Orion is 6 Months Old, New Little Accomplishments

Orion is 6 months old!

We started giving him rice cereal last week, I realize I need help in this area. Orion just fusses and pushes the cereal back out of his mouth as soon as he realizes its not milk. I've even offered him his own spoon to hold, as a symbol to become familiar with to know what's coming next. This is the next skill I need to learn in order to have him help himself. I've resorted to putting some in his daytime bottles for now. He doesn't mind this but this little boy does need to learn to eat by spoon.
















Orion's first cereal feeding. (1/11/2011)

On Jan 14th, Orion surprised me with squeezing his hand on my finger while I was feeding him his formula so I jumped right in hoping we'd have a turn-taking experience. We did! Orion's hand on Mom's finger: squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Mom's hand on Orion's forearm: squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Orion: squeeze... squeeze... and so on. Since then it has evolved to include squeezing in the air or while touching the bottle (fingers close to the handshape 'S' next to the bottle, not around the bottle).

Also new with Orion that I forgot to mention in my last post (1/9/2011) is he's been able to grab his thigh, lower leg and occasionally his toes. I started out with lifting his bottom so his feet were closer so he could get a good grip on them before I let go. Now he knows about the new tootsie toys, his toes.


Orion plays with his feet. (1/17/2011)

In the morning (1/19) we'll go see a pediatric ophthalmologist, who also happens to be Skyler's, to evaluate Orion's vision. We will have more information for all three of us, the ocularist, the ophthalmologist and myself. I am unsure what would become of the type of shell (or whatever else there may be) for Orion's left eye but I am looking forward to finally getting the shell put in his right eye.

UPDATE (1/19/2010): We saw the pediatric ophthalmologist this morning. Orion was deeply sleeping during the exam, except to fight and holler when the ophthalmologist pried his eyelids open. It looked very uncomfortable! When the exam was over, he was already asleep again. She said it didn't look like Orion had any vision so she was interested in my observations of him flinching to camera flashes and an exam light. (She did use her exam light but that was while Orion was asleep.) No matter, the ophthalmologist recommended Orion to have his right eye shell put in by our ocularist. So that shall be done!