Colton is 1 year old!!!

Wow, time really flies. I can't believe we have a 1 year old in the house. Colton is getting so big and has come a long way in a year. The picture on the left is when he was just born and the one on the right is his one year picture. He has changed soo much!

At his 1 year appointment on December 8th, he weighed 20 pounds 4 ounces and was 32 inches long. A lot has happened over the last month and a half. I mentioned in the last post that Colton had spiked a fever and we were going back to the doctor. Well, he still had his ear infections so we got a different antibiotic and they finally went away. 

Thanksgiving was a good time with my side of the family. We were able to get together and eat some great food and place a very bad game (Cards against Humanity). Here are pictures of Colton in his 1st Thanksgiving outfit...

 

Nick and I were able to do some Black Friday shopping thanks to my parents and Kirsten, our night nurse, volunteering to work that night. We were able to get 99% of our shopping done by doing that. 

Next up was Colton's 1st birthday party!  We had a blast and he had a great time too! Here are some pictures from his party. The cakes were done by a nursing friend's daughter. She did a fantastic job!

Colton's Smash Cake

Big People's Cake

Here is a video that was taken of us singing Happy Birthday to Colton. He was doing a fantastic job sitting up in his special tomato!

Colton was blessed with a ton of gifts for his birthday! We want to thank everyone who was able to make it to share in his special day. We appreciate it so much and he had a great time seeing lots of new people! If you check out my Facebook page, we made a video of Colton's first year and it is posted for everyone to see. 

We took Colton to see Santa Claus at Jefferson Pointe this year. The Santa was wonderful with him and knew just how to hold him. Colton is so in awe of his beard!

After we saw Santa we went and watched the Christmas tree that is synchronized to music. It was a neat show. 

Colton got to have two Christmases this year. On Christmas Day we went to Nick's side of the family to do some present opening and brunch eating. Here are some pictures of Colton opening gifts. 

He loved pulling the wrapping paper off the presents. He was pretty tired after all the opening though. He got a lot of new toys and a few books to read. 

Then we had Christmas with my side of the family the next day at our house. He got a ton more presents, including a new iPad holder! This will allow him to start working on some fine motor skills with his hands and be able to choose between things and eventually talk to us through an app. He also got a lot of new clothes that he needed since he is now in 18month clothes! 

Colton and his new iPad holder

Now on to the other stuff. Colton has has a a few appointments in the last month and a half. On December 4th we got another scan of his head to see where we are with the helmet process. He has made some progress, especially in the back of his head. We have another scan on January 6th. We are secretly hoping that we are done with it soon. We went to the eye doctor again and he was able to tell us that he thinks Colton can see (which we already knew). Colton still does not track with his eyes. We got back to vent clinic on January 7th. We are thinking there may be more changes in store for us then. 

He continues to do well and make progress in PT and OT. We are now getting to go to the pool every other week, which Colton thoroughly enjoys! Here are some newer pictures at the pool. 

 

He is now pulling our feet up to our mouth and trying to stick it in. Colton has also discovered that if he pulls on his helmet, he can make his head go where he wants it to go. He trades things between hands and if he puts something somewhere, he remembers where it is and gets it later. 

Lastly, I can finally announce that there is a big change coming to our household. I am changing jobs. I have taken a position with Dr. Smith, the pediatric surgeon. I will get to assist in surgery and see patients in the office and many more things. I am excited about the opportunity and chance to learn some new things!  I won't start until April as I have to give a 90 day notice at my current job. I am sad to leave Parkview, but I need a change. 

I am not sure how posting is going to occur from now on as Colton is a year old. I am going to try to keep up with every month to 2 months as things occur. They may not be as long of posts, but I can guarantee there will be pictures! 

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!