a year since surgery

This past weekend, Sawyer decided to walk. Now he walks all day long and gets so excited with being able to come and go as he pleases.

On Memorial Day he was aggressively putting his hands on my plate of BBQ food. I fed him some of my potato salad. He looked at me and said "mmm!" So he kept opening his mouth, and I'd keep putting bits of potato salad on his tongue. Then as I was eating a brownie, he did the same thing. When he took a bite of the brownie he said "mmm!" again. Part of me thought he was taunting me, and part of me was convinced this was his way of telling me he's ready to eat food like a big boy.

The  next day I was determined to skip tube feeding as much as possible and have him eat all the baby food that's been sitting on a shelf in the pantry. We tried a jar and ten minutes later, it looked like this:

I decided to bake a pan of brownies, just for him. Perfect form of calories, in my opinion.

I was able to skip all of Tuesday and Wednesday's daytime tube feedings!! I run the pump at night, every three hours. I offer something to him about every two hours throughout the day and go off of his mood. Sometimes he wants baby food, sometimes he just wants fruit loops. Sometimes he wants cheese cubes, sometimes he wants chocolate milk. All in all, he is being really cooperative with this new adventure. He is more smiles, he has enough teeth to conquer textures and crunchy food, and of course, his ability to cruise around the house on his own two feet gives him the most joy I've seen yet.  It's encouraging to me to see him take huge steps like this.

walking Sawyer boy!

Chicago town

I have always heard a lot of great things about Chicago, but never thought I'd be going there any time in the present or near future. As soon as I learned when Taylor was graduating, we bought tickets right away. I let my mother-in-law do all the sight-seeing planning, as I was strictly on "baby duty," and my sister-in-law was strictly on "navigation" and "deep dish pizza" duty. In a span of 72 ish hours, we covered a lot of ground. Impressive, considering we were total tourists and had a baby in a crappy collapsible stroller to tow around.  Chicago is amazing. However, we had a lot of adjusting to do; we were in a new climate (wet and freezing in May), were in a different time-zone (we were sleep-deprived), we saw millions of people traveling in droves (while we had to weave in and out of groups) and were away from home (that's always hard on Sawyer, no matter what the situation). So, given that premise of our well-intentioned, carefully planned trip, I'm happy to say we hit every attraction on our list and went to bed exhausted each night, ready to wake up at 5:00 am to catch a plane or a shuttle or to skip morning traffic. As I write this I realized I did, indeed, take a two week vacation from this three-day vacation. Worth every second, though.

Right before saying our goodbyes

SIL and MIL

Millennium Park

"meh" he says

It was the Polish Constitution Celebration that day. However, I don't think these guys were celebrating for that reason. Very cool, though.

At the Art Institute. Loved it. Sawyer didn't care for it. This is us taking a little breather.

The famous Cloud.

We got brave and got pretty close.

this pretty much sums up the entire trip.

Navy Pier. Major tourist attraction. Busier than Disneyland, almost.

And finally, Geno's East. Authentic Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Amaze-zing!

oh, yeah. Had to wait 45 mins for pizza to bake. More fun times corralling Mr. S. Desperate enough to let him play with the fork. Yes, the fork. I was exhausted and hungry. Don't judge. 

Fun times, yummmy food, and decent bathrooms. Can't complain.

Reunited and it feels so good

We had the opportunity to attend Taylor's Basic Training Graduation last weekend. It was truly incredible.

Sawyer was a peach for about 2% of the time. The rest of the time, he was pretty cranky, mad, and tired. I guess I would be too, especially if I had someone I could cry to and comfort me when I threw a tantrum after waiting in an airport for 9 hours. It was unexpectedly hard, but definitely worth seeing Taylor in his Navy blues. After two months of little to no contact from dad, we were all back together, once again.

Then we had to part ways. But another trip to see him is right around the corner. This time, I will plan things differently. Sawyer ALMOST convinced me to never leave the house again, but I've had a change of heart and decided it's worth having a screaming baby as long as it means being altogether.

So so so proud of Taylor. So happy to be able to talk to him everyday!

Sawyer is doing so-so with eating. He'd rather throw the food than put his mouth on it. I've recently discovered he likes to "fake gag" when I'm watching him eat. But as soon as I leave and he's distracted, he'll voluntarily put food in his mouth, no problem. Little stinker. His mouth is filling up with teeth--lucky for me, his molars were cutting through while traveling. I've never been bit so much in my life (from putting Orajel on his gums). I predict Sawyer will be walking on his own within the month, but he is still tentative with the idea, so we'll see. He likes to sing Popcorn Popping with me. He can do the popcorn motions and the finger shake. So cute. Also, as of late, he likes to throw his binkie as far as his little arm can throw it. Then he says, innocently, "uh oh!" Yeah, that's cute once, but over and over in a busy airport is not so cute. This is my indication that it's time to ween. Binkies are only for emergencies, and nothing more.

OHMYLANTA

Well, shoot. It's been a whole month since I've updated the baby blog. It's been an eventful month on two fronts: Sawyer's development and family life. I'm playing two roles: a single mom, and a caretaker to a baby with certain, particular (special, if you will) needs. Needless to say, I've been going non-stop for the last four weeks.

Things are going well. I can't complain. However, single-mom'dom is harder than it looks. Especially if you get a cold that just won't go away.

I think I mentioned at my last trip to Primary's that I was coming down with something. After arriving home, I put Sawyer in his special strappy eating chair and turned on his pump, turned on a movie, brewed up some lemon tea, took a few sips and I was out. I willed myself to get up and put Sawyer in bed and I willed myself back to sleep, trying to ignore the imminent sickness that was waiting for me when I woke up.

I slept in so late that I missed an appointment with the speech therapist. That never happens. I continued to rest during the weekend and tried staying home as much as possible. Suddenly, Sawyer woke up one morning with gunky, pink eyes. That's when all hell broke loose.

Pink eye(s), fever, diarrhea, vomiting, me coughing and hacking like a smoker during the night. (poor Sawyer has been so patient with me. He just goes back to sleep whenever I wake him up. Precious). My voice is barely coming back, but I still sound like Lady Sybil from DA. Minus the British accent. 

Back to the point. I would like to say Sawyer's first dilation was a success, but I haven't had a chance to really try the ol' esophagus out. Last night he munched on an Andes mint with no issues, but that's a given. His diet mostly consists of g-tube bolus feeds of Pedialyte, but we'll get back to trying finger foods when he stops vomiting twenty minutes after his feed.

All in all, the dilation went well. I'm hoping the results are good enough that we don't have to spend any more time in the car. So far, nothing gives me the impression that the dilators didn't work.

Our trip to Riverton

Let's go!

one of those days where the only thing to do is take a bubble bath

I spent the first half of my day disinfecting every surface of our house, so I must be getting some of my zing back. Here's to hoping for a better, healthier week!

It's a sip-on-warm-milk, watch-the-rain-fall, drift-off-to-sleep-with-your-sick/fussy-baby, try-to-get-motivation-to-feed-the-dog-and-throw-all-your-worries-to-the-wayside kind of night tonight. His dilation went well, and I'll update more on that later. I think we're both coming down with something. So for now, I must sleep.

Goodnight

out-takes

Hey Sawyer. Whatcha doin? Oh, just eating some chocolate.

time for breakfast

Doesn't look safe, I know. Sawyer was sick of sitting so he convinced his daddy to walk him around with his xylophone and pump in tow.

back and forth

in and out

whoops don't drop it

Buy! Buy! Sell! Sell!!

texting his friends

trying out hair clipppers for
 the first time

the buzzzz was a bit traumatic, but he looks clean-cut!