Kaleb Prinz: December 2012

I can't believe it's almost Christmas! We've been so busy in the Prinz house, it's just come up so quickly. This is my absolute FAVORITE time of the year, and since we were in and out of the hospital and quarantined last year, I've been out of control this year. By out of control, I mean with wanting to have every possible Christmas experience with Kaleb, of course! We've acquired most of the baby Christmas pajamas available, driven to see Christmas lights, put up the most beautiful "soft ornament only" Christmas tree, attended the Richardson opening of Santa's Village, had pictures with Santa taken TWICE(and had to be stopped on the 3rd attempt), and Santa is going to be really really good to Kaleb this year! We're just so happy he's home and doing so well this Christmas. What more could we ask for really?

Kaleb is still in all 3 therapies 2 times a week, and he's progressing well! We go to Baylor Our Children's House for Speech/Feeding therapy, but PT and OT come to our house through Therapy 2000. He's scooting all over the place, can stand on his own while holding onto something, and has just started to make animal sounds. His MOO is absolutely adorable! The most recent great news is that he's really starting to take bites during feeding therapy. It's amazing how proud I feel to watch his little head move towards the spoon...which he's never done before now! He's working really hard in each therapy, and making progress every day!

Cardiac-wise, Kaleb is doing great! He had a Cath in early November to make sure everything looked good from the surgery and no issues had developed, and he looked wonderful! Dr. Nugent was pleased and relieved that we checked, and now he's letting us go for a while. Woo hoo! We now go to Cardiac Clinic once a month for a check up and he takes a Synagis(RSV) shot once a month, too. Very soon, Kaleb will go to every 3-months check up, then every 6...it's awesome! Of course, there's still one more open-heart surgery in his future, but we're told it's a couple of years away. That's fine by me!!

Right now, we're preparing for our first big trip with Kaleb! We're spending Christmas with Karl's family in Houston, and I'm starting to freak out a little bit. I made a list of everything we need a couple of weeks ago, and have been planning in my head forever, but it's now time to get ready to go....AAAh! It didn't take us long to figure out that our cars are too small to take our small army of supplies, and thankfully my parents are letting us use their SUV. Between Kaleb's medical supplies, my pumping supplies, and Christmas gifts, there's not going to be much room in the car for us! But we really are looking forward to being there. Kaleb has never met his cousins, Jacob and Samantha or his Uncle John, and he's only spent a couple of hours with his Aunt Jenna, so we're really looking forward to being with them on the holiday. I'll have to let you all know how it goes when we get back. Wish us luck!

Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year everybody!
One day, one hour, one minute at a time,
Jenifer