Kyle has been taking showers on his own for some time now, but he couldn't resist a dip in the big tub. Since Jason was out of town, I decided to multitask and throw Ryan in as well. He loves anything his brothers are doing, so he was all smiles. Kyle even asked for something to "scrub him with". Now I just need to teach him to handle diapers and feeding and I will be home free. It was a long week for Grant, Jason was back in town by Thursday with tickets to Sesame Street Live. We knew he would like it once he got there, but getting there was another story as it usually is with Grant (I don't want to see that singing, dancing show, it's scary to me and it makes me cranky). You can see how excited he was in the other picture. They did end up having a really good time though and it was nice for Jason to have some time with them. Things went south not long after they got home when Grant woke up with a stomach bug of some sort. It was one of those days when everything just stopped and the world revolved around getting him to drink enough to stay hydrated. One of my sister's friends just lost a beautiful 4 month old baby girl to a sudden illness, so my neurosis was in overdrive, I set my watch and made him drink a shot glass of water every 15 minutes and worried while he slept if I had done enough. Thankfully, he bounced back pretty quickly by Friday afternoon and so far no one else has been impacted (knock on wood). Although it was Friday, his week of woe wasn't quite over. Our neighbor was having a birthday party at the inside swimming pool and not wanting to brave a swim suit in January, I begged Jason to take them. Although I feel like I never leave Lee's Summit, I decided to head to Leawood for a little January clearance sale shopping and no sooner did I get there then my cell phone rings. It was Jason, at the hospital, waiting to see if Grant needed stitches. I wanted so bad to get there, but didn't want to drag Ryan in to the hospital only to find them already done or him not needing stitches (which turned out to be the case, I don't think I would have even taken him, but I am sure Jason didn't want to listen to me worry all week that we should have). All's well that ends well I guess. Our week did end well, we had a very fun super bowel party with some friends. It was crazy with kids running around and the guys watching the games (the first football game Jason has watched all season, he has been so busy with work and our house's midlife crisis). In the midst of everything, Grant managed to fall sound asleep in the recliner. At least it gave Kyle and I a chance to do the seemingly hundreds of things he needed for school tomorrow (e.g. donut orders, book logs, etc). For the book log, he was supposed to pick out his 10 favorite books. We don't read it often, but he had to include "Walter, The Farting Dog" adding "I think this should be an award book". Oh, the humor of a kindergartner. And Mr. Ryan has gone from a slow inch worm crawl to a full speed army crawl in what seems like a week. He has no fear and will come on little missions out of the living room and head straight for the the stairs.
I meant to post earlier about the CHD Families meeting I attended on Monday. The speaker was amazing, he was a researcher at CMH, working on developing replacement heart valves. Aside from making me feel like I had the IQ of a stone, the presentation was so interesting. Most of it was over my head, but what I think happens is that they take a donor valve (what they use at this point) and remove the donor's cells, leaving only collagen. They then take this structure and "seed" it with stem cells from the patient's own bone marrow. The result is a valve that functions essentially as the patients own valve, growing instead of getting clogged with calcium. As I said, it was amazing. It was also neat to talk to other heart families. Jason didn't go because he was out of town but he asked if it was hard or weird being back at the hospital. It really wasn't. The presentation was in an area I had never ran across (and I thought we had traveled to every corner). I really don't have bad memories of the hospital. It was of course a scary time. but almost everyone was so amazingly nice and the hospital was so child friendly that I have good memories of the boys coming to visit and playing on the playground and going to see the train in the vending area. Not that I want to go back, I am quite happy to visit wearing a temporary visitor sticker as opposed to the orange parent bracelet.
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