Eleven months ago today, Katie and I welcomed all 28 ounces of little Edward Michael. Today, two hundred and twenty eight ounces later, he tips the scales at exactly 16 pounds. And he is a hot mess....but for all the right reasons. He loves bath time and splashes the water all around, shoving his soapy hand into his mouth. He blows bubbles of saliva in our face all day long. He has (as Katie likes to say) 'stinky farts.' Today, he threw his first legitimate temper tantrum - crying, arching his back, snot, tears - the whole nine yards (which of course resolved within 11 seconds of picking him up). He pulls at hair, necklaces, eyeglasses and earrings with no abandon. Today, as an 11-month birthday present to us, he peed all over his play mat. These 'joys' of parenthood are, in fact, true joys. We certainly lose perspective at times and forget how lucky we are, but Edward has continued to bring us such happiness - temper tantrums and all.
Overall, Edward is doing fantastic. He has had some ups and downs here and there, but his past few months have been marked with a significant amount of progress. For example, he still fights his bottles a few times a week, but he loves to eat food! For example, over the past two months, he has tried butternut squash, peas, carrots, zucchini, avocado, green beans, apples, pears, bananas, blueberries, sweet potatoes, cheese, mashed potatoes, yogurt....the list goes on. He is not too fond of green beans and pears (a little too sweet), but he will devour his yogurt, cheese + avocado. He has also started to develop his pincer grasp and is now able to pick up a piece of cheese or a puff and get it relatively close to his mouth before losing control and dropping it on the floor for Winston to clean up. He also loves to sit in his booster seat and 'bang' his toys all around. He then glances at one of us, only to drop said toy right on the ground, waiting for us to pick it up. This cycles repeats itself ad infinitum much to his enjoyment.
Physically, he has also continued to make strides. He continues to receive physical therapy every two weeks. The physical therapist comes to our house and spends an hour with Katie + Edward, first assessing Edward's recent progress and current strengths. She then develops a new set of exercises to teach Katie as well as goals to achieve over the upcoming two weeks. With of all of this, Edward is now able to easily roll over front-to-back and back-to-front. He is also able to get up on 'all fours' and rock a little bit. He has yet to crawl, but he is starting to lurch forward to try to grab a toy. He is also sitting up quite well. He still loses his balance and 'face-plants' (very gently, of course) onto his play mat. But to be honest, he is plenty tough - he takes the bumps and bruises of physical development while hardly shedding a tear. I think the tubes, IVs, and poking + prodding in the NICU toughened him up. Certainly, for 11 months, he is behind from a physical development perspective, but if you adjust for his age, he is pretty much spot on. We are hopeful that the next month or two will lead to crawling and that maybe by 16-18 months, we will be walking!
Thank you all for your continued thoughts and prayers. We are sorry for not updating the blog more often. Katie continues to nag, ahem, remind me to update it more often, but it turns out parenthood is pretty time consuming. Furthermore, when Edward was in the hospital, due to the nature of my job, I actually had a small amount of insight into his care, felt comfortable navigating the hospital setting and subsequently was able to translate that into frequent posts. In contrast, with fatherhood, I am pretty much clueless and insight is one of the last words I would use to describe my current faculties. But at the end of the day, it has been pretty fun and very rewarding figuring all of this out with Katie on the fly, with advice from our parents, brothers + sisters, family and friends along the way. As many before us have asked, what did we do before we had a baby? .....I honestly don't remember.....
