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...

18 Month Cardiology Report

So yes, 2 blogs in under a week. Aren’t you excited?

Actually, this one is delinquent too. We saw the cardiologist a little over 2 weeks ago for David’s 18 month checkup, but I didn’t want to post this before I posted the one for Christmas, and I was being lazy about posting that one. Don’t worry though, on the day when we learn that he has been miraculously healed, you will all be informed before midnight.

In truth, there continues to be not much to report. Which is good. David’s growth path still appears to be tracking right along the 5% curve with no material deviations. It’s actually funny to see David next to other kids his age. One of Christy’s friends has a boy who is a couple months younger than David, and he’s at least 3” taller and noticeably heavier. The doctors have always told us to expect that, but it’s just strange to have the difference be THAT pronounced. Anyway, the doctor said everything looked and sounded good.

We asked him whether he expected the next surgery to be closer to 3 years old or 5 years old - he said much closer to 3 than to 5. We also asked him if there’s any possible reason that the TCH people would want to hospitalize him when he goes back there for his 1-year-post-glenn checkup. He said definitely not (TCH people, I’m looking at you - we’re not staying this time). They actually have not contacted us yet about going back, and I don’t plan on rocking the boat until they do. Dr. Brumund said it was actually a little odd for them to want to see him before we all start getting ready for surgery #3, so I figure we will be ok without them. If we haven’t heard from them by spring, we will probably just take a weekend and go hang out with our friends in Houston.

This visit also featured David’s semi-annual echo-cardiogram. Everything still looks beautiful there as well. David’s aorta is growing “beautifully”, his tricuspid valve (between the remaining ventricle and the right atrium) is still holding up really well, and the pressure drop across the place where the reconstructed aorta meets the natural one is basically negligible. All of which means that David is still doing really well.

Otherwise, we’re still having a blast, and David is still growing and getting smarter and more fun every day. He’s learning to talk a little bit, and he’s getting really good at communicating what he wants even when he doesn’t know what the words are. The other day he wanted some goldfish (the little cheesy cracker things), so he opened one of his books to a picture of a fish, pointed to it emphatically, then went over and pointed at the pantry. I kinda worry that his linguistic skills might be a little behind due to his inventiveness with non-verbal communication, but I guess that can’t be all bad. He still loves outside, loves other kids and people (don’t know where he got that - it wasn’t from me), and has started to love having books read to him. He also eats like a pig. Christy has taken to just leaving food within his reach all the time so that he can have an all-day buffet. I need to get rich soon, cause if he gets any bigger my food bill is going to put me in the poor house.

So that’s about it. I’ll try to be more regular about these things and to remember to let the world know about interesting things when David does them. But frankly, I’m having too much fun to stop and write when I can just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Yes, we do in fact eat straight peanut butter with a spoon.

Christmas!

Christmas less than a month past, and here I am writing David’s next blog post! Yay me!

As one might imagine, the Christmas season is busy and eventful, and this year wasn’t much different. It was, however, David’s first year to really notice what’s going on. He’s a pretty social kid, so he LOVES being at gathering where he can make himself the center of attention. Now that I think about it, that was probably his favorite thing about Christmas - all of the people who doted on him for a month straight.

So anyway, we spent lots of time having Christmas at various places with various people:

First up was the Patin Christmas party at mom’s house with that side of my family. They are always hard to nail down and corral into one location at one time, so every year mom makes them come to her house a couple weeks before Christmas so that she can at least see everyone once. As would become a recurring theme, David was loved by all and David acquired toys. At this one, nobody was supposed to get him anything, but alas, such a demand fell on deaf ears. The standout present from this gathering was the toy Cars keys that he got with the car noise making keychain. He likes car noises, he definitely takes his boy-dom seriously.

For the next couple of days after that party, my dad was in town from Colorado. So David spent a lot of time hanging with Grandpa. Various Google baby clothes were procured along with a sweet bean bag chair that later came in the mail. Good times were had by all.

Next, 2 days before Christmas (if I recall correctly), was Christmas with Christy’s brother and sister-in-law who came to town for an afternoon from Vacherie. Among the items of import gained at this small gathering was David’s new John Deere steering wheel thingy. Since it is both a steering wheel and makes noise, he loves it. I don’t think we’ve been allowed to put that one in the rotation of living room toys yet, because he demands to have it out all the time.

Christmas day lunch brought us to Christy’s mom’s house for presents and food, and David was not disappointed with the gifts received. At this stop, he got what might very well be his favorite toy-based gift of the year - a fisher-price gear thingy. It is pretty cool, and I very much appreciate the accommodation of David’s inherent nerd character in giving him an engineering toy. This child has no chance.

After lunch, we went home for a nap, then it was off to my mom’s house for Christmas evening coffee, dessert, and more presenting with David. His primary acquisition at mom’s house was a David-sized chair with his name embroidered. The kids of the family that we stay with in Houston have these, and David loved them last time we were there, so we kinda figured he’d like one for himself. We have not been surprised at his enjoyment. He climbs on it, watches his baby can read videos from it, and uses it as a stepping stool to get on to the couch. Plus, it’s red. When you’re 18 months old, everything red is awesome.

Lastly was Christmas with my paternal grandma, aunt, and uncle. Christy made dinner (best meal of Christmas, btw) which we ate and then had dessert and more presents. David returned home with a tricycle from great-grandma. Which he loves. Luckily he gets most of his tricycling done with mom during the day. It was also my first experience putting together a toy for David. It was surprisingly not bad, hopefully future endeavors will be just as easy.

So David’s first “real” Christmas was a success. In the end we managed to have minimal incursions of excessive toys and lots of David attention. Which, of course, is really the most important thing.

Note on downloading pictures from the albums...

It came to my attention this morning, that with the integration of Google+ and Picasa, anyone not signed up for Google+ cannot download full size pictures from the permalinks on the side.  So, for anyone who wants to download pictures, you have 2 options:


1.  Sign up for Google+.
2.  When you go to the permalinks, right click on the link that you want, and select the option to copy the URL to the clipboard (in chrome it's "Copy Link Address", in Firefox it's "Copy Link Location", and in Internet Explorer it's "Copy Shortcut").  Then, go to the address bar at the top of the browser, delete whatever is there and paste that link into the address bar (either Ctrl-V or right click and select "Paste").  Immediately after that address, type "?noredirect=1", except without the quotes.  Now hit return or click go, and you should be brought to the old Picasa view of the album.  From Picasa, you should be able to download full size pictures.


This is all an apparent attempt by Google to lock people into using Google+ for everything, which is pretty crappy in my opinion.  I guess they've gotten rid of that whole "Don't be evil" thing.

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.