Sunday, May 29, 2011

Sunday, May 29, 2011


Visiting the 4th Grade Travel Fair to See Ella



I feel like a broken record. There are fun baby things to report this week, but no health issues. Phil and I have always been fans of boring, and we are definitely loving this source of boring!

Caleb is scooting all over the place. He has still not figured out the hands/knees form of crawling, but he can get where he wants to go. Today, I found him halfway underneath his bassinet.

This week, Caleb has started playing Peek-a-Boo with us. We put a blanket on his head, we say "Where is Caleb?", he pulls the blanket off, we yell "There he is!" and Caleb laughs. He has now figured out that if he pulls the blanket back up over his face, he can control the game. The entire family finds this highly amusing (I told you we thrive on boring!).

Caleb has also decided that he likes real food much more than baby food. He now sits in his high chair and feeds himself little bits of whatever we are eating at meals. He is keeping up pretty well for someone without teeth!

Monday, May 23, 2011

Sunday, May 22, 2011


This is what you look like after an exciting Sunday of playing with your entire family

Caleb has decided that his biggest motivation for moving on his own is to mess with his brother and sister's stuff. He particularly loves paper and Uno cards. We have not yet heard "Caleb took my ..." but I am guessing that it is not far off. That is how well he is doing.

We are working on getting him to stay up on his hands and knees and getting him to roll to the left. If we put something on this left side, he rolls to his right and scootches to get it. He gets points for ingenuity, but his cooperation is not too strong.

Caleb is loving solid foods. I have been giving him the Gerber puffs - little snacks that he can feed himself that dissolve very quickly. He now recongnizes the container and is always ready to eat whenever you put him in his high chair.

On Monday, I took Caleb to the pediatrician for an ear infection (his second). He was pretty fussy and kept grabbing at his left ear. He is on amoxicillin and is feeling much better. He had a nasty runny nose last Monday through Wednesday, but is now back to feeling good.

Caleb went to the pediatrician for his 9 month check on Wednesday. As hard as it is to believe, Caleb is now 9 months old. The doctor was happy with how well he is doing. His head circumference is at the 70% percentile, his length is at the 25% percentile and his weight is still not on the chart. The pediatrician is not worried though. We will take Caleb back in a month for another weight check and for another round of vaccines. We decided to postpone his vaccinations so Caleb could get over his cold and ear infection, instead of adding to his misery.

On Saturday, I took Caleb shopping with me to Costco. He is very outgoing, so he smiles at everyone we see. It was like he was running for office - we had a ball. When we got to the check out, the store was selling paper balloons to raise money for the DeVos Children's Hospital. Last year, about this time, I bought four balloons with tears in my eyes, hoping that I would be able to do it again when I had four healthy children. On Saturday, I got to do it (again with tears in my eyes, but with a big smile on my face). Each day, I think about how lucky we are to still have Caleb, but comparing where we were last year at this time and where we are now really put things into perspective!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Sunday, May 15, 2011


Definitely not a poster boy for childhood obesity!


Moving from sitting to ready to crawl

This week was another good week. Caleb is learning new tricks everyday. This week, he started rolling over from his back to his tummy so he can get to toys on the floor. One night, he was rolling back and forth from back to tummy on Sam's bed, pausing between rolls waiting for us to cheer for him. He is quite the ham! He has also learned how to inch along on his belly, play peek-a-boo and he is enjoying solid foods more and more each day. We are amazed at the progress that he is making - he is getting pretty close to being caught up!

Here is my first attempt at uploading video. It's very short, but proves he can roll like a champ!

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Sunday, May 8, 2011



Happy Mother's Day!

We have decided that four open heart surgeries are good preparation for being a little brother. If you can survive that, you can survive being drug along to every Girl Scout meeting, baseball practice and school event that your older siblings participate in. This picture is Caleb at Sam's first baseball practice being held by Maeve (still wearing a snowsuit in May).

We had a great week last week. Caleb is still doing great with the bottle and has bounced back well from the stomach flu. He has a runny nose and a little cough, but it is not slowing him down any.

Caleb is making more progress on his gross motor skills. He can now go from sitting up and move down to his belly and is starting to inch along the floor. He is not crawling yet, but he has realized that he can move to get things that are out of his reach.

He is also making progress eating solid foods. He does quite well with cereal and baby food and likes to feed himself Cheerios. He still doesn't have any teeth and sometimes he gags on the Cheerios, but he is determined that he needs to feed himself.

Caleb had his cardiologist appointment on Wednesday. The cardiologist was very happy with what he saw. Caleb's oxygen saturations were in the upper 80's and low 90's, his heart rate was good and his EKG looked like it was supposed to. He did not have an echocardiogram, but his heart sounded like it should.

Now we have to work on getting Caleb to put on some weight. His official weight is just shy of 14 pounds. Considering that we was nearly 8 pounds when he was born and he is nearly 9 months old, he isn't really packing on the pounds. The cardiologist said that we will wait him out a little while because he doesn't want to use the NG tube unless we absolutely have to. Phil and I couldn't agree more!

Caleb was also taken off his last diuretic. Now he is only on Zantac (which we may be able to eliminate soon), Captopril (to make it easier for his heart to pump and help keep his blood pressure lower) and 1/2 of a baby aspirin a day (to help eliminate blood clots). This level of medication is not hard to deal with and Caleb doesn't mind it most of the time.

Overall, things are very normal now and we are loving it!

Monday, May 2, 2011

Sunday, May 1, 2011


Caleb is not crawling yet, but he loves to stand!

Caleb made it through his first bout of stomach flu last week. He was sick Thursday and Friday, but bounced back like a pro on Saturday. He ate very little on the days he was sick (like all of the rest of us that had it earlier in the week), but he made up for it on Saturday. He is still doing great with the bottle and we still haven't had to put the tube back in! His weight never has varied more than a few ounces.

Caleb's occupational therapist assessed him on Tuesday and he is doing really well. It seemed to us like he has been catching up and now we have proof. He is still behind on gross motor skills, but only by about 1.5 months. He still is unable to go from a sitting position to crawling. He is also behind on his oral skills. He makes lots of noise, but still doesn't make any real consonant sounds. Overall, she is very happy with his progress.

Caleb has a cardiologist appointment on Wednesday, so we will get some feedback on how his heart is doing.

This week, we are going to work on solid foods now that he is doing so well with the bottle. Caleb is very interested in what we eat, but not as keen on baby food. We haven't been spending as much time on the baby food and cereal as we should because of our concentration on the bottle feeding. Now that we have the bottle thing going, we are going to need to start on a cup soon!

My plan is to add a new photo later this morning if Caleb cooperates, so if you are an early reader, I apologize. This weekend was crazy busy and I forgot to get a photo. Caleb did go to his first garage sale, White Cap's game and walked in his first Crop Walk. A photo mom would have taken a picture of at least one of these events, but I forgot!