21 Months, and All is Well!

It’s funny how, when a kid is born, you measure time and age in days. Then it’s weeks. Then months. Then there’s this kinda odd period between 18 and 24 months when you’re not really ready to let go of your baby being a baby and you still measure your kid’s age in months, but nobody knows what the hell you’re talking about when they ask how old he is, and you say “21 months”. I’m sure people internally roll their eyes and wonder why I don’t just say “a year and a half”. But since we do cardiac check-ups every 3 months right now, I have an excuse. I figure I can stick with month-measuring until he’s 2. Then it will just be measuring by years. Ah, how the time flies.

So in the past 2 weeks, we’ve seen both the cardiologist and the pediatrician for quarterly checkups, and both have been quite happy. David remains on his 5% growth curve, seemingly to the pleased astonishment of both doctors. With the way he eats, I suspect he would already be obese if he didn’t have a heart condition. Christy literally has to keep a buffet of food out for him all day so that he can graze. Otherwise, he asks for food every 15 minutes or so. He has also recently discovered chocolate, for which I suspect he has a genetic predisposition (maternal) to addiction. We try to keep it rationed, but we have leveraged the love of chocolate into an increase in milk intake. He never really did like regular whole milk (pediatrician has said 8-16 oz per day, he might have been drinking 8-16 oz per week), but he will drink the heck out of some chocolate milk. Whatever works.

Aside from growth, oxygen saturations remain in the 90% range. The cardiologist said that sometimes a post-Glenn kid’s natural system will form some extra blood vessels in the heart that will keep saturations high. Then, in the cath that they have to do right before the Fontan (third surgery), they will plug all of the extra blood vessels, saturations will drop to like 70%, they’ll do the surgery and then he’ll be at 100% after that. Blood pressure is still good, both in absolute terms (just good pressure numbers) and leg pressure relative to arm pressure terms (if there’s a wide variance between the two, it means something might be wrong, probably in the aorta - for David they were exactly the same). All in all, they seem to be pleased. The cardiologist asked us if David was starting to tire easily, to which Christy responded, “no, he pretty much acts like he’s always had too much sugar.” So I guess that’s a good thing.

On the non-medical front, he’s still getting into everything that’s within his reach. He has learned how to climb on to chairs, and he does it at every opportunity. There are a few things that he knows to not touch, but otherwise, he figures if he can get to it then it’s fair game. He is learning letters, numbers (knows numbers 1 thru 5, probably 10 -15 random letters), and LOTS of words (just learned “M&M” a few minutes ago, is demanding one right now.) He still loves water. He likes to play in the sprinkler, kiddie pool,bath, hose spray, standing water from rainstorms, pretty much any pools of water that he comes across. He has developed a love of all things Elmo and Curious George. He wakes up daily demanding to watch Curious George, and is not happy on weekends when we have to inform him that George only come on on weekdays. He also loves outside. Any time he sees keys, he asks for them, then toddles over to the back door to try and figure out how to unlock it and go outside. Or, he will bring our shoes to us, and once we have them on, he points to the back door. As if to say, “Ok dad, you’re ready to go outside now, what are we waiting on?” He’s still incredibly wiggly and incredibly energetic. I think he gets that from his mother.

Since the last update, we’ve pretty much stayed in Baton Rouge, enjoying ourselves around town. Both Christy and I have had birthdays, but nothing major in the way of celebrations. Easter has come and gone (many eggs were found - Grandmere had been practicing by putting baby marshmallows inside of the plastic eggs, so david was confused when he did his first non-grandmere egg hunt and the eggs did not have marshmallows inside), we did a set of photos with a friend of ours who is a photographer, but mostly have just taken it easy. TCH still hasn’t contacted us to go back, so we’re not contacting them either. We are kinda missing Houston though, and definitely have to go back to see our friends, their kids, and the second iteration of the Terra Cotta Soldiers at the Museum of Natural Science. So we’ll have to negotiate with our friends as to when would be a good time to visit for a long weekend or something.

Life continues to roll by, and we’re trying to enjoy as much of it as we can. So far, I can’t complain. Until next time...