And we're off...

the medicine that is!!! Brayden took his final dose on Saturday and they told us it would take about 3-5 days to finally rid his system. So now we are completely medicine free!!! What a wonderful feeling!! We are still very cautiously watching him to make sure there are no seizures, but since we have gone so long without one, hopefully it will continue to be that way.

We have been enjoying all the visitors that we have been having over the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately we had to get rid of our nanny this week, so we have had a bunch of fill-ins to help us out. A big thanks to Erin, my mom, and Mrs. Ludwig!! Hopefully we found a replacement so we can get these kids back on schedule.

Brayden had his four month check up last week. Here are his stats: length 25 3/4 inches (75th percentile), 15 lbs. 11 oz. (75th percentile), and head circumference 41.3 cm (25 th percentile). He did really good with the shots, though he wanted to just be cuddled and he gave the saddest face for about a day!! He put that bottom lip out pretty far. The doctor said to give him until he is 5 months old and to mark it on our calender to start letting him "cry it out". Well wouldn't you know, last night he slept through the whole night!! I don't know if it is that he is completely off the medicine that he was a better sleeper or if it was that we gave him real food yesterday too. I put the video on of his first bite, not too bad. Pretty funny though, today I came home from work and Jon told me that Brayden didn't like the squash at all and that he had to tickle him to even open his mouth. Well come to find out, it was freezing cold and he didn't know that you had to warm it up. Funny that when I warmed it up, he ate the whole thing.

Since Brayden was in the NICU as a baby, the state has a program to make sure that all children get the services that they need in order to strive. They came and evaluated Brayden a couple weeks ago and come to find out, we have to do physical therapy once a week with him. His right side is weaker than his left side. He grabs and holds better on his left side. So we are working with the therapist to strengthen his right side up. They gave us some homework to do for the week and so far he is acing it! Hopefully he will keep it up and strengthen his right side up pretty quickly.

So this is what you call "March Madness", I enjoy watching basketball with daddy

I learned that playing with Uncle Jimmy's hat is a lot of fun

I am learning to do a bunch of things at once, eating my hands and trying to get my feet into my mouth

I am waiting for this so called "human food"

Mom, you are not fast enough, I guess I will try this instead

My first real food experience

2 weeks worth of pictures...

So this is what you call a birthday party?!

Max's 1st Birthday Party!!!

I turned 4 months old last Monday

This looks like something I can put in my mouth (It is hard to get a good picture these days without him moving everywhere)

I tried cereal for the first time last week and I loved it once I figured out what was going on

Everytime we go to get Brayden out of his crib he is in a completely different position, he has learned to use the rails to move around (not to mention he gets his feet stuck in them too)

Uncle Joey came and visited this week and Uncle Josh came by last week (I forgot to take a picture of them). It was also Uncle Josh's 21st Birthday last week, happy birthday!

I can't resist dressing him up in this hat, he makes the funniest faces when I put it on

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

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