Pre-christmas David's life roundup

Yes, it’s been a while.  In this instance, no news is pretty much good news.  We’ve just been having fun, living life, watching our little boy grow up, and trying not to miss anything in the process.  When I posted last, we had just gotten back from Pensacola.  We haven’t had any medical events since then (those always trigger a blog post), but I realized the other day that we HAVE had Halloween and Thanksgiving.  I will almost certainly have to write something for post-Christmas, and I would hate to soil that one with thanksgiving and Halloween stuff.  

If you’ve been keeping up with Christy’s continual picture and video posting on Picasa (see the links on the right side of this page), you will have noticed that my mother-in-law once again outdid herself with David dress-up.  Last year he was a banana.  The awesomest banana ever, to be sure.  This year, though, we decided to go with some moderately subtle humor.  David was the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz .  Some people (cough-mom-cough) didn’t think it was funny, but those people don’t have a very good sense of humor.  I tried teaching him to sing If I only had a heart, but he was unable to develop the requisite linguistic skills in an appropriate time frame.  Regardless, he quite enjoyed the costume.  It was quite shiny, and I think that David might be part magpie.  He was quite impressed with himself and his sparkly shoes.

Other than an awesome costume, Halloween was uneventful.  We generally avoid trick-or-treaters by going out to dinner (The Chimes, this year), then we went to my mom’s house so that David could show off his sparkly-ness.  He had some cuteness competition from his younger cousin who dressed up as a burrito (the cousin’s dad is a Mexican named Beau, so it’s funny, but not as funny as a heart defect kid dressed up as the Tin Man, in my professional opinion).  But in the end, David was still the cutest Halloween kid ever.  Hopefully we can dream up something next year to top this year, but it’s going to be tough.

A few weeks later was Thanksgiving.  It was, well, Thanksgiving.  I’ve never been a big Thanksgiving fan - turkey is about the most boring food ever - so writing about this feels a lot like I’m just writing about any other dinner that we eat.  There was food.  It was good.  My wife and mother-in-law are wonderful cooks.  There’s really not much else to say.  David played with his grandparents and great-grandparents, but again, this is nothing out of the ordinary.  There was no adorable costume (although his onesie did say “mommy’s little turkey”), there were no funny David stories.  So nothing really to see here, but I figured I should mention it anyway since other people might want to know for certain that nothing interesting happened.

So now we’re 6 days away from David’s second Christmas.  We’re also about 2 weeks past the first anniversary of the Glenn surgery, so that’s something to be excited about.  Christy and I were reminiscing this weekend about being in the hospital at this time last year.  We only managed to make it back to BR a couple days before Christmas of 2010, so it’s been nice this year to sorta experience the whole season.  In a sense, it’s David’s first Christmas season even though he’s already technically been through one.  He is learning to not mess with the presents under the tree, and getting excited every morning when I ask him if he’s ready to turn on the tree lights.  He happens to be a little under the weather right now, but on the mend - just seems to be normal baby winter upper respiratory stuff.  I’m quite sure he’ll be feeling better in time to have a wonderful Christmas day.

David's First Vacation.

About 9 months ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to one of these daily deal sites that was offering 3 nights at the beach in Pensacola for like $150.  I’m not a big beach guy (I don’t like the ubiquitous sand and salt, plus I tend to spontaneously combust if I’m left out in the sun too long), but I figured David and Christy would enjoy it, and more importantly, it would be a good dry run vacation for future Disney trips.  Christy and I have become big fans of vacationing in the off-season, and work has been slow-ish, so on Thursday of the week before last, we decided to leave for Pensacola on the following Monday.
So on Monday morning, we woke up, packed up the car and headed out.  The car ride was pretty uneventful.  We left right about the time that David was ready for his first nap of the day, so he slept through about the middle of Mississippi.  We stopped at the Alabama welcome center, had some lunch (Golden Potstickers FTW), then drove for another couple of hours and arrived in Pensacola around 3 in the afternoon.  

As one might expect, we immediately got beach-ready and headed to the ocean.  David has a sandbox at home that he loves, so he was pretty excited about all of the sand on the beach.  I think he’d have been happy to just sit there and dig for 4 days.  He wasn’t quite as certain about the ocean, but once we’d walked in the edge of the surf a little bit, he was ready to go out with mom.  Christy carried him out to 3 or 4 feet of depth, and he had a great time kicking his legs in the water until a wave inundated him, then he was ready to go play in the sand some more.  And that was basically how the whole trip went, with lunch and dinner mixed in.  We did have a small accident on the last evening we were there - Christy was playing chase with David on the boardwalk while we were waiting for dinner, and he tripped and did a face-plant on the concrete.  He got a little bit of a bloody nose, but all in all, not that bad.  He didn’t like it very much, though.  

Obviously this wasn’t our first short road trip with David, but I’m happy to say that the travelling experience is getting better every time.  This one didn’t really have any fussing or crying until about 30 minutes outside of Pensacola.  So, basically 4 hours of happy toddler.  We turned his car seat around before we left, so he is now facing the windshield.  I think he likes it a lot better.  I certainly do - now when he whines or makes noise, I can see that nothing is wrong and just ignore him.  And the hotel-room-with-a-baby experience wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected either.  By the time we got settled and ready for bed at night, David was so tired that he probably would have slept on the floor, so my worries about him having issues with a foreign sleeping environment were unfounded.  Anyway, I have high hopes that another 12 months or so will find us with a 2 year old that is ready for 12 hours in the car to Orlando.

Follow me, America!

15 month cardiology checkup

Well I’m a slacker.  I know that this is already widely known, but I figured I’d state it for the record.

David had his 15 month cardiology checkup on the 6th of October.  There was literally nothing to report, so I haven’t felt particularly compelled to write this.  But since the whole point of this blog is to help people keep up-to-date with David and how he’s doing, I figure I’d be a terrible person if I just never wrote a checkup post at all.

So here’s the update:  nothing.  In fact, our normal doctor was tending to an emergency at another hospital in town, so we saw the guy that I think they just hired as their 4th doctor.  He listened to david’s heart, looked at his blood pressure and oxygen saturation, and basically said, “yup, looks good to me!”  He increased David’s Enalapril dose a little bit in order to keep up with his growth (note to people with emergency info sheets - I will be sending you a new one), scheduled the 18 month checkup, and that was it.  The truth is, we really only get checked once every 6 months.  The ones in between that are just growth checks, just to let the doctor put his eyeballs on David and make sure he still looks fine.  And thus far, he still does.

In other news, David is now walking like he invented it.  The only time he crawls anymore is to traverse steps and to hide.  He has gained an affinity for being chased around the house, so we do a lot of that.  He still loves water, so he spends lots of time outside looking for puddles or other random collections of water in which he can splash.  And since the weather is getting cooler and nicer, mommy and daddy are okay with this.

Pirate Face

Ugh.

Well I guess my baby couldn’t stay a baby forever.  I think he’s officially toddling.  

I have mixed emotions.  On one hand, I’m proud (and glad) that he is progressing normally.  He gets so excited when he does it, so that makes me happy too.  But it also means that he’s growing up faster than I’d like.  Some lady in Whole Foods one day told me (when I was lamenting him growing up too fast) that every stage would be my favorite.  So far she’s been right, but I still don’t have to like leaving the last one behind.  

Like everything else, he is awesome at it.  It’s pretty clear that he walks better than any other toddler, ever.  As a compromise, he does still let me hold him, so that’s good.  I can also still beat him in a footrace, which is important.  I do, however, need to start planning for when he can outrun me.  I’m sure he will get into a lot more stuff now, but luckily I’m not the stay-at-home mom.  But you should all say a prayer for Christy.  She will need it.

Smartest. Baby. Ever.

One of the odd quirks about having surgery done at a world class hospital is that those hospitals tend to be teaching hospitals.  Which also means that the doctors are simultaneously awesome doctors and medical faculty.  In order to be an academic, one has to publish research.  And who better to do research on than your patients!  I think it’s standard at teaching hospitals for the patients to be asked to be a part of like a kabillion studies.  We were approached about participating in 3 of them (I think), 2 of which I remember, and 1 of which we decided to participate in.  And when it’s 24 hours before your 3-day old has open heart surgery, 3 is a pretty good approximation for infinity.

The winner of our particular study lottery is researching how being on a heart-lung bypass machine at less than a week old can affect future brain development.  As it turns out, stopping a heart can lead to oxygen deprivation in the brain (who’d have thought?), and having oxygen deprivation in your brain at 3 days old can cause developmental issues down the road.  So they gave him their drug (some existing drug that’s supposed to stimulate red blood cell production) or a placebo (don’t know which), did a brain MRI before surgery, a brain MRI after surgery, monitored blood oxygen saturation during surgery and did a developmental test in his first month of life.  Rinse and repeat for surgery #2.  Then the plan was to do more developmental tests at 1 year old, at 3 years old, and at 5 years old.

This past Monday was the 1 year developmental checkup.  Basically, they gave him some standard baby things to do, and he did them.  Then they gave him some basic reading and arithmetic.  Then more advanced reading, basic differential calculus, and an IQ test (his resulting IQ was about 270).  Then they just gave him a pencil and some paper and he went ahead and proved Fermat’s last theorem. (He later told me that he thought Fermat’s birthday was the August 15th and that he was trying to be funny.  Turns out Fermat’s birthday is the 17th.  Oops.  I don’t think the tester caught the joke.)  When it was over the tester said, “well I certainly don’t see any developmental issues.”  I guess she was being sarcastic.  I’m sure she meant to say that he’s the smartest baby she had ever encountered.

Winning!

One Year Checkup, Part Deux

I’m sure after reading about the cardiology one year checkup a couple weeks ago, you were all wondering, “OMG WHAT ABOUT THE PEDIATRICIAN?  SURELY THERE’S ANOTHER DOCTOR UPDATE!!”  Well never fear, we have plenty of doctor’s appointments and I am happy to post a report on each one.  The truth is, good defined milestones for posting these things aren’t always obvious (I mean, if I posted every time David did something cute, Google would run out of storage), but I know that when there’s a doctor’s appointment, I should post.

This past Tuesday was the 12 month pediatric checkup.  After David had finished running some game on the nurses and thoroughly exploring the room we were in, the doctor came in.  He looked at the chart, and basically the first thing he says is, “Looks like his growth has slowed a little more than we’d like.”  I didn’t need to look over at Christy to know that she was having the same internal reaction that I was.  Namely, “If we have to have another knock down fight with a doctor about feeding David, I’m going to hit someone.”

You see, at TCH after the first surgery, they were VERY paranoid about him not growing fast enough.  So paranoid, in fact, that they presumed a massive problem would be there even before it happened.  And I mean, I understand that his heart is less efficient than normal, and that he’s going to burn more calories than normal.  I really understand.  But after we’ve told one doctor, “no, we’re not going to add formula to his breast milk, Christy is just going to nurse him unless we actually SEE a growth problem,” I’d hope that they’d write that down and that would be the end.  Of course, people are stupid, so they never do things that make sense.  It literally took Christy telling one of them, “GFY, I’m nursing him.” before they just left it alone at the hospital.  And then, of course, every time we went back for a checkup they would AGAIN inform us that we needed to be fortifying his milk EVEN THOUGH HIS GROWTH WAS NORMAL.  So, needless to say, we are somewhat touchy about this particular issue.

Back to Tuesday.  So the doctor is worried about his growth.  He asks what we’re feeding him.  We tell him.  He says, “well you’re going to think this sounds a little crazy (Paul and Christy brace for impact), but I need you to add some heavy cream to his oatmeal in the morning.  Or butter, if you feed him grits.”  That's it? Really?  He just wants us to make sure we’re feeding David enough.  He did ask for us (read: Christy) to keep a log of what David eats and to bring it back in 2 weeks.  I was shocked at the level of sanity.  From the way he talked, it sounded like he has the same opinion of dietetics that we do - basically that it’s junk science.  Seriously, these are the people who have made America the most obese and unhealthy place in the world, why the hell should we listen to anything they say?  But I digress.

The nutshell version of all of that is that David should be 20 lbs instead of 18.5 (he’s basically been on the 5% growth curve since he was born), that we need to supplement some of his meals with butter and/or cream, and that we have to keep a log of his food for 2 weeks.  The logging isn’t particularly exciting (we have done enough logging, thank you very much), but I guess it could be worse.  For his part, David is enjoying the new diet.  He gets oatmeal with coconut milk (delicious btw) or cheese grits in the mornings, he had indian food swimming in butter on tuesday evening, and today he had grilled wild coho salmon with a side of creamed spinach for lunch.  The docs always said that he’d be skinny.  I guess we will see.

Obligatory David Picture

1 year, and all is well

These posts are always weird.  I mean, on one hand, the whole purpose of this blog is to facilitate people who want to follow the life and times of a modern medical marvel, with the medical marvel part being pretty front and center.  And one of my favorite bloggers says that in order to be a good writer, you have to bleed.  But at the same time, I’m not a sad guy.  Plus, I hate whiners.  And people who do the very things that they claim to hate.  A lot of times, when I’m writing these posts, I feel like I’m whining.  “Woe is me, my baby has a heart defect.”  I mean seriously, who wants to read that?  On the other hand, I’m not sure I can write a “first year of life” update without it.

366 days ago, Christy gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.  Then I followed the doctors as they took him out to the hallway, put him on a warming bed, and stuck an IV in him.  It was a strange swirl of emotions - complete awe that this little person was my son, complete terror that he might die.  If on that afternoon, someone had showed me the pictures and videos that we’ve taken over the last year, I think I would have called them a liar.  Then they would have said, “are you serious?  That kid could be your clone.”  I would have responded, “maybe it’s my sister’s baby, the Vicknair genes are pretty strong.”  They would have replied, “Yes, but your sister’s baby will be half mexican.  Does that baby look mexican to you?”  To which I’d have said, “Touche.”

Paul as a baby

David at 4 weeks old

3 days later, there was heart surgery.  Then recovery.  Then lots of home care.  Then another surgery.  Then another recovery.  On the plus side, though, we were home by Christmas.  And through it all, David has been the awesomest baby that any parent could ever hope for.  Seriously, I think God gave him the heart defect because he is otherwise perfect.  The existence of perfect people isn’t allowed, so he had to throw in something to counterbalance how awesome David would turn out to be.  He’s well behaved, he’s smart, and he constantly makes me laugh.  All in all, totally worth it.


Today, we have a near-toddler on our hands.  (As an aside, I think we can all agree that a child is a baby until he actually toddles.  So, until he learns to walk, David is a baby, not a toddler.)  He turbo crawls everywhere, he knows baby signs, he loves food, he loves women, and he’s just generally about the smartest and funnest baby that I can conceive of.  The idea that he can get any better baffles me, but it seems to happen every day.  And here’s hoping we have a lot more days.

Happy Birthday, David.

Still kickin...

Unlike the previous phase of this adventure when it seemed like we visited the cardiologist every other day, we are currently on a once every 3-months schedule.  This way is a lot better.  

Today was the 12 month visit, only the third since we got back from surgery #2.  David’s gotten a lot better about all of the poking and prodding, and is a complete pimp with the nurses.  I wish there had been light in the room where they did the echocardiogram, because he was flirting like crazy with the technician.  For the first several months of his life, he absolutely hated things like EKGs and having his blood pressure taken. Today he was more concerned with adding a nurse to his harem than he was with the stickers all over him.

As for the doctor visit part, the cardiologist seemed quite happy with how David is progressing.  David is still right on or around the 5% growth curve (bigger than only 5% of babies his age), which I think is ok as long as he’s staying on that curve.  Which he has.  His blood oxygen saturation is still good (low 90%, normal is 100%), his blood pressure is good, and all of the things that they looked for in his echo were what they wanted to see.  The doctor even told us that David has a really nice head of hair - apparently one of the indicators that a person’s heart is having trouble is that the hair on his head will get thin and brittle.  Which David’s is not.

Everything else is still going quite well.  David has a couple more teeth coming in, front two on the top this time.  He’s chattering nonsense all the time.  I think I’m going to need some of those fancy Bose noise cancelling headphones once he actually starts talking.  He will stand and walk as long as he’s got something to hold on to.  We’re pretty sure he can stand by himself, but any time we manage to let go of him so that he’s on his own, he realizes that he’s standing on his own and sits down.  He’s eating pretty much anything that we do and seems to have finally figured out how to work a sippy cup.
One year old is coming pretty quickly.  I can’t believe that my baby is almost a toddler!  Next thing I know he will be leaving for college.  Oh well, I guess nothing lasts forever.  I wonder when I should start nagging him about grandbabies...

Apparently nobody told David that prohibition is over

And that you can buy beer in a store.  So he got me a beer making kit for father’s day, and he helped me brew it on Monday evening.  It’s an interesting process, you basically make a wheat-tea, boil it, add some hops, then ferment.  

Wheat Tea - MMMM

It was bubbling like crazy on Tuesday morning (which I think is supposed to be a good thing).  While we were making it, the kitchen smelled just like the Coors factory, and then when I changed the exhaust valve yesterday, it smelled a lot like beer, so hopefully it will turn out well.  We had a good time, but David was kinda pissed when I informed him that he was too young to have any when it was done.

Bubbly

Unopened kit in all its glory

David doing QC on Wheat

In other news, David was stung by a wasp last week.  He was standing up, playing in a raised bed in our back yard that’s tailor made for a wasp nest.  We didn’t actually see it happen (didn’t realize he’d been stung until he started irrationally fussing a few minutes later), but our guess is that he saw the nest and decided to explore and/or taste it.  The domiciled wasp likely did not take kindly to this, so he defended his homestead against the aggressor by stinging his index finger.  I’m just glad David didn’t get it in his mouth before the wasp stung, that could have sucked.

Swollen baby hand

for comparison to the other hand

We have a 1 year checkup in Houston sometime in August.  Conveniently, it will be when my sister is due to have her baby.  I'm sure that will please everyone.  It's not really a medical checkup, it's part of a long-term study that David is participating in - they're doing research on how babies' brains can be affected by being on a heart/lung bypass machine at 3 days old.  Even so, they'll undoubtedly do a basic physical exam while we're there. I'll be sure to let everyone know the results when they are available.  I have little doubt that he will be the smartest baby that they've ever examined.  

Yes, that also means his birthday is coming up - July 27th.  And NO, that doesn't mean that you need to buy him anything - especially toys.  He's less than 1 year old and he already has an industrial toy box under construction to house the ones that he has.  All he needs is love and attention, and I'm sure he'll get plenty of that.  

Otherwise, life is pretty good.  Days are filled with crawling and exploring the house and yard.  He still doesn't like to go to sleep, but he seems to enjoy it once he's there.  He got over his illness from last month, which makes paranoid dad happy.  Mom and dad are still managing to stay one step ahead of him (for the most part), although I'm not sure how long that will last.  The consensus among everyone who meets him continues to be that he is the best baby evar.  Not surprising, considering his genetic stock.

Until next time...

David has an email address!

I got an email from my dad yesterday morning, informing me that he'd remembered a gmail address that he no longer uses and that David could have.  Since they have the same name, it worked out well.

Even though I don't watch TV, I occasionally run across a commercial while I'm browsing around on the internet.  A couple weeks ago, I saw one that Google has apparently been running wherein a dad sets up an email address for his newborn daughter and then sends her things while she's growing up.  She gets older, he gives her the email address, she cries, fade to black.  I thought it was a cool idea, the only problem was that you can't set up a gmail account for people who are younger than 13.  Now that problem is solved.

So, if you want to send David a message, you can email him at <firstname>.<lastname> at gmail dot com.  When David gets older and moves out, I'll give him the password and he can peruse all of the things people have told him throughout his life.  I have no plans to read any of this - your emails to David will be private.  I will occasionally open the account up to de-spam it and to make sure nobody has signed him up for daily porn or something.  But I will not be actually opening any of the messages.  This will basically be a write-only time capsule that will be opened when David is all growed up.  So enjoy.  I'm sure he will.

Well THIS isn't genetic.

When I was young, I freaking HATED needles.  I gave my mother untold amounts of hell about having to take shots or have blood taken.  Christy, to this day, is ghost-pale when she comes out of the blood-drawing lab.  So we were both a bit surprised this morning when David had to have some blood taken at the doctor and his reaction was this:

Nothing.

I'm not sure he even realized that he had been stuck.  We were all stunned.  I've never seen a baby completely not react to having his skin punctured.  Very odd indeed.  Well, I guess I can at least claim that the oddness is genetic.

Professional Photography

A few weeks ago we decided to have some "legit" pictures taken of David - i.e., not camera phone pictures.  We got them back this weekend, and they turned out really well.  They're all high-res, and like any picture in picasa you are welcome to click on the "Prints" menu at the top of the picasa album and order hard copies if you want something to put in a frame.  Just no using them in commercial applications without paying royalties!  I've added a permalink for them (in a separate album, not the regular monthly ones), so feel free to browse at your leisure.  And if you don't feel like navigating to the sidebar, just click on this: David's Photo Shoot

General David update

Well, it's been a while since I last did a generic update.  David had his three-month cardiologist checkup on Friday (yes we only see them once every three months now) so I figured this was as good a time as any.  

The cardiology appointment went well.  David's oxygen saturations were in the mid to high 90s (he was in the 70s before the second surgery; normal for a regular person is 98-100%), they didn't hear anything odd when they listened, his blood pressure was normal, and his weight gain was right on track.  In fact, he said that David is well ahead of  an average hypoplast on weight gain.  David weighed in at 7.32 kg (16 lbs 2 oz).  The doctor said that he had one hypoplast who was 18lbs on his second birthday and still had a GI tube.  Needless to say, we're well ahead of that.  Everything was so good, in fact, that they didn’t even feel the need to do an EKG or an echo.  Yay!

In non-cardio news, David has been reaching lots of new development milestones in the last couple of months.  If you've been reading the blog, you know that he's started crawling, pulling himself up into a standing position, and teething.  Well, he now has 2 teeth (the bottom front 2), he is well into eating non-milk foods, is using his hands rather proficiently (feeding himself a little bit, holding his sippy cup, grabbing toys, switching hands with toys, stuff like that), is pulling himself up from laying down into a sitting position (when I get him in the mornings now he is sitting up when I get there) and is working on baby signing (he understands them, can’t always do them).  He love bananas (we mix that with quinoa so that he can get some protein), peas, avocados, and sweet potatoes.  He could do without beets and Lima beans.  I'm not sure that I blame him.  We've started doing a little bit of cutting up softer foods and letting him pick up the pieces and eat them.  He's not a huge fan, but he can definitely do it.  He has learned how to wave goodbye and make a "pphhhhhhhht" sound.  We got him a baby potty seat that we sometimes put him on when he's obviously trying to poop or when he wakes up from a nap.  So far in 3 days he has pooped three times (that I know of) and peed a bunch of times on the potty.  I have no expectation that he will be potty trained any time soon, but hopefully he'll at least get accustomed to sitting on it and getting encouragement when he does it right.  He is learning the difference between an inside voice and an outside voice (seriously, I can say, "David is that your inside voice?" and he immediately starts squealing in a quieter voice), and he has also learned to use a computer.  He twitters now (@babybabelfish - see button on sidebar).  He is pretty funny, if I do say so myself.

The crawling thing has been fun.  As I'm sure is normal, if it can be gotten into, he gets into it.  His current favorite thing to play with and to chew on is string.  Any kind of string.  The problem is, he doesn't distinguish between a shoe string and an electric cord.  So we have lots of fun keeping him away from those.  He also tries to pull himself up on anything that looks stationary, so we have to be careful that he doesn't try to pull up on the wrong thing and fall and break himself.  Standing up continues to be his favorite pastime.  He will even walk if you hold his hand while he does it.

I have never really been around babies, so I have nothing to which I can compare him.  Lots of people have told me that he is unusually smart, but I figure that's just them appealing to my own sense of inherent genetic superiority.  He is pretty awesome though.  I'm not sure there's anything better than him laughing at something that I do to him (he really seems to love it when he sticks his hands in my mouth and I bite his fingers).  Christy thinks that he likes her best, but I'm pretty sure I'm the favorite parent.  He only likes her for the milk, I think.  

Anyway, he has been doing quite well overall.  I still hold out hope that they'll do an echo one if these days and be shocked to find 4 normal chambers and no evidence of surgery.  Right now, though, he still has a scar but is doing awesomely despite it.

I'll continue updating when anything of note happens.  Christy an I keep our phones (with still and video cameras) on hand at all times, so we’re usually able to get some record of first happenings.  And, of course, we continue to keep the picasa albums and youtube channel updated.  I'm working on getting a good video of him feeding himself or doing his baby signs, but I haven't captured them yet.  Never fear, though, David news will always be posted here as soon as it happens.

I think this might be called crawling.

David has been trying to crawl for about a month now, but every time he starts to tip forward he chickens out and leans back.  Well today he found a way to do this paraplegic looking scoot thing that enables him to be pretty mobile without having to risk falling over.

This, of course, has led to actual crawling over the course of a few hours.  All he has to do is swing his back leg in the right direction and he's basically there.  He's still not courageous enough to go straight into the crawl, and he has a tendency to flop down on his stomach once he's there, but I think it's safe to say that we officially have a crawler in our midst.

So far we've done some minimal baby proofing (latches on hazardous cabinets), but once he got mobile it was apparent that we had more to do.  It's like finding broken pieces of glass - the easiest way to do it is to walk around barefoot.  It appears we'll basically be doing that with the babyproofing.  We have had to move a mirror that he used to love looking in and a not-so-stable bookshelf already this evening.  This should be fun.  God help us.

----

Administrative note: we have a cardiologist checkup on friday, so sometime this weekend I'll post a general update on everything - health, development, etc.

David has learned to pull himself up...

This evening as Christy and I are sitting around chatting after dinner, kinda half-watching David, we just happened to look down as he is using his bouncer to pull himself up into a standing position.  It took him doing it another time before I could get my phone and put it into video record mode, but I did manage to capture him doing it for the third time in his life.

We have tried to keep our house empty of places for him to pull himself up, but alas, we are outsmarted again.  I guess there's no stopping progress.  As hard as I try to keep him a baby, he just insists on growing up.

Meeting Mike

Today, David experienced LSU for the first time.  Such a momentous occasion, I believe, demands a post.

In truth, I'm quite sure that he didn't care - one place he's never been is much like another.  Mike was sleeping in the shade, and I don't think David even noticed that he was there.

After that, we walked to the indian mounds and then across the quad.  Sadly, he didn't seem impressed.  He was probably just tired though, I'm sure if he was more awake he would have been totally excited.

So there you are.  David's first trip to the most beautiful campus on the planet, and he didn't even care.  Oh well, maybe when he's bigger he will understand how unbelievably awesome LSU is.

...there are lots more pictures in the "Month 8" picture link -->

AHH!! David is cutting a tooth!

No sooner did I post the administrative note, than we went to put David to bed.  For some reason unknown to anyone but him, he loves chewing on my fingers.  Nobody else's fingers, just mine.  For the past few days I've not been letting him do it, as all 3 of us are mildly ill at the moment.  But he had been trying to get them in his mouth all evening, and I'd just washed my hands, so I figured it was ok.

*scrape scrape

"Umm, Christy, I'm pretty sure I feel a tooth"

"Oh no, my baby!"

We had just been talking about how little we want him to grow up (crawl, walk, CUT TEETH), and he goes and does it.  Oh well, such is life I guess.  Gummy smile was never here to stay.

Quick administrative note

I've added a component on the sidebar that will let you subscribe to this blog via email (for those of you not into the RSS thing).  I presume it will send you an email any time I post an update.  If anyone tries it and it doesn't do that, let me know.

David is sick!

I had expected/planned to use this space to update David's progress as a baby, talk about all of his firsts, post pictures and videos of him doing awesome things, letting everyone know when he learns to crawl and walk and all those fun things.  I didn't really expect for the first "first" to be that David has his first (infectious) illness.

Christy has been feeling under the weather for a few days, and a couple days ago David started with a light cough, mostly at night.  We didn't really think much of it, but it persisted, and yesterday we just figured that it couldn't hurt to be cautious.  He already lives life with an 85% blood oxygen saturation (normal is 100%), all he needs is to get fluid filled lungs that would make that saturation drop.  So this morning, David went to the doctor for a non-checkup for the first time.

We told the doctor that Christy had been sick, David had developed a little cough, and we just wanted to be careful.  His first comment was that they weren't going to treat him prophylacticly - i.e., they weren't going to do anything preventative just because Christy was sick.  Apparently he's had this issue before with parents, which is kinda sad.  Anyway, he proceeds to look in his ears.  Lo and behold, he has the beginnings of an infection in his left ear!

Long story short, Paul and Christy are awesome parents who do, in fact, know when their child is getting sick, and furthermore are able to realize it before it turns into a full blown illness. *patsselfontheback.

So David now has 10 days worth of the infamous "pink stuff" (amoxycillin) that he has to take twice a day.  Also of note is that it didn't require a shot, which I'm sure would make David happy if he knew.

In truth, he's doing very well and I doubt he has any idea that anything is amiss.  He hasn't been fussy or anything, and even though he coughs a little bit at night it doesn't seem to be enough to wake him up or make him mad.  He likes the pink stuff (he's always been a really good medicine taker), so no problems on that front either.  Basically, he is the awesomest baby ever.  Even when he's sick.

In other (administrative) news, Christy and I have been taking pictures and videos like crazy, and they're all getting stuffed into the links on the sidebar.  It's kinda funny how digital media and cheap storage basically lets you take constant pictures of anything that you want.  When I was little, I felt like mom took unreasonable amounts of pictures of us.  I can't even imagine how bad it would have been if she'd had a camera in her phone and infinite film.

Update emails have been archived

Last night I went through all of the David update emails that I sent out prior to staring this blog, and assimilated them into a PDF that you can see here: David Update Email Archive.  If anyone has a problem seeing it, email me or comment below and I'll try to see what the problem is and fix it.

As I read through all of that stuff again, it brought back a lot of memories and emotions.  It's really amazing how far our little family has come from that first time of being told that something might be wrong to now.  I was also entertained at how much we learned through all of this stuff.  When I wrote the first 2 emails, I had no idea what was really going on.  I used the wrong words in a few places, had details way off, all sorts of stuff.  Then I go down and read the email that I sent to our local cardiologist after the second surgery and I'm throwing out hospital acronyms and drug names like I invented them.  As difficult as that whole process was, it's really rather interesting to watch (and remember) the progression.

Anyway, I just wanted to get all of this stuff in one place, so now I think it officially is.  Feel free to let me know if I missed any emails.  I think I got them all, but it seems like there are holes where I should have sent something out but I don't have anything.  Oh well.

Adventures in Ferberizing

So not much interesting has been going on recently.  But I figure I should do 1 or 2 of these a month, so even though this isn't really an update per-se, here is this month's David update...

There are 2 books that every new parent needs.  The names of these sacred texts were passed on to us by some awesome friends when we had David, and now I'm passing them on to you:

1. The Happiest Baby on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp.  We managed to read this one before he was born.  It's a pretty quick read that could really be condensed into 2 8.5x11 sheets of paper, but I fully credit it with keeping us out of the emergency room before the Glenn.  As you may or may not know, David was not allowed to cry for more than like 10 minutes until that surgery had passed.  That book taught us how to comfort him quickly so that he never did.

2.  Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber.  When you do a google search for "Ferber" (probably bing too, since they just copy google's results), every hit is a link saying OMG DON'T FERBERIZE YOUR BABY UNLESS YOU HATE HIM.  I am here to tell you that's a load of crap.  We went back and forth about going the Ferber route for 2 months before we just decided to just get the book from the library and see what it says.  Needless to say, the interwebs critics have probably never actually read what he has to say.

David never has liked going to bed at night.  He would get mad as soon as he realized what time it was.  It didn't matter whether we held him or put him in bed, he was crying.  Most of the time, for a minimum of 30 minutes before sleepiness started overcoming anger.  And truth be told, it wasn't THAT bothersome, we just knew it wasn't sustainable.  He was going to have to figure out how to fall asleep by himself one way or another.

Ferber has a chart of how long to let the baby cry before you go check on him the first time, second time, etc.  He tells you in the book that night 1 is the worst in terms of how long it takes for them to fall asleep, night 2 takes about half the time of night 1, then night 3 and on are smooth sailing.  So night 1 was Saturday.  We put him in bed at 9 P.M.  It took him 25 minutes to fall asleep.  Yes, that's right, he cried LESS for the worst part of being Ferberized than he ever had with anything else we had done.  Night 2 (Sunday), right at 12 minutes.  And on top of all of that, he sleeps through the night.  As in 11 hours straight last night without even waking up from being hungry.  We will see how tonight goes, but I am wildly optimistic.

Otherwise, everything seems to be going swimmingly.  David has started eating some solid foods once a day. He started with brown rice, which he was kinda meh on.  2 weekends ago, we (read: Christy) made him some barley & carrot mush, and he has had a change of heart on solid foods.  She started throwing in random fresh herbs this weekend, and he seems to like that also.

David has a short pediatrician visit this week to get his last Synegis shot (respiratory syncytial virus or RSV antigen) of the year, then he gets his second flu booster early next week.  The doctors are all really paranoid about him getting any kind of respiratory sickness, so David gets lots of extra preventative maintenance.  He's gotten pretty good about shots though, last time he only cried while he was actually getting the shot and stopped almost as soon as it was over.  I keep telling him that a shot should be no big deal when you've had your chest cracked open, but he disagrees.

Christy has continued to keep the picture albums updated, along with one or 2 videos that she randomly takes.  So be sure to check back occasionally to watch him get bigger.  Until next time...

Pardon my progress..

I'm re-jiggering the picasa albums into manageable sizes, so if you try to visit any of them in the next 48 hours or so, you may not be able to find what you're looking for.  I'll update the side perma-links when I'm done.  TIA.

5:00 PM Edit:
Ok, everything is fixed now.  Links on the right work, albums are sorted by month (mostly), and I've separated out the surgery pictures into their own albums so that you don't have to look at Borg-baby every time you open an album.  Happy viewing!

The Infamous Daisy Video

I thought we had already sent this out, but it appears not.  This is a video of David meeting mom's dog.  He found it entertaining:

Christy has also started a Youtube channel that she plans on uploading any other interesting videos to:
David Videos

There's also a perma-link of that on the sidebar.

David is 6 months old!

No sooner do I start this thing before I have a reason to use it.  Christy IMed me and asked for a new 6 months to present album to start dumping pictures into, so here it is:

David - 6 months to present

I'm not planning on posting here every time we add pictures (since christy does it like 12 times a day), but if you'd like notification I think you can subscribe or become a fan or something to the picasa account and it will automatically send you an email every time there are new pictures.

Also notice that I've added a list of perma-links to the picasa albums on the right hand sidebar, so you won't have to look through all of the posts to find them.

While I'm at it, I'll also do a quick "how he's doing" update -

We had a cardiologist appointment last week where he did an echo and all of that good stuff.  He said everything looks really good and scheduled us to come back in 3 months.  Basically, we have a normal baby now.  They told us in the hospital that after the Glenn surgery you kinda have a newborn all over again, simply because all of the constant worry and monitoring is over and you can just take care of your baby like normal.  It's true, and we're enjoying the hell out of it.

David is continuing to do well in general - he's sitting on his own, starting to eat some solid foods (well, if you consider grain mush "solid"), and just figured out how to roll over from his tummy to his back yesterday, although he hates being on his tummy in the first place.  He is sleeping for several hour stretches at night, sometimes even 8+ hours.  He loves being outside; he loves chewing on anything and everything.  He's pretty much happy and fun as long as he's not hungry or tired.  He gets the former from his mom and the latter from his dad.  We got to go back to church for the first time this past Wednesday, and David absolutely loved it.  We were a little worried that the loud music would scare him, but as soon as it started he started his excitement wiggle - I think he likes music.  All in all, Christy and I don't have any complaints, and David doesn't seem to either.

So that's it for now.  We'll talk to you soon...

Transitioning e-tools...

I was telling someone last night that they were welcome to forward around the updates that I've been sending out.  Then it occurred to me that there might not be an update any time soon, and that it would be really weird for all of you to get an email in 3 or 4 years letting you know that it was time for the third surgery.  Plus, I've been needing a single online spot that everyone could bookmark that could then direct you to new photoalbums, etc., since the current ones have gotten rather large and unwieldy.  So anyway, this is that spot.  I've turned all of the RSS stuff on, so you can just stick the feed in your favorite RSS reader (or Facebook, I think there's a way to do that) and any new posts here will just go there.  Or you can just check it periodically, that works too.  The layout is in-progress, I'm sure Christy will tinker with it to make it look better than it does now.

I plan on archiving all of the old emails here too, in case anyone needs to get up to speed.  That will be in a later post.

The picture albums are still here and here .  I'll post an update to this blog if/when we re-organize picasa.


Ta ta for now...