Seven months old!

Well little Ben is 7 months old today! Time sure does fly. Although I've been ready for this year to be over for quite a while, so it's not been flying as quickly as it usually does lately. Ben is doing really well! He's eating better, his weight gain is on track, and he's generally just a happy little baby.

We're having to leave him on the floor a lot more to build up his arm strength, and he's not very excited about that. He puts up quite a fuss and it's hard to make him stay on his tummy - time for some tough love I guess. All of the doctors and therapists keep telling me he has low muscle tone, so he needs lots of exercise to build his strength up. But his weekly physical and occupational therapists are happy with his progress - he's behind but he's been progressing consistently so it's not anything that's getting any worse. So we're happy!


He had a CT scan on Tuesday and hopefully I'll hear from his cranio-facial surgeon sometime soon about exactly what type of surgery he'll need and when. We already have the testicle surgery scheduled for August 5th, so hopefully he'll get plenty of time to recover from that before they get to work on his head.

Will is such a cutie pie these days. I don't know what it is but he just seems a lot cuter lately. Of course as I type this he is flinging himself on the floor and whining because his pretzels aren't staying in the bowl. Well most of the time he's cute! He got ahold of some sidewalk chalk and decided to color his face the other day. He likes to watch me put on makeup - I think maybe he thought that's what he was doing. I made him go and look in the mirror thinking he would be upset, but of course he thought his face decoration was AWESOME. Which is a word he uses on occasion now, along with "disgusting". He's getting quite the vocabulary.

He loves corn on the cob but he always has to have my piece - as soon as we sit down at the table he's fussing for "Mama's piece! No Mama have it!". So we switch pieces and all is well. "No Benny have it!" is also one of his current favorite phrases. He's really into his books as always - He loves to go into Borders and browse the Thomas section. He has a lot of his books memorized and will finish sentences for me. He's also started singing along with his silly song CDs - it's hilarious. He only really knows the last couple of words of each line, so he kind of mumbles his way through every line and then shouts the last word or two. He also loves to go help Daddy water the flowers in the morning.

Brian is feeling much better as well. He had his latest blood test a few days ago and he's still considerably hypothyroid, so they're upping his dose of synthroid. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks we'll have his dosage right and he won't feel so sluggish anymore. But overall he's really feeling good these days. His tomato plants have FORTY-EIGHT tomatoes on them. :)

It's so nice to hear from people we don't even know who are thinking about Ben. We really appreciate all the prayers and positive energy everyone's sending his way. Thanks everyone!

Another surgery for Ben

Well thank goodness I went ahead and made an appointment with cranial technologies even though most of my doctors were telling me to wait. It turns out that Ben has coronal synostosis, which basically means the skull plate above his left eye has fused prematurely and isn't growing with the rest of his head.

The good news: It's fixable and it's not progressive, so once it's fixed we're done with that problem. It's also not associated with any syndrome that Ben might have, so it's an isolated problem.

The bad news: It's a "big surgery" according to his doctor. They're basically going to have to open his skull up, reshape the bones, and put it back together. Apparently there's a less invasive procedure that can be done, but it's not as effective - we're going to get a CT scan done soon and at that point we can decide which way we need to go.

His dr. said he usually does the surgery around 8 months. So Ben has a surgery scheduled for 8/5 to bring down his undescended testicle and then he'll have another one sometime in September. Poor baby!!

Here's a textbook picture of a baby with C.S.:

And here's a picture of Ben's head:


See how you can't even see his right eye because the forehead is bulging so much? Once again I'm so grateful to be living in Charlotte where there are so many great specialists. None of his other doctors picked this up, including his neurologist (Who, BTW, kept telling me to wait on going to cranial technologies.).

A week of firsts

This was a really big week for Will. He got to see his first movie in a theater and his first baseball game (sort of). They show free movies on Wednesday mornings at the mall down the street from our house, so we took him to see Muppets from Space. He had a great time and sat through about 45 minutes of it, which I thought was really good. This week they're showing Wallace and Gromit, which Will has seen and likes, so I think we'll check it out on the big screen again.

We tried to take him to a baseball game, but we got rained out. Not that Will cared - he had a great time running around in circles and eating junk food - he got to try his first cotton candy. The Charlotte Knights are our minor league baseball team and they have a nice little stadium about half an hour from our house. We got raincheck tickets to go to another game, so we'll probably try again in a couple of weeks.

Ben had a first this week as well - he got to meet his great-grandparents and his Great Aunt Ann on Brian's side. We took a trip to Georgia and stayed with Grandma and Grandad this weekend and we took a side trip to visit Ma and Papa. Will loved the olf-fashioned Legos Ma keeps around - they're the tiniest Legos I've ever seen. Of course he loves any toy that he could potentially choke on, so he had a great time. Will was in a pretty bad mood the day that Ann came over, so it took him a while to warm up to her. But before the night ended he was banging on a steel drum and performing his repertorie of songs for her, including "Twinkle Star", "ABC" and "Dr. Suzuki". Ben loved his Aunt Ann and especially loved her glasses.

We had a great time visiting with Grandma and Grandad. Will got to play with grandad's battery-powered train, which was a huge hit. There were lots of train tracks on the way to Ma and Papa'a house too - Will has been on train overload this weekend! He would point out the tracks and keep a running monologue about "train tracks" and "crossing signals" and "better watch out, train comin".

Another first for Ben was that he actually OPENED HIS MOUTH for the spoon last time I fed him! He had sweet potatoes for the first time last night, and apparently they were a big hit because he kept opening his mouth up waiting for the spoon. I got so excited I started yelling for Brian and he came running over thinking something was wrong. Ben is on a real feeding frenzy right now. He's taking 5-6 oz bottles, which is a major step because just a few weeks ago 3 oz was his max. And he was tolerating me shoving bananas and oatmeal in his mouth but he wasn't very excited about it, so this whole mouth opening thing is a big deal.

Fun Family Weekend!

This weekend Brian's brother Ron and sister-in-law Angie came to visit us with their two kids Anna and Luke. We had a blast, although it was pretty chaotic with 4 kids in the house! Will had a really good time playing with Anna - he kept calling her "Aunt Anna". Eventually we got him to say "cousin Anna" but he never quite got it right. He's been telling me all about how they played on the air mattress and had pillow fights and Luke played with cards (flashcards). Our refrigerator looks lovely now with all the Dora pictures Anna colored for us.

I got to take Anna and Will out to Target for icees - it was my first glimpse of what it will be like to have two older children. It was awesome! There were no slings or car seats to lug around, and nobody lunging to rip toys off the aisles. And I started to realize that when your kids get older they can actually HELP YOU with things!! Crazy. I'm looking forward to that. :)