Caden is now on the verge of walking; the closest he's gotten is taking one or two shaky steps to me or Dave, upon which he realizes he's not holding on to anything and promptly sits down to crawl the rest of the way. Oh ya, he has now also perfected the crawl-he had been doing the military crawl up until about 1-2 months ago, but now he is fully on his hands and knees. His ultimate favorite form of travel at this point has to be any sort of push toy-his walker, train, or any sort of chair that moves across the floor smoothly will be used to support his walking. I predict he will be walking on his own in the next 2-3 weeks...then we can find out exactly what else needs to be baby-proofed ;)
In my last post I didn't even get around to mentioning perhaps the biggest change, Caden started daycare, and I am back to work. I was very anxious about daycare at the outset, and I was dealing with some major guilt, but now that he's been going for a good 2.5 months, I can say that overall it has been a good experience. The first 1-2 weeks had Caden crying when I would drop him off, but now when we arrive I ask him if he's "gonna go play with the kids?" to which I get the same response every day, an emphatic "Ya!" followed by jumping up and down in my arms and pointing. He loves the staff, and it helps that they also love him. They take good care of him, and are attentive regarding his KTS, keeping an eye out for any changes that we need to be informed about. Caden also loves the food there, to the point that they asked me if he was eating at home because he was eating more than adult portions at lunch :) I won't complain-any eating is better than the refusal to eat that we were dealing with a few months ago! The drinking is coming along too-we've been giving him homo milk since he turned 1, and he regularly will drink a 10 oz bottle as I'm changing him in the morning, as well as another 1 or 2 bottles throughout the day...now I just need to wean him from the night time boob feeds! I will mention that the one (major) annoying thing about daycare is the number of times Caden's been sick over the past two months. He literally has not had a full week of clear nasal passages or solid poops. Currently I'm on my second day home with him due to an ear infection and chest cold that interestingly started out with projectile vomiting at the daycare on Monday afternoon (it's Wednesday today). Here's hoping the antibiotics have kicked in by tomorrow. I know that this sickness thing is common for kids at daycare, but it just really, really sucks.
Since November Caden has had a new compression garment which is almost like a "Spanx" shirt and glove. It is nude colored compression material that is essentially a tight fitting top with a zipper up the back, one short sleeve and one long (for the affected arm), and also a gauntlet-type glove that overlaps the sleeve a bit and has a partial thumb cover but no fingers, just because we wanted him to have no restrictions to the fingers. It has been explained to me that the garment only maintains the size of the arm, whereas wrapping the arm will help to decrease the size by helping to push fluid up and out. However, wrapping is not conducive to daycare, so I try and massage Caden's arm as best as I can in the morning (not an easy task with a squirmy little rascal) and put on the garment which they usually take off at the daycare before the afternoon nap. Overall I would say that his arm is not the smallest it's been, and there have been recent days when it has looked quite puffy, but I think it also has to do with the fact that he's been sick so often and his whole immune system is just out of whack. Hopefully we can find some sort of system that better controls the lymphadema on a daily basis.
Another big thing that's been building more over the past few weeks is Caden's vocabulary. Up until recently he would babble and every now and then pull out a "mumma-mumma" or "dadda/daddy" or an "uh-oh", but now he says quite a few words (or at least his version of the word) such as "toys, car, ya, okay, quack quack, woof-woof, go-go-go" as well as having signs for "more", "milk", "all gone/done", and "fish". He is also great at communicating the word "no" by shaking his head or turning his head away and screeching when he doesn't want something. Last week we went to an appointment at Erin Oak with a Speech and Language Pathologist (we were referred to them months ago due to Caden's eating issues and when the appointment came of course the eating issues are resolved!) who assessed his communication and language development so far and says he's doing great-right on track, if not slightly ahead of his age for vocabulary etc., and also no developmental issues related to communication. Although I didn't expect them to identify any problems it was still great to see that he's doing all the right things :).
Apart from that, Caden continues to be a happy little boy with an awesome personality, and dashing good looks (insert Dave saying "just like his father" here) who we couldn't love any more :)
Enjoy some pics!
First Santa Pic:
First School Pic:
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