9mo old!!!

How can it be???  Preston Blake is 9mo old!!!!!  Only 3mo until his first birthday!  I can NOT believe it!  I bought the first of his birthday presents the other day too

Isn't it cute?  And perfect because I plan to do cowboys for his first birthday theme.  

He is 17lbs 12oz as of tonight which is about the 10th% so he's still dropping.  He has his 9mo check up tomorrow morning so I'll update with his height then.  He is still nursing, of course, and doing well.  He upped his nursing for about a week while getting some teeth to where he was nursing every 1-2hrs..it was pretty rough because he was even doing that through the night.  But now he's back to about 6-7x in a 24hr period but he has gone from nursing right at 5min to about 8-10min each time.  He has also started really demanding this past month...to the point of grabbing my shirt and pulling it down no matter where we are lol.  So we are really working on the "milk" sign so he can tell me in another way he wants to nurse.  

He is also eating solids really well, he's on 2 meals a day now.  (plus puffs as a snack at least once a day)  We've tried getting him onto 3 meals a day but if he does that he nurses very little during the day and wants to wake really often at night to nurse to make up for that and then he's grumpy from not getting enough sleep.  This kid definitely likes to sleep.  He's waking 3x on average a night...usually 5-7hrs for his first stretch and 3-4hrs for the next 2.  He is having 3-4 naps a day, at least 2 long ones of 1.5hrs+ and then another usually around an hour and another of about 30-45min in the evening to get him through until bedtime.  

As of today he can sit himself up from laying on his belly!!!  He did it about 5x this afternoon.  He's getting on his hands and knees all the time now and rocking and you can see him thinking about how to crawl, he's working on it.  He's the type of baby who won't try something until he knows he can master it, so you can see him thinking and knowing what he wants to do but he won't attempt it yet.  He also pulled to standing 2x yesterday, sitting on the couch next to me he grabbed my shirt and stood up and then did the same with Mark a little bit later.  He is standing really well when holding onto things but still just plants his feet, doesn't move them around while standing so if he starts to lose his balance he goes down, he doesn't adjust his feet to catch himself.  I really think he'll be crawling before 10mo though...we'll see!  

He now has 6 teeth!  Poor baby had 4 break through on top all at once.  Now that they are through though he's doing much better, sleeping better, eating better and just generally much happier.  Though he is pretty  much always happy, he is such an awesome baby.  We always though Landon was the "best" baby, very content but Preston is even better.  He is almost never in a bad mood, almost never cries, is always so content and happy.  He also has such a loving, sweet spirit.  He loves on everyone, if one of his brothers gets hurt he is very concerned and wants to love on them.  

He's now saying 3 words!!  His first word was mama <3  Then he said dada.  He babbles ya ya all the time but it isn't actually a word.  Last night though, he woke to nurse and then was laying on the couch cuddling with me and started looking around calling out for dada.  I told him "dada is still at work, are you ready to go back night night?" and he looked at me and said "night night" clear as day!!!  I picked him up and took him to bed and he curled up on his belly, butt in the air and went right back to sleep.  He has started attempting to have conversations with you, if you talk to him he talks right back and keeps it going and is really watching your mouth close to figure out how to say words.  I think he'll be like Casen and talk really early and really well.  We are still working on signs and so far he is still only using "eat" but attempts to do "drink" and "finished".  He understands daddy, mommy, dance, milk and more as well but isn't trying to do them yet.  Landon asked me to look up "brother" for him so I did that and he's started trying to teach him that one :)  

We've been doing a lot of playdates recently which I love, he loves being out of the house and is always so good.  Yesterday we went to the park and the boys took him down the slide for the first time

Well I think that's everything for this month :)  I'll update after his dr appt tomorrow and when I take his 9mo pics in the next couple days.  

First time babysitting Isaiah!

Look at the cutie we got to spend our Saturday evening with!!!

Isn't he precious????  So cute!!  

It was our first time babysitting him, and Mark's first time really getting to spend time with him, it was a lot of fun.  Dessa and Chris went out for his sister's birthday so we got to have him for a few hours and he was just soooo good the entire time!  Such a good baby <3  Can't wait for him to come play again soon

The boys had a blast with him of course, they just love him

Watch out zombie Hayden is going to get the baby!!!

Uncle Mark holding him for the first time

Isn't he just gorgeous!!!

I can't wait to see the boys grow up together with Isaiah, it will be great for them to be so close as cousins and Isaiah already has 4 big "brothers" looking out for him and ready to teach him all about being a crazy boy!

Happy President's Day!

The boys didn't have school today since it was President's Day so figured it was a good day to do playdates.  They are always jealous that they don't get to go on playdates with the 2 little ones since they are always in school.  Today we had 2 fun ones planned so it worked out perfectly. 

First, we went over to Chickfila to meet one of our playgroups for lunch and let the kids play.  They had a lot of fun there and we stayed about 1.5hrs.  Then we headed over to where Hayden used to take gymnastics to meet our other playgroup.  The gym does Open Gym a couple times a week and did 2 today since all of the kids were out of school.  The one we went to was from 1-3pm and the kids just get to go nuts and play on everything...trampolines, bars, rope, balance beams, padded places...tons to do.  They had a blast!!  None of them wanted to leave when it was time even though I know they were exhausted, it was almost 3 and they had been playing since about 11.  

Hula hooping

Landon taking a 1sec break

We came home and we cleaned up some, I baked some banana bread, they watched a movie, we had dinner, baths and sent them to bed!  They were so worn out, passed right out :)

Bet they sleep great tonight :)  2 more playdates tomorrow, though the big boys will be at school for the first, as soon as they get home from school tomorrow we are loading up to meet one of our playgroups at the park to play.  Should be another fun day!

Developmental Pediatrician Follow-Up

Today we had Preston's follow up with his developmental pediatrician.  He sees her because of all the intervention he needed after birth.  The medications that he required can cause muscle weakness so they like to watch babies like him to be sure he's developing as he should.  He saw them back in Oct and was doing well.  They had said they wanted him to be going from a sitting position to a crawling position and then also putting himself into a sitting position from laying on the floor by the time he saw them this time..he can do neither so I was a little concerned they would want to do physical therapy.  He is very content, he is happy to sit where you put him, he doesn't want to move around or go get things or get into anything...just very content and happy.  I think he probably COULD do those things if he tried, he just doesn't care to.  The dr today saw that about him and agreed, he is just fine.  He is behind a typical 8mo old but he's exactly where they would want him to be based on his history.  He is developing exactly as they would hope, yay Preston!!!

He will go back beginning of July to have another check, we hope it's our last.  She said by around his first birthday he should be cruising with furniture and she doesn't expect him to walk until at least 12-14mo...I wouldn't be surprised if it was even later.  Casen walked at 14.5mo ad he had no delays, he was very content like Preston...so seeing Preston is a bit behind in other areas but also very content I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was later.  He'll be right over 13mo at his recheck and she said they want to see that he is walking or almost walking...showing the signs that he will be with no further help.  And also check to see how he is communicating, starting to talk.  She said since he is already understanding signs and starting to use them back she doesn't think that's going to be an issue at all.  She doesn't expect him to need any further help and hopes this next visit she'll be able to discharge him and he'll no longer need to see them!!!  If not she thinks just one more visit a few months after that to recheck those things and then he'll be good.  Yay!!!!!  

Doctors appts all the time!!!

We have been having a ridiculous amount of doctor appts here lately!  So I'll catch you up on what's been going on with those

Hayden had a psychologist appt last Thurs.  This was for an evaluation for the behavior issues we've been having with him.  All of which has been going on for years but we have been trying everything we possibly can, reading tons of books, doing tons of research and it all gets us no where so we decided it was time to talk to a professional.  In all the research I had done I had come across ODD, well actually a friend told me about it so I started doing some reading, and every thing I read about it was 100% Hayden.  So I was pretty sure that was what he had going on before we even went to this appt.  We got there and went through all of his history, exactly what issues we are having, how long they've been going on, what we've been trying, she was observing him and all of that.  She gave him the diagnosis of ODD, I didn't mention anything about it, so we were both thinking the same thing.  She also had been watching him close, and he was being good just being typical Hayden (typical well behaved Hayden, not acting up) but she said she felt strongly that he has ADHD but with his age they don't like to give that diagnosis but considering Mark had it as a kid and just watching and hearing everything she said that she does think he has it just won't say for sure yet.  As of now she gave us a few tips, most of which we already do, and then he will see a psychiatrist in about 1.5wks and we'll go from there on if we will use medications or what she recommends.  

The yesterday Casen had his dermatologist appt that we've been waiting on for months.  He has had sores on his head for months and months now, we have tried a few different shampoos, medicated ones and it doesn't really seem to help.  They do get better...like right now it's just dry patches, not sores...but then it'll get worse again with us doing the same things so we aren't sure what is causing it to get better and worse.  He also gets patches on his butt which we've noticed on and off since about age 4.  And he gets severely dry skin in his ears which will also crack and bleed.  She said it isn't presenting like eczema but they aren't completely sure what it is just yet.  She took cultures of one on his butt to see if it's staph possibly because that one looked a bit infected.  She prescribed 3 meds for now but wanted to do a 4th but didn't want to overload him.  He is on a very strong medicated shampoo now, a cream for itching and one for infections.  I haven't been able to pick them up because they weren't ready until late this afternoon and we were busy so I'm going to pick them up and start using them tomorrow and hopefully they help.  He has to go back in March and they will biopsy one of the spots that we aren't supposed to treat and see how he's doing.  NOT looking forward to that follow up because it's all the way in Ft. Worth which is a 45min drive already with NO traffic...well the ONLY appt they had open was March 12th at 4pm.  That traffic home is going to be awful.  The next available appt was April 30th, late afternoon as well.  

Preston kicked back with his foot propped up at Casen's appt

And then today we had Hayden's speech evaluation, another appt we've been waiting on for months.  It went pretty well, we once again got results I was expecting.  He was diagnosed with a lateral lisp and articulation disorder.  He changes out many sounds for others...for instance he can't say words that start with an "s" sound, he changes it to a "g" sound.  He does that with many many sounds.  So they will be working with him on that.  They also tested him for how much he understands language and his expressive language.  She said usually they are about equal but if anything the understanding part is higher than the expressive because they often understand more than they can say.  But Hayden tested at 86 (just barely within normal...85 is the lowest considered normal, up to 115) for his understanding and 98 for his expressive.  She said that it very well may have something to do with the ADHD because she was having to say a lot and he would lose track and stop following, his attention span is pretty much nonexistant so by the time she'd get through what she was saying and ask the question he would have already moved onto something else in his mind.  She thinks that as we get the ADHD under control more he'll probably do better on that side of the test but they are going to monitor it.  They will also be monitoring his stuttering.  She said right now it's in the range for developmentally normal...between age 3-5 it's normal.  But that if it gets ANY worse at all they will start doing more, that it should start getting better and better so they will watch close for that.  For now he is going to start with 4months of speech therapy, once a week for 30-45min, she doesn't think they'll be able to get him to concentrate longer than that.  She said if they need to they'll up it to 2 or even 3x a week but we'll start with once a week for the next 16wks and see how that goes.  I really liked her and she should be the one that works with him every time so that's good...sucks to have to drive 30min each way once a week though but oh well..it's close to dessa so we'll get to hopefully see her those days :)

SO that's where we are right now.  On Monday Preston goes back to his developmental pediatrician's office so hopefully he's where they want him and he won't need any kind of therapy.