One year ago......celebrating Zachary's homecoming day

One year ago, finally bringing our baby boy home

Working every day to get stronger at sitting up

Zachary loves to stand these days. Our biggest problem is him tripping on his pants. The skinny guy can't keep up the pants--they have to be big enough for length, but too big around the waist.

Love how Zach gets down our step, head first. He has pretty strong arms.

Happy Gotcha Day Zachary! We have this special day for our other 2 kiddos, so it is nice to be able to celebrate Zachary's homecoming day as well. One year ago we finally got to walk outside the infamous double-doors of the NICU w/o worry of the Hugs tag setting off the alarm. We finally got to put him in the car and drive home w/ him in the car. The driving home from the hospital we'd done for 6 solid weeks, every day, 42 days straight driving back and forth, w/o him. We brought him home and finally got to allow Emerald and Calvin to be up close to their brother, to touch him, to hold him. We got to watch him sleep, hold him as much as we wanted, and love on him in our own home. We did have to wonder--after 42 days of monitors and constant supervision of all his vitals, we wondered constantly what his O2 sats were, should we take his temp, did we wash our hands enough, what is his heart rate???? We went thru monitor withdrawals! But, we had our baby boy home. We got to bring him home to love on and to care for and to finally feel a permanent member of our family. We no longer had to split our time between the three kids. I know we really got him on Dec. 27th, but this day will always remain in our hearts as the day we finally became a complete family under one roof. Happy Gotcha Day Zachary Stanley! We love you so much.

Zach is doing much better with standing. He is even taking some side steps, which is highly encouraging to us. I really think he isn't motivated to sit b/c he is crawling to much. Instead of sitting still, he'd rather be on the move. His feeding is getting a teeny, tiny bit better. He doesn't gag and vomit at something entering his mouth these days. He is doing fabulous with a straw, so that is very encouraging. He even ate some mashed bananas the other day! So, we continue with PT, OT, Infant/Toddler, and she recently mentioned possibly adding Speech to the mix, to help with feeding issues and making sure there isn't any issues that develop later.

I was thrilled to go to dinner earlier this week with 4 other moms that had been in the NICU with us (another mom couldn't make it last minute, boo). It was AWESOME to be able to go to dinner with other people who understand where I'm coming from. It really did make me stop and remember how lucky we are. Some of the other babies that are our friends are having G-tubes for much bigger feeding issues, complete oral aversions (in other words, nothing enters her mouth at all), brain shunts, heart surgeries, cochlear implants for complete hearing loss, eye surgeries to help improve vision, and some other issues I won't mention. I sometimes feel myself being overwhelmed with all of the problems and appointments we have. Going to dinner with these ladies helped me to realize how lucky we are to not be back in the NICU and to have our healthy babies home with us. There are some people who aren't so lucky! It was a fantastic evening, and I wanted to stay with them longer (but one of them had to get back to her baby, Dawson, who was in the PICU at KU Med and had had major surgery just that day).

On the way home our evening was dampened with a phone call saying that our car window had been smashed in. My friend's husband was awesome and had cleaned up much of the mess for us. We assumed silly teenagers smashed 7 windows in 2 blocks. It was a cold ride home that took a little longer than usual. Skip joked saying that my girl's night out cost too much money and I might not get another chance :) If that was my last, it was a pretty good one!