Logan's 9 Month Update

Okay, so as usual I’m almost 3 weeks late posting this, but it’s been an adventurous month.

• His 9 month check up put him at 25 lbs 8 oz (95th percentile), 29” long (72nd percentile), & 19” head circumference (98th percentil).  The 12 month clothes I mentioned in his 8 month update turned out to be 18 month shortalls!  The 12 month ones were too small.
• One month into crawling, and he’s kept us on our toes.  When he’s on the floor, our hinney’s don’t hit the couch.  He’s into everything!  And, I’d like to know how it is that he knows exactly what he’s not supposed mess with.  He’s even trying to pick the outlet covers off.  Ugh!
• Of course, right after crawling came the ability to pull himself up.  This was followed closely by the ability to fall down.  Grace he’s not, but what baby is?
• The “Baby Containment System” is complete.  He’s now officially confined to the family room by 2 gates & 2 doors.  Another gate keeps his paws off the components in the entertainment center.  Like both his mother & father, Logan is drawn to shiny objects that blink pretty lights.  
• We’ve hit the state of severe separation anxiety.  He *might* be okay by himself for a few minutes but not much more than that.  In the beginning, he would melt down whenever I dropped him off at day care, too, even though he wasn’t alone. That passed in about a week.  Now he’s fine just as long as he’s not alone.  As suggested by Dr. Greene (but really we had already figured this out), peek-a-boo and “where’s the baby?” do help.  We’ve been playing these games with him for several months now, and he just giggles hysterically – even when he’s crying which is funny in and of itself. 
• One interesting observation – all of his toys still fit in a laundry basket.  Of course, this makes my OCD side happy because I can quickly gather up his mess when needed.  I know this will change over time, but I’m pleased that our entire family room hasn’t simply become a collection of toys already.  The even better part is that he’s often amused by the simplest things – a tennis ball (with which he already knows how to play a simple game of batting it back and forth with us!), a water bottle with pennies in it (loud but cheap and easy!), and a plastic bowl to put his rubber squeaky blocks in.  Our hope is that he’ll grow into a boy that can use his imagination to play with simple things and be just as amused as he is with something that beeps and flashes constantly.  Having said that, I look back at the 3rd bullet and wonder.
• His “vocabulary” is ever increasing.  “Da da” is still his staple sound.  We’re not completely convinced that he’s saying it to Chris, but I have to admit that I keep saying “ma ma” to him and he just says “da da” back.  It’s a little discouraging.  He’s also playing with intonations.  Sometimes I’d swear that he’s trying to sing along to the radio in his own little way.  Most recently, he’s added something that sounds an awful lot like “uh oh”. 
• Ear infections are still a problem.  At his 9 month appointment, he had yet another one.  This time we're on to the 3rd antibiotic, Suprax.
• This one has more to do with us that with Logan.  Over this last month, we gradually gave up keeping his log that we’ve kept since the day he was born.  I know it seems more that a little OCD to do that for 9 months, but for a couple of engineers it just made sense.  It the beginning, it was a tool primarily for breast feeding, but as time went on we were able to track trends in his wake/sleep & eating patterns, keep up with how many wet & dirty diapers he had on a typical day so that we would know what wasn’t typical for him, or make notes about when medicines were given so we didn’t both give him something thinking the other one hadn’t.  Over the last couple of months, his patterns have been more and more consistent so we both just naturally weaned ourselves off of the need to write down every little thing.  Eventually, we just decided not stop killing the trees it took to print it. 

 

The last major thing that happened last month is that we had our follow up MRI and appointment with the pediatric neurosurgeon.  (Read more about the initial visits in his 5 month update).  The good news is that he’s still just fine.  We did the MRI at Children’s Legacy (they are awesome!) and the doctor was much more pleased with the quality of the images.  We were able to tell more clearly exactly what was going on.  It appears that he has a small growth of “normal” cells (translated – NOT cancer cells) right at the opening of one of the ducts that allows fluid to drain.  Think of it as kind of like a skin tag in his brain.  It’s possible that the growth won’t ever change and will never need any kind of intervention.  But, it’s also possible that it will grow.  When we pressed him for odds, he wouldn’t give us any, but he didn’t seem too worried.  Logan is developing at a completely normal pace (if not a little advanced in some areas) and isn’t showing any symptoms of a problem (crossed eyes, vomiting, headaches – of course, how to you tell if a baby has a headache?).   Based on that, we’re opting for the optimistic outlook until we have some reason to think otherwise.   For now, we are in an observing mode with the doctor.  We’ll go back for a repeat MRI and follow up appointment in 6 months.

Wow – I’m still stunned what all can happen in just a month.  Even crazier is that I’m already working on plans for his 1st birthday party.  Yikes!