On Monday afternoon, we went down to Green Valley to visit Jeff's family. We went to Uncle Bob and Aunt Joyce's house, where Jeff's Dad was staying for the rest of his visit. Henry fell asleep on the way down there. He stayed sound asleep as we sat down in the back patio. After awhile, he woke up and surveyed the area. He spent about 45-60 minutes, sizing everyone and the new location up. After that, he sat in Uncle Bob's lap for awhile and let Uncle Bob (Great Uncle Bob to Henry) take him around the patio to look and touch the flowers. Uncle Jim then came. Henry was fascinated by Uncle Jim's voice. Henry showed off his "Wheels on the Bush" skills and had everyone singing it to him. We went inside for dinner and to watch the NCAA Finals. Aunt Joyce (Jim's wife; there are two Aunt Joyces in the family) arrived. She spent a lot of time watching and talking about Henry (which is of course Jeff's and my favorite subject). All in all, it was an excellent visit. We were so proud of how Henry's handling new experiences (having spent a rather sheltered existence between his first 3.5 months in the NICU and 4.5 months at home or at the grand parents' or at doctors' offices).
On Tuesday, Jeff and I went to the movies in the afternoon. Henry spent the afternoon with Grammy and Grandpa Henry.
On Wednesday, Dorsett had a session with Henry. I unfortunately wasn't there and missed her visit by a few minutes. Dorsett has been intrigued by Henry's vocal range, so she brought a scale to measure his speech abilities. By her estimates, Henry's vocal skills are around the 10 month old level. He mimics some syllables and gives vocal responses when talked to.
On Thursday, Jeff went down to Green Valley to pick up his Dad and take him to the airport. We were sorry to see him leave. While Veronica was watching Henry in the morning, he did the marine crawl (also called the commando crawl) where he used his arms to pull himself forward. I unfortunately didn't get to see it. At some point, Jeff and I both noticed that Henry has really developed his fine motor skills. Normally when he does "Wheels on the Bus," he slaps his hands together. But he has been studying our movements and now can make his hands rotate in a circle around each other without hitting each other. I have to stay, I was absolutely floored when he did this. It takes a significant amount of precision to do the wheels action, and he's doing it. Tara visited in the afternoon. I'm not sure what happened as I had to leave for a gender lecture at school. In the evening, Grammy and Grandpa Henry came over to watch Henry, while Jeff and I went out with our friends Dana, Jamie, Steve, and Nikki to Eat Downtown! which is a charity cocktail event where downtown restaurants provide wines and mini-dishes to try (fund raising for the Museum of Contemporary Art). It was a fun event. When we got back home, my mom said that Henry had moved two steps forward on his knees.
Friday was Henry's 8 months adjusted birthday (or due date day). We started off the day with Henry's last Synagis appointment. He weighed 18 lbs 5 ozs with his diaper on (1 oz). That meant two large shots of Synagis. He was very upset by it. I'm glad that it was his last.
Cuyler came in the afternoon with an OT named Selah, who is going to take care of the development part of the OT duties. Cuyler will continue with Henry's feeding issues. Selah lives on the NW side of town, so it will be easier to make appointments with her than it is with Cuyler. Cuyler worked on Henry's eating. The good news is that she got Henry to eat pureed pears. The bad news is that Henry threw up all of the contents in his stomach about an 1.5 hour after the meal. Projectile vomiting on my mom. I went to help and then got doused twice. It wasn't pretty. Henry was shaking and upset. It came out of no where. He had been sound asleep on my mom and then BLAH. I don't know if it was the pureed fruit. He's had pears tons of times before, so that seems an unlikely cause. It could have been the Synagis shot (although he's never had a bad reaction to it before).
During Cuyler's visit, she had mentioned that most kids take probiotics if they take acid blockers for an extended period of time. I did some research on acid blockers and found out that they often cause constipation (a problem that Henry has) because they essentially destroy all of the good bacteria in the intestines, which are needed to breakdown the food. I'm a little frustrated that none of the doctors has mentioned this before. We've expressed concern about Henry's constant struggle to keep things moving (so to speak) and not one doctor has mentioned the acid blocker side effect. We have an appointment this coming week with Henry's GI specialist. I'm going to ask about probiotics at that time. In the meantime, Jeff and I are weaning Henry from the Prevacid to see if he can tolerate less of it.
I cleaned Henry up and gave him some water to clean out his mouth. Because his stomach was empty, he was hungry. I ended up giving him a bottle of milk in bed. He fell fast asleep. I woke up 3 hours later. I was feeling kind of dizzy myself (don't know if it was related to what Henry was feeling). Henry was still asleep. Henry didn't wake up until 4AM. He took a large bottle quickly. Went back to sleep around 5AM. Woke up again at 7AM.
This morning (Saturday), Jeff, Henry, and I took the dogs for a walk. We then headed into town to have breakfast at Ghini's Cafe. They have outdoor seating, and we got a great spot away from everyone else. Henry enjoyed the new surroundings. He flirted with a couple of women who were several feet away. He had peaches (no problems holding them down). We then went to visit my parents for an hour. Came back home. Jeff and Henry watched the Masters, while I worked. Around 5:45PM or so, Jeff took Henry to the back to get him to take a nap. I thought the Boys were going to wake up for the dog walk, but such was not the case. It's 10:35PM right now that the Boys are cuddled together. I'd take a picture of it, but all three of our camera discs are filled already. We've had some problems getting them off the cameras. Hopefully, I'll get them off the discs tomorrow and post pictures of Henry's adventures from this week.
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