20 pounds – 13 mnths actual – 9 months corrected – wearing size 18 to 24 month clothes

Seems like there is so much to say about my little darlin’ tonight. It is 11:00 PM and I am wondering how long it will take me to write about the boys tonight. I have had a busy week and got behind (and yes, Heidi, I do generally try to stick to Thurs nights but I got preoccupied this week).

Cupie Boy
Someday Ty will grow hair and I will stop calling him my cupie doll but for now, one must admit that he does bare striking resemblance to a cupie doll:). P.S. Daddy spiked his hair one evening this week while I was out. Leave it to Jim…..

Glasses
Ty had a great eye Dr. apptmnt this week. His eyes happened to be very straight on the day of the appointment. I explained how the glasses and patch are both IMPOSSIBLE at this stage and that it has become a battle that has left us all very weary. His Dr. said that for reasons that she can’t explain, his eyes are straightening out again. They were terrible, he had surgery, they were straight, they got worse, now they are getting better….hmmmmm….. Strange.

At this point, we think he may escape surgery. He is still far sighted but even that is improving. As he is keeping his eyes straigher he is building strength on his own. For this reason, the Dr. decided to give him 3 months without patching or glasses just to see how he does. Hopefully, he will continue to strengthen. In all likliehood he will end up in glasses eventually but there is even a possibility that he won’t. I do notice in some pictures that his eyes are still crossing and I notice it when he gets tired. Slow process but definitely improving.

Illness
He had his worst cold yet but even then it did not get to his lungs. Tanner was coughing up a storm but Ty never did. In fact, Ty has NEVER had a cough. Is that God’s covering or what? Unexplainable short of God’s intervention. He is mostly over it but he still has a little bit of a rashy face from having a cold and a little runny still but mostly gone.

Talkin’
In addition to “mama”, “dada”, “nah nah nah”, he is now occasionally copying “hi” and “bye”. I don’t know that he knows the meaning of these two words but he does try to mimic them.

Speaking of mimicking, my little mima bird has been cracking me up with this. He is such a copy cat. He was going through his full repretoire of sounds for Sweetie tonight. While he was showing off to his grammy, I said “Show her your sneeze”. HE DID IT! I did not show him what I was talking about for him to mimic, I just said the word! He pretends to sneeze so adorably. He makes the cutest sound and he ducks his head down. Occasionally he will even throw the “aaghh aaaghh aaaghhh” part in as a forerunner:). Thinking this was simply a coincidence, I then said “Show her a kiss” and he smacked his kissy lips! I was amazed at how well he is understanding spoken language. We have also been noticing that if I am talking about Jim and say Jim’s name, Ty starts going “da da”. NO WAY!!! He even recognized his dad’s name. Again, I would call this incidental but it has happened several times. The last two days he is all about daddy. He is refusing to say mama this week:).

Daddy Time
Ty boy llllooooovvveeesss his daddy. They have been having pretend coughing contests this week and they both see if they can outlast the other. Ty has won a few times. Ty actually tries to copy the length of Jim’s cough. Ty has also realized that Daddy and Tanner spend time playing in the playroom and where they are he wants to be. He about jumped out of my arms watching his daddy walk into the playroom this week. He knows a good thing when he sees it!

Shocking Behavior
🙂 I am trying to childproof but Ty is seeming to get ahead of me. Twice now, Ty has committed shocking crimes.

Offense number 1: Tanner unplugged Daddy’s laptop while daddy was working on it. The live wire was dangling and Jim didn’t notice. Ty grabbed it and put it in his mouth. I would have liked to have said he learned his lesson from this however…..

Offense number 2: I didn’t shut the kitchen gate one day and he disappeared on me. I headed for the kitchen to find him and caught him just as he unplugged my Shark vacuum and placed the live wire into his mouth.

Apparently, he is finding this shock therapy stimulating as he keeps repeating this. Both incidents have scared me to death. I do think he was shocked both times as he started to cry each time but both are low voltage (thank the Lord) and as the crying was short I am assuming that he did not receive much of a shock.

Monitors
I have been breaking myself away from the pulse ox. I only use it to spot check him now. It was getting too dangerous as he is so mobile in his crib.

Teeth
Ty’s first top tooth arrived on 2/15/05 and the second top tooth broke through on the 17th. He now has his 4 front teeth.

TMJ
I think Ty has TMJ. I have noticed for a long time that when I am touching his face, he shifts his jaws out of postion and I can feel it move. I am very familiar with this as I have severe TMJ myself and have slept with a splint since High School. Am wondering if his partial cleft palette is messing up his alignment??? Anyone else notice their babies jaws shifting out of place?

Tongue Up
Ty holds his tongue up often and I have been trying to figure out why he does this. You’ll notice this in pictures sometimes. His PT today said she thinks it is a stabilizing security thing. She pointed out that babies who have development delays in their muscle development through the back, often stiffen their neck muscles to gain head control. You will often see these children holding their tongue up with the stiffening. As they develop their muscles properly, they no longer need this stabilizing attempt but often it becomes behavioral and they don’t shed the habit. Makes sense.

Development
Ty is sitting up so well now. It seems that by the time he hit 12 months, he could finally truly sit up. Before, he could do it but was very unstable. He learned this month (13) to get to an army crawl position from sitting but he can’t get back to sitting on his own.

He is also pulling himself to a stand by using my body. He doesn’t attempt this on stationary objects yet but I was excited to see him do it all. We need to lower his crib bed very soon!

Eating
Ty had his 2nd upper GI on Friday and his 2nd Modified Barium Swallow today.

Upper GI – While they did not see him refluxing during the test, they did see that his digestion is still slow even on Reglan. The Dr. felt it was necessary to recommend an extended study where they will give him something nuclear (sounds great huh?) and watch him for a full hour. I affirmed that his refluxing that interfers with his breathing is generally at least 40 minutes after eating which is why they want to look at this more closely.

Swallow Study – Everything looks great physically but the ST said that she believe him to have Oral Motor Immaturity. He was pumping his tongue SOOOO hard and so fast just to get the tiniest bits of milk through his bottle. I had no idea he had such a hard time sucking. You can’t tell this by watching him. No wonder he takes a couple of hours to finish an 8 ounce bottle!!! His suck is soooo ineffective. He just doesn’t know how to work his tongue right which is contributing to not being able to eat solids without gagging. While this doesn’t answer all the feeding questions we have, it does tell us that Ty does need continued ST to get past the Immaturity issues. He also cannot take thin liquids. There was very deep penetration with the ultra thin liquid (he was very close to aspirating). If that showed up in a 5 minute test, it leads one to believe that aspiration has been a problem for him all along which we speculated. The ST said that we should not feed him anything thin (water, juice, etc) until he matures because there is too much risk of aspiration.

Ty is asleep in the swing right now and I need to go tuck him into beddy bye so I am signing off this posting:).