Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Chloe did the most amazing thing today! She rolled! I'm not talking the simple roll from her belly to her back. She's a pro at that now (and displays this skill every time I attempt tummy-time). I'm talking the fabtastic roll-across-the-room roll! My baby is MOBILE! (I cheer now...heehee.)

For the past two weeks I have been dutifully practicing rolling with Chloe - turning her hips and encouraging her to continue rolls in one direction - showing her how to position her arms so they don't get stuck underneath her. We practiced every day and she didn't seem to mind but also didn't seem to be paying too much attention to my lectures and demonstrations. Then I got home from the pool with Solana this afternoon and Dave said, "Wow. Chloe's really rolling all over the place now, isn't she?" Seriously? I swear I just read this on someone else's blog. Mom works every day with child but child never performs. Mom leaves the room for one moment and child puts on a three ring circus act for Dad. Hahaha! I would be annoyed except I'm sooooo excited that she's doing it! And she's pretty excited about it, too. She kept doing it over and over and over! Unfortunately, I can't seem to load a video onto Blogger....not sure why. But if you want to see the video I think you can see it from this link. http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=412120715840&saved If not, add me as a Facebook friend. I'm happy to add blog friends :-) (Cynthia Hendrickson)

We just saw the opthamologist yesterday and he was happy to see Chloe tracking with her left eye. She definitely has vision in that left eye. It's apparent, though, that she favoring her right eye. We're still putting a patch over her right eye four hours a day and hoping for the best. I told Dave I should do a post demonstrating my ingenuity in patching - my patching tutorial for those who may need it. The doctor was pretty excited that Chloe keeps her patch on. We had a really hard time getting it to stay the first few weeks but I played with the patch and started strategically cutting slits in them to make them stay on better. Ever since then the patch stays on for a 5-hour stretch (4 awake hours) easy peasy lemon squeazy! The doctor also noticed her left eye crossing in a bit. She might need surgery to correct those muscles and straighten the eye but it sounded cosmetic to me. For some reason, I didn't want to get into that too much just yet. All I can do right now is patch consistently so I'm going to do that. They'll do a thorough exam of her eye under anesthesia some time after she turns one. (Planning ahead isn't my number one virtue - just ask my hubby and he'll tell you about how I say "bye" about 5 times every time I go somewhere!) Oh, and her contact is staying in ok. We've found it on the couch twice this week - always contact drama. But I'm sure you're bored of hearing those stories over and over *wink*

Time for bed. I need to reserve some energy for my jog tomorrow morning followed by baby chasing!

My GIANT Baby

If you are my Facebook friend you may have seen my status update mentioning the fact that one of my friends called Chloe, "GIANT!" Never in a million years would I have imagined a situation where I would consider someone calling my daughter a "GIANT" to be a compliment but here I am. She said it. I was completely happy to hear it. People have been telling me a lot lately how big Chloe is and, to tell the truth, I just figured they were being nice. Come to think of it, people don't even flinch when I tell them she's 10 months old. Chloe's still tiny in my eyes. But I mentioned this to Dave and we got talking. Maybe she's getting a lot bigger and we just aren't noticing it because we see and hold her every single day....it's a thought. She hasn't been weighed in about a month so we don't have that constant weight report that we used to.


Chloe's little bathtub has a hammock attachment for newborns that I've been using. The morning after our conversation I decided to take the hammock out. One side of the tub has a reclined seat for babies who aren't sitting yet and the other side has a straight seat for sitters. I put her in the reclined seat and...Holy Moley! She's TOTALLY big enough for this! I can't believe I still had her in the hammock! Then Dave set her in the exersaucer and whatdoyaknow - she fit - and loved it!


So yesterday I weighed myself and then myself+Chloe on the bathroom scale. According to that, she's 13.2 pounds. Yes! I decided to take all the 0-3 month clothes out of circulation. They all say "up to 12 pounds" after all. I put them in the plastic storage bin and noticed Chloe's preemie stuff that was already in there. I got an idea - a little experiment. Here's the outcome. These pictures will blow your mind. Dave's eyeballs popped out of his head Jim Carey style when he saw the one of Solana carrying her.


Here Chloe is modeling her round belly next to one of the preemie outfits she wore her first month at home. (Hmmm)


I tried to put it on her... (Wow)


I tried to close the snap... (Hahahaha)



Then Solana asked if she could hold Chloe. (YOWZA!) Doesn't Chloe look humongous?!? I promise this picture is not digitally enhanced.


After our second visit to the pulmonologist I noticed the doctor typed "Good Job Mom!" in the post visit instruction notes. And I must admit that, although her weight gain isn't actually a result of my effort, I liked it :-) But Chloe's weight gain the month after that visit was less impressive (that was the month she had her cataract surgery). I have tracked every single mL Chloe has eaten since January in a little log book and take note if she takes less in a day than I expect. Perhaps I don't need to obsess so much. I believe she's picked up the pace again. There just may be a gold star in my future, after all...

Watermelon Peer Pressure

Dave bought a watermelon and cut it up. We've offered it to Solana a few times before and, being a kid who grew up chowing down on watermelon, it baffles me that she's not crazy about it. After a long afternoon of playing outside in the heat Solana decided she wanted a snack. I offered up some watermelon and this is what happened:

Me: Why don't you have some watermelon? (Taking a bite) Mmmm. It's sweet and delicious!
Solana: No thank you.
Me: Solana, all little kids loooove cold and juicy watermelon after playing outside in the hot sun.
Solana: Not this little kid!

Oops! Did I just attempt peer pressure on my daughter? My bad! Heehee! I can only hope she shows such strength against peer pressure when she gets older.

Those Eyes

I love looking into my girls' eyes...

Chloe's First Baby Food

They used to recommend solids at age 6 months. That was way back when Solana was a baby. Did you know that they've upped it to 4-6 months? Seems so young to me! Anyway, Chloe is 6 months adjusted (and almost 10 months since birth) so we've been talking about it. We notice her mouth going crazy any time we eat good smelling foods around her, especially chocolate and popcorn. I've stopped eating those near her because I feel so bad! Her little tongue sticks out and moves all around and drool just starts pouring down her chin. That's probably not a sign at all that she's ready for food but it sure got us thinking about it! One of my concerns was the fact that she's not sitting up, yet. But after chatting with my neighbor (who has an 8 month-old) I decided to borrow their baby recliner because it sits up a little more than Chloe's Baby Papasan. Then came the question about what to feed her. I decided on...get this...Prunes. A bit unconventional for a first food. I know. But Chloe tends to get stopped up - probably because of her super caloric breast milk/Neosure concoction so I've been giving her prune juice pretty much since we brought her home. Then I started using prune baby food to counteract the banana that I used in her frozen milk. I know that she can digest it and there's no allergy issue. Anyway, here's a little photo story board of her first eating experience:

"I'm in a new chair and in a different spot...patiently waiting to see what's going to happen."

"Hmmm. What's this?"

Tried and true method for exploring new things. "I'll just lick it to find out."

"I think I like it but I need to think about it a bit more. Maybe if I move my tongue all around that will tell me something."

Sissy's turn! (Solana was about to crawl out of her skin with impatience. She couldn't wait to feed her baby sister!)

"Yes, I oficially like this. Now please gimme dat!"

"Aaaahhhmmm gettin' the hang of this..."

I think we can call Chloe's first baby food "a success!"

A. Big. Success.

NNow I don't want to feed her prunes every day so I need to switch to something less...um...effective. Rice cereal stopped up Solana so I'm nervous about that. Oatmeal, maybe? Suggestions?

Phonics, Vision Results, New Crib

Things are pretty calm in the Hendrickson household these days. Solana's been out of school for a week. I'm enjoying the 80 minutes of driving per day that I don't have to spend dropping her off/picking her up. We've started Hooked On Phonics, per the suggestion of the librarian, and she loves her new powers of reading. We're moving very slowly so as not to overwhelm or stress her out - I want it to stay fun. So far she's reading all kinds of words with 'a' in the middle: cat, hat sad, pat, had, bad, dad, man, pan, etc. We move to 'i' words today. Solana has always been crazy about books. We read to her every day and she memorizes long passages out of books for fun. We go to the library and she wanders through the aisles picking out books that look interesting to her - I love it that she feels so comfortable at the library. She's never shown the slightest interest in learning to read, though, until we got this pack from the library. Is it premature to say, "Hooked on Phonics worked for Us...?" (I'm just dying to say that!)

Chloe saw the opthamologist last week and they tested her vision. I expected some kind of machine that looked into her eye and gave a measurement but instead they did a somewhat more subjective test. The technician held up large cards in front of Chloe. Each card had a picture of a square. The square was striped. The first one had very thick stripes - maybe four stripes made up the entire square. And on each card the stripes got progressively thinner so that the last square had such small stripes it almost looked like a gray square instead of a black and white striped square. The technician held up the cards one at a time to see if they caught Chloe's attention. If it obviously caught her eye she would move on to the next card. Once Chloe stopped looking she decided that Chloe couldn't see it and used that as her "measurement" for Chloe's vision. So, as you can imagine - plenty of room for inconsistant results.

Here's what they determined:

Right eye: 20/260 (vision of a 5 month-old)

Left eye: 20/470 (vision of a 3 month-old)

Seeing her vision in number form was a bit startling to me. I've also started noticing that her eyes aren't moving exactly together and that makes me a tad bit nervous. I know there's some vanity speaking there but I'm not sure what that says about her vision. I'd kind of sidestepped myself over toward the idea of imperfect but correctable vision for Chloe. Nobody's told me otherwise so it's easy for me to hope for (and eventually expect) the best possible outcome. My optimism is somewhat blinding sometimes. We're still patching her right eye for four hours a day. The hope is that we're forcing her left eye to work and also forcing her brain to develop that eye. Fingers crossed that it's working.

She also saw that physical therapist yesterday. I've been working with Chloe on sitting. She doesn't care for it and throws herself back after just a few seconds. I was kind of worried about what they physical therapist would say because I didn't think she'd made any progress since our last visit. I guess she's been making tiny improvements every day that I hadn't noticed, though, because the PT said that Chloe's definitely tolerating it better than she did on her last visit. We'll just keep working. I'll get this child off the back of her head eventually!

Speaking of the back of her head... I know I said I'd stop obsessing. I didn't. I've actually started sleeping Chloe on her belly (cringe). I know! I know! I spent 5 months visiting the NICU and their "back to sleep" campaign is serious. But here's my justification: 1. Chloe's old enough to lift her head and roll over. 2. Chloe sleeps with a pulse-ox monitor. If she ever managed to smash her face into her (firm) mattress and miss any breaths then her blood-oxygen level would drop below 90 and her pulse-ox machine would yell at me. Her crib is next to my side of the bed, as is the monitor, so I would immediately wake and fix her. Plus, she still sleeps with oxygen. I expect her to be sitting by the time she's off her nighttime oxygen and pulse-ox so back sleeping won't be an issue. All right. If you're freaking out about this I'm open to comments. And as passionate as they are about Back to Sleep at the hospital I expect to hear at least one impassioned comment so let me have it.

And last but not least, Chloe got a new bed! We converted Solana's big-girl bed back to a crib when Chloe came home (Solana got a cool bunk bed in exchange) and put the crib in Chloe's room. I'm not exactly sure why we did that, though, because Chloe's been sleeping in the pack n play bassinet ever since we brought her home. We finally decided that she's getting too big (12 lbs) for the quality of mattress in the bassinet. The problem was that we're not ready to move her out of our room. So we bought her a super cool mini-crib! I'd never head of mini cribs but Dave did a bunch of research on cribs when we were expecting twins. The mini cribs were our solution since they don't take up as much room as full-sized cribs. We never bought them but he remembered the mini crib when we were trying to decide what to do about Chloe's sleeping situation. The mini is perfect because it takes up the same amount of space (even less, actually) as the pack n play in our bedroom and she can stay next to the bed! Solana left our bedroom at 6 weeks. Needless to say, Chloe will be there well into her first year :-P

Dave and I celebrated our 6th anniversary with a dinner out and comedy club. Angela babysat for us and, once Dave dragged me out the door, we had a really nice time!

Random Pictures

Solana loves our Schwan's guy (probably because he delivers ice cream). Here she is waiting to assist.

Chloe AND Solana eagerly await Daddy's return from work every day.

Slip N slide with Angela's girls, Ari and Kylie.

My and my favorite famous friend and photographer, Angela.

Chipmunk on our deck.

Cardinal. They have a nest right outside Solana's window

Blue Jays love peanuts.

Solana's AWESOME teachers - Mrs Minham & Mrs Thimmons.

My big girl graduated Pre-K!

Our friend, Ann, with Chloe. Ann married one of Dave's oldest and best friends, Dave Fay, last year on August 23rd. My Dave was to be best man and Solana flower girl. As the wedding approached I was placed on bedrest and then we lost Leila so Dave and Solana didn't fly to Colorado for the wedding. Good thing, because my water broke and Chloe and Leila were born on their wedding day! Now Ann is pregnant and her due date is...August 23rd! Pretty crazy, huh? They live in Ohio now and Chloe will surely be best buds with their little guy, who she's sitting on in this picture :-)