Christmas Morning!

I didn't capture much of Christmas on camera, but I couldn't pass up sharing this video of Caleb's reaction to what Santa brought him.  I guess 3 is a magical age on Christmas Morning!

My baby's first birthday party!

We had a cute little Monster party for my cute little monster just before his birthday.  I didn't get any pictures of him opening his presents...I was trying to take in the moment.  ;)  But here are some pictures and videos of the rest of it:

Monster cake with cake pop eyeballs.  Only friendly monsters were welcome at this first birthday party.  ;)

 He's not so sure about this....

Falling apart....

Real mean trick, Mom.  What were you thinking, putting a cake in front of me??

We put the little white chocolate "monster teeth" in his mouth, and he enjoyed them.  Kind of.

He thought about enjoying the frosting.

But in the end he was quite offended at the sight of that cake on his tray.

So we tried giving him a much less overwhelming "slice" instead of the whole monster.  He took a few tastes and thought they were all right.

Eventually he ended up crying until we wiped off his hands and gave him some crackers.

Hey, it's his birthday...I suppose he just wanted to cry.

At least he was cute and happy in this one-of-a-kind monster onesie that I made.

Russell is ONE YEAR OLD!

I know, I know.  This is more than a month late.  Go ahead, call me a bad mom.  Or maybe just a bad blogger.  And then forgive me and take a look at what my adorable little boy is up to these days!

At 12 months, Russell:

• Weighs 16lbs 5.5oz, which isn't on the charts
• Measures 27.5 inches, which is barely below the charts as well
• Has a head circumference in the 38th percentile
• Wears size 3-6 month clothes and size 2 diapers.  He only has 3 wet diapers a day
• Can crawl, cruise, and scale stairs going both up and down.  I quite love that he can go up and down stairs.  Check this out:

• Can stand up in the middle of a room, without pulling up on anything, and stand for a few short seconds
• Loves the cat and dogs.  They cheer him right up when he's feeling down
• Is pretty great at eating a good variety and volume of solid foods.  He doesn't rip things with his teeth very well, so I have to cut everything into small pieces, but otherwise he does well.  He isn't yet into the habit of throwing everything off of his tray, which I appreciate very much!  When there's something that he feels very strongly about not eating, then he'll drop it on the ground or just put it off to the side
• Has a favorite breakfast of wheat toast with margarine and homemade apple butter
• Has a favorite lunch of green smoothie (made with yogurt, apple juice, spinach, carrots, peaches, blueberries, and strawberries)
• Drinks 8-12oz of formula each day from a Nuk sippy cup.  I would highly recommend them (as would our feeding therapist)!  They don't have a valve, so it's easier for a baby to drink when they're not entirely motivated to drink more.  And it makes for an easier transition from the bottle to a cup. Russell will almost always drink 4oz when he first wakes up, and the rest of his formula is taken an ounce or so at a time.  He is usually not very willing to drink at all by the evening.  He's also very, very bloated in the evening.  Poor boy.  I wouldn't want to eat if I looked like that, either.  I kid you not, every single morning when I get him dressed I see his skinny little belly and give it kisses that make him giggle.  Then every single night when I undress him to put on his jammies I'm always, always surprised at how huge his belly looks.  You'd think I'd be used to it by now

• Drinks water from a straw sippy cup.  He often demands water while in the middle of a meal.  Likes to keep his palette moist, I suppose.  He probably only drinks an ounce or two a day, but it's somethin'!
• Is anemic.  :/  The GI doc wrote a prescription for iron, but the pharmacy said that it was actually an over-the-counter med.  But then I couldn't find it on the shelf.  Hmm.  So I've just been giving him a multivitamin with 100% iron, but he still sleeps a lot at night.  It's not abnormal for him to sleep from 9PM to 11AM.  Although, he has been having a shorter nap than he used to, and he always wakes up mad from his naps.  :(  I attribute it to teething
• Is still on reflux meds 2x/day.  It seems to help him to drink a bit more formula, but it's hard to tell
• Has 12 teeth (I think).  The front four on top and bottom, and one molar on each side on both the top and the bottom.  He's still missing his eye teeth/canines/fangs/whatevertheyrecalled.  I think it's weird that his molars have come in but the others haven't
• Claps when we say "yay!" and waves when we say "bye-bye."  He even has a proper wave, with his hand facing outward
• Is very good with taking a bath in the kitchen sink.  He doesn't splash much at all.  We've recently moved him to the tub to take a bath with Caleb, just when it's convenient to have one person bathe both boys.  But our bath tub is super deep and huge, so it's hard to reach him.  I prefer the sink

In this particular sink bath, Caleb was concerned that Russell didn't have any toys.  I told him he could get Russ a rubber ducky, so he ran upstairs and grabbed the big box full of bath toys from under the bathroom sink and hauled it all of the way downstairs, set it in front of the sink, and pulled out all three rubber duckies and gave them to a very happy little Russell.

• Still uses his mouth as a third hand, as you can see in the above picture.
• Points at EVERYTHING!  This is very wonderful.  This is how babies learn words.  He points, I label.

  

• Loves books with big, colorful pictures and toy cars.  He is quite good at pushing cars around the floor
• Will dance to any music.  Even if I'm singing "pop goes the weasel" he'll dance.  He's a dancing fool, I tell you
• Enjoys putting objects into containers
• Loves me more than anything.  Very rarely does he want to go to anyone but me, although it has happened a few times.  His face lights up every time he sees me.  Although, he is better about being separated from me, which is sooo nice.
• Has a personality to match mine.  Caleb's personality is so very similar to Nate.  They do everything alike.  Good thing I love them both.  ;)  But they're so busy and fun-loving and at times very exhausting, and I'm more calm and quiet.  It's nice to have Russ around.  Like me, he likes to have fun when he's feeling comfortable in a familiar situation, but he's also cautious and shy and quiet at times.  He balances out our family.  Oh, I do so love having him around!

Proud Mommy Moment: Operation Smile

Caleb saw this commercial a few weeks ago.  Ever since, he has been talking about the "babies with owies on their lips."  I told him that maybe he could draw them a picture and mail it to them to make them happy.  I also told him that he could give them some money to help them pay for surgery so that their owies can go bye-bye.  He picked all of the coins from his bank (two quarters and a dime) and one dollar bill to mail to them.

I asked him what he wanted to say in his letter, and he said, "A."  Well...that's a letter, all right!  So together we came up with this "message" for them:

Did you know that $240 is all it takes to give one potentially life-saving surgery?  1 in 10 babies born with a cleft lip/palate dies in their first year.  That's because they can't suck, so they can't eat.  I know what it's like to have a baby who can't eat.  It breaks my heart to think that so many babies can die of starvation.

Nate's employer matches charitable contributions, so we donated $120 and they donated $120.  So together we may have saved a life!  If you want to help the babies with owies on their lips, you can go here.  It feels so good to do it.

And it feels so good to be teaching my small child to think about others and to give of himself to help them feel better.  I hope I can continue to use these opportunities to teach my boys, and I hope they continue to love to give.

Russell's new tricks

Don't you just love it when babies develop their receptive communication skills?  I think it's my favorite.  :)

Russell's digestive woes

Russ was scoped the day before Thanksgiving.  Remind me never to have a medical procedure done just before a holiday.  It took a whole week to get our results back!  I was going nuts!

Here is the status of my baby boy's digestive tract, starting at the top:

A) His esophagus has 2 eosinophils per high power field.  In order to have a diagnosis of Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE), he must have at least 15 eos/hpf.  And there are some telltale signs of EoE when looking at the esophagus with the naked eye, such as furrowing (although I'm not entirely sure what that is...), and Russ' esophagus was beautiful.  Lovely color, nice and smooth, good blood vessels.  So his esophagus is of no concern.  Yipee!

B) His stomach appeared healthy, but the biopsies showed inflammation.  So he was diagnosed with "gastritis."  There wasn't a single eosinophil.  Hooray!

C) His duodenum was also inflamed on the biopsies (diagnosis: duodenitis), and there was something going on with the villi.  I can't remember exactly how she described the villi (which function to absorb nutrients, so when they malfunction it results in malnutrition), but she said that the abnormality was caused by reflux.  We will be starting him on a prescription reflux medication twice a day and hopefully that should be all that he needs to feel better!  Wouldn't that be nice?  But somehow I don't believe that it's going to happen.  I'm going to call the GI doctor next week to check, but everything I can find about abnormal villi is related to Celiac Disease.  He shows no signs of reflux in his esophagus and no outward symptoms, either.  And most babies with reflux (virtually all of them are born with it to a degree) outgrow it by the time they are one year old.  So why would Russell just now be refusing food to a greater extent than ever before?  It's puzzling.  But there wasn't a single eosinophil in his duodenum, which is great!  (That's where Caleb's eosinophils reside.)

D) His colon was technically considered healthy.  They only did a sigmoidoscopy, which is like a mini colonoscopy, so it's possible that they didn't get as good of an idea of what's going on in there as they could have with an entire colonoscopy.  The biopsies did show 38 eosinophils per high power field.  It is generally agreed (from what I have found) that 40 eos/hpf warrants a diagnosis of Eosinophilic Colitis (EC).  But since EC is so rare, and the "healthy" number of eosinophils in a person's digestive tract varies based on where in the country you are, there technically isn't diagnostic criteria.  Stinks, huh?  My kids are just that rare.  Well, maybe.  From what I understand (and I have a lot to learn), I very well may have 39 eos/hpf in my colon and I don't have symptoms of EC.  You may have 35.  But generally, once a person has 40, they show symptoms of EC that warrant treatment.  But really?  Russell's biopsy was two eosinophil cells short of getting diagnosed with EC.  Eosinophilic disorders are a "patchy" disease, meaning that you could take a biopsy in one spot that showed lots of eosinophils, and move over an inch and find none.  So although our GI took multiple samples (I think she may have only taken two...but I'm not sure), if it were to be done again, he might end up with a diagnosis.  Or it might show even fewer eosinophils.  It's hard to know.

So.

Deep breath.

Our GI didn't say this, but in my mind, if the reflux meds don't help anything (ie, if he doesn't start drinking significantly more, since drinking two ounces a day is pretty darn awesome for our little anorexic baby), then we may assume he has EC.  I will either talk to our GI doctor about the possibility, or I will seek out a second opinion.  I'd rather not do that, because it might mean putting Russ under anesthesia again for more biopsies.  I would hate that.  He would hate that.  I promise, I'm not looking for a diagnosis, I'm looking for answers to why my baby doesn't want to eat and drink enough to be healthy.

Don't you hate it when it's in your child's best interest for them to suffer more in the short term so they can suffer less in the long term?

Story of my life.

Let's just hope the reflux med works and that's that.

Russell is 11 months old!

That's almost one year!  What?  No way.  That went by way too fast!  He still seems like such a little baby to me!

At 11 months old, Russell:

• Weighs 15lbs 15oz (on a good day).  He has only gained a few ounces in the last two months, so we're a bit worried about that
• Wears size 2 diapers (and only has three wet diapers a day)
• Wears size 3-6 month clothes
• Has eight teeth and hasn't gotten a new tooth in many, many months.  Everyone who sees him feels the need to comment on how many teeth he has for being so small
• Is still pretty bald, but is starting to get a little bit of a mullet thing goin' on.  He barely has enough blondish hair on the back of his head to "run my fingers through," so to speak, but it's an improvement!  Although, there's nothing wrong with having a little baldie :)
• Can crawl, cruise, and has stood without holding onto something a few times for a few short seconds
• Can crawl up and down stairs.  It is sooo nice to not have to worry about him on the stairs
• Loves to open cupboards in the kitchen.  He isn't into clearing the shelves just for fun yet, but he knows where to find a few things that he enjoys looking at, holding, and chewing on (such as Caleb's fruit leather and Caleb's medical supplies) and will go straight for them when he has a chance
• Loves to open and close doors--on the cupboards, baby gate, and bedrooms (but not using the door handle...obviously.  He's a wee bit too short for that).  It's nice that he has figured out how to go from crawling to sitting so quickly (he's been doing it for a while now).  He can entertain himself much better because of that.  It took Caleb f.o.r.e.v.e.r to figure that one out
• Babbles with the consonances m, b, and y and enjoys saying "ffffff" through his teeth/lip.  He doesn't babble very much.  Most of the sounds that he makes are still strictly with vowels, although he is starting to use his vowels to make conversational sounds, which is fun
• Loves touchy-feely books.  He knows how to turn the pages, and knows just where to put his fingers to find the textures
• Still loves the cat like crazy
• Looooves to dance.  He's got some groovy moves.  He also has great taste in music.  Check it out:

• Cries like a maniac when he wakes up in the morning/from his nap.  He very rarely wakes up happy
• Loves Caleb more than anything.  Just a touch from Caleb will make him roll in laughter.  He will literally chase Caleb all through the room, trying to head butt Caleb (his head is currently the most ticklish part of his body).  It's quite comical.  Usually Caleb pushes him away, which makes Russ laugh
• Loves holding things in his mouth.  He isn't opposed to crawling with things in his hands (yeah, he can balance on those egg-shaped musical shaker thingies), but if he wants to hold more than what fits in his hands, he puts his toys in his mouth.  I honestly think he thinks of his mouth like a third hand.  One time when Auntie Jenna was playing with him, he had one toy in each hand and she had a toy that he wanted.  He tried to grab it with a spare finger, but couldn't grasp it, so he reached forward with his mouth and grabbed the toy.  He's pretty cool like that
• Waves to everyone he sees
• Smiles to everyone he sees
• Has clapped once
• Is ridiculously attached to his mommy.  Sometimes just giving him to Daddy will make him cry.  He turns away from everyone who reaches for him if I'm holding him.  He still follows me out of a room, and he'll cry if I leave the room too fast
• Loves to eat our daily lunch smoothie (made with apple juice, spinach, carrots, chia seeds, peaches, strawberries, and blueberries), freeze dried baby yogurt bites, baby cheetos, and wheat toast with butter and homemade apple butter.  He enjoys sinking his teeth into fresh apples, although he really doesn't eat them.  He also loves to nurse (only 2-3x/day), although I'm 99 percent sure that my milk is 99 percent dried up

• HATES pasta, eggs, and hot dogs (the first time I offered them to him, he ate 1.5 hot dogs!  Since then, he won't even put one in his mouth).  Most other foods (like baby cereal, jarred baby food, and "real" food) he will take a bite or two of, and then turn his head away and absolutely refuse to eat any more.  He often puts food in his mouth, chews on it for a second, and spits it out.  If you sneak something in his mouth that he doesn't want, he will spit it out
• Drinks formula from a specific type of sippy cup and will take some water from an open cup or a straw cup, but doesn't drink much.  The most that he has ever drank in a day was 7oz.  That was incredible.  He averages about 2oz.  It's not rare for a day to go by without him drinking any formula.  Remember how I said that he isn't getting anything from nursing?  Yeah.  It's bad.  Remember this post from when Caleb was 13 months old (10 months adjusted)?  Caleb was in really, really bad shape with his eating.  But the least that he ever drank in a day was 7oz.  That's the most that Russ has ever had.  And I could always get Caleb to eat just a little bit more by distracting him.  Distractions don't work for Russell.  That's why Russ had a swallow study a few weeks ago.  We wanted to make sure that his lack of drinking wasn't due to aspiration, since he often coughs while he drinks.  His swallow study showed that everything was fine.  And that's why Russ is having a scope done next week.  At this point, I'm expecting him to be diagnosed with an eosinophilic disorder.  Based on some of his symptoms (coughing while drinking, bloating, and alternating constipation and diarrhea with mucous in his stools), I wouldn't be surprised if they found eosinophils in his esophagus and/or his colon.  That would make things quite different from Caleb's type of EGID.  Tonight Nate asked me, "So, do you think he'll get a feeding tube if he does have eosinophils?"  Who knows.  I would love it if he didn't need one.  But he can't be dehydrated forever.  Hopefully if we could get rid of the offending foods then he would feel well enough to want to drink, so we could avoid the tube.  But let's be honest.  I'm not counting on anything right now.  All I know for sure is that if he needed a feeding tube, I would want to skip the NG tube and go straight to the g-tube.  There is no way Russell would stand to have a tube in his nose and taped to his face.
• Will most likely be getting feeding therapy (and probably speech therapy at the same time, by the same therapist) in a few months.  The nice thing about that is that we would use the same feeding therapist who has been coming to our house since Caleb was about 4 months old!  We love her!
• Is getting more and more fun as his personality develops more.  Today we brought him to a restaurant for the first time since he has been able to eat solid foods, and he had so much fun smiling at everyone!  He used to be very antisocial (to the point of me losing sleep over the possibility of him having autism), but now he has become quite the charmer!  He loves other babies, and likes to "talk" to them.  He has a BFF named Henry.  Every time they see each other, they smile and laugh.  It's adorable.  Henry's older brother is Caleb's BFF, so it's perfect!

I was canning apple butter one day with apples from our trees while Russell was playing in the kitchen.  He started fishing in my bucket of apples and pulled out the smallest apple (with lots of leaves on its stem) and was very happy to chew on it all afternoon.