10 & 11 Months {Davis}

So often I am overwhelmed with gratitude. I am so thankful for every second, minute, hour, and day with Davis. Things are stressful at times (a lot of times), and it's hard. So hard that sometimes I think it's unbearable. But then I look at Davis, see him smile and know with all of my heart, we would go through everything again and again, just to have these moments. There were days I didn't think I'd be writing about his milestones and accomplishments every month, yet here I am. God has given us this time. Time we do not take for granted. This second chance of life is the best, most important gift other than the gift of salvation. We want to use it wisely and give God all the glory and praise for what he's done for our family.

Davis is making huge strides! We love watching him grow and learn. He's wearing 9 month clothes and weighs 18.5 pounds. That puts him in about the 20th percentile for weight. Right now he's holding his own, but we would like to see him pack on some more lbs. Feeding is going great! Davis is still taking the majority of his food by mouth. He maybe gets 1 to 2 tube feeds a day to supplement what he doesn't take during the day. He's taking more solid foods by mouth. Before he would hold the food in his mouth before swallowing. Now his swallowing is more automatic. He continues to see a speech therapist once a week to work on feeding.

Davis is about 3 months behind developmentally, which is a miracle in itself. After everything he has been through, to only be 3 months behind is terrific. I give all the credit to our Lord who has given Davis the strength and ability, and also, to our fabulous physical and occupational therapists at Children's. They worked with him everyday, and showed Tucker and I things we could be doing to help Davis reach his developmental goals. Davis also has a wonderful physical therapist who comes once a month to work with him and shows me things I can do to help him continue to make progress. He's doing so well that at our last visit, she said it was time to rewrite goals for Davis, because he has already reached the previous goals.

Davis can sit up by himself without any aide or support. He can roll from his back to his stomach and from stomach to back. He can go from a sitting position to a laying position and vice versa unaided. He is very determined and motivated to reach toys and will get himself into a crawling position to get to them. He's doing lots of scooting and wiggling around, so we don't think it will be too much longer before he begins crawling. We have also been working with Davis on putting weight on his legs. He has showed some interest in pulling up, so we are working hard to encourage that.

Davis has gone from 12 medications to just 5!!! He is completely off all of his stomach meds, and he hasn't shown any signs of reflux at all. They took him off his antibiotic and antiviral medication, because it was making his neutrophil (help fight infection) count go down. Right now, he's on aspirin, his transplant meds, steriod, and  antifungal. It's amazing the progress he has made in such a short amount of time!

During these two months, Davis went to the Montgomery Zoo with his brother and Aunt Kate, he took his first boat ride, and got his first haircut. I was trying really hard to wait till a year old to cut his hair, but his bangs were so long they would get in his eyes. You could just tell it bothered him. I wasn't ready to take him to get a "real" haircut, so I just trimmed it some around the edges.

 Wild hair, don't care!

(Except I kind of cared.)

 Trying to get a picture this month was a struggle!

I get props just for just getting it done, and I was on time,

I might add!

Much better!

This was obviously post trim.

I forgot to mention that Davis now has 4 teeth, and they are absolutely precious! Hopefully, he will be using them to chomp and munch on all kinds of delicious foods! It's hard to believe that he will be a year old next week! When we were at the hospital time seemed to drag on, but since we've been home, it's seemed to fly by. We are so thrilled to be planning a ONE YEAR celebration with this sweet boy!

Amanda