Look what I learned this week

We are still really excited that we are getting Bradyen off his medicine. He has been pretty fussy the past few days, but it is hard to say what is going on with him. He is getting off this very addictive drug, so we are trying to be as patient as possible. Even if it means getting up twenty times at night to put the pacifier back in his mouth. Our second guess of why he is fussy is that he might be teething. He puts everything in his mouth and he is a drooling machine. Of course, I am in his mouth like everyday checking it out. We have two little buds right underneath the gums, so it could be any day here soon. Grandma Patty and Grandpa Dave came up and visited us this weekend. Brayden sure hammed it up and showed off all his little tricks.

Mommy gave me a toothbrush and it went straight to my mouth and I knew exactly what to do with it

Look mom I am really good at brushing

I also learned that I can hold my own bottle!!

The results are in....

And it is great news!! The doctors office called and said that his brain scan came back normal. He had no abnormal readings or seizures during the time when they monitored them. Excellent news!! Now over the next month we can start slowly decreasing his dose so that in a month he will no longer be on medication. When we talked to the doctor last time, he said that even though he will stop the medicine it will take a few months for his body to completely get rid of the medicine. So the next few months we will have to keep a close eye on him to make sure that he doesn't have any seizure activity. The doctor seemed to be pretty optimistic that he didn't think he would have any more seizures though once he was taken off the medicine. We just thought we would share our good news with everyone!!

Sleep...

Sorry I got too excited typing that I added the pictures in here last, so you get pictures first this time. Go Red Sox

Getting some rest with mommy after a long weekend

Mullet

Post Mullet (sorry buddy, we couldn't stand that hair do and we had to do something about it)

Sleep, it is so over rated these days. I am sorry if this is all I talk about, but this is all we think about these days. Brayden actually started to get a little bit more sleep this week. I have been trying to feed him more formula, hoping that it will fill up his belly and help him sleep more. On Monday night, he actually slept from 8 pm-3:30 am. Of course, since we are so used to him getting up all the time, I got up about five times during that time period to make sure he was still breathing. But of course this sleep was short lived. He has been getting one good sleep period per night, so either the early or late shift he will be out cold. So he is definitely learning.

Brayden had his EEG on Friday. What they needed to do was hook him up to electrodes and monitor his brain waves. It was exactly what they did when he was first born. The directions that we got before we came were very specific. Please have your child sleep deprived. Great the week he starts to figure out how to sleep we now have to deprive him of sleep. They only wanted him to sleep from midnight to 4 am. I don't think so! Not only does that mean we have a sleep deprived child but also a sleep deprived mother. So I cheated and he slept from 8-6 am. I was a little worried he wouldn't sleep, but he did great. He only had to sleep for about an hour. We still don't have the results of the test, hopefully we will hear from the doctor tomorrow on whether or not we can start taking him off his medication.

We had a great weekend hanging out with my family. It was my brother Josh and his fiance Lauren's bridal shower. Brayden had a blast hanging out with all the women. He definitely knows how to flirt with them!!

Just a fun little video of Brayden playing in the tub

3 months old...

We have had a sleepless couple of weeks, so needless to say the blog doesn't get updated. Brayden is very hot and cold when it comes to his sleeping at night. One night he will sleep 6 hours straight and then the next night he gets up every hour and a half. So we have been walking zombies lately, we are hoping that things get better and soon! We miss our sleep.

Last week Bradyen had his first photo shoot for his 3 month pictures. He did such a great job, he was a great sport the whole time. He didn't even cry, but he did pee on the floor. That was my fault, I wanted a cute butt picture and sure enough he went pee during the photo shoot. The pictures turned out great, so great that I didn't order any yet because I couldn't decide what to get.

My mom came up for a few days last week to help us out. She let us all get some needed rest and watch Brayden while we were working. We finally got Brayden to accept some formula. He was allergic to the first two that we tried, but soy formula works! We took his stats for this month and he is 25 1/2 inches long and weighing in at 14 lbs. 8 ounces.

We had our first visit to the emergency room. Brayden has been really bad sleeping for the past week and he finally cracked yesterday. He had a fever and was crying to the point where you couldn't console him. And he is not a crier so we knew something was wrong. We took him to urgent care to get checked out. He just has a little virus, with a red throat and a rash on his chest. So of course, all he wants to do is sleep and sleep on you. So we took turns last night with him sleeping on us. Poor guy. Hopefully he will start feeling better and getting some sleep soon!

All dressed up for his photo shoot

Practicing my smile for my photo shoot

Too many pictures, too many smiles (the pacifier is half way out of his mouth)

Figuring out that grandma has bigger fingers to chew than mine!

I finally figured out how to hold that rattle..

And put it right in my mouth

Waiting to get checked out at the urgent care

Trying to get some sleep in my parents bed

Bathtime in the real bathtub, I have learned that I can really kick and splash now

I thought this was fitting, Jon did our taxes today. His shirt says "tax write-off"

Brayden is learning to laugh and giggle at everything

Good News All Around!!

As you can tell by the title of the blog, we had a great check up with the pediatric neurologist this week. The doctor did a bunch of physical evaluations to see if there are any developmental differences. Brayden did really well and passed all of his tests. Since he has not had any seizures since we left the NICU, we get the go ahead to do another EEG (brain scan) in about 3 weeks. The doctor said that if there are no brain seizures, then we can spend the next month weening him off of his medicine. So that is great news!! We also made a great discovery about his medicine. They told us from the get go that it causes drowsiness, so Jon and I thought, it helped put him to sleep. So we always gave it to Brayden right before bed. Well when we were talking to the doctor we told him that he was not sleeping so well and when we always go to check on him he is always tossing around. Well come to find out that the medicine does make him drowsy, but it also prevents him from getting really deep sleep!! No wonder why he is always up and tossing around. So in order to combat the medicines side effects, we were told to give him the medicine earlier in the day so that it will wear off by the time he goes to bed so that he could possibly get a deeper sleep. After we went to the doctors he sent us a written report about Brayden's progress and boy did it make us laugh. Right in the report it states that Brayden is " a big baby". He grew and inch and a half in 3 weeks and of course gained two more pounds. He needless to say he is in the 92nd percentile for length at 25 inches and weighs in at a whopping 14 lbs 6 oz, that is in the 89th percentile! So our new nickname for Brayden is Tank. The kid is just solid.

Our other great news for the week was that Jon's sister Jamie and her husband Josh, had a baby girl, Madelyn Grace on Thursday. We were all super excited, no one knew the sex of the baby so we were all anxiously waiting for the baby's arrival. We headed out to visit with them this weekend. It is amazing how little she is. It boggles me that Brayden was that small less than 3 months ago!!

Ok, so let me tell you the story behind this. We share a nanny with one of Jon's co-workers and this is her son Colin in the picture. When he gets dropped off usually Brayden is still in his pajamas, so I know what Colin is wearing when I change Brayden. On Tuesday we were up early so I got him dressed and then Colin showed up wearing the same exact outfit. It was hilarious!

Brayden has now learned to giggle at himself and just about anything funny that mommy and daddy do. On his shirt is Rocky, the Lees Family got this shirt for him, saying that he was such a fighter when he was in the hospital. Brayden also loves to take pictures with his hands clenched up, we always say he is going to be a boxer, so this shirt is very fitting.

Jamie holding Tank! The thing about this picture is that she lifted him up to see how heavy he was and then remembered that her doctor told her not to lift anything more than 10 lbs, so she immediately put him down since he weighs over 14 lbs.

Madelyn Grace, she is absolutely adorable. She has the cutest little nose and the longest fingers and toes I have ever seen.

Grandpa and Grandma holding their grandkids.

Maddie and Brayden, he looks like a monster compared to her

I thought this was cute, something caught their eye and they both rolled the same way.

Brayden playing so big with daddy

He Rolled Over!!

Brayden learned to roll over yesterday and I missed it!! I was at work and Jon was doing some tummy time with him and he became so exhausted that he put his head down and rolled over. Jon knew that I would not believe him that he really did it so he was smart enough to video tape it for me. Luckily as soon as I got home from work he did it for me. When he finishes rolling over he gets super excited that he did it. He did it five times yesterday, but of course we can't get him to do it today.

Jon was out of town this week, so it was definitely an exhausting week. Luckily my mom came up for two nights to help me with night duty. So when Jon got home on Friday, I got the night off and a full nights rest without any interruptions, it was definitely needed. Brayden is back to his typical 3 hours of sleeping before he wants food again, so I feel like I am up all night feeding him. So Jon and I decided that maybe he is not getting enough milk, so we decided that we would try a little formula to hopefully help coat his tummy a little bit. I decided I would try it on Friday morning since I would be home all day with him, just in case any problems or an allergic reactions occur. I only gave him 2 oz. of formula and he took it like a champ. I was like this is great, he didn't even notice a difference. Maybe this will solve some of our sleeping problems. Well, I was wrong, about 4 hours later, the poor little guy puked everywhere!! Now I felt like a horrible mother because I was trying formula for the benefit of us getting a little more sleep. So needless to say it will be awhile before he gets formula again and we get good sleep!!

We have an exciting week ahead of us. Brayden has an appointment with the pediatric neurologist on Tuesday. Hopefully we will find out how much longer Brayden will have to be on the anti seizure medicine. And the other exciting thing going on this week is Jon's sister Jamie and her husband Josh are going to welcome their baby into this world. We can't wait, they are planning on getting induced on Tuesday night, so hopefully Wednesday morning we will have exciting news.

Here are some pictures from the week...

Brayden completely exhausted from learning how to roll over

All dressed up in the outfit Great Grandma O made me and yes that is my milk belly hanging over my pants

Just laughing at the things mommy tells me

Us at the Butler game last weekend

Brayden rolling over, notice the nice mullet hair-do that he has going on

Let's Go Butler!!

We have had a little bit of a trying week with Brayden and his lack of sleeping. He was doing great for about a week where he would do a six hour shift and then a three hour shift. Well that all changed ever since he got his shots last week. We just thought he was a little off because of that, but he hasn't seemed to get back to that sleeping pattern again. So needless to say we are back to just three hours of sleep at a time. Good thing I have coffee to get me through the day!

Besides that lack of sleep, which I am sure everyone can relate to, we are having a great time enjoying Brayden and all the fun things he is doing now. He is laughing and smiling a ton, pretty much at anything we say he laughs at. Brayden is also loving tummy time. He is learning to lift his head up really well and looking all around.

Brayden also went to his first Butler Basketball game this weekend. He was such a good baby at the game. He even took a little nap during the bad parts of the game, but overall he loved it.

Since I have to work half days on Saturdays, I always ask Jon what him and Brayden will be doing while I am gone. Well you will see in the video below where they would like to go without me being around. It's pretty funny.

Tummy time with daddy

Just checking things out

Getting an airplane ride from daddy

Let's go BU!!