although odin was born on the fourth of july and has already celebrated his “actual” birthday, his age-adjusted birthday is just as significant because it’s the day when he should have been born, after you “adjust” for the fact that he came into the world 15 weeks early.

sometimes it’s difficult even for us to remember that his body ( and mind? ) doesn’t really care that he was born so early and spent its time in the neonatal intensive care unit attempting to finish all those important things that it would have done in womb.

when you’re spending your time and energy finishing the unfinished work necessary for important processes like breathing and nursing and and digesting food and maintaining body temperature there’s not much energy left over for honing your fine motor or socialization skills, which is why his developmental specialists are much more interested in “adjusted” age rather than his “actual” age.

in a few weeks, odin will have another round of assessments and they’ll be looking for him to do many of things that his cousin evelyn is doing since she was born within a few days of his adjusted birthday. as best as we can judge, they seem to be hitting milestones at about the same time, although he typically does things a few weeks or months after her, but it’s impossible for us to know how much of that is just natural variation.

in any case, it’s amazing to see how much they’ve both grown since they were together on odin’s first “original due date” day. although they still enjoy sharing toys, i can’t help but wonder what the scene will be like next year 🙂