Catching up

Jack has been amazing us the past few weeks. He went from unable to go from laying down to sitting (as of mid-Aug) to sitting up, commando crawling, 'real' crawling, pulling up, cruising and now he is getting so close to walking! He can walk behind his lion push toy. There is video of this in the montage (after some pics). For the first time today he stood himself up in the middle of the room with no help. He can stand like that for 4 seconds or so. The physical therapist said that when he can stand for 7-10 seconds then he'll probably try to take his first steps. James and I are in complete awe of him. Who would've thought a year ago that he would be doing all this? It's right on track with what a baby that had no health issues would be doing. We're so proud of him!

Jack is also understanding more words. You can ask him "Where's Elmo?" and he will go find him. He hates if you say "No". In fact, you don't have to raise your voice at all and he stops in his tracks and usually gives a few fake cries to let you know he doesn't like it. We're onto this act now so it's not proving very useful for him..haha. He also learned how to sign "more" and asks for more food. He tries to mess with me though because when I offer more then he likes to shake his head and say "NO". I think he's trying to remind us that he thinks he is in charge!

We had a really fun weekend with finger painting, doing crafts to send to his grandparents and playing. He is all about the toys now!

As you can see, I'm playing around with Jack's blog. I've been bored with the layout so I'm sprucing it up. Jack loves Halloween and when he was in the NICU last year he was famous for his costumes. Probably more so because we started dressing him in them in September. We haven't figured out what Jack should be this year. It'll be hard to trump "Super Jack" from last year. We welcome suggestions :-)

Finally, I'm really excited because myself, Gina and Tracey (Wyatt & Andrew's moms, respectively) are going to start a Johns Hopkins Parents CDH Network. Jack's surgeon is in full support of our efforts and is willing to help us. I think this will really help families locally. This weekend I resigned from the Board of Directors at Breath of Hope so I can focus on the Hopkins efforts. Wish Gina, Tracey and I luck! Also, if there happen to be any other Hopkins CDH parents that read this blog please get in touch with us if you want to be involved.

OK - better get going. One last thing, when you watch the video clip pay attention to Jack. He was trying to dance while walking. He's a dancing machine!

Wish us luck - tomorrow we go to Hopkins to see the allergist. Let's hope we get a better report then we did in Frederick!

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com