Surgery in the morning!

Tomorrow morning is Charlie's heart surgery. We have to be there at 6:30freakingAM and surgery is at 8:30. That's less than 12 hours - gulp! Today he had pre-op, which included an echo, an EKG, labs, a chest xray, and an appointment with the physician's assistant. It was a long day, and Charlie missed his nap, but he still did really good! He's pretty awesome like that!

The CT scan didn't really give us any answers. His lungs looked "junky" - which is common in kids who aren't breathing on their own (intubated). Charlie's lungs looked more junky than typical, but the radiologist thought that's what it was anyway. Also, there was one lymph node in his chest that was slightly enlarged. More "slightly", more non-answers. It could be a clue, but it's probably nothing. All the doctors agree it's best to go ahead with surgery and hope it solves everything. The surgeon will grab the lymph node if he can while he's in there, but he's not going to dig around for it. Lately, Charlie's fevers have been less frequent and not as bad, so maybe whatever it is/was is getting better anyway!

Brennan is spending the night at my parent's house, and I already miss him. It's hard to be away from him when he doesn't understand why, and I'll miss seeing my little sidekick everyday. He'll spend most of the time with my parents, with other family pitching in here and there. And Ken will take him home to sleep at night, for the most part. I feel so bad for him, but luckily he's a pretty easy-going kid who loves his "Gammas" and "Bampas"!

In other news...Charlie now signs "duck"! It's pretty cute. He's up to about 10 signs now. And Brennan knows his colors! He's still working on a few, like brown. But he knows the rainbow plus gold, black, white, and pink. He's really been focused on it and names colors of things he sees all.day.long. He loves to name the colors of cars, which is how he knows "gold". As he says, "mommy car gold"! He's getting better at saying "More ____" instead of generic whining. Yesterday he also said "Where Daddy going?"! Can you tell I love language development? ;)

I REALLY need to go to bed. I'll try and update tomorrow!

Brennan's 15 Month Stats and Adoption Update

Brennan had his 15 month appointment this week! He had a nice growth spurt - he grew two inches in the last three months! He moved from the 8% in height to the 23rd! He's now 30.5 inches and 23lbs 14oz. My little chunker! He's caught up to his age-mates in every way except speech. That makes sense, because his oral-motor development has always taken the longest! He's right where he should be; his doctor says you'd never even know he was a preemie! He has added two more signs, so he now knows more, eat, milk, please, duck, bath, go, and all done. He knows there's a sign for daddy but he can't quite figure it out yet.

Today we went downtown and got our background checks for our dossier. Brennan had a great time flirting with the clerks! Afterwards we went out to eat, which we rarely do. B had a blast. His little head was whipping around looking at everything. I let him stand in the booth next to me, and he thought he was all that. I could barely stand the cuteness.

I need to redo my medical document *again*, and we're waiting for our redone homestudy to come in the mail. If all our documents are given the okay, then I will have everything apostilled by the end of next week! If our apostilles are approved, do you know what's next? OUR DOSSIER GOES OVERSEAS!! I really hope the rest of our documents get approved, or I will probably loose my mind. The last few weeks have been nuts. I am so glad we are almost finished! I just want to bring my boy home already! I got another picture of him recently - it's not a good picture of him, but it shows just how tiny he really is! I can't wait to fatten him up.

Some may know his name already, but stay tuned for the official reveal!

What? I'm sitting still?

... I haven't done that in weeks!
I've been completely busy, run-down, and ragged. I lost it one afternoon and had to take a little nap. It REALLY didn't help that I've had allergies all week, and that it was that oh-so-special time of the month :). But now over and I have two days to relax!
We had a garage sale this weekend, and that's taken up a lot of my time. My aunt and her roomie joined me. All of my stuff was sold as a fundraiser to bring home our little boy who Ken refers to as "LittleKid". So, that's what I'll call him now. We had a poster telling a little about our family and Reece's Rainbow, and a donation bucket. We did ok, but we were a little disappointed at the turnout. We realized that our sale was the same weekend the state fair opened! So we're doing another one in two weeks! We'll do it at my aunts house - she lives by a school, and a lot of the teachers stop by after work!
Brennan has grown up so much in the last two weeks! He's barely a baby any more. That's making this mama sad. I'm so happy he's growing so well, of course. But the last few weeks I've been thinking about his birthday party, which has made me think about when he was born. He was such a tiny little thing, less than four pounds. Now he is a MONSTER! I've been going through all the "I wish I would haves". Like, spent more time with him in the hospital, taken more photos, etc. I know a lot of preemie moms have a hard time with it when their children are born, or when they come home. I think I'm just a little delayed. He's the only little baby I'll ever have, and I will forever miss those days just snuggling with my tiny little man.

ANYWAY- back to Brennan! He's crawling! He started two weeks ago and he got good at it fast. He can crawl over things and with something in his hand. He's gotten good at getting anywhere - pulling himself up, getting back down, going from laying to sitting to crawling to sitting. And even his crawling is cute! Yesterday I walked into his room to get him out of his crib, and he was just standing there looking at me! Standing! In his crib! Just like a big boy. Tonight at my in-laws he found a chair to pull up on. He kept pulling himself up, moving over a few steps, and then purposefully falling and doing it over again! Once he walked all the way around the chair. He also took a step on Wednesday! All morning he had been trying to just take off on his own. I'd stand him up in front of me and he'd try to take a step into me and crash. I was trying to show my mom and he actually took a little step and kept his balance! It's so crazy. He's going to be running all over the place soon! He keeps thinking he can just GO all by himself! I'll stand him up and he'll just start taking off before I've got ahold of him. Sometimes he'll actually take a few steps with my hands loosely in front of his chest, so he's really doing most of the work! My house is not ready for all this mobility! I still need cabinet locks!

Ken and I have submitted our adoption application, finished all our training, and we have our first homestudy appointment next week! After that we should be able to make our commitment to LittleKid! I cannot wait to bring him home. I'm doing everything on our end as fast as I can, but there's a lot that's out of our hands. The woman at the agency who handles our applications said that she was impressed at how fast I got it all done though, so that has to count for something. We're coming, LittleKid!

Five months corrected

Brennan is five months corrected today. On Monday he will be 7 months old! He's so big, no one would ever guess he was a preemie. He's definitely caught up in size! He's still not quite at his chronological age developmentally. Brennan can sit by himself for quite awhile, and even corrects himself sometimes if he starts to tip over. He doesn't really seem motivated to sit, so you have to keep him really distracted with toys or his mirror. I have to keep my hand near him though, because when he's had enough of a toy, he throws himself backwards! He's not even near crawling though. If I leave him on his tummy too long, or if he can't reach his toy, he throws a FIT. But I'm still putting him on his tummy every chance I get! Brennan can move around pretty well on his back though. Often when I go to get him out of his crib in the morning, he's completely turned around with his head down where his feet are supposed to be! He moved a few feet across the living room floor too.

Brennan finally had his first cold at the beginning of the month. He did fine. He lost his voice a little for a few days (I think he had a sore throat like I did), had a stuffy nose, and a low-grade fever one day. I, on the other had, got worse and worse and ended up with bronchitis! I was pretty useless for a few days, and couldn't talk, so poor Brennan had to entertain himself! I'm glad he didn't get too sick though. I still worry about his little preemie lungs, even though clearly, he's doing just fine!

What else has Brennan been doing...he grabs everything he can reach, and most of it heads straight into his mouth! Even toys that really don't fit - like his stacking rings. I put them between his knees when he's sitting up, and he just leans over and gnaws on them! It's pretty funny. He can grab things with one hand and get them into his mouth with a speed that amazes me. He still sucks his thumb to fall asleep. He wakes up frequently and sucks his thumb to fall asleep again. He usually doesn't wake up all the way, but he moves his hand over towards his mouth to suck. He falls back asleep before his thumb gets in his mouth, with his hand still covering his face! It's pretty cute. Another thing he did recently was stand by himself! Well, he was holding onto his play table, but he stood there for a good 20 seconds before tipping over! Maybe he'll skip crawling and go straight to walking!

I took Brennan off his Protonix for good. Last time I tried that, he started waking up crying at night and throwing up a lot. This time, I did it because his prescription ran out, and the pharmacy had to call his doctor to get more. I never heard back from the pharmacy, and I was too sick to really care. And he's doing just fine! We had stopped doing solids for about a week and a half, and we started them again, and B does seem to spit up a lot more with solids. I'm not really sure what to make of that, so we're just sticking to rice cereal for awhile until he matures a little. It still amazes me how quickly B caught on to eating from a spoon. He recognizes the spoon and opens his mouth when he sees it coming, and he's pretty good at getting food off of it. If he had learned to bottle or breastfeed that quickly, he wouldn't have spent so darn long in the NICU! Anyway, this is clearly a kid motivated by food!

Chunky Monkey

There have been so many changes this month!
Brennan starting rolling over (front to back) in the middle of the month. He's starting to try back to front, but not seriously. He's getting pretty stable sitting up, and can sit for several minutes with the boppy pillow supporting him. He's aware of strangers, and if they get too close when he's not in a good mood, he gets upset. I think it's kinda cute, but it's not really that good, since he is getting upset sometimes when I am not around. Not good when I have to work! Luckily I usually work when his dad is home, and Brennan adores his daddy! Brennan is getting really good at grabbing things and getting them into his mouth. He's getting to be more fun to play with! We've been getting outside now that the weather is warm, and while he likes going for walks, Brennan is still not happy about wind and sunshine. By the end of summer he'll be over it!

Brennan had his NICU follow-up appointment this month and he is doing great! He's right where he should be - he's right in between his corrected and chronological ages. I think he will be caught up in just a few months. At 15.5 pounds, he's now all the way up to the 15% percentile! He definitely had a growth spurt - he gained 3 pounds in about 6 weeks! What a chunk! Since he is doing so well, we started him on solid foods the day after he turned 6 months old. We started with rice cereal, and the looks on his face were priceless! He didn't really hate it, but he kept giving us these looks like, "Mom, there's something weird in my mouth! Why is this happening to me?" In less than a week, he's already learned a lot about eating solids! He knows what a spoon is for and how to get food off of it, and he swallows most of it. It's really cool how fast he's learning. Today he tried bananas, which he seemed to like better than rice cereal. It's really mostly banana-flavored formula of course. In a few days we'll start sweet potatoes!

This morning Brennan had his first fever. I knew when I picked him up from his crib that he was too warm, so I took his temp - 100.2! He had his vaccines yesterday, so luckily he wasn't sick, just reacting to the vaccines. He was still happy, just hot and sleepy - he took a TWO HOUR nap this afternoon! We went to the conservatory at Como with Grandma P and Aunt Laura in the morning, and he did fine after a dose of tylenol. I think he really liked watching all the people walk around.

On March 14, we did a child dedication for B at church. The Lord blessed us with a beautiful baby boy, so we dedicated his life to the Lord and promised to bring him up knowing God and all that entails. Our families came over afterward to celebrate and Brennan loved being the center of attention!

Now I must join the rest of the family in slumber!