Hard to believe – Finn will be a year old next month! He’s a big boy and is mostly wearing 12 to 18 months clothing. He’s getting more and more hair every day too, but it is still soft and silky and a beautiful dark blonde color. He’s got seven teeth now and it seems he’s always working on more. Overall, he is looking more ‘grown up’ each day. (A couple of new pictures have been added to the Gallery under the Fall 2007 folder).
Finn continues to work on his sitting. Sometimes he can sit entirely unassisted for up to 30 minutes without falling over. His posture is not the greatest and he does not straighten his back, but he is sitting nonetheless. This is an improvement from even a few weeks ago when we still regularly had pillows spaced around him on the floor to catch his falls – but now we don’t use them at all. (We only leave him sitting ‘alone’ like this on the carpet however).
The low muscle tone or hypotonia is still present unfortunately, especially through his trunk. This makes sitting and being in a crawling or standing position very difficult, but the good news is that he really seems to be gaining strength in his arms. Finn is able to hold on to, lift, and pull around his favorite toys, some of which are rather heavy and large. He still struggles with his coordination a bit when reaching out to grab something and he still has diminished fine motor skills as this point. For example, he has not yet developed the ability to use his ‘pincher grasp’ (bringing his finger and thumb together) effectively to retrieve small objects.
One of our larger concerns as of late is that he has been demonstrating some ‘strange posturing’ or ‘contorting’ of different parts of his body. Our pediatrician does not think he is having seizures, nor does he really think what Finn is exhibiting is involuntary muscle spasms, but he isn’t totally sure. What it looks like to us is that Finn is trying to get his body to do something (i.e. move towards an interesting object) but somewhere along the way the correct signals aren’t being sent from his brain to his body. We have an appointment to meet with a neurosurgeon at our children’s hospital at the end of the month. But we know he probably won’t be able to give us any really concrete information either. So much of Finn’s long term (and even short term) prognosis, simply involves ‘waiting-and-seeing.’
On the topic of eating, Finn does seem to be doing better with his ability to swallow food. All of his food is still pureed, but within the last week and a half we have been able to add some more texture and thickness to it as well. He only eats about 2 times a day but this has been encouraging (Of course he still nurses a lot the rest of the time!). He is still working on learning to swallow water from a sippy cup which currently results in ‘Niagara Falls motor boating’. While this isn’t getting water into his body, it makes Finn hysterical with laughter.
In terms of his language, his new favorite sound is ‘ra ra ra.’ He’ll often throw in a ‘ma’ or ‘ba’ too. He does not yet repeat sounds spoken to him or identify them with people or objects. We look forward to that day and Daddy is waiting patiently for his name!
We continue to be thankful everyday that Finn made it through his surgery, and we are just thankful that he is a part of our lives because we love him so very much! But, honestly, it has been difficult at times too over the last month since we had hoped that at this point there would be a little more progress made in terms of his development. It is hard to recognize that he still has such a difficult time even ‘balancing’ his body and is still not really able to sit up at eleven months of age. (We remember how his sister was already walking by this age!) Sometimes we are worried and fearful, but overall we try to remain optimistic and hopeful that Finn can still overcome his challenges. Please continue to pray for him and keep him in your thoughts.
