Blogging!

Hey! It's me! Sorry it's been a while since the last post, we've been preparing the house for the eventual homecoming of our little guy: rearranging furniture, getting rid of stuff we don't need, and figuring out what we need to buy. Right now, if he were to come home he could sleep in the laundry basket. That wouldn't be bad though, come to think of it. Fortunately though, we're calculating that he still won't be home for around a month. But really we have no idea, that's just a guess.

Also we've been taking advantage of our amazing babysitters at the NICU and going to holiday parties and stuff. We figure that after Cole comes home we'll be a bit more limited in our mobility, so let's get out there and goof around while we still can!

Anyway. I'm sure you're not very interested in all of that. What you want to know is that Cole is now over 6 pounds! He's got a whole collection of chins! His fingers are chubby and strong! He has now consumed multiple bottles of formula all by himself on different days! They have experimented with taking him off the cannula and he has lasted about 2 hours breathing on his own! That's all the good news!

They have scheduled his surgery at Children's Hospital for a date which I don't currently remember. This surgery is to fix the multiple hernias in his groin area. Preemie hernias are pretty common, and this surgery is also pretty common and hopefully won't cause him too much strife.

A little more serious is that they have found "Retinopathy of Prematurity" (ROP) in both of his eyes. This is a condition where the blood vessels forming around the surface of his eyeballs kinda get stuck and end up malformed and can potentially damage his poor little eyes if it gets worse. Fortunately he's only at Stage 1 which can magically rectify itself. If it doesn't they can treat him with lasers. More information can be found here. Seems like the odds are pretty good that he'll be fine. Of course it's scary when his physical parts don't develop perfectly, so we're scared. Hopefully he'll get through this just like he has gotten past his other trials. He is a fighter. Plus, his cute little blue eyes look great to me! That's gotta count for something.

Blah blah blah! Enough words! Here's some pictures.

His fingers are getting big enough to cover so much of Kate's finger!


I have a baby.


Look at those chins! Fatty.


Hello snoozeball!


I like this one 'cause his eye looks nice.


AAAAHHH!


Remember a hundred years ago when we took that picture of my wedding ring going around his entire hand? Well we did a little experiment to see if there would be a difference. I would say the juxtaposition indicates growth.


Last Saturday was my birthday, and when I went in to hang out with Cole, I found that Liz, a super sweet nurse whom we love, had made me a birthday card with a photo of Cole wearing a crazy awesome birthday hat that she had made. She and some other nurses had wrangled him into wearing the hat and "holding" a bottle so they could take a picture for the card. How cute is that?!


That's all I got for now!