June 4

Today is Elsie's 5 month birthday! Just in case I haven't explained this yet, preemies have "actual" ages and "corrected" or "adjusted" ages. Elsie actual age, just like it sounds, is her chronological age, which is 5 months old. Her corrected/adjusted age is what she would be if she had been born full-term. Her corrected age is 4 weeks, or 1 month old. This matters because, obviously, Elsie is not developmentally where a full-term 5 month old baby would be. Developmentally, she is a one month old baby. All of her milestones will be judged on her corrected age for the first year or two of her life. Most preemies catch up developmentally to their actual age peers within about two years. Hopefully that makes sense. Elsie is 5 months old actual, 1 month adjusted.

And heeeeere's our dollar bill pictures for the big 5 month lady!

1 month

2 month

3 month

4 month

5 month

As you can tell, Elsie was not terribly interested in holding still so that I could get a good picture. But the pictures tell a true story. Our little girl is growing so fast! I don't know how big she is, I've stopped asking because I don't really care a ton how big she is now. She's grown out of most of her newborn clothes. She's fat and healthy, and that's all that matters to me :)

I took a couple videos of Elsie crying to post on here; lots of people have asked what her cry sounds like since she has a paralyzed vocal cord. I'm so used to hearing Elsie's soft cry that when my cute 5-week-old niece was staying at our house a few weekends ago, I was surprised to hear her seemingly LOUD cry. "Why is your baby crying so loud?", I thought, "What's wrong with her?" Oh, that's right, she sounds like a normal healthy baby. It's my baby who is the quiet one, ha ha ha, it made me laugh. Anyway, here's the videos. In the first one, she's just kind of fussing, rather than full-on crying, but the second one gives you a good idea of what her cry sounds like.

Happy 5-month birthday, cute girl!