I've sat down several times to write this update, but can never find the right words (or enough time) to get it all done.
Dylan is almost 21 months old! My sweet, tiny, preemie miracle is 3 months away from being 2 years old! How the time flies by & moves at a snail's pace is beyond me. Sometimes I look at him & see a little boy, while other times I still see my baby. It seems like we just celebrated his 1st birthday & now I am thinking about his next one. I've been told it's like this for their whole lives, but I don't think I realized how fast time goes until I actually had a little guy of my own.
Dylan is doing awesome! We praise God every day that he is healthy & well & normal when the opposite could be the case. When you have a preemie the doctors tell you all sorts of things about what could be wrong with your baby because of being born so early. It's really anything from minor stuff like coming home on oxygen or needed glasses at an early age to really big stuff like cerebral palsy or brain damage. A lot of what they tell you is really stuff that you have to just wait & see. You don't know until months later in a lot of cases what the extent of the damage from the premature birth might be. Sometimes the doctors can tell right away, but most of the time it's a waiting game.
We have been blessed – Dylan seems to have NO lasting effects from his early birth. We know that God was watching over him & answered the prayers of so many who lifted him up daily! So before I get into more details about Dylan, I first want to say thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU!!! to all who prayed for us while Dylan was so sick! It was such a blessing to know that we were being thought of & prayed for during that time!
Okay, so now on to Dylan...he is doing so well. Better than I think we ever could have imagined. He is a total ball of energy & a goof on top of it! He loves to sing & dance & read & talk. He has a ton of words, which is amazing to me after reading my older blogs & seeing how worried I was when he wasn't jabbering much. Now you can hardly get him to stop talking! He loves to read & will bring you “ooks” & ask you to “ree ook” all day long! He also finally learned how to walk at about 17 months...although he would still just rather you carry him.
I'm not entirely sure of his growth, but I think he weighs about 26 lbs. That puts him between the 25 & 50th percentile of boys his age. He's still kind of a little guy, but he is healthy! Even though I think he is still so little, I have to keep things in perspective. The other day I let him carry some snacks into the gym. My tiny preemie boy carried a 2 lb bag of animal crackers from the car to the building – he was only 2 lbs 3 oz when he was born! It made me tear up a little to see how far he's come. Almost every day I look at him & wonder how we were so blessed. I don't see him as a preemie anymore, but I still think about how tiny he was & feel so thankful for his health now.
Right now, Dylan is asleep in his big boy bed surrounded by his favorite stuffed animals (Geegee – his monkey; Imposter Geegee – another monkey; ChickenDuck – a huge, weird chicken or duck...we aren't really sure; & hippo) & his bankie. All in all...life is good.
