18 Months

18 Months

The realization of Dallas being 18 Months is exciting and sad at the same time.  When you hit age milestones, and don’t have the behavioral or physical milestones to go with it, it can get you down.  More and more I find myself thinking about all of the things he is not yet doing.  The older he gets the easier it is to see the gap.  But then I remember how many surgeries and illnesses he’s had and battles he’s had to fight and that reminds me of how incredibly strong and great he is doing.  Sure I wish he was running all over and getting into things, but he will get there in time.  Patience was never my strong suit, I think I have said that before, but Dallas is helping me dig for patience and I do think I am getting more of it. J 

He turned 18 months on December 9^th and his well-child visit was on that day.  He came in at the 38^th percentile for weight, 54^th for head size, and 11^th for height.  Pretty good for a kid titled “failure to thrive,” in his first few months of life.  His immunology labs came back and his levels are on the low end of “normal” for response to infection, but he does not respond to certain immunizations.  He was put on a daily maintenance antibiotic for that, but otherwise there is no port treatment recommended right now.  This is a good thing, but we still have the whole IV issue which will just present itself at the next “event.”

The last week was miserable for Dallas.  He got sick last Tuesday with a fever, coughing, and vomiting.  He was still not better by Friday, so he was put on a steroid and a very strong antibiotic.  He had a rough weekend and today is OK.  Still some discomfort of some kind and lots of coughing.  We are happy that he will be on a strong antibiotic treatment through Christmas, so hopefully we can have a healthy Dallas for the holidays!

Blessings to all and have a Merry and HEALTHY Christmas!!

Dallas got in about 2 weeks ago to get the immune labs drawn.  It was another ordeal, not surprising!  It took 2 people and three attempts to get the blood, but at least they got it.  They did try to keep Dallas comfortable by giving him gas, but this made him puke so then they decreased the gas for rounds 2 and 3 and he was screaming his lungs out anyway.  We do not have any results yet.

He is otherwise still a handful, but things are improving.  We have a hat that we have been having him wear all the time and this has been helping tremendously with keeping the cochlear device in place.  He continues to make good progress at his speech appointments and we can almost say for certain that he turns to his name!  It seems like he enjoys sound a lot, so I believe his new idea to remove the device whenever he can is behavior related.  He knows that we prefer him to wear it, so anytime he wants our attention or is upset, he pulls the device off.

We started a weekly feeding therapy last week.  His progress in this area has been at a standstill for quite some time.  He only eats pureed foods and drinks warm milk from a bottle.  He has done some straw drinking and barely any chewing.  Our first priority is to get him chewing.  Simply being able to toss some Cheerios or crackers on his tray would be wonderful, as any level of independence would help us all a great deal.

The new look

Laughing at Thanksgiving