being fast asleep by the time the halloween trick or treating begins in earnest doesn't stop our mild-mannered former (?) micropreemie, from donning his "captain broccoli" costume in an effort to spread the message that green vegetables are yummy and good for for and much better than the usual fair found on all hallow's eve.

maybe, just maybe, next year everyone will be clamoring for the coolest costume, ever. or more likely, by next year odin will be accusing us of being the meanest parents ever unless we get him a "real" constume, let him stay up late and tromp around the neighborhood filling his bag with candy.

until then, we'll always remember this halloween as the year that odin was still happy to bound about the house defending the rights of green vegetables everywhere :-)

i tried to convince him that an improvised version of "the chopping broccoli song might make a perfect theme, but he wasn't sure it had the gravitas appropriate for his Very Important Mission.

while we've tried to be sensitive to reinforcing gender stereotypes with odin particularly when it comes to playing with toys and have actively encouraged him to play with dolls, we have to admit that he seems to much more interested in playing with his toy automobiles than he ever has been with role playing with dolls.

can we blame male genetics? or maybe we're discounting the effect of his pops' interest in antique muscle cars?

whatever the cause, he sure seems to know how to get coax a smile from grandma sondra :-)

if the strictest interpretation of the definition of a toddler requires regular and repeated actual toddling then i think we're officially ready to induct odin into the wonderful world of toddlerdom!

just like when he started crawling and standing unassisted he's been in a bit of a gray area for a few weeks and it's been difficult to know for certain whether it's fair to say he's really walking or if maybe we're just being overly optimistic observers.

but in the days since his developmental assessment he's been making great strides ( ha! pun intended! ) and we're increasingly confident that any independent critics will agree he's a toddling toddler and quite close to walking full-time!

obviously we're quite impressed that's he's managed such a feat within a week of his 1 year age adjusted birthday and a full 3 months before i myself ever got the gist of the bipedal behavior.

marya ( a.k.a. emdot , see also here ) sent odin this addition to the postcard project from lovely san luis obispo, california featuring a sea lion basking in the sun on the back of an elephant seal.

of course, i'd really like to know if the sea lion pup reminds her of odin, who does the elephant seal she describes as "[big and ] very funny looking [who] makes funny noises" remind her of?

i'll try to not take it too personally :-)

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

well. for now you can only order them if you live in the u.s. but if you are and you near a target store you can pick them up there. and for those unfortunate souls in maine who would have to travel 200 miles to get your prints, you can have them mailed to you.

i think i set the preferences so that everyone should see the "order prints" icon above every picture.

see more here. and many thanks to the fine folks at flickr for allowing us to provide a very easy answer to one of our most often asked questions from friends and family :-)

update: when kris just tried to print some photos she discovered a pretty significant caveat - apparently the service is only available to flickr members who "who hold credit card accounts with a billing address in the U.S." which i think actually means you need to buy a "pro account" and i think makes this pretty much useless for most of the people that i thought might find it useful ;-(

update 2: as per the printing faq, you do need a flickr account and "have a credit card billing address in the U.S." but i guess you don't actually need to purchase a pro account. sorry for the confusion :-)

as i've often lamented, it's nearly impossible for parents to objectively judge whether this or that behavior is "normal" within the natural variation that exists with infants and what needs to be actively "managed", given the micropeemie odds for "invisible" disabilities, so it's important to periodically have a professional gauge how odin is progressing in terms of his communication, socialization and motor development.

which is why we were visited today by a very nice woman who works for our local "early intervention" program so she could help us determine how he's been developing since her last visit 274 days ago which was as positive as assessment as we could have possibly hoped for.

it's difficult to not get nervous before the assessment as you worry whether or not your child is going to "cooperate", but - for the most part - odin enjoyed showing off for her by standing unassisted and even occasionally occasionally taking a few steps, reading ( at this point she's not so concerned about the book being upside down :-) ) and generally having a grand time being the center of attention.

in addition to observing him play, the assessment required us to answer a fairly involved set of questions from the relatively standard ages & stages questionnaire to help quantify his abilities compared to his age adjusted cohorts ( on online version of the test can be found here ).

when you sum the scores you'd ideally like to see nothing "in the black", which means - generally speaking - that odin is still very much a boy like any other ( at least any other 12 month old :-) )!

buuuuuuuuut, he's showing perhaps ( and i stress perhaps ) the early signs of needing help with language and communication. while he's been saying "dada" since my birthday and even very occasionally "mamma" he doesn't often show strong signs of associating them with us specifically and while have a couple of favorite "proto-words" ( tsh-tsh for "brush teeth", "fsh" for fish, "hh" for "hi" ) he only marginally has the kind of vocabularly you might expect in a 12 month old and we'll want to focus our efforts in the next 3 to 4 months to ensure that he'll have a strong command of 10-15 words that'll be expected of him at that point. there's no need to call in the speech pathologists just yet, but the recommendation is that we should keep a closer eye on his language and communication skills in the coming months to see if any special help is needed.

of less importance but which might be interesting to those with kids in similar situation - although he's quite close to walking which is a remarkable achievement for such a wee one, it's still obvious to the professional eye that he's still suffering from the effects of "decreased central tone" which is affecting his balance and coordination. the specialist recommended that we do simple things like loading his walker with heavy objects and occasionally picking up his legs as "walks" on his hands ( think of a human wheelbarrow ) to help him gain muscle strength. but all things considered, it's a relatively minor concern since he's doing fantastically with his other "gross" and "fine" motor skills ( she was quite impressed with his pincher abilities ).

and lastly, we learned that the "early on" program sponsors a winter "play group" that's not exclusively for preemie parents but iy does have specialists on the premises who we can talk to if we have any questions or concerns over the winter. it's open to the "unwashed masses" but our specialist said that there's a relatively small number of regular attendees and they're all very conscientious about the the continuum of cautiousness during cold and flu season that might concern parents of micropreemies.

so we had a very positive assessment and we found a playgroup for odin!

while we've certainly been aware that autumn is in the air, apparently we've been in denial about how quickly we might be needing to equip odin with mittens for our late afternoon walks since his hands were surprisingly chilly and red as he sat down for dinner.

but given our lack of success with foot coverings, i think we'll be soon soliciting advice on how to coerce him into keeping his hands warm and toasty through the winter, since it probably won't be too many weeks before the first snow!

surely someone somewhere must have authored a dissertation investigating the origins of the nearly universal appeal of the game of peekaboo. i suppose it has something to do with an infant developing a newfound appreciation for the concept of object permanence.

probably not surprisingly there seems to be different opinions as to when an infant expresses an interest in playing the game themselves - with various sites claiming that an infant will enjoy hiding him or herself anywhere from six to thirteen months.

so i suppose since he's recently celebrated his 1 year age adjusted birthday then we won't get too concerned about the fact that he's only just begun to find it amusing to hide his face when we exclaim, "where's odin?!"

or maybe he's cleverly figured out the fastest way to get us to stop insisting that he play the silly game :-)

while sitting on my lap enjoying his bagel chip, odin looks up and it occurs to me, once again, that he really appears less and less like a baby and more and more like the young boy that he probably already is - a recurring epiphany which is always immediately followed by the uneasy feeling that one really doesn't fully appreciate how quickly time passes until you have children.

the time. it flies. it really, really does.

"did you style his hair like that?" i asked as i noticed that odin's notoriously bald noggin wasn't quite as spare of hair as it seemed only just yesterday.

"nope. it just wanted to do that all on its own and couldn't bring myself to brush it down." kris repied, somewhat unceremoniously, as i started to hum what i thought were long-forgotten lyrics from a musical that i probably shouldn't ever admit in public to enjoying way "back in the day":

"Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair"

i can't help but wonder if odin's newfound interest in spitting is the direct result of watching me expectorate the mucus from my chest and lungs over the past two weeks as i slowly recover from the Worst Cold, Ever.

he's been watching me very closely as he tries to figure out the purpose of my odd behavior, so i guess it should come as no great suprise that he'd eventually decide that it might be fun to see if he could spit just like his pops.

maybe next week we'll work on his distance and accuracy as i try to decide what other charming habits i can pass on.

kris, of course, is mightily amused.

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 :-)

on the eve of odin's age-adjusted birthday, we thought it might be nice to go to the pediatrician's office for a weighin to see how he's doing with his weight gains. as always, we're not particularly concerned about seeing a specific number, but it's nice to get a calibration data point every few months to see if there's been any dramatic change one way or the other.

some might remember that sixty seven days ago odin tipped the scales at just slightly over twenty pounds ( 9.1 kilos ) and we thought that we'd probably start seeing evidence of the plateauing of weight gains that normally occurs around 12 months; but obviously odin still has a few surprises left for us, as he hasn't slowed down a bit and has kept on gaining at the stupendous rate of about a half ounce a day, which keeps him well above the 50th percentile on very low birth weight growth charts!

i guess we now know why it's getting more and more difficult to carry him around the house :-)

and don't let his frown face fool you. he didn't actually get any shots today. i guess he just decided that he wasn't very happy about being put on the scales. but he'll have lots more opportunities for shots in the coming months because we learned during our visit that he's been approved for rsv shots for a second season! or rather, insurance has agreed to completely pay for monthly shots of synagis, which will likely cost over $2,000 USD per injection. it's not uncommon to have to fight a good fight to get reimbursed for a second "rsv season" - all the more so because odin has been so remarkably healthy - so we quite pleased that nobody seemed to feel particularly motivated to object to full reimbursement.

obviously we think this is great news, although he probably won't be to keen about it, as the bolus of "humanized monoclonal antibodies" is based on weight ;-(

our complimentary copies of parents magazine finally arrived so we finally got a chance to see the article without needing to run out and interact with hoi polloi at out local big box bookstore :-) overall we're fairly happy with the finished "product" and i don't regret the decision to let odin's story reach millions of people who might not have otherwise had a chance to learn about our miracle boy or spent much time thinking about the rollercoaster that any nicu parent must ride.

that said, the timing of the article going to print coincides with a particularly rough couple of weeks on a preemie email discussion group that i frequent that has flooded my inbox with a seemingly endless series of heartwrenching stories from parents who are having to make impossibly difficult decisions - life and death decisions - because their rollercoaster ride is turning out much more differently than our own.

i guess we're feeling a feeling that's similar to when we felt guiltish while in the nicu - extremely grateful for how fortunate we've been and yet quite sensitive to not wanting to seem as if we're helping contribute to the popular myths that there's always a happy ending, or that coming home is even really the end - in many ways its just the beginning - or that technology can save every baby.

but maybe i'm not making much sense :-) in anycase we're happy to see that at the end of the article they mention that november is prematurity awareness month and maybe - just maybe - a few readers of the article will take the next step and contribute to the march of dimes which funds the research that saves lives.

oh, and speaking of media matters - "hallo!" to all the blogging baby readers who haven't visited in awhile :-)

since we see him everyday, it's easy to not attend to the incremental changes that occur over time until suddenly the cumulative effects can no longer be ignored; it seems like just yesterday that odin was barely able to hold himself up in his highchair and even while we, of course, know that he's been growing all the while since then and now, there's still something immediate and tangible when we find ourselves realizing that innumerable and barely noticed events have occured to make possible this very day when - for the first time - he discovers that he's tall enough to repeatedly push his feet against the table and tip his highchair onto its back legs, which - unsurprisingly - he finds tremendously amusing as he attempts to empirically test newton's third law.

being medicated, i'm incapable of being quick enough to capture odin taking his first few tentative, unassisted steps towards full blown bipedalism!

we were so impressed that we thought he deserved a cookie ( a standard issue homemade toll house. ). don't let the serious face fool you, he really did enjoy it. really.

gah. that "cold"? it's not going away. by friday, i was operating under the assumption that i was just going to get pneumonia. but now it has abated just a bit and i think it's just a particularly nasty version of the common cold, with no real fever or chills but lots and lots and lots(!) of mucus and coughing and more mucus and coughing. and yet still more mucus and coughing.

and now with the sinus pain. ack. hopefully the megadoses of ibuprofin aren't just disguising a case of sinusitis.

of course, odin has no idea why i can't always immediately play with him when i'm emitting seemingly continuous streams of virus laden fluids.

which makes me wonder - when are you contagious during a a cold? for the entire cold? or just the first few days? and while i've been as conscientious as i can be, about washing/decontaminating myself before playtime, i can't believe he hasn't come down with it. maybe he's already successfully fought off the infectious invaders?

oh, and if anyone has tried-and-true cures for the common cold, i'd be mighty obliged if you shared it.

please. help. me.

longtime readers may remember that october 8th is a very special day for us since it was the day that odin odin came home from the nicu! i know i've said it before, but you get to hear me say it again - it's literally almost impossible to imagine that a whole year has passed and we certainly could not have let ourselves believe what a happy , healthy boy he's become.

and since it's his homecoming anniversary day that can only mean that his cousin evelyn will be having her first birthday in a few days, which is why we thought it might be nice to have him practice his john hancock on her birthday card. of course, on this particular day, mister serioso preferred to intently study the card while holding the crayons, looking at us as if we were crazy for trying to get him to deface the card.

so no, smarty pants, he's not sending himself a card for his age adjusted birthday, but if you dropped one in the mail ( click here for the current address ) soon, i'm sure you could probably get one to him on time :-)

since we're rapidly entering cold and flu season and considering the fact that i already have a heinous head cold, you might forgive me wondering aloud about the continuum of cautiousness that exists regarding the measures that one might deem reasonable or not to prevent illnesses in former micropreemies ( and since i'm medicated while i'm writing this, you might also forgive me for not being entirely sure if that previous sentence actually makes any sense :-) ).

of course, any parent will take whatever reasonable measures to prevent their child from getting sick during cold and flu season, but parents of children born less at less than 28 weeks with birthweights less than 2 pounds ( 900 grams ) can often have a difficult time just deciding what defines reasonableness as they try to balance the desire to avoid over-protection against the increased risks their children face associated with respiratory tract infections; of particular concern are bacterial and viral infections that aggravate the "lower" respiratory tract ( e.g. the lungs, respiratory bronchioles, alveoli etc ), resulting in bronchitis, bronchiolitis and pneumonia.

as a consequence of his extreme prematurity, not only are odin's lungs physically smaller than children of the same age ( and will remain so until he's around 8 years of age ), but they're effectively even smaller still since he's had a non-trivial amount of damaged tissue as a result of infant respiratory distress syndrome, mild bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and pneumonia; so contracting anything that inflames and irritates his lower respiratory system can have a much more dire impact than one might otherwise suspect.

and while we're big fans of doing the things that one should do in one's home to prevent colds flus and infections, including using copious amounts of the ever popular alcohol-based hand sanitizers which do a fantastic job of killing bacteria, we're still at a bit of a loss about what to do about the viruses that are unaffected by sanitizers and are often the causes of the very respiratory infections that we're concerned about ( e.g. viral pneumonia is the most common type of pneumonia in children ).

which finally brings me to my "real" point. while we're sure that odin has a grand time playing with one or the both of us each day, we'd both like to see him have more opportunities to engage in semi-structured playtime with kids his own age and we'd rather not wait a full 6 months until the end of cold and flu season to start. so we're contemplating enrolling him in an age-appropriate gymboree learning program ( or perhaps other similar programs in our area ), but can't quite figure out how to rationally weigh the risk that daycare & preschools are epicenters of [viral] flu epidemics.

are we being overbearing and overprotective parents if we decide to keep him secluded and sequestered for another winter season, knowing that at the very least we would have the peace of mind that we did all that we could to help prevent the risks associated with developing a lower respiratory infection? or are we being cavalier and irresponsible by deciding that the potential benefits of "social play" outweigh the risk of developing a condition that could lead to further damage to his already handicapped lower respiratory capacity?

i haven't been able to officially verify it, but we've heard that subscribers to parents magazine are just now receiving a very abridged version of odin's adventures in their mailboxes with the arrival of the november edition of the magazine ( at long last! ).

i haven't seen a final prepublication version of the story and don't have a subscription so i'll likely have to wait another few days for it to hit the newstands before i can see how it turned out.

i'm not even sure which, if any, of the images they chose to run. i do know it was a herculean effort to edit the ex machina archives down to fit the space contraints of the issue, so it'll be interesting to see the final copy. now, if i could just get the movie rights finalized :-)

i'd have to go back and scour the archives of my outboard brain to know for certain, but i'm almost positive that i haven't had a cold since well before odin's birth, which means that my nearly two year streak of good fortune has come to an end this week.

what started out seeming like just a case of late season allergies has turned into the mother of all head colds which is draining stupifying amounts of glop into upper respiratory tract.

so i'm all hopped up on nyquil and robitussin ( the kind with the expectorant ) in the hopes that it doesn't transmogrify itself into bronchitis. or worse. and yes, i do realize that both cold medicines contain dextromethorphan but i swear i'm not using them in a manner inconsistent with their labelling.

of course, i've been put in quarantine , since odin has micropreemie lungs already damaged by pneumonia and therefore has an increased chance of having respiratory infections turn to pneumonia which would certainly not be a good thing.

oy vay!

although odin has mastered the fine art of drinking from a sippey cup and a straw, he still enjoys practicing drinking from a big boy cup unencumbered by anything that could prevent him from enjoying the the simple pleasures of gulping and gurgling and occasionally making what sounds suspiciously like a satisfied "ahhhhh" after taking a particularly large swig from the cup.

adding to all the drinking fun - we've recently upgraded his big boy cup from its diminutive predecessor and odin has discovered that it's stupendously entertaining to yell into the cup.

we try to explain to him that unintended dire consequences can result from simultaneously yelling and drinking ( which is what i'm doing when i snapped this picture ), but he just eyes us suspiciously as if we're just out to ruin his new source of fun for no good reason.

after sending a postcard from fiji, uncle matt and auntie deb sent this card from kaikoura, new zealand. we'd like to think they were just trying to send odin postcards from exotic locales to help stimulate his interest in geography when he gets older and not simply trying to prove to us how unbelievably awesome their vacation was :-)

it's amazing that this is actually the second postcard that we've received from new zealand and i think it would be just about perfect if odin consulting, ltd. sent us a postcard from tauranga.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

even after all this time, i still occasionally wonder when a day might go by when i haven't seen odin flash me his mister serioso "look". as if someday it might just disappear or gradually become rendered unrecognizeable with the inevitable changes in facial structure that occur as he enters toddlerdom.

but there it is. still. that recognizeable look that's mostly in his eyes with a bit of pursed lips and his jaw set just so. i'm beginning to think that it's more likely that , much to his chagrin, i'll recognize the face even long into adulthood. and whenever i mention it, he'll roll his eyes and wonder why on earth i just can't get a life.

although perhaps he'll grudgingly admit that it's pretty neat to spend a little time going back through time with the serioso slideshow.

over the past year or so we've been occasionally suprised to discover that certain sounds completely, totally and unravel odin and instantaneously bring on a fit of crying. and while it might seem reasonable to be startled by, say, the sound of a food processor ( but - oddly - not that of a vacuum cleaner ), it's a little harder to understand what's so frightening about the sound of packing tape being torn removed from a roll ( although, curiously, greg at daddytypes has observed the same effect ) or even the "swoosh" sound that the bottom of a door makes when it moves against carpeting ( thankfully, odin appears to have habituated to this sound slowly over time ).

and then there's the newest scary sound produced by his "Ready, Set, Go" cars that he recently received as a gift from a friend. the concept is simple, you pull the car backwards to wind up a spring and release it to let it race forward; but apparently you must not ever pull the car backwards and then lift it up and let the wheels spin and produce a sharp "bzzzzzzzzzzzz!" sound.

no sirreee, one must not ever do that. at least not within earshot of odin.

we thought he might have simply been surprised by the unexpected sound the first time it happened, but no, the effect is quite repeatable.

i wonder if any other parents have discovered their own sources of the scariest sounds.

if you live in michigan and it's the day of the football game between the university of michigan and michigan state one's choice of clothing color can carry great significance, particularly if you've been seen wearing msu green and u of m blue and gold.

cleverly, odin decided to remain officially neutral on the matter while perhaps sending a message about his true sporting allegiances.

and in case you don't follow these sorts of things, michigan state lost the game :-)