A post in pictures

We are not very exciting around here.  The highlight of my week usually includes my weekly trip to Costco/Target when I get a latte and walk around by myself.  Or bath night or Fridays when I change out all his tubing.  No complaints from me though!  Our little one is growing and thriving at home.  

Our little buddy is now big enough for the "facing forward" option in the Baby Bjorn.  He loves it!  We hang out like this for at least a few hours every day. 

Bath time is his favorite thing.  He loves to look out the window and do crazy amounts of kicking. 

This is how he spends his mornings.  Face planted in my chest. He loves it! This has always been his happy place.  I think it goes back to those very first holdings in the NICU.  Love this baby.  

He was doing some bicep curls during our afternoon exercises.  

Carl reads little books to him at night.  He's currently being taught how to use the Ipad.  

This was during our "tube free" time.  The outfit is a hand me down from Cousin Charlotte.  So cute.  It only lasted about 30 minutes though...

Carl and Brian wore matching plaid shirts.  SO cute. 

Thanks for the shirt Auntie Gracie! 

Brian is strangely content lying on his stomach with his hands straight down by his side.  Whenever he's crabby we do this and we have a new baby.  

We put Brian in the Bumbo!  He thought it was great.  His head control is getting so much better.  Our little man also LOVES the lights. 

Picture overload, I know!  Brian and I have two doctors appointments this week, both on Tuesday.  We see the lung doctor first then we go visit the cardiologist for a heart ECHO.  I'll be very interested to hear what the lung doctor has to say about his oxygen and how long he thinks we'll be on it.  Brian is doing pretty good I think, but it sure will be nice when we get to lose our tails.  :) 

He's Huge!

We have had quite the busy week!  But first, a picture :) 

This is our little man last Friday.  Once a week I always change out his nasal cannula and feeding tube for new, clean ones.  Friday is the day.  And I usually pick a cute outfit and do a little photo shoot while he is tube free.  He was SO CUTE and content.  Brian did so well with his oxygen off, he lasted about 20 minutes and was maintaining his oxygen saturations in the 90s (that's perfect) for the whole time.  We even managed a few facetime chats to show off his tube free face.  

Here's our little wiggle worm this afternoon.  This is outfit #4 people!  He goes through them like crazy lately, for multiple different reasons...  I don't really mind, it lets me use all the outfits we got for him, and baby laundry really is the best kind.  

We've been busy with our first round of therapist visits.  Last Thursday we have a Physical Therapist and an Occupational Therapist come to our house to evaluate our little buddy.  Overall, they think he is doing great!  He tested right on for a normal one month old!!  He was behind on some things, but ahead on others.  They were very impressed with his head control and could tell that we have been doing our exercises every day.  So that is great news!  They will continue to come to our house and visit our little guy once a month to watch his progress.  

On Monday, we had a Speech Therapist come to our house.  Their job is to watch his feeding and see how he is tolerating everything.  Obviously our chubby little man is getting his food, but we would like more of it to go down by mouth and less and less through his feeding tube.  He loves to eat but has been dealing with some pretty significant reflux.  We started up on some meds to hopefully help and we will get something called a Swallow Study done.  Brian and I will go to the hospital and have him eat in the radiology room with some special formula that will allow them to see if he is spitting up or having any of the food go into his lungs.  Hopefully we are all good, but better safe than sorry.  

 

We also had our second doctors visit on Tuesday!  Brian is up to a hefty 10 pounds 14 oz.  WOW!  That is 10x his birth-weight, people! Our Dr was very happy with his progress.  Based on how well he has grown this last month, if he continues on this trend he will physically be caught up to "normal" by his actual 1 year birthday.  So, if things go according to plan,  Charlotte and Brian will look the same by Labor Day.  To keep up with this crazy growth curve,  Brian gets fortified breast milk and needs to eat 3oz every 3 hours to get the needed calories.  That is alot to eat for a little 7 week old baby!  So we let him take what he likes from the bottle first, then continue to put the remaining down his feeding tube.  We hope that he needs that tube less and less, our Dr said that we have about 6-8 more weeks for him to totally catch on before we start talking about placing a G-tube.  That's a surgery that would involve putting a tube right into his stomach for him to get food that way.  Let's hope that doesn't happen!  

Carl and I are enjoying our time with sweet Brian.  He is much more alert and interactive now.  It's so fun!  He's constantly looking around lately and seems very curious.  It is definitely a fun, new stage for us.  He is on the brink of smiling on purpose! Not quite yet, but I think we are getting there.   I have one more week home then I head back to work next Friday night.  I've had a whole six months off, my work has been awesome.  At least I only need to do one day a week, and an 8 hour shift at that!  And then Carl is able to stay home and take care of our little buddy so there will be no day care for him.  We don't want any extra germs around here.  :) 

Sweet boy fell over, and didn't even mind.