MichaelZullo.com

We had a late in the day PT appointment today. Probably not the best because just so happen Mikey was tired because he didn’t nap well today. But we still went and he did well for the entire time. Towards the end he was getting really fussy and of course as soon as we hit the car he passed out.

Now as for the session. Like usual, she did little stretches and she was happy to see him at mid-line a lot of the times. She was also happy to see him looking to the left. His rotation is there its the tilt that he has problems with. Some times he’ll hold his head up straight and then he’ll start tilting. As we were leaving I asked if she noticed any kind of improvement and she did say yes, which is the best thing a mommy could hear! But we can’t let up at all. We need to stay diligent with what we are doing.

She did mention a TOT band as an option but not yet. Apparently this is a neck brace that helps the bad side stay straight. She also mentioned the helmet and even botox injections, who would’ve known! But for now we are hoping therapy will do its thing. I guess we’ll discuss this stuff if we’ve seen no further improvement once we’ve hit a month of PT.

Since daddy is off today he came along with the both of us to PT. I was still tilting a lot to my left but the therapist was happy that I’d remain looking to my left for a good long time. I would stay mid-line for a couple of minutes every once in awhile. It’s a lot of HARD work! We go back on Monday so hopefully over the weekend mommy and daddy will get a lot of time to stretch with me so that I’ll have made some kind of improvement by then.

Despite the fact that Mikey was super cranky yesterday afternoon because of tooth #2 breaking through Daddy was able to get him to giggle up a storm. They both went outside with Max, our golden retriever, and proceeded to play with him. I’m going to include 2 videos since they are both super cute:

After a very cranky afternoon of teething and crying and just all around PAIN tooth #2 finally made its appearance. Hopefully tomorrow will be a much calmer day for Mikey but just in case it isn’t I’ll be taking my baggy of teething goodies to work with me.

We just got back from PT not too long ago and now more than ever mommy is FRUSTRATED. Now I’m tilting the other way again and its really bad. It’s even worse than when we went for our evaluation. The therapist even mentioned that if in a few weeks it doesn’t start getting noticeably better they will refer me to a specialist that just deals with torticollis. They will keep track of my head measurements and they would even measure the angle of my tilt. Who knows what else they’d recommend.

We have strict order to limit the amount of time sitting and to really focus on tummy time. Mommy went to Target right after the appointment to pick up some toys like they have at therapy that light up and play songs so that I’m stimulated when I do tummy time. Boy its a tough job being a baby.

So this past Easter Weekend mommy decided that she was going to save a lot of money by making my baby food. She has already tried making carrots and avocado for me and they were a hit. So when we went to Publix on Saturday she made sure to get acorn squash, sweet potatoes, apples, and peaches. She was like Betty Crocker all weekend long baking and boiling foods and putting them in ice cube trays to freeze them up so that she could then package them in a ziploc freezer bag. We now have well over a months worth of baby food ready for consumption in the freezer and all for a fraction of the price of real baby food!

Boy is time flying. This past month Mikey got his first tooth and is trying his hardest to sit up on his own. And I think both mommy and daddy are convinced that he looks just like his daddy did when he was a baby. So that you don’t have to look at a MUCH earlier post to see daddy’s old baby pic I’ll repost an updated comparison over here:

Daddy:

Mommy:

Mikey at 5 months:

So today was my first real PT appointment. We did all kinds of fun stretches and activities to get me to stretch out my neck. What was weird is now I’m tilting the other way! Other than that I had a great time checking myself out in the mirror.

So mommy and daddy finally got fed up with me tilting my head and decided to use up my doctor’s prescription and get me into physical therapy. Today I had my evaluation with a therapist and she’s really nice and has nice long hair that I can pull, just like mommy! Turns out I have typical torticollis which is a tightening of the neck muscles. From what mommy has read online it can happen because of the way I was positioned when I was inside her belly. So we will go twice a week at first so that mommy can learn the stretches and then hopefully we can go to once a week because its pretty expensive.

Hopefully this will be the only sad blog entry here. But I felt like we needed to honor our loving Mozart one last time because he meant a lot to us. Today we had to make the decision to put Mozart to sleep. Which is no easy decision. He has been suffering from paralysis of his larynx for about the last year or so (along with a bunch of other problems that just goes along with old age) and it has been getting worse and worse. And today it was the worst that we’ve ever seen it. Poor guy was suffering and just couldn’t catch his breath. It wasn’t fair to him to keep him around for our sake.

We will miss you dearly Mozart. You are in doggy heaven now so go run around like you used to as a little hyper puppy. You were always such a good boy and we will always love you.