Molly October Update

Molly's growing like crazy. Her dexterity and cries are the most significant changes lately. She's developed this high-pitched, um, squeal that mimics fingernails running down a chalkboard perfectly. Yeah, annoying, I know. But it's cute in a human-being-learning-to-communicate kinda way. She amuses herself for long stretches by squealing like this while mother and I try to figure out if she's in pain or happy. Hard to tell sometimes.

She's transferring from hand-to-hand now, which is a big development stage, and anything within reach goes right into the mouth. From our perspective, everything gets evaluated in a binary fashion now: will it fit in the mouth or not? I learned a hard lesson letting her chew on an old birthday card. Before I knew it, she had a corner torn off, tried to swallow it, and couldn't breathe. A quick series of slaps to the back and a finger sweep removed the paper but left me with nightmares for days. I never want to experience that again.

The Early Childhood Initiative evaluator came by to gauge Molly's progress as a premie. All her indicators matched her physical age to her developmental age. In other words, for all intents and purposes, Molly is in step with kids her age, with no deficiencies in development. Yeah, Molly!

New pics