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.