18 months

Tomorrow Kyren will turn 18 months (14 months developmentally).
Yesterday he had his appt. with Dr. Bernbaum, his devpmtl. specialist from CHOP.
In her words, she was "blown away" at how well he's doing overall. She and her partner doc. kept commenting on how sweet his personality is, and how mild-mannered his disposition. he let them examine him up and down, and never whimpered, cried, or pulled away. I told them he was used to it by now. They said, "oh no. There are plenty of babies who are used to this kind of poking and prodding but don't have as calm a reaction as this one!"
The great news is he no longer needs PT, he is on the growth chart for his adjusted age for height, weight, and head circumference, and he is not technically delayed in any areas. . . except speech. We spent the majority of the time talking about his Upper Respiratory issues and his lack of vocal/verbal expression. At first they were gung-ho on it (his hoarseness, lack of vocalization) being related to reflux-- but once they saw him drink his sippy cup and cough his nasty cough, they quickly changed their tune. They believe he's been aspirating all this time-- causing his lungs and airway to be reactive and rubbed raw.
Soooo... he is now scheduled for a hearing test (just in case there are any related speech issues), a Swallow Study (ugh!), and a speech/language evaluation at CHOP. He's (thankfully!!) off the nebulizer, and on a precautionary inhaler (of flovent) 2x a day. . . which is like a mild steroid to beef up those lungs. to add to it all, the poor little guy had a mild ear infection, so add to all that-- amoxicillan 3x a day for 10 days.
but ya know what? compared to what we COULD be going through-- we'll take it!! we'll take it all!!
We've already seen an improvement by putting milk in his sippy cup today. he has not choked or coughed at ALL. unbelievable. apparently water (which is all he ever drinks from the cup) is a lot thinner and 'harder' to swallow than milk. who knew?! wish WE had!! all this time :(.
Dr. B is hopefull that he will grow out of this phase as his lungs mature (as most preemies' lungs do). And thus... so are we. :)
Happy 18 months, to our happy little soldier!