Our little crawler turned one!

Can you believe that it has been a year since Charlie was born? We can't! I love that his birthday is St. Patrick's day. We have definitely been bless with some Irish luck, haven't we? We had a small family party for Charlie. He didn't eat any cake, but got into the icing a bit. One of his (too) many gifts was his very own cushy chair. We can just picture Charlie curled up in his chair reading a book...

We have reached so many milestones in the last couple of weeks; it is amazing! We saw Charlie's pulmonologist last week and he told us that we could start treating Charlie like a normal baby! We are taking it very slow...we have eaten outside at restaurants a few times. It felt so strange and fun to include Charlie into our outside-the-house life. The Doctor also called the home health service to come pick up all of Charlie's monitors and oxygen tanks. We were keeping them on hand in case he got sick. We don't need them any more!! If Charlie gets sick his lungs should be able to handle it. It is really amazing how far we have come. I don't think we really believe it yet...I know that I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wonder if that feeling will ever go away?

We have been working on Charlie's crawling for a really long time now and we were starting to think that he may just skip it. We worked really hard on getting his tummy off the floor and yesterday he crawled on his own! Today he crawled even more and showed off for his physical therapist. He is also scooting along furniture and he showed her that too! She said "he really is a miracle baby..." yup. We are so blessed.

Now that Charlie is a year old I have been thinking of making this our family blog and blogging about what we all are doing. I mostly mother Charlie, but Chuckie always has a lot going on!

Thank you all so much for faithfully reading and supporting us through the last year. It really has meant so much to us!

Charlie's green velvet birthday cake!

Mesmerized by the flame and the frosting...

Charlie LOVES his ball from cousin Ethan.

Charlie's big boy chair!

Charlie getting into "his" drawer.

Second day crawling! He is making this proud/determined face in every picture!

We have a stander...

Charlie has been mobile for a while now. He is still perfecting his crawl, but he drags himself around really well :) He has started getting up on his knees and getting into things. He loves to play with his bucket car seat. Our job has just gotten a lot harder because Charlie has started pulling up to stand. He was hanging out with me in my (messy) office and he pulled up so he could play with a package of printer paper. He was so serious about it. It is really funny. He isn't very stable so he falls over a lot. Charlie is really starting to ham it up for the camera.

It is hard to document his activities. It looks like all he does is look at us and smile :)

We met with Charlie's developmental pediatrician. It was a great appointment! She thinks we should aim for Charlie to catch up to his actual age by 15 to 18 months. She also feels that we can now rule out any serious motor problems or developmental delays. Charlie may be clumsy when he grows up...but that should be about the extent of it. Preemies are at a higher risk of learning disabilities...but she told us not to worry about it for now. We are so excited! She really thinks we can relax now and just enjoy Charlie. We love just hanging out with Charlie...but we still take him to weekly therapy appointments and try to work with him as much as possible. He doesn't love to eat solid food, but we are working on it and his speech therapists aren't worried yet. We are in a really good place as Charlie approaches his first birthday!!

Charlie loves to pull things out of baskets...

One of Charlie's favorite toys...

Not the most stable position...

What I saw when I peeked under my desk...

So serious!

So big!!

Piano lessons from Daddy.

Piano playing on his own...

Crazy man ready for his bath!