22 months old

Avery Jo is 22 months old today

• She is such a good big sister. She loves to love on her brother, hold him and help bring things to me.
• She says "Oh" alot, usually when she starts a sentence or cries out.
• Her favorite songs to sing are "Cuckoo clock" "ABC's" and "Ring around the rosie"
• She started saying "mine" and "my turn" this month. sharing is a hard concept for toddlers but she is learning and doing good at it!
• Avery's favorite toys are her "make-up" and cell phone. She walks around with an empty bare minerals compact and buki brush and loves to "pretend" to put it on her face. She also walks around talking on her phone, she will giggle and say "thats funny".
• Avery has loved all her time with both sides of grandparents this month while we took care of her brother.
• Avery did her first somersault, on accident, she was doing her "trick" where she bends over, head on the floor and puts her arms out straight from her sides. She accidentally pushed off with her feet and did a forward roll. She loved it.
• She is very good at telling you "bless you" if you sneeze, especially her brother. If he sneezes and she's in the other room you'll hear her yell out "bless you bubba"
• She is obsessed with Elmo, Dora, Minnie Mouse and "old mcdonalds farm" (which is a video of nursery rhymes she got from Auntie Cici and Uncle A)! She has an Elmo book that has lost a few pages, but she still loves it!
• Avery learned how to jump this month, she can actually jump off the ground!
• Avery can sing her alphabet and only misses a few letters, she can also count to 10 and spell her name!
• Her favorite book (this week) is "Not Me" by Nigel McMullen which she calls the "jack book", I'm a little worried though because the book is about an older brother who blames all his mishaps on his little brother!
• BIG NEWS, yesterday morning when Avery got up she decided she was all done with her pacifiers. She threw them in the trash can and said "bye bye paci". She did great for her nap and last night without them. I am so proud of my big girl. She only used a paci when she slept and I wasn't planning on trying to get rid of them for awhile. She can definitely surprise us!
• I can't believe my little girl will be 2 years old in just 2 months!!!

Instead of posting pics of Avery from this month I will post pics of both kiddos at the end of each month and make a post of its own. So be watching, I'll try to post a link to those pics in a few days!

love my kiddos

My 2 babies!!! Avery is such a good big sister. :)

ONE month old

Liam is 1 month old!!

• Whew, what a month this has been, I can hardly believe it. I kinda feel like I missed the first 2 weeks of his life since he was in the NICU!
• Liam was born with RDS(respiratory distress syndrome) and spend 11 days in the NICU. Once he got a dose of surfactant into his lungs he started improving with each day.
• He loves to show us his little smiles, especially just after he eats.
• At his follow-up appt with Dr. Z he weighed 8lbs 4oz . This was just after he turned 2 weeks old.
• He loves his swing the most. He has fallen asleep many times in it!
• Liam lets us know as soon as he is hungry. And boy you better be fast! :) he eats every 3 hours during the day and I let him go up to 5 hours at night.
• We think he may have had gas pains and reflux. We started him on gas drops and when that didn't help much I cut dairy out of my diet. I began to suspect that he might have reflux and his doctor prescribed him some medicine that seems to be helping!
• He also gets the hiccups after almost every feeding. Almost as often as he did in my tummy!
• Right now he has very dark hair and dark blue eyes.
• I think Liam looks just like chris, but he also looks very similar to Avery as a newborn, can't wait to see how he changes.
• He loves to sleep on his tummy, everytime I put him down for some tummy time he ends up falling asleep and doesn't make a peep till its time for him to eat again! I wish I could let him sleep all the time on his tummy, he is very relaxed and I think it helps ease his gas pains. I think he likes being on his tummy because when he first was in the NICU thats how he spent most of his time.
• Right now he's sleeping one good stretch of 4.5 hours at night, hopefully that'll increase soon :)
• Liam is quite the snuggler, he often fusses until he is picked up by someone. He loves to be held (especially on your chest), rocked and bounced around. This is quite a change from how Avery was! I often wonder if its because he didn't get much attention in the NICU, he wasn't held much and didn't get attention unless his monitors went off, he was crying or it was time to feed him. :(
• Our little guy is quite the mommy's boy! He loves it when I hold him. He loves his daddy too though!!
• For only a month old he has really good head control. He can hold it up and look around!
• He hasn't fully decided if he wants to be a pacifier baby. He has a love/hate relationship with it, he has also found his thumb on occasion!

This amazing little dude has completed our family in a way I never thought possible! Happy ONE month birthday Liam David!

A-V-E-R-Y

Avery is learning how to spell her name... She gets confused by "V" and says "B". She also loves to color with a pen, she is actually pretty good at being gentle with it and even holds the pen well without me ever teaching her! check out the video;

my babies

I found a fun app that I downloaded on my phone. I used it to put Avery's baby pic and a pic of Liam side by side;

I didn't realize how much they look alike at this age, Avery is on the left at 1 week old and Liam is on the right at 2 weeks old. Obviously, Avery didn't keep her dark hair, wonder if Liam will?

Tomorrow marks one week since we brought Liam home, I am still so grateful!!!

What a fabulous day!

After 11 days in the NICU we were told Liam could go home! We had been told on Sunday that he would probably get to come home middle of the week as long as his weaning from his high flow nasal canula went well. Fortunately, he was weaned down and taken off Monday without any problems, he actually seemed better without it!! YAY! The only hurdle was that he had an episode of apnea (his heartrate dropped) Monday night and his doctor wanted to monitor him for 48 hours. I had secretly hoped that we would be able to take him home Tuesday but his doctor wanted to keep him till Wednesday just to be safe. They gave us the option of "rooming in" with him Tuesday night and we jumped at the chance. Basically we checked into the hospital, and spent the night taking care of Liam. We had to check in with his nurse every 3 hours when he ate and tell them how long he nursed, if he had a wet or poopy diaper and what his temperature was but he was all ours! He had no monitors on and we could hold him as long as we wanted. He did great except he didn't want to sleep after his 11:30pm feeding till after his 2:30am feeding! Even though I hadn't slept much the night before I didn't mind rocking him, chris too. He actually slept better with the TV on. I think he was used to the lights and sounds of the NICU. Wednesday morning chris and I held our breath while the nurse took Liam to see his doctor. His doctor came in, gave us a run through of what all he had done while he was in the NICU and said he looked great! Whew. Chris loaded up the car and I waited for someone to walk us out. I could hardly contain my excitement as we walked out of the hospital! goodbye NICU! We have been home since 11:30am and so far everything is going smoothly! Chris' parents brought Avery back home and all she talks about is "bubba", she doesn't want him to nap and cried when I took him from her arms. She loves him so much, just melts my heart! I can't wait to see how they both grow up together. Thank you for your prayers during this difficult time. I am so thankful that Liam has done so well and is now home with us.

 Here is our family pic with the famous stork;

 Target checking Liam out!

Did I mention how much she loves her brother? <3

Last day of July

Today is my actual due date and we have some more good news about our little man. Liam has been taken completely off his nasal canula (YAY!) and hopefully they won't put it back on overnight. He also was moved to the "step down" room. We were told that it is the room for babies that are close to going home. We spoke to his doctor earlier today who told us that they would take his nasal flow down to a 1 and possible turn off completely (which they did). She said he still has bouts of Tachypnea, which is where his respiration spikes, and he needs to not do that in order to be released. Hopefully its just a matter of time before he learns to keep his respiration low after a feeding (this is usually when it spikes). We are optimistic that he may come home by the end of the week, although his doctor said maybe the middle of the week, but I'm trying to not get my hopes up too high yet! Tonight we attended a NICU discharge class that our nurse told us to attend. We learned CPR, which chris and I were really excited about, I wish we would've taken a class on it before Avery was born just to know how and what to do in an emergency! We are praying that Liam just keeps on improving so we can take him home and finally introduce him to his sister. She is dying to meet him!! Please keep him in your prayers still this week, I will try to update when we hear something new! For now, here is a pic of him just after a feeding, he makes the same smiles Avery used to make after a feeding;

I just love this little guy!