On the Mend - and tons of photos

Our little guy is back to feeling like his old self again. He's still coughing a little and got some residual congestion, but overall, the bad germs seem to be gone. I took him to the doctor on Monday, and she said he probably just had his first taste of a virus, but his lungs sounded nice and clear. Because of the lung damage he has due to his early birth and time on the ventilator, colds like this could be big trouble - but he fought this one off like a champ. As usual, we think he's a rock star.

He also had a great therapy appointment this week. We weren't there for it - we just can't be home twice a month from work to attend all of these (on top of the many doctors appointments we take time off for), but luckily the therapist comes to the house to meet with Charlie and our wonderful nanny Pamela, which is great. I spoke with the therapist afterward, and she was really impressed with his progress! He's much more tolerant of tummy time; in fact, I'm glad we caught the drama video when we did, because now he doesn't fuss at all! He's also getting more and more steady when seated and is reaching for objects above chest height, which is great. We're really proud of him and his hard work and advancement.

He's a busy guy all the time - I was trying to catch photos of him playing with his animal ball because he loves it and gives me great big grins while he plays with it - but as you can see, the constant motion doesn't make for great pictures! This fun ball that Lisa and Mark gave us makes lots of noises - it barks, oinks, meows, and ribbits - and Charlie thinks it's a hoot, as you can see.

Finally, a moment of stillness:

Even the cutest of kids take a terrible photo now and then:

Charlie still has no teeth, but he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth. Buy stock in Clorox (or whomever owns Clorox) - we're keeping them in business the way we go through antibacterial wipes. Here's a series of photos I took in about 10 minutes - he has a short attention span - he gums one, and then quickly moves onto the next:

And when he can't find a toy that suits, he moves onto his fingers.

We got a fabulous new jogging stroller this week - thank you Discovery folks for the generous gift certificate to Buy Buy Baby! We've been saving it until the weather warmed up because we knew exactly what we wanted. Here's Charlie trying it out for the first time. We were also trying his new shades out for the first time, since it was still bright and sunny at 6 p.m. (thank you daylight savings time!) - you can see from the tear escaping from below his glasses that he doesn't love them yet...

Lastly, here he is this morning, hamming it up with his dad.

On Tuesday, our little miracle boy turns 1 year old - hard to believe! What a year!