12-2-2009 Zachary Update

Hi all,
I figure it's time for another woot woot update on Zach's progress. Well lessee he's up to 7 teeth atm. 4 on the bottom 3 on the top. He's able to crawl all the way up the stairs (of course someone behind him to make sure he's ok) the OT has us doing that to work on his core strength. He's pulling up to a stand better and keeping his balance better while standing. We go thim working on drinking through kid cups with straws it's the take and toss brand, they work pretty well for teaching them. He likes them better than the sippy cups.

We had his 1 year eye checkup (well more like 13 months) but who's counting. Anyhew Dr. Hittner said he has no reoccurence of ROP, no scar tissue, nothing his eyes are as good as they can be. No glasses needed, no more special eye exams just regular exams for the rest of his life. So that was wonderful news as there is always a concern that ROP can come back with preemies especially ones born as early as Zach was.

He's saying mommy and possibly I want.. so his speaking abilities are becomming a bit more refined even if it is only 1-3 words. I'll take any word combinations we can get. He does seem to be able to pattern/color match. He has a book with animils in it that sings to him nursery rhymes. The Dev Specialist and I were singing it to him and he started pointing at the yellow lions on each of the pages. We didn't ask him to do it but he kept repeating it. On any other pages there were similar objects (color etc) he'd point at them with his fingers. Mind you the lions were 2 different sizes one was large and one was small. I found that pretty amazing that at (that time 9 months adjusted 1 yr not) he was able to pattern match. So his cognitive is still pretty far ahead of his motor skills by far.

His motor skills although still lag behind a bit. He did seem to jump ahead 2 months worth of skills in about 2 weeks time according to his specialists he sees weekly. That was a nice change for sure. So he's now in this state where he pretty much feels comfortable with what he's doing motor wise and is back to working on speaking and cognition as he is talking a lot more than he was.

We're also gearing up and getting ready for him to start being watched by our dear friend Amanda for some of the week so I can go back into the office. Not sure how long this transition is going to take but I asked for 2 more months. I'd already been working on this but it's getting to the point of necessity.

So we hope you all are having a wonderful Holiday season and check out his new photos I just uploaded a bunch today!

Sarah