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.