January wrap up and medical updates :)

We wrapped up January with no illness, we are so grateful for that! I have a little cold right now and I am hoping Charlie doesn't get it. The longer he goes without getting sick the better because everyday he gets bigger and stronger. So it has been great that he has gone this long without getting sick. We have been really really careful. Charlie is doing really well with all his therapies. We have been working on his fine-motor skills and he has made great improvements. He is still commando crawling on his tummy but he spends a lot of time rocking on his hands and knees. He sits up now and that makes giving him a bath so cute and so much easier.

Charlie had another swallow study done and I snapped some pictures. He is so cooperative! The study showed that he is still aspirating thin liquids; we will continue to thicken his foods and repeat the study in 3 months. The swallow study is so neat to watch; I feed him barium (which shows up on x-ray) in different consistencies and we can watch an x-ray "movie" of his swallow to see how the liquid travels down his throat. I thought he looked so cute in the chair. I felt bad feeding a hungry little boy non-food in his bottle :( but other than that it was pretty fun. We get to see one of the therapists we saw in the NICU and it is so neat to show off how much Charlie has grown! In general Charlie loves to see old friends and meet new people but he is just starting to get stranger anxiety.

Charlie has started eating baby cereal. We are going really slow with solids for a few reasons but mostly we really didn't want to push him at all. Preemies like Charlie often have oral aversions and feeding problems that last well into childhood. We really wanted to make sure Charlie was ready and interested in eating. Charlie is doing really well with his cereal, he seems to like it! We go to an outpatient speech therapist that helps us with feeding and we are going to get another feeding/speech therapist that will come to our house. There is such a difference in the therapy that we get in our home versus out. It works out well to do both, but it does mean that we have lots of appointments. Chuckie and I like all the many ideas we get to help Charlie overcome any issues he is having. Charlie is currently caught up to his adjusted age of 7 months!

Charlie let me put him in the basket but he is definitely too big!

Charlie is such a sleeper! If he gets tired he will conk out anywhere.

Such a big boy sitting in the sink!

Bath time is so fun!

Getting set up for his swallow study...

He has his protective gear.

The radiologist took too long and Charlie removed his protective gear...

Worn-out with a barium mustache...

Enjoying baby oatmeal with Daddy!