Colin is 2 1/2...

... and 3 days today. Since I'm doing monthly updates of Eli and Colin is always there to help me take pictures, I thought I'd do a post for him to document him being 2 1/2. He had a lot of fun picking out who he wanted to pose with. He had to have the classic Bananas but couldn't leave behind his side-kick, Blue. He was funny because he wanted to do "normal" pictures and silly pictures.

Colin is a lot of fun at 2 1/2. He's learning new words everyday and often surprises Chris and I with the new phrases that come out of his mouth. Some of his cutest phrases are "no way", "gotcha!", and " 'sup dude". He's unfortunately a bit addicted to the TV and loves to reenact the shows he watches. His favorite show right now is The Imagination Movers on Disney. Everyday he pretends to be one of the Movers and let's the rest of us know who we are for the day. He asks us to sing the songs all day long too and we are all dressing up as Imagination Movers for Halloween this year. He has also become a back-seat driver and loves to tell me to slow down or stop and go at red and green lights. When in the car, he is constantly asking me to play "Linger" by the Cranberries. I used to like that song... Some of Colin's favorite things to do include mowing (preferably with Daddy), playing Imagination Movers, picking and eating raspberries from our bush, playing with his friends, and reading/going to the library. Another funny thing about Colin is his propensity to be a ladies man. I workout at the Y a couple times a week and leave the kids at the Kid Zone. Since I like to workout with friends, there's usually at least one of Colin's friends in the KZ at the same time. However, on those occasions when none of Colin's friends are there, I often return from my workout to find Colin playing with older girls. Never boys and never younger kids, always older girls. They love him!

It's amazing how quickly he continues to change and grow up. He's such a great helper and so much fun to be around (unless he doesn't nap ;) ). I measured him at home today and he's grown over 1 1/2 inches since he turned two and is now 37 1/4 inches and at home he weighs 30.2 pounds. We love you, Colin!

A Trip to the Apple Orchard

The Ring Fam made our first trip of the season to the apple orchard today. Mmm, early-season cider and fresh-baked donuts. Yum!! The highlight of our visit, at least for Colin, was watching the cider being made. Colin has officially dubbed the guy working the press as "juice-man" and proceeded to play "juice-man" for the majority of the afternoon. The only thing that could drag him away from watching juice-man was the sugary nectar produced by his hard work. We're looking forward to many return visits this Fall.

Chris and Colin watching "juice-man".

Colin sad that I dragged him away from "juice-man" to take a picture with me.

Cheers!

All smiles once given the sugary goodness of the juice-man's nectar.

Mmm, donuts!

Eli's excited about his first trip to the apple orchard.

Lucky Daddy got a nice shot with both boys. ;p

Double Appointments

Colin and Eli both had doctor appointments this week that I thought worth mentioning. Crazily, they were both on Wednesday - and when I say crazily I mean I was crazy for scheduling two doctor appointments for the same day.

Colin went in to see the pediatrician for a 6 month weight check. When he went in for his two year well-child appointment, he had actually lost almost a pound since his 18 month appointment. The doc really wasn't concerned and the only thing he suggested was keeping him on whole milk a little while longer. Well, back in April I changed him over to skim and he still managed to gain 6 pounds in the last 6 months. It shouldn't really be surprising if you've even seen the kid eat. The doctor said the weight loss was probably just a fluke and he obviously made up for it since then.

Eli went in for his 2 week follow-up with his surgeon and is healing nicely. More importantly we have officially started the dilations (aka, anal probe; aka, the violation). At the appointment, the surgeon started him off at 6 mm and worked his way up to 10 mm, at which point Eli started crying. He then had me practice on Eli under his supervision so I knew what I was doing. I appreciated the hands-on tutorial but didn't really think it was fair that I had to probe the baby after he was already crying. We're currently using the 8 mm dilator and thankfully, after a couple days, Eli doesn't seem to mind the dilations that much anymore. Although, that might change when we move up a size. Next week we will move up to 9 mm. The following week we go back to the office for another follow-up and will move up to 10 mm. We'll continue to go up 1 mm per week until we reach 12 or 13. We'll go to see the surgeons every one to two weeks until then. At that point, they can schedule his final surgery. However, this surgeon wants the urologist to do his surgery first so the perineal area can stay cleaner while healing. Makes sense, but we can't even get in to see that doc until mid-October. At this point, we're considering changing urologists and will be looking into that more next week. However, if the new urologist can't see us before mid-October, we might just stick with the old guy so Eli can get everything over with.

Here's some cute pics of the kids. They're completely unrelated to the post so please don't think that's a look of joy on Eli's face while getting the anal probe. ;)

Eli Visits the Neurologist

Yesterday Eli visited the neurologist for the first time. Even though his spinal ultrasound came back normal in the NICU, the doctors recommended that we follow up with a neurologist to make sure there was nothing they missed. We were expecting the neurologist to order an MRI, but the doctor felt that was unnecessary right now. He did a basic exam testing Eli's reflexes, checking for milestones, looking at the tone of his leg muscles, and watching how he bears weight on his legs. He felt that Eli passed with flying colors and showed no indication of having any spinal problems. We will follow up with him in about four months just to check in because there are some problems that can present themselves when the child is older (such as a tethered cord), but it was nice to find out we weren't going to have to sedate our baby for yet another procedure right now.

Eli's First Taste of Solid Foods

In a desperate attempt to get him to sleep more at night, we gave Eli his first taste of solid foods today. Of course, we started with the traditional rice cereal, which tastes more like cardboard than food, so we decided to make it a little more enticing by sweetening it with a little breastmilk. His initial reaction was to grab the spoon himself and shove it into his mouth. Once there, however, he wasn't entirely sure he was digging the new sensation. Despite the grimaces, he continued to open his mouth wide whenever we came back with a fresh spoonful so we pressed on through the whole serving. By the end he was fussing between bites because we couldn't feed it to him fast enough. Maybe tomorrow we'll try a larger serving.
Colin of course, was standing by the whole time taking pictures with his 'camera' and feeding Eli his pretend food. I love that he wants to be involved in everything.

Surgery #2 - Check

Last night we brought Eli home from the hospital after having his pull-through surgery on Tuesday. It felt so good to be back in our own space. I could tell that even Eli felt much better just being home.
The surgery went really well with no complications. It took a little over 2 hours and then it was another 45 minutes before Eli was up and they brought us back to recovery. Apparently, he was really upset before we got there, but he calmed down and fell asleep as soon as I was holding him. I have to think that the raucous he made was pretty big because when it came time to move us to the PICU, they didn't even think about putting him back in the crib. They wanted me to continue holding him and pushed us up in a wheelchair. Or maybe that's standard practice for infants... For the rest of the afternoon and evening, Eli was usually only happy when being held by me. Chris got a chance to hold him a couple times, but unfortunately those were short-lived. We decided it would be better to divide and conquer so Chris went home that night to be with Colin in the morning, and I spent a long and sleepless night holding Eli. Luckily, by the next morning, Eli was already feeling better and did OK going to Chris so I was able to catch a quick nap. By Wednesday afternoon, Chris had gotten Eli to sleep on his own in the crib. We found this to be particularly amazing because he's always swaddled at home and we weren't able to swaddle him due to his catheter. In addition to going to other people and sleeping in his hospital crib, Eli started smiling and laughing a bit on Wednesday. It's amazing how quickly little babies heal! We decided to both stay at the hospital Wednesday night so we could take turns trying to get some sleep. Although we did get a chance to get some sleep, Wednesday night was rough because Eli ended up gagging on his Tylenol twice and threw up all over me the first time and all over Chris the second time. We were just happy that the nurses and doctors recognized that the throwing up was caused by gagging and didn't ask us to stop feeding him and that for the most part, Eli didn't seem to be in pain anymore. By Thursday, Eli was doing even better and got his catheter and IV out in the morning. He seemed so happy to be a little more free. After Tuesday night, the catheter seemed to cause him the most dicomfort. The surgeon wanted to monitor his urine output for 6 hours after removing the catheter to make sure nothing swelled up and then we got to leave around 4:30 that afternoon. Unfortunately, they made us move to a different room for our last two hours there. It did put things into perspective though - we thought our first room was a little uncomfortable, but at least it had chairs!
By the time we got home yesterday, you couldn't even tell Eli had just had surgery. He was tired, from having his sleep schedule disrupted, but acting like his usual self. We're so thankful everything went well again for this surgery and hope that he continues to be such a trooper for the remaining two.

Eli a couple hours after surgery - poor baby!

Eli happy and playing Thursday morning after having his catheter and IV removed.

Eli ready to go home Thursday afternoon. Yay!

Eli is 4 Months Old

Eli is 4 months old and for the most part is a fun and easy baby. Our only problem with him happens between the hours of 8-1o PM. He just refuses to go to sleep for the night. We haven't figured out yet why this is the only time he's so fussy or what to do about it, but we're leaning toward trying CIO real soon. On a happier note, he *loves* his exersaucer and taking baths. He is very ticklish and has an extremely contagious laugh. He also seems to never get bored of watching Colin. His 4 month well-child appointment is on Wednesday, so I'll update his weight and length then.

ETA: I took Eli to his 4 month well-child appointment today. He's doing great, weighs 15 lbs, 10 oz, and is 26 1/4 inches long.