flashback saturday

Ooops, I was supposed to post this yesterday for "Flashback Friday" but I was having too much fun hanging out with the Super Friends last night, staying up late and watching the first X-Men movie on our new TV. I like that we still try to have fun movie nights even though we all have kids 2 and under. It takes some patience and you can't really watch a movie that needs too much concentration, but we make it work.

Anyway, I'm unofficially making this JC's birthday week post-a-thon because I inadvertantly have only been posting about things pertaining to this milestone. I'm not going to apologize though. IT'S A BIG FREAKING DEAL! I can't believe that I have a one year old. It didn't really hit me until I called to make a hotel reservation for next weekend and the lady asked me how old my baby was when I told her it would my fiance, baby and I staying in the room. I was about to say "so many" months but I had to stop myself and say "one year". It was trippy.

I've been freaking out so much by how much different my baby is at a year old. My little guy was born at 33.5 weeks so he had to stay in the hospital for the first 17 days of his life. It was agonizing to say the least. Here's a couple pictures of his sweet little newborn self while he was in the NICU wearing one of his few preemie sized outfits.

He was so tiny you guys. Like itty bitty tiny. Well, he actually was pretty big considering how early he was. I'm so curious as to how big he would have ended up if he had the chance to cook a little longer before he was born. 

Poor baby man had to have a feeding tube for most of the time that he was in the NICU. That was the main reason as to why he couldn't come home right away. He was big enough but he didn't have enough energy to finish his feedings before he would fall asleep. I really like these pictures because it was the first time that I ever got to dress him in "actual" clothes. The hospital provided these HUGE gowns that he wore most of the time because they were easy to keep all of his monitors attached. My mom bought him this little outfit and I wanted him to wear it before he got too big. It was so nerve racking getting him dressed. He was just so little. I was so happy when I finally got him all dressed because the onesie was pretty much stretched to capacity. His little belly was so big. It made me hopeful for how big he would eventually get. 

I wanted to do a size comparison with now but for some reason JC wasn't down for holding still while I held the onesie up next to him. Who would have guessed. So I looked around for an appropriately sized stuffed animal and scored with his bunny that we got him for Easter. It fit the bunny perfectly!

He's gotten so big!!!

Seeing this made me smile so big. I'm keeping that bunny dressed so that any time I worry about how big JC is compared to other babies, I can look at that and see how far we've come. 

<3 Melissa