10 Months Old!

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter! We had some family over and had a great time. Mason did really well with everyone and even let his Mom out of his sight for a while with no complaints! The Easter Bunny brought him some toys which he loved!

Overall, Mason is doing pretty well. Last week he weighed in a few ounces shy of 16 pounds. It has been a few days, so we are guessing he is 16 pounds now. UofM just called today and increased his total daily calories to match his new weight. Mason is also going to get another trail off of his nighttime oxygen. We need to straighten out some software issues with his Pulmonary team and we will be ready for trail. Not sure how long the software issue is going to take.

Mason's occupational therapy is going pretty well. He is now totally comfortable making a mess in his baby food. Instead of just getting himself messy he now includes the walls, the floor and the dog :) Our goal is to get Mason to feed himself. Instead of playing with toys in his food, he is playing with spoons and will feed himself a little. So far he is enjoying all of the baby food flavors, but only if he feeds himself. We are also working with a sippy cup.

Unfortunately Mason is still having some gagging issues. We think this is caused by a combination of his small stomach and his weak esophagus. After some discussion with his surgeon, we both agreed that it is time to take a look and possibly dialate his stomach wrap, which could possibly be a little tight. His esophagus has always been pretty weak because of how his anatomy had formed before he was born. We depend on gravity to help him digest after he eats something by mouth. This will hopefully improve and normalize as he grows and gets stronger. The procedure is scheduled for April 4th and will last about an hour. Mason is undergo general anesthesia and the surgeon will use a small camera to look at everything. The procedure is scheduled as outpatient, so he should be able to come home afterwards.

You may have noticed an addition to the page in the last couple of days. Travis will be walking in the March for Babies on April 26th. His goal is to raise at least $500 for the walk. Thank you to everyone who has donated or committed to donate so far!! The March of Dimes is a very important organization to us because Mason was affected by both a birth defect and prematurity. We are hoping that starting next year, Mason and I will be able to join Travis in the annual walk.

Family Easter Picture

Playing with toys.

Feeding myself.

New Surroundings

Where do I start? Things have been pretty crazy lately and I have a lot to update.

We have moved! Our house sold and we moved into our new house on Sunday. Selling our house turned out to be a very complicated procedure, but we are almost through it and will probably close by the end of March. While we were in this process, we found a new house and spent a little time fixing it up before we moved in. I am happy to say that we are now in a more comfortable situation and I can remain a stay at home Mom. Bear with us for a while as we are living out of boxes and can't seem to find anything that we need!

The other big news is that Mason has tripled his birth weight. He was weighed last week and is over 15 pounds! He is starting to fill out more and we are seeing some baby chunk! Mason is also ready to come off of his diuretics! He has been outgrowing them and is now at a weight where they are not effective anymore. The other good news is that we are going to attempt to get him off his nighttime oxygen in the next week or two. They will probably wait to see if he does ok with the oxygen removed before they discontinue his diuretics. Slow and steady is the key!

Mason has also made some pretty good physical progress. He is now sitting on his own unsupported. He looks so cute sitting there! He still topples over a bit and is starting to put out his arms to try and break his fall. Mason is also working on serial rolling. He has figured out how to consistently roll from tummy to back and can roll from back to tummy with a little help. He rolled from his back to tummy once this week when I wasn't looking. He is also starting to imitate us by waving bye-bye (hit or miss) and raising his arms in the air.

Our little guy has become such a talker! He is always talking or practicing his scream. He can even scream like a girl! For the last few weeks he has been jabbering different sounds together. Last week is was b sounds like ba-ba-boo, etc. This week is d sounds. He is saying da da, but just not by itself yet. He just started this today and put a huge smile on his dad's face. We have also heard ma ma in his jabbering a couple of times this week. He talks so much during the day that I wouldn't be surprised if sentences started coming out :)

Oral feeding is still pretty difficult for us. We switched from a speech therapist to an Occupational Therapist in hopes that some sensory work might do the trick. Right now our goal is to get Mason's gag reflex further back in his mouth. Our second goal is to get Mason to make a mess. This is the fun part. Instead of feeding him we dump baby food, jello, pudding, whipped cream, etc. onto his tray and let him make a mess of it. However, we have found that this is easier said than done. Mason does not like to get his hands, or any other part of his body dirty and we had a tough time at first. He seems to be doing better now and I am doing a TON of laundry. I have to say that Buster seems to be enjoying the mess too!

Playing and Talking

Wearing My Shades!

Petting Buster Before Bedtime