So when I get out of the shower to discover the other bathroom's floor has been flooded and Lumpy and Mr Grey are using soaked stuffed animals like water balloons, or when Mr Grey and Lumpy climb onto the super high exam table and then Mr Grey sends Lumpy plummeting to the ground while Baby Hulk's pediatrician watches, in horror. Or the spitting, or the biting. Lumpy opening the door with the red warning on the handle that tells you it is for emergency use only and an alarm will sound! Refusing to stay in their room and running through the house screaming hours after bedtime... When I am to the point where the invisible gorilla is strangling me, I pick up my sweet, good, Baby Hulk, hug him tightly and breathe in deeply, his sweet barfy baby scent. It took me a while to figure out why my baby didn't have that baby smell. Then around four months he started spitting up and suddenly he smelled like a baby! I pick up my sweet baby and a sense of calm washes over me. The gorilla doesn't entirely let go, once it starts he pretty much hangs on until an hour or so after the kids are asleep. But suddenly I don't want to beat them as much. I can think clearly enough to send them to the playroom (I know I never gave you the tour of my new house but it has a playroom... with a door... that I can close).
On July 3rd Darling Husband took off from work early and we loaded everyone into the car and drove to Bellevue for an ophthalmology appointment for Baby Hulk, all my baby sitter options were unavailable with Buttons out traveling and my poor Momma Pru managed to get pneumonia! Since the monsters were coming I needed wrangling help after that embarrassing ordeal with the pediatrician I was not going at this one alone! So it became a family outing!
The doctor noticed something Baby Hulk's physical therapist had just been calling torticollis, a slight head tilt, only she had speculations that it might not really be torticollis. She thought it might actually be a misalignment of his eyes! Baby Hulk really hated the doctor, she kept trying to straighten his head so she could get a look at his eyes and he fought her the whole time and every time she turned her back on him he had quite a lot of horribly rude things to say (I am certain if The Doctor had been there to translate, since he speaks baby, there would have been a lot of bleeping). By the end of the appointment he was extremely cross with her and she had no answers. She wants us to set up another appointment with her in 3 months... le sigh...
Oh! And do you know how they fix a misalignment? SURGERY!!!! I hope his physical therapist is right. She doesn't think his eyes are the problem. She knows she isn't an eye doctor, but she has worked with a baby who had an eye misalignment before and she says it was completely different. I was already a bit in denial that anything was really wrong with his eyes, but having her say that may have made it worse. I had pretty much given up on the doom. There will be no doom! My baby is healthy as an ox!
Playing defense for his brothers is serious business so Baby Hulk has had to do some serious working out so he can take on the evil Mommy. He has been working on bulking up and as of 7 months this kid now weight 13lbs 6oz! ...Yeah... that's still tiny huh? And he is a little over 24" long!!!!! Yeah... that's still tiny too... But if you enter in all his stats into the Down syndrome growth chart... well it's still tiny... He is in the 16th percentile for height, and 22nd for weight, BUT he is in the 56th percentile for head circumference! That's just on his own special growth chart. Plug those measurements into the regular growth chart and it comes up "less than 3rd percentile" for both weight and height and 6th percentile for head circumference. Tiny!!!! My 7 month old has hand me downs from a 2 month old! He is between 0-3mo and 3-6mo clothing depending on the brand.
It's kind of weird, but because of his size it doesn't at all feel like there is anything different about my baby. He looks like he should be doing what he is doing developmentally. He looks like a little baby who should just be learning how to sit unsupported, and chewing his toes. When I look at my other friends' babies I can't imagine him doing the things they are doing at 7 months. Pulling up and cruising and such. He is too tiny! He is just a baby!
Just when I started to think the amazing and obvious changes and strides he was making in his physical therapy were slowing down, last week happens! He still is only prop sitting, but has gotten so good with it now that he can shift his weight around from one hand to the other so he can play with his toys with the free hand. He rolls to his tummy like it's nothing now, which actually has been causing me quite a bit of grief. The boy now wants to sleep on his tummy... "Back to sleep" has been drilled into my head so thoroughly that I just can't let him sleep on his own now! I end up holding him in bed with me to keep him in the proper position all night. I think I would be okay with his tummy sleeping if he hadn't oh so conveniently forgotten how to roll back onto his back from his tummy! When he started rolling onto his stomach his physical therapist told me she believed he would be rolling around the room in no time.... and then he stopped rolling both ways!
I was not at all expecting him to be any kind of mobile but then this week he started turning, his belly is his axis as he spins to reach the toys he wants, and then Friday night (7/12) he starts bringing his knees up under him and trying to kick himself forward, and by Saturday he is doing kind of an inchworm move, only somehow it ends up propelling him backwards... but holy cow I wasn't expecting this at all!!!! I'm really proud of my little boy. I think he is proud of himself too.
And now to catch you up through super cute pictures!
First Independence day, kisses from Lumpy, and watching fireworks on the dock at Grandma's house with Stitches and her offspring
Momma lovings
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Hanging with the boys
Trying to be grown, and give me a heart attack
I thoroughly intend to keep up my postings this summer although as you already know, I am not good with doing what I say I'm going to do. I hope you will stick around for my random and occasional posts and maybe I'll even try to take over a little for Buttons and Stitches on Hot Toddies events. There need to be some of those. I miss them!!!! I think a Lady Porn marathon is very much needed in the near future. Remember back in the days before the drum broke when we played Rock Band all the time? Yeah.... I'm thinking maybe we should use the money from our He Had A Plan sales (I still can't believe we wrote a book!) to get some new drums...
That's a handsome boy!
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