Sweet Baby Crew

This is my darling little Crew. He is 11 months old this week (8 months adjusted). His sweet and expressive personality just begs kisses and loves all the time. He gets a bath almost daily to rinse him of the "family spit smell" as well as dinner grunge that gets trapped in his neck creases. We still occasionally call him "The Tiny Prince", but have lately been referring to him most often as "Beast". It started when he was teething (and exhibiting fairly beastly behavior) and it stuck.

This picture features our Beast positioned in a new physical therapy pose designed to strengthen his arms and torso and to prepare him for future crawling. He looks especially adorable in it, don't you think?

We met with our new physical therapist this morning and we're excited to get this show (back) on the road. The new PT will come twice a month and will help teach us tricks of the trade to guide him toward success. We have the parental intuition and the unconditional love necessary to help him, but we need a few keys/tools/details to fill in the blanks.

We reviewed his results from last week's evaluation and found that most of his scores were in the 4-month range with a very few items creeping more toward 5-months. We continue to work with him aggressively every day and he is making progress, albeit slow.

I intentionally positioned myself with the Intervention Coordinator last week as rather timid about this whole intrusion and fairly high maintenance. It's been alluded that they very carefully chose someone to work with us from among their more elite team members. I have no problem with that. And hopefully my sweet spirit and genial disposition will be a pleasant surprise for them in the future. I did verbally commit to our PT this morning that I would speak my mind and not be passive aggressive--I volunteered that tendency in the interest of full disclosure...

Our PT (Julie) sees a lot of good things that Crew is doing. He has been (tentatively) sitting like a gorilla for (very) brief periods of time for 8 weeks with very little improvement. This morning he was sitting up straighter, putting his hands on his lap, and even reaching out for a toy. Little show off. He rarely rolls from his front to his back anymore and has only made it to his stomach one time. He is starting to roll to the side occasionally and is beginning to show greater interest in reaching and grasping. My dinner plate might not be safe much longer when he sits on my lap!

Kinley and Tanner are always on the lookout for new accomplishments. Tanner will come running to me, shouting "Mommy! Crew touched my face!!" or "Crew rolled to his side to look at me!"

I have really enjoyed the extended newborn stage of our little miracle. It's been a tender mercy to be able to hold on to his early stages for so long, knowing he is our last child and missing out on the snuggles of our anticipated twins. I've been able to thoroughly enjoy Baby Crew for long enough to help me through a large portion of my grief and to not have his newborn stage be a forgotten blur. I haven't been ready to move on with him and have turned a blind eye to his (ardent) desire to remain a tiny, cuddly, helpless newborn forever. Nevertheless, the time has come when he needs to step it up and move out of the newborn stage and start acting like a big boy. It's time for him to bust through this development plateau and continue on in his journey of health and progress.

Come on, little tiger!

Now tell me, is he not the CUTEST thing EVER?