Speaking of closing his eyes, the sleeping through the night
was going great for a few weeks but then he got a cold and it hasn’t been great
since then. I apparently spoke too early in my last blog when I expressed my
excitement of his new sleep habits. I should have kept my mouth shut. He is
definitely a ‘sleep feeder’ as they call it. For whatever reason, he eats his
bottle like a champ when his eyes are closed. It’s hard to not feed him in the
middle of the night when we know that most times he gets in more than half his
ounces overnight. I’m fairly certain Brett and I are going to go crazy very
soon…so I’m thinking an attempt to get him sleeping will be in our very near
future. He has also mastered eating a bottle by himself. Proud mom moment for
sure!
Perfect example of how bedtime goes for Kellan :)
Kellan is almost done with his first session of swimming
lessons. He has done great. He kicks almost the entire time….as in the minute
we enter the pool area, we don’t even have to be in the water yet! It never
fails that he lets out a few squawks at the other boy in the class when they
have to sit on the stairs and come into the water like big kids. I’m pretty
sure Kellan’s favorite part of swimming lessons is the locker room before and
after where he enjoys watching the action of all the kids in there.
His love for other kids is only growing stronger. I struggle
some days with daycare because he rarely gets a nap that is longer than an hour
and he doesn’t eat much at all. His pediatrician assured us that the social
aspect of the daycare is almost just as important. I can’t see myself taking
him out knowing how much he loves those kids there. He was moved up to the next
infant room the first part of February. We were excited for the change. We
started realizing he was the only kid actually sitting in the infant room and
all of his “friends” were at least 6 months younger than him just lying around.
He is now surrounded by walkers and crawlers. We hope they are some of the
motivation he needs to get moving.
Our focus that last two months with physical therapy is to
get him to use his arms. He has actually started to like standing, he’ll even
do a little dance if you ask him to while he’s up on his wobbly little legs. But,
we aren’t giving up on his crawling. We are also working on his transition from
laying to sitting. He seems to be very far from grasping the concept, but we
won’t give up! This picture portrays better than he is doing, we left him there for like .12 seconds, but I still love to see it!
He's in his therapy shorts below. They help him keep his legs together versus the "frog" position they are typically in. Narrowing his base will help him start moving.
As for speech therapy, it still feels like we don’t do much
during therapy (compared to physical therapy I guess), but I must say his
communication skills have evolved immensely over the last month. If you ask him
to give you something, he does. You can imagine how many times a day we ask him
to give us a ball J.
The trick doesn’t get old. The other night he was even alternating between
giving the ball to “mom” and “dad.” This was caught on video as we were so
proud! You can also show him 2 different things and ask him to give you one of
the items and most times he is correct. He has started to LOVE books. He has realized there are actual pictures and
things to touch and feel in his books, not just something to chew on. We got a
photo album that is specifically for babies. You put pictures of favorite
people or things into the book to encourage him to open the pages, worked like
a charm! Grandma Daiker and “Da” are mostly always the pages open.
We had our follow up appointment for his eye that we were
patching. There wasn’t the change they were hoping for so their first
recommendation was to patch for 2 hours instead of 1. I’m very certain that
Doctor has NEVER had to patch a baby. 1 hour was nearly impossible, 2…well we
knew we had to find an alternative. The options we were given were not great.
Our original decision was to perform a test under sedation to see if his retina
is even working. This would have to be done at UW Madison Children’s since they
are the only hospital around that performs the test. When the nurse called from
Madison to ask about Kellan’s health history, she informed me she was worried
about how Kellan will do in the test. She went on to tell me he could stop
breathing and they should look into the possibility of a breathing tube during
the test. It was like she was thinking out loud, I couldn’t believe she was
just so ‘ho-hum’ about informing me of this. It was that phone call that made
me second guess our decision.
We ended up talking with Kellan’s pediatrician and he
steered us in a different direction. Our other option outside of glasses was a
drop that would dilate Kellan’s good eye for 6-8 hours per day, taking away his
nearsightedness in that eye, forcing him to use his droopy/wandering eye. That
option seemed horrible, but we’ve been doing it now for almost a week and it is
so much easier than what we expected. He absolutely HATES getting the drop in,
one of the only things he actually cries about, but once they are in he is
fine. I’m really hoping it does what it needs to strengthen the other eye. We shall
see.
I’m working to become better at managing his allergies. It
is so easy to give him a ball or a balloon and not remember he can’t have them
if they have latex. Poor guy. We just got an epi pen just in case, I feel much
better now that we have that. I hope we never have to use it, but the idea of
having it with him puts me at ease. I’ve also realized I really need to watch
what people try to feed him. We were at a birthday party recently and someone
wanted to give him a little cake. Ahhhh, no! It is definitely going to take
some adapting to get used to a little kid with allergies.
On another note, my life was once again put into perspective
when I found out a very close friend of mine got the news her little brother
has cancer. He’s like a little brother to me…the news hit me hard. I was
reminded that my faith needed to be strengthened again. My first time in church
in quite a while and there were many signs that I should be going more often. I
found myself drawing parallels with Kellan’s life to this family, a scary yet
gentle reminder of the important things in life. As I sat there in church, I
heard the words sung:
“Be
with me Lord when I am in trouble, be with me Lord I pray.”
We’ve had our fair share of troubled times the last 14
months and I know there will be more in our future. I have been praying so hard
that God also has a plan for my best friend, her brother and their family. One
of the hardest lessons I have had to learn, sometimes the plans seem to really,
well….suck. Hug and cherish the ones you love because you just never know.
Kellan continues to be the happiness to my morning, fills with
me happy thoughts throughout the day, and the smile and “squawk” I rush home
for every night. The changes he has made the last 2 months are pretty incredible.
He makes us proud and he is so fun. Becoming even greater every single day. His
little personality shines through more and more each day….I can’t wait to see
what tricks our little magician pulls out next.
No comments:
Post a Comment