I’ve had two graduation ceremonies in my life: high school and college. Since my time, however, we’ve developed into a graduation-happy society. I now see kids graduating from daycare, preschool, kindergarten, various grades throughout elementary school and from middle school before they even hit the rarer graduation milestones I had. Landon’s adding one more “graduation” to his list — being released from everything NICU! Although not technically graduation and definitely no fake (or real) mortarboard and diploma involved, I’m nonetheless going with that term.

Upon his discharge from West Penn on May 5, our pile of paperwork included an appointment for the developmental clinic in early October. Although they generally follow only babies born before 33 weeks (Landon was 33 weeks, 5 days), because I had several seizures that deprived him of oxygen while in utero, they wanted to check in on him. For the same reason, they also ordered precautionary brain MRI while he was in the NICU to check for defects, which came back clean.

Unsurprisingly, he passed with flying colors and not only is doing exceptionally well for his adjusted age of just over 4 months, but doing really well for his actual age of nearly 6 months. As such, the wonderful pediatrician we had there and the developmental specialist released him, marking the final hoop we had to jump through with the NICU!

Landon is rolling both directions, sleeping reasonably well most nights, is very sociable and talkative, reaches for toys, puts everything in his mouth and is growing super fast. He weighed 17 lbs, 5 ounces and measured 26 inches long. The doctor said his engagement with people made it clear he got a lot of face-to-face interaction, which made me feel better about sending him elsewhere during the week.

He also smiles ALL the time. This baby smiles so much that he smiles while he’s eating, causing milk to spill out of mouth all over both of us. He rode in his big boy stroller seat for the first time this past weekend and smiled the whole way while he chewed on the shoulder strap. He always smiles at the baby in the mirror after bath time, too. Landon rather enjoys his baths but cries while I dry him off and re-diaper him. “Baby in the mirror” is an immediate way to cease the tears and get him back to his jovial self. It’ll be some time yet before he realizes baby in the mirror is actually him.