Ah- choo!

Hello,

After I posted last week, I realized I forgot to mention Willow's current weight. She had a check-up on December 2 and she is now 13 pounds, 14 ounces. I believe that's about the 5th percentile for her corrected age. Our little peanut. My friend Jess at work has a daughter who is almost 4 months old, and she weighs the exact same as our 9-month-old. Willow's doctor isn't worried though, and neither are we.

We also visited a pediatric physical therapist, on the recommendation of the PT at the NICU follow-up clinic. According to her, Willow favors her right side and also needs more tummy time so she will learn how to roll over back-to-front. Right now, she won't do it because she hates to be on her tummy. Anyway, we have some exercises that are supposed to help. Honestly, I can't really even see the issues that she claims exist...I sort of wonder: if Willow wasn't under the microscope of many health-care providers because of her prematurity, would anyone even notice these things? I know lots of other preemies who never attended the follow-up clinic...do they have "issues" that are going unnoticed? Does it even matter? The PT even admitted that if we didn't do these exercises, Willow would turn out just fine, it may just take a little longer. Oh well, we'll do it, I guess. I want to do what's best for Willow.

Willow ate rice cereal once a day all week and didn't really get any more enthusiastic than the first time we tried. It seemed like she was agreeable to opening her mouth, but once we put the food in, she'd spit it back out. It's quite humorous, actually. Yesterday we tried sweet potatoes. I made it up fresh and mixed it with a little milk to thin it out. She didn't really like it at all. Here's a video of our attempt:



She also has a very funny new trick: fake sneezing. See, any time Willow sneezed for real, we'd act surprised and say "Bless you!!" and she thought that was just great. So she started fake sneezing to get the response more often. Now, if we fake sneeze, she will usually do it back.




Yesterday Willow surprised us by deciding to nurse. I actually hadn't tried in a couple weeks - the last few months any attempts were met with a disgusted look and then screaming. Well yesterday morning, she slept a long long time and woke up starving. I was changing and dressing her while Josh was getting her bottle ready and she was crying with hunger so I gave it a shot. She latched right on and took a whole feeding. Then she did it again this morning. If she keeps it up, she may foil my pump-weaning plans entirely! Little stinker. :)

Here's a couple more photos, one from her first time in the snow, and one reading with Daddy.