Top heavy.

If Max had been born on his due date, he would be 9 months old today. But never mind that - yesterday was an even more important day! Yesterday, five days after Max's first birthday, marked the day that we've spent more days at home than we did in the hospital. I think we were just as excited to clock that milestone as we were for Max's birthday. I was always sad that Max spent more time growing in the hospital than he spent growing inside of me - but now he's been home even longer than that, and it's an awesome feeling to have trumped the NICU time.

We had a whole bunch of appointments on Monday to ring in Max's new year. We started the morning with an audiology appointment, where we learned that Max really does not like things in his ears. I don't think I can state that strongly enough. Max lost interest in the televisions, lights, and puppets paired with sounds before the audiologist  could get an accurate picture of Max's hearing so she had to use the computer and ear piece to get a manual reading on his hearing. It was not well received. Max needed to stay relatively still and quiet during this process. We managed to calm him enough with bubbles to get a reading on one ear, but he protested so much that we have to return for a second appointment to get a reading on the other ear. Max is not a fussy kid, but he was having none of it. He screamed and sobbed the minute the little ear piece went in. We have no concerns about his hearing, but the audiologist can't give her official 'sign off' until she gets the reading. Ah well.

Next we met with the occupational therapist. We discussed some of our concerns (or observations, really) about Max's gross motor skills. While he is making progress toward milestones like sitting and crawling, we're hoping to help him catch up a little bit. To aid in these goals we're going to have our first visit with the physical therapist to see if there are some things we can do at home to help Max practice these skills (other than the obvious). Max is doing great with his fine motor skills - things like clapping, feeding himself with a spoon, banging objects together, taking objects out of containers, etc.

Thankfully they saved the vaccinations for last, as Max was in no mood for funny business by the time we made it to the end of our morning. Max was weighed and measured and is now 14lbs 9oz and 25.5 inches. His head circumference has made it onto the bottom of the 12 month charts, while the rest of him is still on the bottom of the 6 month charts - no wonder he's having trouble sitting, the poor kid is terribly top heavy!  Max was given a once over, given a poke in the arm and one in the leg, and we were on our way.

Because our doctor appointments were at the same hospital where Max spent the first several months of his life, we decided to take a swing upstairs to drop off some photos and visit the NICU staff. We were thrilled that the receptionist working the door had to strain her memory to remember us. I've never been so happy to have been forgotten. Some nurses and doctors came out and ohhed and ahhed at how big Max had gotten and chatted for a few minutes before we had both had our fill of being there. We both walked out with a bit of an odd feeling in the pit of our stomachs. It was nice to visit the people who took such good care of Max, but just being there stirred up so many feelings that we didn't care to revisit. Spending day in and day out in a place you have such a love/hate relationship with will do that I guess. Either way, it was nice to leave some photos for the 'NICU Stars' wall.

We're working on getting some photos together from Max's birthday celebration, so stay tuned for that!