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Jacob was born on June 21, 2002 via emergency C-section at 3:16 PM. This blog follows him through the NICU and the graduate nursery to his home—and we'll see where it goes from there!

Monday, March 24, 2003
The big meltdown continues here—after our big snowstorm, the weather got into the 50s for a couple of days, so it was a pretty slushy, soggy mess out there. We had a bit of snow and rain today, which didn't help matters much.

Jacob had his nine-month birthday on March 21st! Seems very hard to believe. He celebrated with a bowl of oatmeal. Not the way I'd like to spend my birthday, but give me another 40 years and I'm sure I'll be happy to be able to eat at all. He's doing just great, he likes his oatmeal as much as he does his rice cereal. His newest things are shaking his head side-to-side as if he's disagreeing vehemently with you, even though he's smiling the whole time. He also throws his hand up and down over and over when he's eating, like he's trying to get a truck driver to blow his horn or something. He's been very interested in the cats and Simba, reaching out to touch them and staring at them when they walk by. They've been very good with him, they tolerate him very well and don't even look askance at him. He's been a drooling machine, and has really been working on his teething rings, but we haven't seen a tooth yet.

We've posted some new pictures, go to page 53.
posted by Geoff Shrieves at 5:36 PM

Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Well, we've made it through the Blizzard of 2003 unscathed. It started snowing very early Tuesday morning, and continued through the night. By the time it was all over, we got (officially) 16 inches. Of course, some of the drifts were four feet or more. The snow was literally coming down horizontally most of the time, as we had a strong north wind. We only had a sprinkling compared to many other communities, some of them pretty close to us. Louisville, where we used to live, got 34 inches. And that's only about 15 minutes from here. It was a very wet, heavy snow, which started melting today. Our parking lot is a flooded, slushy mess.

Anyway, we knew it was coming, so we went to the store Monday evening and stocked up on groceries—popcorn, snacks, milk, cookies; you know, the essentials. Our power went out for a couple of hours Tuesday morning, and another hour or so this morning, but we were spared the long power outages some folks in Denver suffered through. Good thing, as we had a couple of episodes of The Sopranos first season on DVD that we wanted to watch last night.

Walking Simba the Dog has been an adventure. She had to wade through some pretty massive snow drifts, dragging me along behind her unwillingly, just to do her business. I'm not sure she likes it much. The snow-shovelling crew finally cleared all our sidewalks by this evening, so last time I walked Simba, there was a thin sheet of ice. I think the snow/slush was safer, to tell the truth.

Jacob had a visit with the pediatric hematologist in Denver on Monday so they could draw some blood and test for the clotting abnormality Debbie has prior to his surgery in April. He was a little trooper; he barely cried at all when they stuck the needle in his arm, and didn't seem to feel anything during most of the blood draw. They took quite a bit from the little guy, and we should have the results in a few weeks.

We have been taking a few pictures, but don't have enough for a full page yet, so keep checking back!
posted by Geoff Shrieves at 10:00 PM

Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Jacob's had another couple of busy days. Yesterday, his PT nurse came by to visit and work with him and she continues to be pleased with his progress. Right now, she's working on getting good trunk rotation from him. Apparently, that's somewhat of a problem with many preemies, and slows down their ability to learn to crawl. I think he's going to be crawling pretty soon, though, he almost has the movements down! He's going to be hard to handle when he gets mobile. . .

He just had his monthly Synagis shot, only one more! And with the injection comes a new weigh-in—as of today, Jacob is 13lbs, 4oz! So, he continues to grow. He's been eating rice cereal, and we just started him on oatmeal cereal, and he loves it, so we hope he'll pack on the pounds even quicker with some solid food.
posted by Geoff Shrieves at 10:42 AM

Saturday, March 08, 2003
OK, I've created a Real Media file for you folks to look at! Just click here. If you need the RealOne Player, go here and click on the link in the upper right hand corner that says "Free RealOne Player".
posted by Geoff Shrieves at 5:02 PM

Well, here it is another month in Jacob's journey! He turned eight months old on Feb. 21st. It's very hard to believe he's gone from this to this in what seems in some ways like a short amount of time. We have been truly blessed; he's a wonderful baby, and the joy of our lives.

We forgot to mention last time that he weighed in at 12lb, 6oz on Feb. 27. We had a major trip to the veterinarian this past Monday; all three of our cats and the only foster we have left went in for checkups, vaccinations, and our foster Nell had some dental work done. Jacob was very good at the vet's; he smiled and laughed and flirted with everyone. He's been doing new things nearly every day. Last night he managed to get a painful death grip on my hair which required Debbie to pry his fingers off one by one while he chortled merrily. His manual dexterity is getting better every day. And he now rolls onto his stomach, gets his knees up under his body and rocks back and forth—something his physical therapy nurse has been waiting to see. Guess he'll be crawling very soon!

I'm working on getting a short video clip up, keep an eye on this spot! In the meantime, check out page 52. There are 14 new, cute pictures!


posted by Geoff Shrieves at 3:54 PM