Eleven Months old!

Wow, time really flies when you are busy and have a lot going on!  Colton is 11 months old. Yes, that means that in 3 weeks (from today) we will have a 1 year old. I can't believe it. More on that later, but here are his 11 month pictures.

In the last one he is holding one of his new favorite toys. It lights up and has many different colors. 

There have been lots of things going on this past month. We haven't been back to vent clinic, but we have been able to wean Colton's vent settings down quite a bit. So much so that if he weren't sick, I was thinking about trying him on CPAP where he would do all the breathing, but he would get support with each breath. That may come in the next couple of months or so.

One of the biggest focuses this month has been on Colton's head. The first helmet that was fashioned did not work out. Something happened to the scan when they were doing it. When we put it on it didn't fit right. We spent close to a day trying to make it fit. The final decision was to re-scan Colton's head and wait for another helmet. That took a week and a half. When we got the new one it fit pretty good. After a few tweaks, we left the office. Throughout the next week we worked up to Colton wearing the helmet 23 hours a day. He doesn't seem to mind it. The worst part is putting it on and taking it off. He gets it off when we wash his hair every night. He is a sweaty boy when his helmet comes off. Hopefully it will be only a couple of months of wearing the helmet and it will be all done. He goes the Monday before Thanksgiving to have his head re-scanned and we will see how far we've come. We are already seeing a change when we take his helmet off to wash his head. Here's what his helmet looks like. Right now its all white, we are working on getting it some bling.

The other thing that happened this month was that Colton had surgery. We've been waiting for this surgery for a while and had hoped that we could get it done this year. Colton's testes were not in the sac when he was born and they need to be down in the sac before he is two years old for hormone production. We were hoping that it would be the last surgery he would need to have. Unfortunately, Dr. Smith was only able to get them down part way. He had to position his testes in his pelvis and then in 6 months he will go in and pull them the rest of the way down so that they rest where they are supposed to. Colton came through surgery really well and we came home about 3 hours after the surgery. By that night he was acting like nothing had happened. We had our post-op visit last friday and everything looks great. The stitches and steri-strips that were over his incision were removed. His incisions look great! The plan is to get an ultrasound in 3 months to make sure the boys are happy and then surgery again in 6 months.

At this same time we had wanted a bigger feeding tube placed to make it easier to give Colton his blends. Colton's stomach was not big enough to hold a bigger feeding tube. So we got a replacement tube. It will have to work for now!

Halloween was so much fun! Colton was dressed as a Doggie and we dressed Marley, the doggie, as a pumpkin. I went as a witch. We had a good time trick or treating around the addition. It was a little chilly but I'm glad it stopped raining.

As I mentioned earlier, Colton is sick. About a week and a half ago we noticed that he had blood coming from his right ear. We took him in to the pediatrician's office and lo and behold he has a double ear infection. So we were hoping after 10 days of antibiotics that it would all be cleared up, but he spiked a fever Friday night when I was at work and has been pretty sleepy all weekend. So back to the doctor we go tomorrow.

We've been working with physical therapy and occupational therapy as well. Things are going good on that front and we are stepping up how often we get physical therapy. Carrie, his pt, is going to be coming once a week. Every other week we will be going to the pool and the opposite weeks will be at home. Speech is going good as well. We are going to be switching things up to better coordinate with our schedules. Instead of us going to speech twice a month, speech is coming to us twice a month. We will still go to feeding clinic once a month, but this way we don't have to drag big C out during the winter.

We are hoping this winter goes by without Colton getting sick. Next up Thanksgiving!