January Update and Funnies

I know, I know, it has been a while.  I have no shortage of excuses as to why I haven't blogged in so long, but I'll spare you my lengthy list and just get to the update.  In my last post I mentioned that Casey had been putting up a fight at bedtime.  Well it got worse...a whole lot worse.  She went from crying for 10 minutes or so when we put her down, to screaming at the top of her lungs. All. Night. Long!  At that point we knew something more was going on, but of course she chose New Year's Eve to begin the round the clock screamfest, so (after some reassurance from the on call nurse that it was not an emergency and not worth of exposing her to flu or RSV at an after hours clinic) we had to wait until after the holiday before we could get in to see the pediatrician.  When we did take her in, he confirmed a full blown double ear infection.  Not the most exciting start to a new year, but after a round of meds, she has been back to her happy, great sleeping self.

In other news, we are making lots of progress on the walking front.  She often takes several steps, and then she suddenly realizes that she isn't holding on to anything, and will suddenly lunge her body forward for us to catch her.  She gets the biggest grin on her face though after she walks a few steps, especially when we cheer her on.  Words of affirmation definitely has to be this girl's love language. I think she is still just lacking a little confidence, but she is so close! 

It seems like most every day we are laughing about something funny Casey is doing, so I have to share some Casey funnies:

1.  We were playing on the floor one day, and Casey noticed my stomach was showing a little.  I guess she was curious, because she raised up my shirt to investigate and discovered my belly button.  She has become rather fascinated by "finding" it over and over, and much to my dismay is constantly trying to stick her finger inside of it while yelling, "Button!" (Of course it sounds more like "BUTT-n").  Since it really creeps me out, I keep trying to get her to find her own "button," but so far her onesies hide it too well and have made it hard for me to convince her she has one of her own.

2. Casey loves to pretend to go to sleep.  In the middle of playing she will suddenly just fall out on the floor and go completely still like she is sleeping.  When you ask her if she is going night-night she totally gives herself away by giggling.

3.  It is never a good sign when your 17 month old repeats "Uh-oh, Uh-oh" over and over again when you walk out of the room.  Most of the time I think she just likes to say it, but the other day I ran to grab something out of the microwave and returned to find her dumping my almost full Diet Coke all over the carpet while chanting "Uh-oh!" 

4. My friend Alicia brought lunch over one afternoon and we were playing the "Where's the ______ game?"  After going through all the objects in the room and all the body parts she knew I asked her, "Where's the monkey?"  Puzzled, she looked around for a few seconds, then pointed right at Alicia. 

5.  For a while now, Casey has loved to mimic the dogs and the cat when they are whining or meowing.  Lately she has decided to start mimicking us.  She spent the entire car ride home the other night yelling "Hahahahaha!" in the deepest belly laugh. 

6.  This is more of a "You know you're a preemie mama when..." but I use a lot of hand sanitizer.  Now every time Casey sees the bottle she rubs her hands together like she too is putting some on.

7.  When I got to my mom's house the other day, Gigi was excited to show me Casey's new "trick."  She then proceeds to ask Casey, "Do you have a dirty diaper?" and Casey gets a huge grin on her face and says "Shoo!"  Now whenever she sees the diapers on her changing table, she exclaims "Shoo!"

And of course, I couldn't close without some pictures of the Doodle.  Truth be told I've been about as good about taking pictures as I have at blogging lately.  Many of these are just cell phone pics, but since this child is always on the move, it is usually much quicker than grabbing the camera.

 Enjoying our snack outside on a beautiful 73 degree January day in Texas.

This girl would seriously eat her weight in goldfish.  Please note the straw cup.  We are making some progress toward moving away from the bottle people! Slowly, but surely.

 

 Casey discovered how to push the buttons on my CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) to make it light up, and she thinks it is the greatest toy ever. 

 

We are still pretty obsessed with getting our shoes and socks off in record breaking time.

 

 "Just chilling with my teapot!"

 

Someone was just a little excited!

 

 Sweet little ear infection girl waiting to see the doctor.  I definitely enjoyed the extra snuggles though!

 Such a toy (and cat) hoarder! 

 

 And just like that, she drops everything and decides to play "night-night."

 Ready for bath time!

 

Check out that mohawk!  Her hair is finally starting to grow. Seeing lots of potential little pigtails in our future!

 Rolling around on the ground...one of her favorite activities.

 

She's convinced she is going to find a way to escape baby jail.

 

 Someone decided to pull off her extra coverage bib and wipe her tray clean with it.  I'm pretty sure it's because I'm such a great housekeeper that she just wants to follow my lead.  Wait...no, that can't be it?!?

 

 The other day she decided that it would be super fun to pull off the couch pillows and "hide" under them.

 In an attempt to keep all the little pieces from some of her toys all together, I put them in some plastic containers.  Casey is absolutely unamused and is constantly bringing them to me and whining until I free them again.

 

 She has also started playing "telephone" all the time.  She loves to put my phone to her ear and wait for me to pretend someone is talking to her in it.

I was eating chocolate ice cream the other day, and someone decided she was a huge fan!



Christmas (and all of December) Update

Well December happened, and I have been a bit of a blogging failure as I am finally getting around to my first post of the month.  It has certainly been busy around here, and it has been a while since I have really done a true developmental update, so I'll give it my best shot to remember all the major highlights.  We just returned from spending a great Christmas with Brian's family in Houston.  Casey wasn't quite into the gift opening  yet this year, but she was more than willing to play with the wrapping paper and investigate her new toys once they were opened.  She also got to meet her Great Grandma Casey for the first time, which was really special.  For Christmas last year, our biggest wish was to have her home with us, and 11 days before Christmas, that wish came true.  Adjusting to taking care of our preemie at home made for a very different kind of Christmas celebration, so this year we were very excited to spend the holiday with family.   It is hard to believe Casey's one-year Homecomiversary  (Look it up, it's totally a word) has already come and gone. We have been blessed in so many ways in just one year, and we are amazed every day by the progress Casey has made from her early beginning.

Speaking of which, we had Casey's yearly evaluation with ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) last week. All of our therapists were in agreement that she has made great strides, but based on the tests and questionnaire they administered that day, she does still qualify for services for another year since she does still show delays in several areas.  Services can be provided until she is 3, but she will have to re-qualify every year, and we also evaluate services every six months to make any necessary changes.  For now, she will continue to have Physical Therapy twice a month.  We have seen so much growth since we started PT (initially she didn't qualify), and our biggest goal in this area is for Casey to walk independently.  She is a master crawler, and walks well when pushing her walking toys, but hasn't yet been brave enough to take that first step by herself.  Our physical therapist feels confident that she will get there soon, but we opted to continue her services until Casey reaches this big milestone.  Casey is also the proud new owner of some pretty adorable new baby shoes, which we hope will give her more support in her walking quest.  The other areas she continues to qualify for are Speech and Specialized Skills Therapy, and the goals these therapists will be working on together are predominately verbalization and self-care (age appropriate play, dressing, and feeding herself).  While we are hearing lots more vocalization and attempts at repeating words, Casey is still not consistently saying many words.  Cognitively we know that she has a very large vocabulary and that she recognizes new words very quickly, so at the recommendation of our therapists, we have been working on baby sign language to help her from getting too frustrated when she is trying to communicate words that she is unable to say yet.  Our Early Intervention Specialist is also be working with her on playing independently for longer periods of time, as currently her attention span is only a couple of minutes (or less) before she demands our attention, and they would like to see her playing independently for more like 5-10 minutes.  This made me laugh, because this girl is always busy and constantly on the move, but this tired Mommy could use a break every now and then, so I'm hopeful that we will start to see some progress in this area. Our Speech Therapist is also working with us to help her transition from a bottle to a sippy or straw cup (still a very slow work in progress, but I am planning to really focus on this one while I am at home this next week).  She is also making great progress in trying and accepting more table foods, which has been a huge goal.  In fact, I can't remember the last time that I actually ate an entire meal without little fingers grabbing at my plate.  Thankfully, we can safely cross weight gain off the list of goals, as she was just shy of 20 pounds at her November check-up, and is officially on the charts for her ACTUAL age for weight, height, and head circumference.  She is only in about the 7th percentile or less for all areas, but we'll take it!

Some of my favorite developments since I have done a true update are that Casey gives hugs and kisses on command (more freely to dolls and inanimate objects, but she does reserve a few a day to mommy and daddy and others, too).  This girl also loves music, and has been known to bust out some pretty adorable dance moves to show her appreciation for certain tunes.  She gets a bit obsessive about certain musical toys, and even managed to wear out a brand new set of batteries on a Christmas Jingling Snowmen during our trip to Houston.  To say we were all a bit tired of "Jingle Bells" would probably be an understatement.  We have also been working on identifying body parts, and so far she consistently has belly, nose, and mouth (although she prefers to point out my nose and mouth rather than her own).  When you ask her what we say when the baby goes "Night, Night," she will lift her finger to your mouth and wait for you to say, "Shh!"  Too cute!  A recent Casey funny: I mentioned to Brian the other day that Casey was looking so big in her jeans and tennis shoes, and when she heard the key words, she lifted her hands high above her head and gave a huge grin, indicating her acknowledgement of the words "So big."  For those that don't know this is a typical response to the question, "How big is Casey?"  It was definitely a good reminder that she is absorbing and listening even when we don't realize it.  We are also seeing a lot more evidence of just how strong-willed our girl is.  She has developed a rather painful obsession with pulling my hair, and she sure can give it a good yank.  The word "No" has definitely become a challenge word to Casey, and she only really thinks she has to obey when Daddy gets really firm with her, and even then she will often try to continue what she was doing as she looks back to see if Daddy is watching. We have also discovered that it is virtually impossible to keep socks on this girl's feet for longer than a couple of minutes.  I can't even begin to count the number of cold mornings that I have dropped her off at my mom's all dressed in her winter coat and covered in a blanket, but with her bare feet poking out of her car seat.  Just in the past few days, she has also developed a not so enjoyable tendency to throw an all out fit at bedtime and nap time, which is a bit heartbreaking.  I have no doubt it was this stubborn streak that we can attribute to helping her survive early on, but we are seriously working on these and hoping some will be quickly passing phases.

So if you managed to make it through this long post, enjoy the pictures of Casey's visit with Santa and our Christmas celebration as your reward:

We are so thankful that we were able to squeeze in a meeting with Santa again thanks to my co-worker's personal connection that allowed us to visit him in their home.

 Initially, Casey wasn't too concerned...

 

 And then she got a closer look at just who was holding her.

 

 Nope, not too thrilled anymore!

 

 Begging to be rescued

 

So we changed her into her Christmas dress and tried again.

 

With much the same results!

 

 How sweet is Santa, wiping her tears!

 

 Of course she was okay once we distracted her with singing Rudolph.

 

 And even had a kiss for him, too!

 

 Pretty Christmas Dress!

 

 We attempted a few more shots...

 

 but someone was less than cooperative

 

 Since she was already all dressed up, we attempted a few pics in front of a Christmas tree.  Pretty sure more than a few people driving by probably thought we were strange for taking her picture by the tree in front of the police station (but there was absolutely no one there, and we are still in isolation, so whatever works).

 

 There's our smiley Doodle!

 

 Christmas Day! Ready to open some presents!

 

 Helping Great Grandma Casey open her gifts.

 

 Casey was more than content to just play with the paper and tissue.

 

 All dolled up!

 

So sweet!

 

 Merry Christmas from The Sattlers!

 

I couldn't resist including this one on the card!

 

We hope everyone has had a blessed and wonderful Christmas!

Thanksgiving

At long last, Casey got to take her first trip to Memphis to meet the rest of my extended family on my mom's side.  There were several family members that had been patiently anticipating their chance to finally get to meet our girl.  Since Casey's birth, one of the hardest decisions we have had to make has been to keep her in isolation to protect her premature lungs.  As a result, we have had to skip most large family holiday gatherings for the past year in order to avoid the risk of exposing her to potential germs and illness.  Even though we are technically in isolation again this year for the duration of RSV and flu season, our pediatrician gave us the go ahead to celebrate with the family as long as everyone had a flu shot, and assuming we did not take her out in public. We were more than willing to comply, although we were a bit hesitant about  how she would do on our longest road trip with her to date (almost twice as long as our trips to Houston).  Luckily, I can report that despite her new aversion to napping in the car, the seven hour car rides both there and back were mostly uneventful, with only one stop each way (and truth be told, Mommy needed the stops more than Casey). It was really great to spend some quality time with my family just relaxing, indulging in lots of overeating, and enjoying the chance for family to interact with Casey and see her amazing accomplishments for themselves.  Here is a glimpse into our Thanksgiving:

Of course I couldn't resist dolling her up and getting in a little photo shoot in honor of her first Thanksgiving outside of the walls of a hospital.

 

I tried and tried, but she just wasn't going to give up a smile.

 

"Look what I got!"

 

 She was very enamored with the leaves.

 

Love!

 

 Sweet little angel

 

 She didn't quite know what to think when we put a bunch of leaves in front of her.

 Posing with Daddy!

 

 How sweet is this? Love these two!

 

 We got in lots of play time, too!

 

 Casey was pretty impressed with her cousins!

 

 Some of us enjoyed Casey's toys more than others! (Sorry, Will!)

 

 One of my new favorites!  So adorable!

 

 This is how most of my family spent Thanksgiving.  Cheering on the Memphis Tigers!  There were some pretty rowdy fans in the house!

 

 Gigi, Mommy, and Casey

 

 My cousin, Claire, was so excited to finally meet Casey (her CES initial twin). 

 

 Another 4 generations of first born daughters picture.

 

 All the cousins (minus Katie - we missed you!)

 

Our little family! Thanksgiving 2012

 

A lot has changed since last year at this time:

Thanksgiving 2011

 

We certainly have so much to be thankful for this year! Casey had a great first trip to Memphis, and it was a wonderful Thanksgiving.