Tomorrow Ty will be ONE YEARS old (corrected age)! Before Ty was born, I had already decided how I would do his first birthday pictures. In January, he was still too young for my idea. This afternoon though, Jim is going to help me! Hopefully my idea will work and turn out cute. I’ll try to post pictures tomorrow:)

We decided to celebrate Ty’s first year birthday and Tanner’s fourth year birthday on SUNDAY, MAY 22nd. The “Shear Shactor” party is just around the corner now:).

Music Lover

Ty’s love of music continues to grow! He has been just singing and clapping away this week. In fact, he has woken up in the dead of night this week, started singing and clapping and then fell back to sleep. Totally adorable.

The other night, we put Ty to bed awake. Jim and I were both tired and were hoping he would just fall asleep. He decided to stand in his crib and pull on the mini blinds. His daddy got after him for this and Ty got mad. He held his breath. Jim swung him out of the crib in a hurry tossing him in the air a bit and said “Oh no you don’t! Your not holding your breath right now!” Ty breathed:). Go daddy. He didn’t want to settle down after this so I ended up singing his favorite song (Hush little baby…). When I was finished, all was quiet. I assumed he was asleep. A minute later, Ty started singing back to me and clapping his hands. I found that I enjoy being sang to sleep as well:).

Rasberries

If Ty was in a rasberry blowing contest he would win for sure. He can blow spit to kingdom come. I am trying to distract him from this because there are plenty of people who will NOT appreciate this. Ty also has discovered that it is hysterical to blow rasberries on Tanner’s and Mama’s legs. It hits our tickle spots and Tanner and I can’t help but laugh. Unfortunately though, allowing Ty the opportunity to tickle us occasionally results in a bite! He will be in the middle of blowing and then all of a sudden clamp down with the full mighty 6! Ouch!!!! Tanner and I do NOT appreciate that one!

Button Pusher

Ty is definitely a button pusher…literally. He makes Tanner pretty angry when he crawls over to the TV set and pushes the power button when Tanner is in the middle of a game!

Ty gets mama pretty unhappy too when he crawls over to my computer and powers of f my CPU while I am typing! Aaaghhh!!!!

I need button pushing toys for Ty’s birthday party. Let him push his own buttons!:)

Stimulation Issues?

Doesn’t it seem that each week I have to highlight at least one “strange” incident of the week? It’s always something…

The other night, I was watching Ty standing up at Tanner’s TV. He does this all the time. While watching, I was wondering if Ty likes standing at the TV this way because he can see better. Still hard to tell how bad his eyesight actually is (though he has been crossing them more often again so I know we are far from being out of the woods). After a little bit, he started shaking his head. Ty has done this since he was teeny tiney, when he is over stimulated, being social, or very tired, he shakes his head back and forth. So far all this was typical Ty behavior…then he started hitting his head against the TV. He did it hard enough to hurt himself and he started crying. What is THAT all about? One more new thing to capture my attention…sshhhheeeshh. I haven’t seen a repeat episode but I will be watching this (of course).

Eating

We thought that our feeding issues were going to be a thing of the past when he finally learned to take food off a spoon. Nope. He still will only take on average 1 baby food jar a day (if that). He refuses it after a few bites most of the time. He is not doing any better with solids either. He doesn’t particularly care for any solid food other than fruit puffs and even when he does want something, he almost always chokes. I had to pull him out of his high chair and turn him upside down this week for choking on the baby food dried apple bites which are the size of a tic tac! Thought I would try something different for him, but just as always…he choked. I am wondering if we will end up back in ST for this ultimately. Not sure how bad his OMI issues will be (Oral Motor Immaturity). He did LOVE Papa’s chocolate shake from Wendy’s last night though and was jumping up and down begging for each bite! This was a big deal!

Crawling

Ty officially can crawl – he chooses not too. When it seems like the best way to get somewhere, he will do it with ease and perfection, otherwise he just prefers the army crawl.

Crying

Here is a question for other mom’s. I have noticed that Ty is sounding a tiny bit croupy when he cries this week. He doesn’t sound croupy any other time and has no other sign of illness. Earlier in the week, I know he aspirated some water in the bathtub. How long would water stay in a kids lungs I wonder? The bath is tough because he will just dive his head in without caution and next thing you know he is sputtering to high heaven.

BHS (Breath Holding Spells)

I did a little more research on BHS this week and found a few things that I thought were interesting.

This article had some interesting things to say.

1. Ty’s symptoms do seem to be BHS

2. BHS that is severe usually begins in infancy, less severe starts around a year of age. Ty’s first BHS incident happened last July when he was only 2 months corrected. They specifically mentioned that the youngest age this tends to occur is 2 months for the severe type. Hoping this is not indicative of what lies ahead. He actually ended up in the Children’s Hospital for 6 days after that event. The reason was because he kept having apnea (sleep apnea) and the events that day were more serious. Then that night when he started crying in anger, he turned blue on me. At the hospital he had another sleep apnea incident though minor. Interesting how these two things were happening together.

3. This article said that for children who have them more than once a day, they sometimes treat with oral Theophylline. Interesting. Ty was on oral Theophylline until probably Nov or Dec. Wonder if this contributed to keeping these incidents at bay earlier on?

4. Thought it was interesting that the article mentioned BHS may be tied to low iron. Ty had a low hematicrit for a long time and he just went off iron supplements in Jan.

This article has me concerned that Ty may end up with a more severe form of BHS as his started at such a young age. On the other hand, we have not had a major problem with it and he has only advanced to the point of turning blue (from BHS) twice – the July incident and then last week. My question then is, does that mean it will be a rare occurrence or is he likely to advance to a more severe state because this is the common age bracket when it starts getting bad? Hmmmm….hoping the former.

It also keeps mentioning “otherwise healthy babies”…. I wouldn’t call Ty “otherwise healthy” with the neuro issues I know he has so I wish I could find info on babies with BHS and intraventricular bleeds. Wonder if there has been any study on this? Haven’t been able to find any.

Ty has not had any serious episodes this week but I have warded off several when he first started to hold his breath.

Family Night

In the past, we have all gathered at Papa and Sweetie’s for family night on Friday’s. This weekly gathering has been upset by Ty’s lockdown. Yesterday we finally had a “family night”. It was crazy! Sadly, Brooke had her wisdom teeth pulled this week so they couldn’t be there, but we had 5 of the 7 kids all together anyhow. I posted some pictures to the new April album.