Little Tin Man

Disney World!

2012-12-14T11:02:00.003-08:00

When I was growing up, our favorite vacation was always the one that ended in Orlando at Disney World. I don’t know how young I was when I first went, but I’m pretty sure my sister wasn’t around yet, which means that I was probably not yet 5. We didn’t go every year, but I’m pretty sure we went as often as we could. As for Christy, I don’t know whether or not she had the early-age indoctrination that I did, but by the time I met her she was also a Disney nerd. Since we’ve been married (went there for our honeymoon), we’ve made an effort to go once every other year. This being an even numbered year meant that it was time. 2 year old in tow and all.

Coincidentally, as I mentioned in the last post, my dad decided sometime in early summer of this past year that he wanted to take a bunch of us on a Disney Cruise. Worked for us, we were already planning on going. Christy, however, was not satisfied to have cruise days substitute for Disney World days. We were planning on 6 nights in Disney World, and she demanded to have her 6 nights. Dad was planning on doing the cruise and then 3 nights on land after the cruise, for which I wanted to join him, so I caved and agreed to do 4 more nights before the cruise. And since we’d have David with us, we told Christy’s mom and step-dad that they had to come with us for those first 4 days.

Obviously, one cannot condense 7 days of Disney World and 4 days of Disney cruise into a blog post. My posts are too long as it is. I can say, though, that it was pretty awesome. I was a little leery of doing this with a 2 year old, but he was really great the whole time. It took a day or two to get used to trying to schedule lunch and a nap in every day, but once we had that figured out, it was pretty smooth sailing.

He loved the characters - we spent more time waiting in line to see characters than we have in all of the times that we’ve been to Disney World combined. He also liked the Dumbo ride (and similar Aladdin carpet ride one) that goes in a circle and lets the rider go up in the air. The Epcot Food & Wine Festival was going on while we were there; that was pretty awesome. - lots of really good food in small portions so you could try everything. We did the Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, which was pretty awesome - street dancing (David loves music), candy, fireworks, smaller crowd. We also did Mickey’s Christmas Party after we got back from the cruise - not as awesome. MUCH bigger crowd, almost seemed like there were more people than there were during the day. Otherwise, it was just typical Disney awesomeness.

The cruise was a neat experience too. I’d never been on one of those, so it took me a day or so to get used to the motion. Christy and David never seemed to have a problem with it, though, and we all had a really good time. There was lots of water to play in, Disney’s private island was pretty cool, and David loved being able to play with Miles through all of it. The food was amazing, and we all loved the underlying M.O. of “make passengers feel like royalty”.

In the end, it was a fabulous trip. People have told me, “you know, he will never remember any of that.” To which I think, “I hope not, that means I get to take him for the first time AGAIN!” I can say, though, that he remembers so far. He will still tell us occasionally that we need to go to the Magic Kingdom today. And I will also say that doing Disney with a toddler is a lot of fun. It’s different than without - planning for lunch, dinner, and naps is key - but I’m definitely glad we went. It could be that David’s inherent awesomeness made the trip better than it would be with a normal kid, but I have no way to judge that. All I can say is that with an awesome 2 year old, Disney World is still awesome.

More pictures can be found here.

Short cardiology update...

2012-10-29T11:37:00.003-07:00

Since August, our cardiologist in town has been talking about surgery #3 being scheduled some time around the beginning of the year, at age 2 1/2 or so. He'd been trying to get in touch with Texas Children's Hospital to nail all of that down, but basically all of our scheduling has been expecting the surgery around that time.

Well, I just got a call from them. They finally got in touch with TCH. You may recall that we've been confused in the past about timing of surgery #3, because the in-town docs always talked in terms of 2 1/2 while TCH always talked in terms of 4 or 5. Well apparently there was a reason for the confusion. TCH wants to do the surgery between 3 1/2 and 4 years old. So all of our planning has been for naught. The easiest way to make God laugh is to make a plan.

So, no surgery this year. Looking more like spring of 2014. I guess God figured that y'all needed another year to pray for him, as you've probably been slacking.

I'm a big kid now!

2012-10-27T06:18:00.002-07:00

I will make a promise to the readers of this blog: this is the first and last potty post that you will see from me.

A few months ago, my dad decided that he wanted to take us (and my sister’s family) on a Disney cruise. So we got all of that booked and scheduled and began our normal Disney anticipation and drooling process. There were videos to watch - David made us watch this video multiple times a day - message boards to read, and since we’d never done a cruise of any kind, rules & “what to expect” sort of things. I was thinking, “oh, my kid has a heart condition, I probably need to let them know about that.” David was thinking “OMG LOOK AT ALL OF THOSE POOLS AND WATER.” As we were perusing the details of the ship, looking at all of the pools & water play areas, we noticed a small problem: children are only allowed in the pools - any pools - if they are potty trained. Apparently there is some sort of ancient international maritime law that only allows potty trained children into pools aboard ships. That’s what Disney’s excuse is, anyway. With a child who loves playing in the water and who will almost certainly melt down constantly if he is not allowed to play in all of that available H20, we had a predicament. The obvious solution to which was, of course, potty training him.

So some time in the beginning of August, Christy decided that it was time to take the plunge. He had “shown interest” (whatever that means - but it’s what all of the potty training experts say that you have to look for) for a while, and this was as good of a time as any. Ordinarily, I don’t think we’d have done it so early, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

After reading some blogs on how to effectively get your kid to pee in the toilet, Christy chose the 3-day “potty training boot-camp” method. Essentially, the kid goes around naked for 3 days. If they start to pee, you stop them and bring them to a toilet. And then after 3 days, they are supposed to have it figured out. Sounded pretty fanciful to me, but I figured the worst case would be that Christy would have to deal with 3 days of David peeing all over the place, then we would try something that would have a chance of success. Christy, on the other hand, figured that she’d bring him to her mom’s house for 3 days and leave him outside naked.

3 days later, I was proved wrong and he was potty trained. I think it really only took him about a day to figure out what was going on, and the extra 2 were just for reinforcement. By the time day 4 rolled around, he was wearing disney themed big-boy underwear and telling us “gotta poop gotta pooop!” when he needed to go. IMO it’s a little more of pain in the butt, because now bathrooming is on his schedule instead of changing him being on mine. And travelling is not as easy, because he does have to make bathroom stops more often than Christy or I do. But all in all, it’s pretty cool to have a 2 year old not in diapers anymore. Cheaper too.

Happy Birthday #2!

2012-07-27T10:39:00.001-07:00

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.

To the beach!

2012-07-01T07:44:00.003-07:00

Yes, I'm getting really bad about this. I actually had to go back and look at the post before this to see when it was, and then figure out what we'd done since then. My first thought is always, "well nothing, just regular life". Kinda like when I get home from work and Christy asks me what happened that day. I generally don't remember stuff that happens day-to-day, much less over the course of 3 months. Fortunately, Christy is better than I am at this stuff, so she just gave me a list of all the stuff we've done since we last spoke...

To the beach!

This one, I actually did remember. Going on vacation is momentous enough that it tends to stick in my mind. Some friends of ours were attending a wedding in Destin, FL, and at the last minute found out that the set of grandparents who were supposed to join them to watch the kids would be unable to go. So, on Thursday I got an email asking if we wanted to stay in the extra room in their condo on the beach. Um, yes? On Friday, we left. It was pretty awesome. The weather was beautiful, even when it rained. It was early May, so it wasn't too hot yet. And it also happened to be a wedding involving my sister's husband's family, which means that we got to hang out with them, his awesome family, and David's cousins for 4 days. We did let David play in the ocean too much on the first day and he got a little blue-ish, but he was fine once he warmed back up. The rest of the time he and mom (and all the in-law family) spent loving the sand and the surf, while dad (me) stayed in the condo listening to the waves and catching up on his reading. Fun times.

The rest of the stuff from the last 3 months involves staying in town and me still having to go to work every day, which in my mind makes it just regular, uninteresting life. But after Christy listed off a few things, I realized that there were at least pictures of things, so there must be actual events behind those pictures.

Mom's company had their annual crawfish boil in late April, which we all enjoyed. There were several kids there for him to play with. David loves other kids, so he had a great time with them and with the sidewalk chalk that someone bought for the kids to play with. A few weeks later, Christy's brother boiled crabs at her mom's house for mother's day. I'm not sure that David knew what to think of the crabs, but he did like the hotdogs that were boiled with them.

A couple weeks later David assisted us in crushing the competition in the Louisiana Republican Caucus, where Ron Paul candidates won 75% of the available delegate slots to the state convention. I think I'm going to get him a shirt that says "Don't blame me, I voted for Ron Paul". David is pretty politically savvy, I'm always impressed by his understanding of the constitution and the importance of freedom.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, grandpa (my dad) came to visit for a weekend. It's funny, David is always unsure of him at first, but warms up when he realizes that Grandpa will take him outside. Or give him food. So we spent lots of time with him, and with G-Gma (my grandma) who is moving to Texas.

And finally, this weekend, Christy's step-sister came to town with her husband and 3 kids, so David got to meet them for the first time. Like I said before, he loves other kids, so he is enjoying the time being spent with them.

So I guess we've been keeping busy, and David has been having lots of fun, causing lots of trouble, and generally just being awesome. Right now, he's eating ice cream and watching Finding Nemo with mom. Life is pretty grand.

21 Months, and All is Well!

2012-05-06T07:25:00.001-07:00

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

2012-01-27T05:10:00.000-08:00

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!

2012-01-23T16:57:00.000-08:00

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...

2012-01-07T09:48:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-20T16:24:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-10-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-22T04:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-17T20:01:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-08-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-04T16:03:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-28T18:09:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-07-14T17:56:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-06-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-05-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-10T08:24:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-04-12T19:54:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-03-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

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 -->