7 months old

Edison turned 7 months old last Friday.  When he was last at the doctor over Christmas, he weighed 20 pounds 4 ounces and was 28.5 inches long.  He is huge and is wearing 12-month clothes already. 

Developmentally, he is fully sitting unassisted.  It's pretty nice to be able to sit him on a blanket with a bunch of toys and he can entertain himself for awhile.  He is still giving lots of hugs and kisses.  I even have a small hickey on my chin right now from where he got a little too enthusiastic with a kiss.


The best part of this month, by far, is that he finally sleeping really well at night.  Until two weeks ago we were up every 2 or 3 hours all night long.  Through trial and error, we figured out the perfect combination for obtaining a good night's sleep: tickles followed by a lotion massage, an overnight diaper, warm pajamas, 2 teething tablets, a story, a bottle instead of nursing, and sleeping on his tummy with a fuzzy blanket both under him and on top of him, a heater in the corner set to 68 degrees, a humidifier running next to the crib, and a white noise machine attached to the crib.  Don't knock it.  It works.  I feel like a normal functioning human again.  


We had Edison's first ophthalmologist appointment last week.  As we suspected, he has ptosis affecting his left eye  - basically the muscle to lift the eyelid didn't develop all the way in the womb.  In good news, it hasn't impacted his vision yet.  The doctor was encouraged that he still tries to use his left eye by holding his chin extra high and by lifting his eyebrows.  The worst thing that could happen is if he gave up using it.  We are now doing patch therapy for an hour a day; we put a band-aid patch over his right eye to make sure he continues to use his left eye.  We will likely have to continue doing this until he is six years old.  We are also meeting with a surgeon when we go back in March.  Surgery will involve implanting a silicone lift that will allow him to use his forehead muscles to lift his eyelid.  He likely won't have surgery until he his three or four years old, giving his face some more time to grow.  Every time I get frustrated with the long road ahead of us, I remind myself that things could have been worse and at least this is something we can fix.  Besides, it's hard to get too upset when you get to wake up to this every day.  

Here's a cute video of Edison with his daddy this month. There's even a quick baby kiss in there.