Big Day

Today is a big day for Nate the Great! Today Nate has officially been a NICU graduate longer than he was a NICU resident! Just in case anyone was wondering, 140 days at home goes by MUCH faster than 140 days in a hospital. We are so grateful to have him home and healthy!

Graduation Day

9 months

The bug is 9 months old! He is just under 16 pounds and 25 inches long.

• He is rolling both ways now. He isn't quite as good rolling to the right but he can finally do it on his own. 
• He is such a pleasant little boy! He is almost always happy and smiling and hardly ever cries. He has started grabbing my face with both hands and coming at me with his big slobbery open mouth. He is so much fun!
• He is figuring out how to get where he wants to go. He has started scooting while laying on his back. He pushes his little feet on the floor and can scoot himself just far enough to get toys that are out or reach.
• We have started solid food! Nate has had about a week of cereal for breakfast and he pretty much hates it. He takes 1 or 2 spoonfuls (well more like tiny licks) and decides he's had enough. Hopefully we can find something he likes to eat because so far rice cereal is not a favorite. (Update: I started this post about a week ago and after talking to my very wise sister in law, I tasted the rice cereal. You're right, Katherine, it does taste like paste! Apparently Nate thinks so too because we tried oatmeal and things have been going a lot better).
• We had the physical therapist come a couple of weeks ago and everything went great! She couldn't believe he was a former 24 weeker. He is still right on track for his adjusted age (5 months). She is going to come over once a month just to check up on him but she had no concerns at all.
• We go in for a doctor appointment next week so we don't have much to report health wise. My only concern has been his eating. He just doesn't seem interested in his bottle at all anymore. I know he's still a chunky little thing and he's probably fine but I just worry so much about him getting enough to eat. There are stories of preemies who ate just fine for 6 months and suddenly stopped taking the bottle. Some end up with feeding tubes and don't learn to eat again by mouth until they are 4 or 5. I know its not likely to happen but nothing that has happened so far has been the "likely" situation so it's always in the back of my mind.

We had to do a dollar bill video this month because all of the pictures I took turned out super blurry. You'll see why...

Look how handsome this little man is! This is one of his super cute Christmas outfits and we had to try it on this morning.  

Here's another one :)

We recently moved Nate up to size 3 diapers. They are still a little big but we mostly moved up because we ran out of size 2s and already had a big box of 3s (we still haven't bought a single pack of diapers thanks to all of our friends and family)! We remembered this picture from just before Nate's last surgery. Toward the end of his hospital stay, we were having the hardest time keeping his ostomy bag on. One day after changing it 5 or 6 times (it is held on with super sticky tape so changing it was so hard on his poor little belly) we decided to just leave the bag off and put a big diaper over the stoma to catch all the poo. He looked so tiny in this size 3 diaper. He's grown so much!

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Christmas!

We had a great Christmas this year! It was the calmest, most stress free Christmas I have ever had.  I guess that is one of the perks of having to stay home. We had a good excuse to skip all of the million holiday parties and craziness and spend time focusing on more important things. Here's some pictures from our day.

Nate opening his singing puppy from Grandma Johnson

Nate and I Christmas morning

This is what Todd made for me. Every night when we are going to bed I always say I wish Nate could come and cuddle with us. I'm very grateful that he is such a good sleeper but sometimes it would be nice to snuggle our baby in bed. So Todd blew up this picture of our sleeping bug, glued it to some cardboard, and wrapped a blanket around it. It's my very own bedtime Nate :)

Learning how to use his first hammer from Grandma Jensen

My present from my mom. You can't see it very well but it has the girls' names on it on the bottom.

Uncle Shane teaching Nate how to be a race car driver