Cardiology Checkup

I am fully aware I have not blogged Easter and there are some very blogworthy photos/phrases (such as “Look, the Easter bunny laid a car egg”) but Ryan’s annual checkup with cardiology was today.  I took my camera, wanting a pic of him covered in EKG stickers, but he was pretty unamused with the whole process and it just didn’t seem like a Kodak moment.  We did survive, thanks to the tv’s in every exam room at CMH North.  He was as usual, captivated by Sponge Bob and held perfectly still for his echo, towards the end, he just looked at me and started saying “Mama, Mom, Momma” over and over as in what in the hell is she doing and why haven’t you picked me up yet.  He took his favorite bear-bear and held tightly the whole time.  When the echo tech tried to put a sticker on bear-bear, she found out what the look of death looks like when coming from an almost 2 year old.  After the echo, we talked to Dr. D, the cardiologist.  He was more talkative this year (last year, I just remember him saying, “he is fine, complete repair, perfect, don’t give him any special treatment”.  Today he still said he was fine, but did say he had some leakage from his aortic valve that has caused a slight enlargement of his left ventricle, but it is very mild and within the range of what a normal kids heart would look like.  Just something they will continue to watch.  He asked about speech, saying they do sometime see speech and language delays in TGA kids because of the decreased oxygenated blood flow to the brain in utereo.  Fortunately, Ryan is talking up a storm and although he was born with a small head (5% compared with 90-95% for his brothers), he caught up extremely quickly, yeah Ryan.  When we came home, he said “I unt grapes, I unt choclate milk”.  Lot’s of words for not even 2 year old.  I think that is all for the most part.  He did say he has some mild dilation of the aortic root, caused by the fact that it was originally headed to his pulmonary artery and is thinner.  This dilation means he shouldn’t be involved in weight lifting when he gets bigger.  He can do weight training, as long as he doesn’t hold his breath while he tries to lift as much weight as he can.  While this doesn’t bother me, I do worry that telling a teenager he can’t do something, will only make him want to do it more and I feel more pressure to do everything right parenting wise so that we have a good relationship at that time in his life and he will listen to us and his doctors.  At least I have probably 10-12 years before that worry is realized.  Another note related to bear-bear, he continues to have the binky only at night, now when he gets tired, he will say in this really low voice “unt bear-bear, blanket, binky”.  So cute.

Annual Spring Trip to the Zoo

I don’t know if you can call two years in a row annual, but like last year, we did trek to the zoo with mom, Lilly my friend Julie and her 3 yet again this year during spring break.  Like last year it was an amazingly beautiful day weather wise and we had a great time.  I figured Kyle would be the bellyacher, but with his new found reading skills, he had a great time reading signs and telling us random animal facts.  The downside was that since he could read signs, we couldn’t’ use the “oh, there’s nothing down that trail, just bathrooms line when we were tired and didn’t feel like making one more loop to see another set of monkeys.  I even let him man the camera (the small digital, not my big expensive one that didn’t even make it out of the house with us because if I took it somewhere with all three kids I would end up losing one of the kids because I was so worried about keeping track of the camera) and he did a great job.  The picture of Ryan that Kyle took captures one of the last outings with his “me”.  We (we meaning Jason) finally got serious about ditching the binky during all but bed and nap time.  It won’t lie, it was a pretty hellacious week.  Ryan directed most of his frustration at me and I sent the lion’s share of that frustration straight at Jason, but we survived and now that is over I am glad to have one last visible parenting hurdle no longer hanging over my head.  An upside is that I think Ryan now looks forward to bedtime, he will come to me around 8 or 8:30 and say “Iwannarock”, then run in his room, reach between the slats of his crib to retrieve his long lost friend and then go sit in the rocking chair and wait for me.  Back to the zoo, Ryan is just the perfect age and loved it, so proud to identify all of the animals and other things we ran across (BIRD! BIRD! BIRD! WATER! TREE!).  If he didn’t recognize the contents of the exhibit, he would just say “ANIMAL!  ANIMAL!”  Grant spent most of his time saying everything was boring, which he says about anything he doesn’t like (these “peas” are so boring) which seems like anything that does not involve the TV.  I know it is just a phase and things will get easier soon.