

Still snoozing with Daddy sometimes. So cute!!

Our lucky clover. We couldn't save this for March because he is getting too big for it!

Hmm...Daddy is making a weird face!

Big smiles!

January wrap up and medical updates :)

We wrapped up January with no illness, we are so grateful for that! I have a little cold right now and I am hoping Charlie doesn't get it. The longer he goes without getting sick the better because everyday he gets bigger and stronger. So it has been great that he has gone this long without getting sick. We have been really really careful. Charlie is doing really well with all his therapies. We have been working on his fine-motor skills and he has made great improvements. He is still commando crawling on his tummy but he spends a lot of time rocking on his hands and knees. He sits up now and that makes giving him a bath so cute and so much easier.

Charlie had another swallow study done and I snapped some pictures. He is so cooperative! The study showed that he is still aspirating thin liquids; we will continue to thicken his foods and repeat the study in 3 months. The swallow study is so neat to watch; I feed him barium (which shows up on x-ray) in different consistencies and we can watch an x-ray "movie" of his swallow to see how the liquid travels down his throat. I thought he looked so cute in the chair. I felt bad feeding a hungry little boy non-food in his bottle :( but other than that it was pretty fun. We get to see one of the therapists we saw in the NICU and it is so neat to show off how much Charlie has grown! In general Charlie loves to see old friends and meet new people but he is just starting to get stranger anxiety.

Charlie has started eating baby cereal. We are going really slow with solids for a few reasons but mostly we really didn't want to push him at all. Preemies like Charlie often have oral aversions and feeding problems that last well into childhood. We really wanted to make sure Charlie was ready and interested in eating. Charlie is doing really well with his cereal, he seems to like it! We go to an outpatient speech therapist that helps us with feeding and we are going to get another feeding/speech therapist that will come to our house. There is such a difference in the therapy that we get in our home versus out. It works out well to do both, but it does mean that we have lots of appointments. Chuckie and I like all the many ideas we get to help Charlie overcome any issues he is having. Charlie is currently caught up to his adjusted age of 7 months!

Charlie let me put him in the basket but he is definitely too big!

Charlie is such a sleeper! If he gets tired he will conk out anywhere.

Such a big boy sitting in the sink!

Bath time is so fun!

Getting set up for his swallow study...

He has his protective gear.

The radiologist took too long and Charlie removed his protective gear...

Worn-out with a barium mustache...

Enjoying baby oatmeal with Daddy!

Our cute little rascal!

Well, Charlie is officially mobile. He can drag himself all over the place, and pretty quickly too! He is also rocking on his hands and knees, so crawling might be here soon. Now that he can move around he has started to get into things. He loves shoes, so his daddy gave him a new one to play with. There is nothing like trying desperately to keep your preemie away from germs and have him try to lick the bottom of a shoe...Here are some cute pictures of our cheerful little rascal!

I love my new Raggedy Andy....

I will chew on him just to prove it....

Ooh, a shoe!

I got the shoe!

Forget shoes, what is THIS?

What happens if I pull it?

Can I put it in my mouth?