Five Years Old

Oh my word, I can not believe my sweet baby boy is five years old today, FIVE! He was born after I spent 15 days in antepartum for pre-eclampsia. We welcomed Reese Eliot on February 16, 2007 at 29 weeks. He weighed 2 pounds 2 ounces (975 grams). He spent 58 days in the NICU before coming home on his 2 month old birthday. On that first day before I even laid eyes on him the neonatologist assured us he was a firecracker.

A teeny tiny diaper just like he's wearing in the yellow hat photo above at one month is hanging in a shadow box in his room. Now that he's sleeping on the top of the bunk bed (a low bunk) he can see it at eye level and its teeny tiny size always results in huge belly laughs.

He looks almost chunky in this 5 week old photo.
This is the first time he got to wear clothes about 5 1/2 weeks.

Here is the chunky monkey on his first day at home. Two months old and a whopping 5 pounds.

This is today, February 16, 2012. He now weighs 15 times his birth weight and he more than tripled his birth height. He loves light saber battles and Scooby Doo, his speech therapist, drawing, coloring, superheros, movies and his brother.
I just wanted to squeeze him all day long. Reese has made amazing progress these last five years. He began receiving services for speech, gross motor and a cognitive delay at 20 months. He was over 2 years old before he even said "mama" or anything remotely like it. At is 5 year old evaluation he is officially no longer eligible for OT as his gross motor skills are all up to speed. His special ed classification changed from "cognitive delay" to "Speech Language Impaired." The school psychologist was very adamant that this was a HUGE distinction. So he will continue to see the speech therapist through the school system and we'll continue with his private speech therapist. That's it. We have been incredibly lucky that Reese has had so few problems related to his prematurity.
He is a super sweet little boy. He has worked very hard without too much complaining even when his schedule changed so that September through February he had 2 separate speech therapy sessions and his occupational therapy session all on the same day.
He is still as much a cuddle bug as he was as an infant. I almost wish I could just hit pause and keep him just like he is for awhile longer, but then of course I'm overjoyed that he is growing and progressing just like he is.
Happy 5th Birthday sweet boy!!!