Callie's First Christmas!

We hope that everyone had a Merry Christmas! We spent the day together, just the three of us! It was truly a blessed day! Callie loved all of her presents, but she enjoyed the wrapping paper the most! All she wanted to do was eat the paper...it was so cute!

Busy Week

We have had an extremely busy week, both medically and personally! First the medical updates...

Callie had an appointment with her eye doctor last week at Johns Hopkins. Her ROP (Retinopothy of Prematurity) has corrected itself, but Callie now has Strabismus, or a lazy eye. This is can be common in both preemies and full term babies. The good news is that Callie has full muscle capabilities in both eyes, she is just favoring her right eye. So, the Doctor is having us patch her good eye one time a day for an hour in the hopes that she will start using the left eye more. If this doesn't improve over the next four months, we are most likely looking at surgery again. We are praying the patching works, we would just hate for her to have to go through surgery again!

The other big appointment of the week was with the Developmental Pediatrician at Hopkins. This was a follow up from three months ago and they were extremely pleased to see how far Callie has come. It is still to early for the doctors to give an official prognosis, but she feels safe that Callie will become an independent adult. Callie is still at high risk for having learning disabilities, but not to any greater degree than any other baby. Physically, she still has some stiff muscles, but it doesn't appear to be limiting her as she is starting to pull to stand already! We will continue to work on her muscles daily with stretches. The Doctors are confident that Callie has a great future ahead of her (we already knew this :)) but it is amazing to hear it from the experts!

In fun news, Callie experienced her first major snow storm this weekend when Maryland was pounded with 22 inches of snow. We decided to take her outside briefly and see what she thought of the snow...of course, she loved it! Over the weekend, Callie also had her first Christmas with two of her her Aunts and her Oma (Lee's Mom). And she also had her first bath in the big girl tub with Mommy! Fun times!!

Christmas Photo Shoot

We are enjoying a beautiful snowy day here in Maryland and I thought we would share some of Callie's Christmas pictures. We decided to just take them at home this year and avoid the photo stores and all of the germs that come with them! Callie is such a happy girl, she made the photo shoot so much fun!!

Updates

Callie has had a couple of great weeks in a row! Medically, she has seen her Pediatrician for her 9 month check up. Her doctor was very happy with her progress. She is on the full term baby growth chart for weight, hanging out at about the 5th percentile and she is almost on the chart for height. She is closer than last time, so the doctor is happy! Callie also saw her Neurosurgeon. We had been seeing him every 3 months and he was so pleased, he doesn't want to see her again for 6 months! Her shunt is still at the lowest setting (highest resistance to flow), so he is pleased!

Developmentally, Callie continues to progress. She sits for long periods of times, is working on crawling and standing, and loves to play! We were commenting the other day that she is out of the "Infant Stage". When she is awake, she now likes to be entertained. Whether with toys, music or reading, she likes to stay busy!! We also made the big move last weekend to her crib in her own room! I think this was hardest on Mommy...but Callie seems to love it!! The picture above is her looking out at us through the crib!

In other news, Callie's Aunt Calise has moved in! We are so proud of Aunt Calise for graduating from Penn State! Now she is going to spend the next semester with us being Callie's full time Nanny! We couldn't be more thrilled!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope that everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving! We have so much to be thankful for this year. We have the love and support of our family and friends, the good fortune to be in a town with excellent medical care and most importantly, we have a healthy, happy little girl!

Callie has had a good week. She is now weighing in at over 16 pounds! She has definitely leveled off with her weight gain, but that is because she needs to gain a little height before she can gain any more pounds :) Callie has also outgrown our home scale, so her weigh-in's are less frequent! We have started putting Callie in her high chair when she is eating solids. We are still struggling to get her to enjoy solid food. We are finding she does better with vegetables alone, so for right now, we are just trying to get her comfortable with that before pushing fruit and cereal again.

She is now up to date with her seasonal vaccines. She has had both the regular flu and H1N1 vaccines and has started with her monthly RSV vaccines. (http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/lung/rsv.html) Infants and Toddlers has been extremely pleased with her progress developmentally! We have a couple of big appointments coming up with Neurosurgery and the Developmental Pediatrican and will keep everyone updated with her progress!

Happy Girl

We are sorry for not posting last week, but we have been having computer issues! Callie has had two great weeks in a row. Every day she does something else to amaze us! She is now rolling all over the place, both from stomach to back and back to stomach. She is doing a great job sitting all by herself, and loves to play her drum! We are pretty sure that she is teething because everything goes in her mouth (including her drum)! She is eating more foods every day. So far she has had sweet potato's, carrots, sweet peas, and bananas (all mixed with her cereal). Surprisingly, she loves the vegatables the most! She is also starting to enjoy watching videos of herself. In one of the pictures below, I am playing her a video of her laughing. She loves to watch it over and over again and eventually will try to eat my blackberry!

Happy Halloween!

Callie had a great first Halloween! It was a warm night, so we were able to sit on the front porch and hand out candy! Callie loved the fresh air and all of the sights! We hope you all had a nice Halloween!

Happy Girl!

Callie had another great week! She is exploring more and more...as you can see by her grabbing onto Mommy's face! She is also starting to enjoy reading more. While reading the book with Daddy yesterday, she was actually giggling and helped him turn a page (that might not have been on purpose). She is also starting to get really mobile! The picture above shows how much she is moving-she started in the middle of her gym mat and ended up off of both that and the blanket! We had a nice weather weekend and were able to get Callie outside, which she loves! It is really hard keeping her in her "bubble" and it is only October! We think she gets a little bored, so we are trying to vary her activities inside as much as possible and take advantage of every warm fall day we get!

15 Pounds!!

Callie passed the 15 pound mark-10 times her birth weight!! Such a big girl!! She has had a great week! Now that she figured out how to roll...she is doing it all of the time! We included a short video clip so that you can see her in action! We are continuing to work on getting her to like her cereal. We switched to Oatmeal, which seems to help a little, but she still prefers her Mama's milk! She always ends up with more on her face than in her mouth! From the picture above, you can see that it tired her right out!! She is also showing her personality more and more. She is more active and knows how to get what she wants! She is SO much fun!

Pumpkin Patch!

This weekend Callie had her first trip to the Pumpkin Patch! It was really nice to get out of the house in an open air environment. We are so restricted right now and will be until spring and this aweful flu season is over, so this was a nice break before the weather gets bad. Callie had a great time checking out all of the new sights. She particulary loved the hayride!

The other big event of the weekend was that Callie rolled over all by herself. Up until now, she had rolled several times if we positioned her right. Saturday she did it all by herself!! This was a big milestone for her adjusted age. Callie's Infants and Toddlers teacher had made two goals for her to try and meet by her appointment on Monday, to roll over and reach for her toys-our little superstar did both this weekend!

Yum...Cereal!!

Callie had her first taste of cereal this week! In general she liked it and did well, but we couldn't resist including pictures of her initial reaction. Callie continues to get more interactive every day. She loves to babble with us, which can make meal times quite difficult since she would rather talk than eat!! She is definitely starting to experiment with sounds. We are even starting to hear consonants, which is good developmentally.

New Discoveries

This has been a week of discoveries for Callie. This week, she has discovered her hands, her tongue, her ear, and that she can splash in the tub. We have included a picture of her sticking out her tongue. And I am sure she will hate us for it one day, we have included a video of her splashing in the tub. We couldn't resist...the determination on her face was just too much!

14 Pounds!!

Callie has passed the 14 pound mark! She continues to amaze us every day! Her muscles are really starting strengthen and she is now able to hold herself in the sitting position! She is starting to show interest and preference in some of her toys. Some of them she will consistently track and others she will barely look at!

This week our dogs have officially realized that she is part of the family. Bryson, our little dog, has shown interest from the beginning. Whenever her alarm would go off, he would be the first one to her bassinet, but he would never come up to her while we were holding her. In the picture above, you can see how he came over to her for the first time to cuddle with us! Riley, our bigger dog, pretty much ignored her until Friday night, when she decided she loved her and wanted to be by her side all night! Too cute! It amazes us how they instinctually know to be gentle and gain our permission before getting close to her.