Family Resemblance

The top picture is Grandma holding Jamesie, and the next one is Grandma holding baby Melanie. (And then for comparison, there's me holding Jamesie, from Halloween.) I think James takes after his mama!

You'll be sad to hear that we missed out on our Thanksgiving photo opportunity -- we were in such a hurry to get the turkey into the oven in the morning and on to the table in the afternoon that we didn't remember to pose the babies next to the turkey for size comparison. (This year, the turkey wins -- it was around 17 lbs, and James and Mattie are in the 11-13 lb range.) Oh well, I don't think there's going to be any shortage of baby photos of either one of them!

We had a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving weekend, and all our company made it home safe and sound. Since Uncle Adrian managed to catch Cousin Daniel's cold, we didn't get to see them. We were disappointed, but fortunately we'll see them for Christmas.

Saturday, James "talking"

James is beginning to "talk" more often than he used to. We try to encourage this by praising him when he makes sounds, but it is hard to know if he connects our hugs and smiles at that moment to his vocalization since he receives so many hugs and smiles anyway no matter what he is doing.

Happy Nov 28th

We have a very happy household today (and the day has just begun). The sun is out and the boys are enjoying the extra staffing over the holiday weekend. We haven't told them that aunt Erin and uncle Isaac are leaving this afternoon.

So Very Thankful

We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. I started to make a list in my head, and it was so long that it would take up an entire blog page! We are thankful to have our two precious boys at home, and thankful to the amazing nurses and doctors who took such wonderful care of them (and saved their lives) in the NICU. We are thankful for all of you -- our friends and family who have been so fantastic in so many ways.

We hope you have having a wonderful holiday! We have been enjoying good food and good company. (In fact, I fell asleep on the couch this afternoon, and when I woke up, the table was set, the potatoes were mashed, and the turkey was coming out of the oven! Best guests ever!)

Getting Ready

We're getting ready for the arrival of family for Thanksgiving. We're so excited to see everyone! (And hopefully the cuteness of the babies will distract people so they don't notice that the house is messier than usual.)

There's been a wrench thrown into our original plans, though. Cousin Daniel has a cold. (This is his first time in daycare, so he's had an illness of one sort or another pretty much constantly all fall, but this one started this weekend.) Our pediatrician did not think it was a good idea to expose the babies to cold germs, so Aunt Nora and family are delaying their arrival to see if they can get past the most contagious and runny-nose stage. Hopefully it will work out -- it won't feel like Thanksgiving without them here! (I think Nora would not approve of my just misting Daniel with Lysol every time he walks by.)

Of course we couldn't escape without some type of medical appointment this week. Matthew's blood pressure was up a little bit, so we had to pop by the pediatrician's office to get it checked again. It's still a bit higher than they'd like, so they've upped his medicine a little bit.

Hope you are all doing well heading into the holiday weekend!

A Tale of Two Mornings

Yesterday morning we woke up to discovered that James had had an ostomy bag "malfunction" -- yuck! It's no more disgusting than a poopy diaper blowout, but it does take longer to deal with!

But this morning we had the boys down under their activity gym, and they were smiling at each other! So cute!! They each seem very happy to have a brother.

Also this morning, Matthew slept until 8 AM! (Of course, he fell asleep later last night than usual, but hey, I'll take those extra hours in the morning.) He usually wakes up at 4 or 5 AM for his first breakfast (and then goes back to sleep for a couple hours before second breakfast), so this was quite a pleasant change.

Rest in Peace, Aunt Jeanne

Aunt Jeanne passed away this morning, at home, surrounded by her loving family. Rest in peace, Jeanne -- we will miss you.

Saturday morning photos

It is a beautiful bright day here in Chapel Hill. And I think Melanie and the boys are looking particularly happy and cute this morning so I thought I would share the feeling.

Good Eating

Jamesie continues to do well with his bottles --yesterday he had some 40 and 50 ml ones interspersed with his 20 and 25 mls ones, and same thing today. We are very happy -- it's so much more pleasant to feed him during the day without the pump, and to have the flexibility to be out and about without a feeding deadline every three hours! (Of course, James sets his own "deadlines" by crying when he wants to be fed!)

It's hard to tell what he's hearing and what he isn't; sometimes he seems to respond to relatively soft sounds, and other times he doesn't seem to hear loud ones. It didn't seem like he was responding to much sound today, but then when our friend was visiting and made some clicking noises behind James's head, it seemed to soothe him. (Time will tell, but it's hard not to try to figure it out in the meantime.)

Mattie was laughing up a storm this morning -- baby laughter is awesome!

We Love You, Aunt Jeanne

Our thoughts this week are with Mike's Aunt Jeanne, who is being released from the hospital into hospice care tomorrow. She has beaten cancer before, but sadly, it has returned and can no longer be treated.

Most of you have not had the privilege of knowing Jeanne, but she is a truly amazing person -- one of the kindest and most cheerful people I've ever met. She organized her town's 100th anniversary celebration, she sends out the family calendars so that the rest of us can remember birthdays and anniversaries, she has a smile for everyone. And throughout her illness she has always been upbeat and never stopped taking care of those around her. She is truly a model of grace, strength, and courage.

Jeanne and Mike's Uncle Don celebrated 50 years of marriage this summer, not long after the babies were born. It's too bad there wasn't a way to teleport between North Dakota and North Carolina so that we could have celebrated with them and they could have met the boys. (The bottom photo is from a few years ago, when they celebrated Thanksgiving with us in Philadelphia.)

We love you, Aunt Jeanne. We wish we could be there to see you. You are in our thoughts and hearts today and always.

Rings

James is starting his training early for his Olympic gymnastics debut. (I think having the pacifier will be a deduction, though.)


James did fine with the larger overnight feeds, and he also did fairly well with his bottles yesterday. He only drank around 20-25 mls at a time, but he'd do that two or three times over the course of an hour, so he ended up exceeding the goal of 200 ml in daytime feedings. Of course, it seemed like we were feeding him every time we turned around! It's okay for now, and it was really nice not to have to deal with the pump during the day, but we're hoping that he'll consolidate those little feedings into fewer larger ones. He was also awake and happy a lot during the day, so at least this approach seems to be reducing his tummy discomfort.

Practically Normal

The GI doctor called first thing this morning with James's blood results, and he was very pleased -- James's direct bilirubin is down to .6, which as the doctor said is "practically normal." (The normal range is 0 to 0.3.) His other liver enzymes looked good as well. Hooray!! Everyone had been saying how good James's color looked, so we thought we might be getting good news (but didn't want to get our hopes up). It was a nice way to start the day!

This afternoon the teacher from the hearing Early Intervention program came to the house. (The plan is that we'll be seeing her twice a month while James is still little, and then more frequently as he gets older -- after about six months adjusted age.) There are several different approaches to teaching communication to kids with hearing loss or deafness, and this person uses the Auditory-Verbal approach.

Apparently we're doing things in a slightly unusual order. There are two Early Intervention programs for hearing loss. One provides teaching for parents and kids, and the other, called Beginnings, is more of a support program to make sure families are aware of the resources available and are connected to the appropriate agencies and so on. Part of the Beginnings program is explaining all the different approaches to communication teaching, so that parents can make a more informed decision about how to proceed (for example, focusing on sign language versus speech). But we're not meeting with the person from Beginnings until next week, so we don't know much about the different options yet -- though we get the sense that people feel very strongly about the one they choose! Usually this meeting takes place before a referral to a teacher. But that's okay; I think we'll be happy with the current person, and if we decide an alternative approach would be more helpful for James, I'm sure we can switch.

The first part of the meeting was her getting a sense of where James is developmentally (by asking us questions about what kinds of things he's doing or not doing) and auditorially (I'm not sure if this is actually a word, but you know what I mean). Our impression was that she was very encouraged by the kinds of things he was doing and the fact that he does seem to be responding to some sounds. And her experience has been that more often than not, kids with auditory neuropathy do well with hearing aids. It was nice to hear that from someone with actual experience working with kids with this condition.

As we understand it, the goal of Auditory-Verbal approach at this stage is to help James pay attention to sounds. So, we're supposed to pay attention to when he seems to be responding to sound, and draw his attention to it by pointing to our ear, making an excited face, and saying, "You heard that!" We're also supposed to talk to him as much as we can in a regular voice, but close to his ear. This makes it more likely for him to hear what we're saying, but doesn't distort sounds as much as raised voices do -- and of course, it's also a much more natural way to talk to a baby! As the weeks go on, she's going to be giving us additional exercises to do. She's also going to be doing some evaluation herself of how much James is hearing or not, and is going to do some activities with him that will help prepare him for the more formal behavioral hearing test. (Her overall goal will be to have him at an appropriate age level with language by the time he turns three, when the Infant-Toddler program ends. If needed, he'd transition to the next level of EI program after that.)

I don't think I fully understand the basis of the A-V approach yet (and I'd be interested to see what the research says about it), but it seems like a reasonable starting point.

For feeding, we tried the "bottles during the day" approach. He did several 20 ml bottles, which isn't as good as he'd been doing over the weekend. However, he was alert and happy a lot today -- he wasn't dealing with as much digestive discomfort. We'll see tonight whether we can give him enough food overnight to make up for the lighter meals during the day.

Good Thing They're Cute

The day started off well. We had an appointment with the speech/feeding therapist at the hospital around lunchtime. She was glad to hear that things had improved with the new formula. Since James is doing well at night (no spit-ups, not waking up in pain), she suggested trying to give more volume with his continuous feeds (for example, running the continuous feeds for nine or ten hours instead of seven, and going to a slightly faster rate), and then trying to just do bottle feeding during the day when he acts hungry, with a goal of 200 mls during the day (or five feedings of 40 ml each). If that works, it would be great, because dealing with all the pump stuff during the day is really time-consuming. It would also give us a little more freedom if we have to be out and about; right now we only have about a two-hour window between feedings.

I'd fed James a little bit (25 mls) before we left because he was acting hungry. He was sleeping when we were there, and he didn't want to eat when I tried to feed him. But then he woke up a little more, and ate 50 ml for Mike with no problems! That's the best he's done in a while. We weighed him, and he's continuing to gain weight (he was 11 lbs, 8 oz on their scale). So, it was a good visit.

She suggested going up from the slow-flow nipples on their bottles to the regular flow ones, since neither James nor Matthew seems to have trouble any more with drinking too fast and choking. We tried it with Matthew tonight and he did just fine with it.

We also had to do blood work, but the orders for it weren't at the desk, so we had to wait around for a while for them, and then had to wait at the lab, so it ended up being a long afternoon. In fact, I had to leave to go to a meeting at work, so poor Mike had to manage both of the little guys for the last part of the visit. Fortunately, they both slept, so it was a bit easier for him!

This evening wasn't so much fun. James was pretty fussy with his feedings, and at his 9 o'clock feeding, he didn't really want the bottle at all, and then ended up having a small spit-up afterwards. Matthew was a little fussy as well, so between the two of them, they kept us both busy more or less non-stop. Mike was trying to meet a deadline for work, and I just wanted to do a few little things like put a couple dishes in the dishwasher and pay a bill, but it was not to be! The babies are both asleep, finally.

Six Months

I can't believe the boys are six months old today! Half a year -- wow. They're such wonderful little guys. We're so happy to have them.

We had sun today for the first time in four days, so we took the babies out for a walk by our neighborhood lake. (There's a little gravel path down to the lake, and it turns out our strollers really aren't good for off-roading -- they made it, but it wasn't a smooth ride!) Stanley was happy to get out of the house, too!

James had a good day today with his bottles. He was drinking 35-40 ml per feeding, which is still not his best, but it's an improvement from where he's been recently. We just went up to the 24 calorie version of the formula, and he seemed to be doing well with it until the evening, when he had a bit of a spit-up and seemed a bit more uncomfortable. So, we'll see how things go.

Matthew has been having great fun grabbing things recently (mainly toys hanging from his activity gym, although watch out if you have long hair); his coordination has improved so that he's actually able to grab things on purpose instead of just randomly. He was fussing a little bit the other day while he was playing, and I think it may have been because he was frustrated because one of the toys was hanging just a little too high for him to reach. I wonder if this is the start of a new phase. Up until now, if he's crying, it's almost always for one of three reasons -- he's hungry, he has gas, or something has hurt him (scratching himself, getting a shot, etc.). But today he was fussing a little and then smiled when we came over, and started fussing again when we left -- so maybe he's now going to start expressing himself about some other needs as well as just the basic ones.

We had a really nice evening -- one wonderful friend came by bearing dinner (and immunizations), and another (also wonderful) friend came over later to watch some football with us. Hooray for adult company!

Friday Fun

We went to a friend's birthday party tonight. Getting out with the boys is an effort, but it was definitely worth it -- we had a great time seeing our friends and meeting new folks, even if we did have to divide our attention between socializing and baby wrangling. The babies were both asleep when we arrived, but that didn't last too long. After he had some milk, Matthew was happy to be passed around and smile at people, but James was a little more high maintenance.

The other kids there (all boys!) were all a few years older than our little guys, so we had a preview of the future. (It turns out that the future is cute, but also very noisy.)

Happy James

James was giving us lots of smiles today!

Weigh-in

We took the boys to the doctor for a weight check today. James is gaining weight again -- he'd been hanging out at around 11 lbs for a week or so (which is better than losing weight, but still not quite what they want to see), but today he was 11 lbs, 6 oz. Yay! And Mister Matthew is tipping the scales at 12 lbs, 2 oz.

We were also there to check Mattie's blood pressure, and it was in the normal range, so it looks like the change in medication was effective. That's good! (We'll see if the home nurse gets a similar reading on Friday.)

Matthew has been so much fun lately; he has such a sunny disposition. He's also been drooling a lot the past couple of days. We think it's probably too early for teething; maybe his hands are just especially delicious!

Happy Veterans' Day!

And thank you to those who served (and are serving) their country! Grandpa Barr, we're looking at you. :)

Yesterday and today have been solid days of rain. Our power went out last night, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise -- we went to bed earlier than we would have otherwise, but the power came back on in time for James's overnight feeding. (We do have the ability to feed him through the tube manually, without the pump, but we're glad we didn't have to do that.)

Boys in Hats

Grandma is safely back home again -- we miss her already!

We had the babysitter in for a few hours again today, which allowed me to go get a haircut and go grocery shopping guilt-free. :) I had a list of other things that I planned to do while she was here, but I didn't make much progress on it -- those hours went by very quickly! Oh well, that's just how it goes these days.

The cooler weather last week gave us a chance to use the boys' new winter hats. (Thanks, B & R!) Aren't they cute?

Baby Shower

Our friends in the neighborhood threw a baby shower (or you could call it a "welcome home" shower) for us yesterday. It was originally planned for June, but obviously that didn't work out!

It was wonderful to have a chance to get together with everyone. Great company, delicious food -- what more could we ask for? We fed the babies right before we went over, so they were generally good -- Matthew was happy and social for the beginning of the party, and then conked out and slept in his carseat for the rest (and a couple hours afterwards as well!) James was sleeping at the beginning, but then woke up to enjoy the cake-cutting. He had a little fussy spell, but Grandma's magic touch calmed him down.

We're now well-supplied with diapers for the near future -- hooray for practical gifts! :)

Pictures

We're all enjoying hanging out with Grandma!

More Medical

Grandma arrived late last night for a visit -- hooray! Too bad that we had to spend so much of today at doctor's appointments. (Little did I know that the story of our life would turn into a continuing education course in pediatrics.)

First up was the boys' injections for RSV antibodies (Synagis). Next time the nurse offers to let me step outside while they get the shots, I'm going to take her up on it; even though it's such a little thing, it bothers me a lot to see my happy babies suddenly be in pain. (They both got over it much faster than I did.) Before the shots, the doctor was telling us how wonderful this treatment is, and she said something about how it really improved the chances of preemies surviving through their first winter. While I'm sure that's true and that it is a great medicine, I also didn't need to hear something that implied that my children's survival was questionable.

The afternoon was our follow-up visit with Nephrology for both boys. We were hoping that Matthew's blood pressure would be normal and he could come off his medication, but unfortunately, it was high, so they had to increase the dose instead. (They took his BP about five times to be sure.) Bummer! Hopefully he just needs a little more time to grow out of it. They're experimenting with giving him a higher dose of labatalol and dropping the enalapril, so we'll see how that works. James's blood pressure was fine, so they didn't want to make any changes to his meds.

James only weighed eleven pounds at his appointments today, which was disappointing. He's not losing weight, but he hasn't gained weight either over the past week. Of course, he was spitting up a lot during the later part of last week and has been getting slightly lower calorie formula for the early part of this week, so hopefully this is just a temporary blip and he'll get back on his upward trajectory. Matthew was around 11 lbs, 11 oz -- big boy!

We tried bumping up James to the 24 calorie version of the formula, and that didn't work -- he immediately started throwing it up again. So we went back to 20 cal (with no problems), and we'll try to ease our way up gradually to the higher fortification.

Getting the Ball Rolling

The meeting with the Early Intervention hearing program person today was mostly just to fill out the paperwork to get things started, and for her to let us know more about the program. They have teachers who come to the house and give us exercises to do with James, with a focus on helping him develop speech and language. (It sounds like they don't really focus on sign language; the idea is that he can pick that up later if he needs it.) She said, "It's hard and it takes a lot of time." On the bright side, though, at this age they do a lot through play, so hopefully some of the exercises will be just using time that we would have spent playing with the babies anyhow, but doing it in a more structured way. And while it still really sucks (really REALLY sucks) that James has this auditory condition in the first place, at least there's something constructive we can do to help, and we have support available. (The EI person also had great things to say about UNC audiology; just like the NICU, they're the best around, and have people coming from all over the state.)

Other things:

We had the boys next to each other in the crib this morning, and James waved his arm near Matthew. Matthew grabbed James's sleeve, put it in his mouth, and started gnawing on it. (How sweet -- our own little Donner Party!)

Matthew should get the Most Improved Burper award. It used to take ten, fifteen, twenty minutes to get a burp out of him. Now he's much faster! And this makes our lives much better, especially in the middle of the night. (James has always been a good burper.)

We had a nice dinner with our neighbors tonight -- they had take-out delivered to our house, and then joined us to eat it. It's a bit risky to plan something like that since the babies are sometimes fussy in the evenings, but we got lucky and they were pretty good (though James did demand his paci and then drop it several times, as is his habit).

What A Difference

Since we started giving James the new formula yesterday afternoon, he's only had two tiny spit-ups -- a dramatic and welcome difference from the way things have been recently. (We had started to think of it as "a good night" when he only had several small spit-ups and not a big vomit, and it had become routine to have to do a full load of laundry at least once a day because of all the burp cloths, blankets, and outfits that had spit-up on them. We were getting to dread his feeding times because it made all of us miserable to see him in pain.) Overnight, he didn't have any spit-ups at all, and he's had no trouble with his medicine doses, either. And he just seems happier and more comfortable. Such a relief -- let's hope this trend continues!

He didn't take big volumes of food from the bottle today, but he did very well with the smaller amounts -- he drank them smoothly and quickly. He still has some reflux (of course; although the new formula seems to be helping to manage it, the underlying problem is one that he just has to grow out of), and I think it's showing up more with the bottle-feeding than the tube feeding. Essentially, he starts out really well, but then if you move him (to burp, for instance), he has a hard time getting in a comfortable position again. But hopefully we'll start to see some improvement in this, too, so that we can work back up to the larger amounts. And he still does get a little uncomfortable sometimes during his tube feedings, but my impression is that it may be gas more than reflux, and he's usually pretty easy to soothe if I pick him up (which was not the case before).

So, bravo for the speech therapist! We are so grateful to her!

Tomorrow we'll be meeting with the Early Intervention coordinator for the hearing services program. (The days without appointments are very nice, but second-best is when they come to us, like the EI people are doing.)

[Bottom picture is Mattie.]

Evaluations

Our morning started with a visit to the speech therapist for James's feeding evaluation. The therapist was the one who had worked with him while he was in the NICU, but we'd never actually met her. But when she started out by saying how she missed James and loved seeing him, I liked her immediately. :)

Her take on the situation is that it's not his bottle skills that are the problem, it's that his tummy hurts, and nobody wants to eat when their belly doesn't feel good. So, the main goal for now is to try to manage the reflux (and any other issues that he might be having, such as gas). She recommended that we try a different, gentler formula (Gentlease). Even though he was doing okay on the Enfacare at the hospital, she said sometimes problems don't show up right away. She checked with the dietician and the GI doc, and they both approved the change. It would be great if this switch helps, because it's an easy solution. If this doesn't work, there are other things to try (different meds, the rice cereal, etc.). It was very reassuring to know that there are lots of different options to try.

After that appointment, the boys had their bloodwork done at the lab. Mattie was getting just a routine test (to make sure he's not anemic, I think), and James was getting his bilirubin, etc., checked. The doctor called in the afternoon with James's results, and his bilirubin had gone down again (yay!) to 2.4, and his sodium was up a little (to 134), which is also good. They'll repeat the labs in two weeks.

We also went to the hospital pharmacy to get some prescription refills. It turns out that getting salt water is complicated even there! The outpatient pharmacist had to call the pediatric pharmacist to double-check how to do it. But it was significantly less expensive than the compounding pharmacy.

We ran into James's surgeon there, too -- he saw us and stopped to say hello and see how James was doing. We see him everywhere these days!

We arrived home about a half-hour before the people for Child Development Services (Early Intervention) came by. Our coordinator was there along with an educational development specialist. They were both really great. The evaluator talked to us about what James was like and what kind of things he was doing, and then got down on the floor with him to look at things like how he was tracking objects with his eyes, what kinds of movements he was doing, how he reacted to being on his tummy, and so on. James had been awake a lot of the morning and was a bit off-schedule with his food, so he was pretty fussy and uncomfortable for the first part of the visit, but then he settled down (and then fell asleep!) He was calm for enough of the time that I think what she saw was reasonably representative of his typical behavior.

Her take was that he's a little bit behind what they would expect for his adjusted age (two and a half months), but that it's not anything more than you would expect given what he's been through. For instance, he's not lifting his head up high when he's on his tummy. Essentially, because of all his medical issues, he hasn't had the opportunity to develop some of those skills yet. She did recommend another evaluation by a physical therapist, though, and that person would decide whether he needs additional PT sessions. The PT will also do an evaluation for Matthew, mainly because the evaluator noticed that he still likes to have his head turned to the right, and they want to make sure that he's not creating any muscle tightness. (I think both of the boys have full range of motion with their necks, but it doesn't hurt to get it checked out.) In the meantime, she recommended lots of tummy time and a couple other things (using toys to encourage him to lift his head while he's on his tummy; using wrist rattles to encourage arm movements). We were happy with that outcome; it was good to hear that there weren't any big issues that we'd missed, and it's also nice that we'll have a chance to get input from the physical therapist.

We had mentioned that the other night, James had startled in response to both Stanley's bark and to Mike banging a pan with a spoon (relatively loud sounds). One of our toys has a little jingle bell inside it, and she jingled it about six inches above his ear. She did this three times, and her impression was that he raised his eyebrows each time when she jingled, so she thinks he is responding to sound (even a relatively quiet one). I was out of the room when she did this, and when she tried to replicate it for me, I don't think he really reacted -- but it's possible that it could have been that he was just used to the jingling by then. So, that's not necessarily diagnostic of anything and I'm not going to put a lot of weight on it, but it at least provides a little room for optimism about the possibilities for his hearing. (The hearing services are a separate program; this evaluation today wasn't really intended for that purpose.)

James has been trying to get his fists in his mouth a lot today, just like Mattie has been. If we're lucky, maybe he'll accept that as a substitute for the pacifier! (His periodic inability to keep the paci in his mouth becomes increasingly less endearing after the umpteenth time of giving it back to him, only to have him pop it out seconds later and cry about it. I'm sure his nurses would agree!)

Sunday Sundry

We took advantage of the weekend hours at the pediatrician office yesterday. We saw some orange spots in James's diaper, and although it didn't look like blood, it also wasn't exactly normal (and it seemed unlike that he'd choose this method of decorating for Halloween), so we thought we'd get it checked out. It turned out to be crystals that were precursors of kidney stones. The usual treatment is to have people drink a lot of water, but since James also needs his calories, that's not necessarily the best thing in his case. So the doctor recommended that we just give him unfortified formula and breastmilk for a couple of days (so, 20-22 calories instead of 24 calories per ounce), so that he'd have more fluid. Since then we've been careful about trying to give him as close to full amounts as possible at each feeding, too, and it seems to be working -- no more orange spots so far, and the doctor called tonight to let us know the urine analysis looked great (no blood, no infection, etc.). I was impressed that she called personally at 8 PM on a Sunday!

He also had a little rash on his chest that she thought might be viral, but nothing to worry about unless it got a lot worse. It seems to be mostly gone today. (I mention this only because one day down the road we might say, "hey, when did he have that little rash?" And then we'll say, "I don't know, let's check the blog." It's our own version of electronic medical records.)

We put the airplane mobile (thanks, Auntie Jess and Uncle Chris!) lower down over the crib, and James was fascinated by it. This one doesn't have batteries, though, so he has to wait for mom or dad to push it around!

Mattie seems to be entering the "let's put everything in my mouth" phase. He's especially fond of gnawing on his hands, but toys are another favorite. (I find it especially amusing that he's trying to eat the Very Hungry Caterpillar stuffed animal. "But he was still hungry!")