James' Baby

We finally found James a non-girly baby doll.  Several therapists have suggested it as a good tool for learning body parts, getting him comfortable with new situations, etc.  James has been struggling with bath time lately (not sure why, but the water, all of a sudden, freaks him out) and, of course, with eating.  Here is what James and baby have been up to:

James loves to hug and snuggle his baby doll:

Bath time has been so much easier with the baby doll.  James is ok with water on his head since baby doll gets water on his head as well.

Baby doll gets a bite, then James gets a bite.  It did encourage James to eat, but it may have taken twice as long.  We haven't tried it again since.

Tonight we sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" with baby doll.  I think we'll keep it up to see if James picks up the body parts.

He has also been saying the word, "baby", all the time.  He sure is a fan!

With love.

Sweet As Candy

Every day I am reminded that my James is just as sweet as can be (even though he sure does like to scream!).  After a doctor's appointment this week James got a dum-dum lollipop and actually enjoyed it!  I was surprised he let it in his mouth in the first place, but after a sweet taste he was all for it!  Mark and James traded licks and James actually had a great pucker!

After the appointment we ventured into Whole Foods and found a more natural type of lollipop, hoping it might be a big step to overcoming the hurdle of his aversion toward solid foods.  So tonight we were able to have family desert time.  Mark splurged on a small container of ice cream (which James can't have, sorry, dairy!) and we armed ourselves with a lollipop.  We were able to capture his initial reaction:

After this he really warmed up to the 'pop, even trying to grab it out of Mark's hand, and sucked on it for awhile.  It was nice to see him exploring a new food and enjoying it, even if sugar was the catalyst.

His mouth muscles are working hard!

He also said "NO!" for the first time today, he imitated me as I read to him.  I couldn't get him to say it again.  Maybe that is a good thing?  ;D

With love.

Falling Hard

September has been a flurry of activity, so many doctor's appointments and therapy sessions!  His genetics appointment went well, nothing new from cardiology, and we are waiting for James' orthotics to be created.  We opted out of county speech therapy (will write about that separately) and will start educational therapy through the county instead.

I hope October will be slightly calmer (or that the activity will be more fun).  James has been working hard to strengthen his leg muscles and stands (with the help/force of the stander) at least 30 minutes each day.  We are beginning to see some real progress.  We are going back to see James' feeding specialist/speech therapist/cranial sacral extraordinaire this month and are so excited.  She is the only person that has gotten results (and James has worked with 5 other speech therapists) and we hope she can help us climb the brick wall we have hit.  James eats well, but we can't seem to move into the chewing stage.  He is starting to learn the concept, but is very averse to it.

With the stress of stalled feeding development and attempting to teach our son to stand, in addition to the awfully slow arrival of two year old molars and the awfully fast arrival of cold season, we have struggled to keep positive.  We had a couple weeks where we just didn't know how to handle this state of perpetual infancy.  Luckily, we've taken a weekend or two to step back, take a break, and relax from the chaos.  With rest, prayer, and encouragement we made it through the worst weeks.  I appreciate our family that pushes us to keep going.  It is easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day and not always easy to remember all the good progress James has made.  I can't believe that this time last year James was on his feeding tube with no real thought of weaning him off.  That is enough to make me thankful for where we are.

Now that we have picked ourselves back up we are ready to enjoy the Fall.  :D  James and I had a chance to go to Aunt Melanie's soccer game last weekend.  James loves watching soccer and he enjoyed sitting on our picnic blanket, crawling around the grass after his ball, and watching (or chasing) "Referee Rich" (aka Granddad).  I think he paid more attention to what my dad was doing than what was going on in the game.

With love.