Big Al had physical therapy this morning and Miss Julie is very pleased with him. He's really getting close to being able to sit all by himself. The goal is for him to sit unassisted for five minutes by July, but he is on pace to beat that. First, he used his new sit-to-stand giraffe to practice and did a great job. Then Julie (who is a hard taskmaster) made him sit on the floor with just his Boppy around his bottom. He was pretty sure that he didn't like it. He frowned quite a bit and kept giving her the hairy eyeball, but, once she got out the toys and distracted him, he did great and was able to sit up without any real support for several minutes. Every once in a while, though, he gets tired or overbalanced (he has a rather large melon) and he topples over like a felled tree.
Griffith was almost unable to contain himself throughout this whole session. First, Julie came in a started talking to Allan so Griff had to keep yelling "hey! hey!" until she came over and talked to him. Then, once Julie started working with Allan, it was all that Flora and I could do to keep Griff from crawling in the middle of everything. No toy or person was going to distract him from whatever it was that his brother was doing. No toy is more interesting than the one my brother has. Nothing is more fun than taking it away from him.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
The boys are doing great. They have really been enjoying the good weather. Flora has even ventured out on the front porch with them so that they can watch the trucks going by. This is good for hours of entertainment.
As you can see, wrestling is a source of some fun in our household. Griffith, being mobile, would seem to have the advantage, but Allan is stronger than you would think. In addition, he's wily. Griff just barrels right on and doesn't even try to be slick. If he wants something that Allan has (and if Allan has something, Griffith wants it), then he heads right for it and grabs it. If he wants to stick his hand in Allan's face, he does it. No subterfuge there. Allan, on the other hand, will see Griffith heading in his general direction and start to wail. If you weren't watching, you would be certain that Griffith had done something rude to him. I guess it is the equivalent of the early warning system: Allan wants to make sure that there is an intervention before something dire happens. Or he just wants to get his brother in to trouble. So you can see why Griff would go ahead and whack him when he has the chance. Odds are he's going to get in trouble for it anyway so he might as well get his licks in while he has a chance.
As you can see, wrestling is a source of some fun in our household. Griffith, being mobile, would seem to have the advantage, but Allan is stronger than you would think. In addition, he's wily. Griff just barrels right on and doesn't even try to be slick. If he wants something that Allan has (and if Allan has something, Griffith wants it), then he heads right for it and grabs it. If he wants to stick his hand in Allan's face, he does it. No subterfuge there. Allan, on the other hand, will see Griffith heading in his general direction and start to wail. If you weren't watching, you would be certain that Griffith had done something rude to him. I guess it is the equivalent of the early warning system: Allan wants to make sure that there is an intervention before something dire happens. Or he just wants to get his brother in to trouble. So you can see why Griff would go ahead and whack him when he has the chance. Odds are he's going to get in trouble for it anyway so he might as well get his licks in while he has a chance.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Ready to roll
Griffith and Allan, ready to lead the walk. Griff loved his Mardi Gras beads. Allan, a little less interested.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Hip, hip, hooray!
The boys did it ! (With a lot of help from a lot of you.) Big Al and Grif made their goal of raising $5000 for the March of Dimes -- they beat it actually. And on Saturday they led the walk. Well, sort of, anyway. The Sam's Club team (corporate bullies!) actually cut in front of us, but the boys were the lead in theory. We had lots of good company -- Dick, Steph and Bailey (who claimed to be worn out from the walk despite having ridden piggy-back nearly all the way!), Jennifer, Greg, Jim & Montell, Michele, Lee & Katie, Gretchen, Andy & Caroline (who were misled about how far the walk was by Jay but soldiered on anyway). There will be pictures but I left the card reader at work.
The weather turned out to be perfect and the boys were absolute angels for the whole walk. They got to see their buddy Dr. Joe (actually Griffith is still very skeptical of Dr. Joe who fixed his hernia. And he has every reason to be, really. Dr. Joe would rip off Griff's diaper and begin poking on his privates every time he came in the nursery and Griff has a long memory.) Allan is a little more forgiving and doesn't seem to bear any ill will toward Dr. Joe for putting in his peg. Or maybe he's just biding his time. Hard to tell with Allan. He's inscrutable.
Allan decided early on in the walk that this would be the perfect time and place for a nap and crashed. He slept the entire time. Not his brother, though. Griffith was beside himself. He's so nosy and such a flirt -- he didn't close his eyes for a minute. After it was all over we went to lunch and had burgers. By the time we got home, Allan was all charged up and Griffith was running on fumes. Allan spent all afternoon talking to his dad. Griffith spent most of the afternoon napping with his momma (I picked well that time.)
Griffith has mastered walking along furniture, but hasn't graduated to walking across open ground yet. I had my first real display of jealousy/sibling rivalry today. Both boys were hungry and I was sitting on the floor with Allan on my left leg, feeding him. Griffith was laying on my right leg drinking his bottle when he decided that this really just wasn't good enough. He crawled up on my right thigh, sat down and planted his right hand in Allan's chest and began pushing with all his might. Great. Cain meet Abel. We got it worked out for the moment, but I doubt this is the last time something like this is going to happen.
Allan is continuing to make good progress with his physical therapy and speech therapy. He has graduated to eating small curd cottage cheese. He doesn't seem to like it much (I don't either) but it gives him practice with chewing. So there's that.
Allan's heart rate had been unusually high for week or two and so we had an ultrasound on his heart last week and the cardiologist thinks that he has an A-P window. Basically it is a hole between the aorta and pulmonary artery. This is a rare (of course it is -- it is Allan, after all) congenital heart defect which allows blood to shunt from the aorta to the pulmonary artery. It means that some of his oxygenated blood ends up going back in to the pulmonary artery where there is unoxygenated blood. This may help explain some of his respiratory issues and why he is still on a fair amount of oxygen. They are giving him a high daily dose of Lasix for 2 weeks to dry him out and we will have another ultrasound to see if the hole is still there (there is a small possibility that it might close). If it is still there, then they will do a heart cath, just like Uncle Mark had, to assess the amount of shunting and the pressures in his heart. They will send all of the test results to the Wizard of Oz of Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery at the University of Michigan. Then they will decide if this is something that we need to have surgically repaired right now. He's doing fine. His physical condition is really no different than it was two weeks ago (except his heart rate is back down). We are just hanging out and waiting to see what develops. Allan is apparently bound and determined to continue to see the world via one doctor at a time.
The weather turned out to be perfect and the boys were absolute angels for the whole walk. They got to see their buddy Dr. Joe (actually Griffith is still very skeptical of Dr. Joe who fixed his hernia. And he has every reason to be, really. Dr. Joe would rip off Griff's diaper and begin poking on his privates every time he came in the nursery and Griff has a long memory.) Allan is a little more forgiving and doesn't seem to bear any ill will toward Dr. Joe for putting in his peg. Or maybe he's just biding his time. Hard to tell with Allan. He's inscrutable.
Allan decided early on in the walk that this would be the perfect time and place for a nap and crashed. He slept the entire time. Not his brother, though. Griffith was beside himself. He's so nosy and such a flirt -- he didn't close his eyes for a minute. After it was all over we went to lunch and had burgers. By the time we got home, Allan was all charged up and Griffith was running on fumes. Allan spent all afternoon talking to his dad. Griffith spent most of the afternoon napping with his momma (I picked well that time.)
Griffith has mastered walking along furniture, but hasn't graduated to walking across open ground yet. I had my first real display of jealousy/sibling rivalry today. Both boys were hungry and I was sitting on the floor with Allan on my left leg, feeding him. Griffith was laying on my right leg drinking his bottle when he decided that this really just wasn't good enough. He crawled up on my right thigh, sat down and planted his right hand in Allan's chest and began pushing with all his might. Great. Cain meet Abel. We got it worked out for the moment, but I doubt this is the last time something like this is going to happen.
Allan is continuing to make good progress with his physical therapy and speech therapy. He has graduated to eating small curd cottage cheese. He doesn't seem to like it much (I don't either) but it gives him practice with chewing. So there's that.
Allan's heart rate had been unusually high for week or two and so we had an ultrasound on his heart last week and the cardiologist thinks that he has an A-P window. Basically it is a hole between the aorta and pulmonary artery. This is a rare (of course it is -- it is Allan, after all) congenital heart defect which allows blood to shunt from the aorta to the pulmonary artery. It means that some of his oxygenated blood ends up going back in to the pulmonary artery where there is unoxygenated blood. This may help explain some of his respiratory issues and why he is still on a fair amount of oxygen. They are giving him a high daily dose of Lasix for 2 weeks to dry him out and we will have another ultrasound to see if the hole is still there (there is a small possibility that it might close). If it is still there, then they will do a heart cath, just like Uncle Mark had, to assess the amount of shunting and the pressures in his heart. They will send all of the test results to the Wizard of Oz of Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery at the University of Michigan. Then they will decide if this is something that we need to have surgically repaired right now. He's doing fine. His physical condition is really no different than it was two weeks ago (except his heart rate is back down). We are just hanging out and waiting to see what develops. Allan is apparently bound and determined to continue to see the world via one doctor at a time.
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