Captured! (and a look at Austin's journey)

Ah yes, we caught the elusive smile on film! Austin is nearly 11 weeks old now and smiling A LOT, but it's been tough to catch it on either the still camera or the video camera. He gets mesmerized by the cameras usually when you try to get pics or video of him and looks very serious. :)

Josh and I teamed up yesterday and got this one. Yes, I know I'm his mom, but isn't he cute?! :)

Austin's been fun and a challenge so far. As most our friends and family know, he was born with clubfoot. He was in casts for about 6 weeks and now is in his Mitchell brace. He's done so well, and we're just glad he won't remember all this when he's older. He's being treated by Dr. Dietz in Iowa City at Dr. Ponsetti's office. Ponsetti is the leading expert on clubfoot (he's in his 90s now) and Austin has been getting EXCELLENT care.

Here are Austin's feet right after he was born. You can see, he was born with bilateral clubfoot.

This is a picture of Austin at 2 weeks old in his first set of casts. (with decorations by Zacky)

And here he is at 7 weeks old in his final set of casts. (also decorated by Zack) He had 4 sets of casts in all, and you can see in this last one how much farther turned out his feet are.

Now he's footloose and fancy-free! :) Well, not quite. This pic was taken during one of his "breaks" he gets from the Mitchell brace. He's in the brace 23 hours a day right now. So he gets one hour out of the brace for bath time/play time. His feet start kicking just as soon as we get that brace off. I'll post a pic of the brace soon - can't seem to find one right now.

So, all this to say Austin has done SO well and we're so happy with his progress. He goes back to Iowa City in April, and hopefully will be able to go down to wearing the brace just during naps and bed time. We're looking forward to that. :)