Disney World!

When I was growing up, our favorite vacation was always the one that ended in Orlando at Disney World. I don’t know how young I was when I first went, but I’m pretty sure my sister wasn’t around yet, which means that I was probably not yet 5. We didn’t go every year, but I’m pretty sure we went as often as we could. As for Christy, I don’t know whether or not she had the early-age indoctrination that I did, but by the time I met her she was also a Disney nerd. Since we’ve been married (went there for our honeymoon), we’ve made an effort to go once every other year. This being an even numbered year meant that it was time. 2 year old in tow and all.

Coincidentally, as I mentioned in the last post, my dad decided sometime in early summer of this past year that he wanted to take a bunch of us on a Disney Cruise. Worked for us, we were already planning on going. Christy, however, was not satisfied to have cruise days substitute for Disney World days. We were planning on 6 nights in Disney World, and she demanded to have her 6 nights. Dad was planning on doing the cruise and then 3 nights on land after the cruise, for which I wanted to join him, so I caved and agreed to do 4 more nights before the cruise. And since we’d have David with us, we told Christy’s mom and step-dad that they had to come with us for those first 4 days.

Obviously, one cannot condense 7 days of Disney World and 4 days of Disney cruise into a blog post. My posts are too long as it is. I can say, though, that it was pretty awesome. I was a little leery of doing this with a 2 year old, but he was really great the whole time. It took a day or two to get used to trying to schedule lunch and a nap in every day, but once we had that figured out, it was pretty smooth sailing.

He loved the characters - we spent more time waiting in line to see characters than we have in all of the times that we’ve been to Disney World combined. He also liked the Dumbo ride (and similar Aladdin carpet ride one) that goes in a circle and lets the rider go up in the air. The Epcot Food & Wine Festival was going on while we were there; that was pretty awesome. - lots of really good food in small portions so you could try everything. We did the Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, which was pretty awesome - street dancing (David loves music), candy, fireworks, smaller crowd. We also did Mickey’s Christmas Party after we got back from the cruise - not as awesome. MUCH bigger crowd, almost seemed like there were more people than there were during the day. Otherwise, it was just typical Disney awesomeness.

The cruise was a neat experience too. I’d never been on one of those, so it took me a day or so to get used to the motion. Christy and David never seemed to have a problem with it, though, and we all had a really good time. There was lots of water to play in, Disney’s private island was pretty cool, and David loved being able to play with Miles through all of it. The food was amazing, and we all loved the underlying M.O. of “make passengers feel like royalty”.

In the end, it was a fabulous trip. People have told me, “you know, he will never remember any of that.” To which I think, “I hope not, that means I get to take him for the first time AGAIN!” I can say, though, that he remembers so far. He will still tell us occasionally that we need to go to the Magic Kingdom today. And I will also say that doing Disney with a toddler is a lot of fun. It’s different than without - planning for lunch, dinner, and naps is key - but I’m definitely glad we went. It could be that David’s inherent awesomeness made the trip better than it would be with a normal kid, but I have no way to judge that. All I can say is that with an awesome 2 year old, Disney World is still awesome.

More pictures can be found here.

Short cardiology update...

Since August, our cardiologist in town has been talking about surgery #3 being scheduled some time around the beginning of the year, at age 2 1/2 or so.  He'd been trying to get in touch with Texas Children's Hospital to nail all of that down, but basically all of our scheduling has been expecting the surgery around that time.

Well, I just got a call from them.  They finally got in touch with TCH.  You may recall that we've been confused in the past about timing of surgery #3, because the in-town docs always talked in terms of 2 1/2 while TCH always talked in terms of 4 or 5.  Well apparently there was a reason for the confusion.  TCH wants to do the surgery between 3 1/2 and 4 years old.  So all of our planning has been for naught.  The easiest way to make God laugh is to make a plan.  

So, no surgery this year.  Looking more like spring of 2014.  I guess God figured that y'all needed another year to pray for him, as you've probably been slacking.

I'm a big kid now!

I will make a promise to the readers of this blog: this is the first and last potty post that you will see from me.

A few months ago, my dad decided that he wanted to take us (and my sister’s family) on a Disney cruise. So we got all of that booked and scheduled and began our normal Disney anticipation and drooling process. There were videos to watch - David made us watch this video multiple times a day - message boards to read, and since we’d never done a cruise of any kind, rules & “what to expect” sort of things. I was thinking, “oh, my kid has a heart condition, I probably need to let them know about that.” David was thinking “OMG LOOK AT ALL OF THOSE POOLS AND WATER.” As we were perusing the details of the ship, looking at all of the pools & water play areas, we noticed a small problem: children are only allowed in the pools - any pools - if they are potty trained. Apparently there is some sort of ancient international maritime law that only allows potty trained children into pools aboard ships. That’s what Disney’s excuse is, anyway. With a child who loves playing in the water and who will almost certainly melt down constantly if he is not allowed to play in all of that available H20, we had a predicament. The obvious solution to which was, of course, potty training him.

So some time in the beginning of August, Christy decided that it was time to take the plunge. He had “shown interest” (whatever that means - but it’s what all of the potty training experts say that you have to look for) for a while, and this was as good of a time as any. Ordinarily, I don’t think we’d have done it so early, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

After reading some blogs on how to effectively get your kid to pee in the toilet, Christy chose the 3-day “potty training boot-camp” method. Essentially, the kid goes around naked for 3 days. If they start to pee, you stop them and bring them to a toilet. And then after 3 days, they are supposed to have it figured out. Sounded pretty fanciful to me, but I figured the worst case would be that Christy would have to deal with 3 days of David peeing all over the place, then we would try something that would have a chance of success. Christy, on the other hand, figured that she’d bring him to her mom’s house for 3 days and leave him outside naked.

3 days later, I was proved wrong and he was potty trained. I think it really only took him about a day to figure out what was going on, and the extra 2 were just for reinforcement. By the time day 4 rolled around, he was wearing disney themed big-boy underwear and telling us “gotta poop gotta pooop!” when he needed to go. IMO it’s a little more of pain in the butt, because now bathrooming is on his schedule instead of changing him being on mine. And travelling is not as easy, because he does have to make bathroom stops more often than Christy or I do. But all in all, it’s pretty cool to have a 2 year old not in diapers anymore. Cheaper too.

Happy Birthday #2!

Two years old. Tempus fugit and all that. For last year’s birthday post, my sister complained that I made her cry at work. I’ll try to not do that this year. Truthfully, it’s been a great year. No hospitals, only normal doctor visits all with good reports, and watching my baby turn into a full fledged toddler. From a crying kid who can’t even walk to a running kid who is trying to figure out how to jump, is learning how to turn the thoughts in his head into coherent sequences of words, and who knows how to unwrap a present. The only bad part is that I have to miss it for 40 hours a week.

I won’t re-hash the past year too much - I try to keep it all covered in the blog posts throughout the year. Looking back, it feels like it was a pretty uneventful year, but I guess everything is relative. David has certainly grown a lot. Physically, he’s still sticking to his 5% weight growth curve. I think he just officially outgrew his 18 month clothes, which makes me sad. He’s developed opinions on things, has learned “no” (although I’m not sure he always uses it correctly), and is learning letters, numbers, and colors. He is a HUGE fan of Curious George and Elmo, although in a one-on-one I think George would win. I think David identifies with George having to get across messages without using words. He’s definitely learned sounds like “uh-huh” and “ooooooooh” from that show. We’re going to Disney World later this year, so we’ve been trying to show him Disney movies so that he knows the characters when we get there. He’s always liked Lightning McQueen, but we think he needs a broader exposure.

Medically, everything seems to still be going swimmingly. We had a cardiologist appointment earlier in the week, and he was quite pleased with everything. (Quick refresher on cardiac circulation: normal people is body->right atrium->tricuspid valve->right ventricle->pulmonary valve->pulmonary artery->lungs->left atrium->mitral valve->left ventricle->aortic valve->body. David’s circulation is body->half to pulmonary artery, half to surgically combined left+right atrium. The PA half goes->lungs->surgically combined left+right atrium->tricuspid valve->right ventricle->pulmonary valve->body. The L+R Atrium side goes tricuspid valve->right ventricle->pulmonary valve->body. And yes, some of the blood doesn’t go through the lungs, which is why he doesn’t have 100% oxygen saturation all the time like most people. The third surgery will remove that feedback part and 100% of the blood will go straight to the PA.) David has developed some “collaterals”, which I think are some small blood vessels that form between the aorta and the pulmonary artery, which ultimately serves to recycle more blood through the lungs, and keeps his oxygen saturations at 90%ish. All of which means that David won’t be forced into surgery #3 because of low oxygen saturations. My impression is that he can kinda just go along until he’s as big as they want him to be, then they’ll do the pre-surgery cath, plug all of the collaterals, then do surgery a couple of days later. The cardiologist said that he suspects that will happen sometime in the next 6 months, but he is going to get in touch with TCH and find out what their schedule is on these. Beyond that, he said that David’s tricuspid leakage is minimal and unchanged from previous visits, that the ventricle is pumping well, and everything is basically as good as can be expected. I imagine next week’s pediatric appointment will be much the same - everything looks great, here’s your 2 year immunization, have a good day.

Looking forward, we have 2 days of birthday festivities planned. Today began with David opening his 64 episodes + 2 full length movies of Curious George, after which he told us he wanted more presents. We told him we didn’t have any more, but that there were more at grandmere’s (Christy’s mom) house. He ran to the back door and said “let’s go!”. So this morning, they will be making cheesecakes for tomorrow’s family bday party. Then this afternoon after David’s nap, we will be having sushi, then this evening we will be doing Boutin’s & live cajun music with Pippi (my mom). Tomorrow a little after lunch will be the birthday shindig with David’s cousin, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and one great-grandma. After that we will all collapse and sleep until Monday morning.

So here’s to one more year. 2 years ago at this time (10:30 AM CST), Christy was on Pitocin and David was stubbornly not moving, dad was nervous & excited to meet the boy that he’d already bonded with in-utero, and mom was hungry and tired. Last year at this time, that little boy was trying to figure out how to walk. Next year at this time, we will be done with cardiac surgeries, hopefully forever. And he will still be teaching me things that I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

To the beach!

Yes, I'm getting really bad about this. I actually had to go back and look at the post before this to see when it was, and then figure out what we'd done since then. My first thought is always, "well nothing, just regular life". Kinda like when I get home from work and Christy asks me what happened that day. I generally don't remember stuff that happens day-to-day, much less over the course of 3 months. Fortunately, Christy is better than I am at this stuff, so she just gave me a list of all the stuff we've done since we last spoke...

To the beach!

This one, I actually did remember. Going on vacation is momentous enough that it tends to stick in my mind. Some friends of ours were attending a wedding in Destin, FL, and at the last minute found out that the set of grandparents who were supposed to join them to watch the kids would be unable to go. So, on Thursday I got an email asking if we wanted to stay in the extra room in their condo on the beach. Um, yes? On Friday, we left. It was pretty awesome. The weather was beautiful, even when it rained. It was early May, so it wasn't too hot yet. And it also happened to be a wedding involving my sister's husband's family, which means that we got to hang out with them, his awesome family, and David's cousins for 4 days. We did let David play in the ocean too much on the first day and he got a little blue-ish, but he was fine once he warmed back up. The rest of the time he and mom (and all the in-law family) spent loving the sand and the surf, while dad (me) stayed in the condo listening to the waves and catching up on his reading. Fun times.

The rest of the stuff from the last 3 months involves staying in town and me still having to go to work every day, which in my mind makes it just regular, uninteresting life. But after Christy listed off a few things, I realized that there were at least pictures of things, so there must be actual events behind those pictures.

Mom's company had their annual crawfish boil in late April, which we all enjoyed. There were several kids there for him to play with. David loves other kids, so he had a great time with them and with the sidewalk chalk that someone bought for the kids to play with. A few weeks later, Christy's brother boiled crabs at her mom's house for mother's day. I'm not sure that David knew what to think of the crabs, but he did like the hotdogs that were boiled with them.

A couple weeks later David assisted us in crushing the competition in the Louisiana Republican Caucus, where Ron Paul candidates won 75% of the available delegate slots to the state convention. I think I'm going to get him a shirt that says "Don't blame me, I voted for Ron Paul". David is pretty politically savvy, I'm always impressed by his understanding of the constitution and the importance of freedom.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, grandpa (my dad) came to visit for a weekend. It's funny, David is always unsure of him at first, but warms up when he realizes that Grandpa will take him outside. Or give him food. So we spent lots of time with him, and with G-Gma (my grandma) who is moving to Texas.

And finally, this weekend, Christy's step-sister came to town with her husband and 3 kids, so David got to meet them for the first time. Like I said before, he loves other kids, so he is enjoying the time being spent with them.

So I guess we've been keeping busy, and David has been having lots of fun, causing lots of trouble, and generally just being awesome. Right now, he's eating ice cream and watching Finding Nemo with mom. Life is pretty grand.