Graduated!

Happy Birthday to our little boy who is not so little anymore. He is now 37 inches and just over 30 lbs, which puts him in the 25th percentile for three-year-old boys. Not too bad for a two pounder!

Despite the rain, we had a great birthday party!
Yes, he had a pink cake. What can we say - he loves strawberries!

Thanks to Aunt Jen, Pop-pop, and Gamma Jan for the bounce house!!

Three generations of Raymonds in the bounce house!

Chloe still gets a little "love"! :)

Birthday cousins!

Turning three seems like a big step - clearly out of babydom and moving out of toddlerhood. I guess we have a "preschooler" now. It also means that Jake has aged out of Early Intervention services. For the past year, the only service he was receiving was speech therapy. And now he's out of speech therapy too. Our SLP told us she couldn't continue to charge us in good conscience. She did give us some warning signs to look for as he gets a little older. Apparently many kids do not have "L"s until they are 4-5, and Jake might not have "blended Rs" (and other consonants) until he's 5-6. Which means you can look forward to a lot of "geen" (green), "keen" (clean), and other fun words when you talk with Jake! :)

The other HUGE graduation we celebrated this Spring was graduating from the Duke NICU follow-up clinic. Jake went through a full Bayley's assessment, where he did at or above age level for everything except gross motor. Even that was within the normal range, so they told us not to come back! We are not taking it personally!! We are so proud of Jake for overcoming so much. He is definitely changing the bell curve for 27-week wimpy white boys (the affectionate term they are given in NICUs the world over).

This Spring we also enjoyed a great (if quick) visit from my old (long-time??) friend Jenny. She brought Jake one of his favorite gifts - his own angry bird! She needs to move closer!



Last, but certainly not least, a huge THANK YOU to everyone for your support for March for Babies. We exceeded our $5,000 goal and had a great walk!!

Have you ever looked fear in the face and said I just don't care?

Because that's what Jeff and I are doing. The two high-risk OBs I've met with have given us very good odds on having a full term 40-week baby, so we are cautiously excited. I'm at 14 weeks this week, and everything looks great so far! Ultrasounds every 4 weeks, alternating with doctor visits every 4 weeks - so I'm in the office every 2 weeks. My new OBs are not going to let anything slip by!

We're due November 2. Jeff's hoping for 11/11/11 or 11/1/11. I'll take anything after October 12 (37 weeks).

The Practice Easter Run

I didn't spend a whole lot of time researching this but it looks like as of June or so of 2009 Kristin pretty much took over running the blog so it's been quite a leave of absence for the dad. I suppose this is a post in the right direction.

Last Saturday our neighborhood put together a kids Easter Egg hunt in nearby Fred Fletcher Park. Kristin & Jake put together some eggs with & she went to help hide them while Jake & I cruised over & joined the parade of wagons (man, apparently everyone has them) walking the 3 block distance to the park.



With bunny ears in tow (we actually had 2 varieties), the little guy was ready to find some eggs. I don't think he really knew why but he was excited about it. In the end though, we negotiated to a single basket.



Ready to get going (& wearing ear set #2). We had to wait a bit for all the kids to make it.



Jake did very well & quickly filled up the basket with ~ 20 eggs.



And once the eggs were collected, it was time to shove the free candy directly into the cheeks. We tried to contain the intake, though with cookies & cupcakes on hand as well it was quite a sugar high.



All in all though a great time. The best part about it is we get to do it again this Saturday in our buddy Lanier's Easter Egg hunt. The average age of the participant will likely be going up this weekend but we think Jake will be more than up to the challenge.

March for Babies 2011!!

We, once again, have been delinquent bloggers. I'm posting a quick one tonight to help get the word out for our March for Babies walk - which is just over 2 weeks away. I set a super ambitious goal this year of $5,000 - nearly $2,000 over what we raised last year, and it's looking like we aren't going to come anywhere close. So, please, just $10, or even $5 will bring us closer to that goal. Trust me, $5 is better than $0!! :) Just click on the badge to the right.

For the Raleigh-based folks, stay tuned for information on a special Pronto Pasta fundraising night! 15% of profits will go to Team Cubby - as long as you tell them that's who you're there for at the cash register!

Thanks everyone!!

Jake flips for babies (note the self clapping at the end)

Growing and Growing; Thanksgiving and Christmas!

Jake does his best Risky Business...
(completely unstaged and unprompted)

Jake had his 2.5 year old well-child visit last week. Granted, he's actually 31 months, but...

He was a whopping 29.5 pounds (35th percentile) and 37 inches (65th percentile)! His head is still 97th percentile, but it's holding steady. We aren't so sure about all the nurse's measurements, but he's in the ballpark. We have pretty much come close to hitting 50th percentile! Whoot!

His pediatrician thinks he looks great. She was particularly pleased with his speech. Based on what she saw (and the ASQ - Ages and Stage Questionnaire) she said she would not have said he was a candidate for speech therapy. Of course she told us to keep with it because she only saw a snapshot, but that pretty much confirms what our speech language pathologist (SLP) has been saying for the past month or so. Our SLP thinks that Jake will drop down to speech once per week soon and probably be out of speech by age 3. Great news but scary somehow. So, so much of his progress is due to his SLP and what she has taught us. What will we do without her? I guess the answer is, we won't need her.

Here are some photos from Thanksgiving and Christmas. We had a great time at Kimberley and Michael's for Thanksgiving. It was so much fun to have all five cousins together! Christmas in Raleigh was wonderful too, complete with snow!

Four cousins!

Aunt Kristin and Hannah

Lily in the Bounce House. Who has a bounce house IN their house?
My sister! It's awesome (and slightly crazy)!

Uncle Jeff and Caleb

We went to a great Children's Museum...

Jake's first visit to Santa

Gamma B helps Lily with her gingerbread house
(Jake made one too)

Good times with Lily!

Good times with Pop-pop!

Good times with Daddy!Good times with Gammy Jan!
Cuddle time with Papaw!

Christmas Morning...
Someone was pretty excited!
Another year, another bear sweater (thanks Gammy Jan!)

Jake and Bailey wish you another laid back Holiday!

Birthdays and Half-birthdays!

In the past week, Jeff turned 35 - now eligible for the Presidency - and Jake turned 2.5 - still eligible for extreme cuteness. Pop-pop and Gammy Jan came to celebrate, along with celebrating Dale's birthday two weeks ago. For Jeff's birthday, I took the plunge and bought him a digital SLR. So now we will have great photos - tens of thousands of them if you know Jeff... Here are a few from the park on Sunday.

In the past two weeks, Jake has started singing songs, which is very exciting for us. This has been one of his speech therapy goals since we started speech back in March. His singing is still pretty unintelligible, but we've had some other great musical milestones - like singing the last note of a song (on key) and tapping in rhythm. The whole family has been going to Music Together classes on Saturday mornings, and we've really enjoyed them. I'd really recommend them for anyone with toddlers looking for a music class.

Here's Jake doing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and being generally adorable. This video also demonstrates some of his apraxia, although I would note that his singing is much less intelligible than his normal speaking. (Note: if you are viewing this post via email you won't be able to watch the video. You'll have to go to the blog webpage).

Tomorrow we head out for Pennsylvania for a big family get-together for Thanksgiving. We're all really excited. Since I never got caught up with the Summer posts, here's a video of Mariah and Jake from August. As you can see, we are in for fun times...

What do you mean that's a bear?!?!

November 17: Prematurity Awareness Day

Today we met with Wake County Public Schools for our "transition meeting" - getting ready to transition Jake out of Early Intervention (birth to 3 (on the dot!)) and into special education services. Oh, how I hoped we would never have this meeting. That he would be all "caught up" and we would leave this whole "preemie thing" behind us. But it seems the "preemie thing" is not going to go away. It's part of who Jake is (part of why he is) and part of us. From the March of Dimes events we go to, to the searching for answers for his apraxia, to my realizations that I have far more patience than I ever did before and a far greater tolerance for accepting help from others, this "preemie thing" is a part of us.

Look at the picture above, really look. That's Jake just a few minutes old - that's his hand around my index finger. That's his red skin - already an indication that he will suffer severe jaundice and spend several days under the bilirubin lights. That's an intubation tube down his throat performed in a standard maternity room by an amazing respiratory therapist who insisted that I get to touch my baby before they rushed him down to the NICU. He's one of my heroes, as are so many of the amazing medical professionals at Duke who saved my son. This year, I'm saying thank you to all of them. And just like last year, I'm so very, very grateful.