Isaiah 7.17 : Updates, etc.

So Isaiah had his first ice cream cone tonight. We've been walking with our neighbors a bit more regularly this week, and after our short little jaunt through the neighborhood tonight we decided to head over to our neighborhood Bruster's Ice Cream. They apparently give away free baby cones to kids 40" tall and under, so we got one for Izzy. Just plain old Vanilla, and surprisingly, he wasn't that into it. Seriously it was maybe the size of a soup spoon full of ice cream crammed atop an itty bitty cone, but it was free and he did eat about half of it. The other half was split roughly equally between Isaiah's face and Rachel's stomach. We totally weren't thinking and didn't take a picture, but it was pretty cute. I was worried the sugar would keep him up since we got it just before his normal attempted bedtime of 8pm. We rarely get him to sleep that early, and are usually lucky to have him asleep by 9 most night, but he seemed to go with only a li...

So I'm a day late with the finger and toe pictures, but click on the picture and you'll go to the Picasa site to see them in all their current glory. Still a little scabby and surgical, but they'll clean up nicely in a few weeks!

I swore I dashed off a quick post the other day, but I must not have. Wednesday night we took off his arm casts and got to see his 10 fingers. They're still pretty swollen and scabby, but all the grafts took and things look good. His right hand is shaped almost as if he's gripping an imaginary golf ball in his hand whereas his left hand is a little flatter seeming. It's too early to tell how well they will work, but once we're done with dressing changes we'll be able to start trying to get him to grip more things. He's already holding his own bottle again and manipulating things up to his mouth with both hands which is great. He's still not wanting to stand up much and doing the 'air sit' when we pick him up and he's still holding out his legs as if he were sitting on a magic carpet. He's pretty strong because he can do that for a good while. We drove up to Chattanooga yesterday. We followed my Mom up there on Friday on her way back hom...

So the leg casts are off and his ten little toes look great. There was very little gunk this time compared to last time and the skin grafts are healing well. I'm just excited to do the 'this little piggy' stuff. We've started in on the dressing changes and have moved up taking off the arm casts to tomorrow since my sister leaves for Minnesota tomorrow night and we wanted her to be able to see all ten of his fingers. Once those are off I'll have pictures of his hands and feet posted by the end of this weekend for all to see. They're still a little raw looking, but we just need to share!

FYI I'm going to put the post date into the title until I can find the time to figure out the programming for the date so you don't think I'm writing about today 2 weeks ago (though it would be nice to have that kind of foresight) So we're realizing rather quickly that Isaiah got the music genes from both of us. He seems to appreciate his Dad's (my) quirky taste in music and was bopping around to some Finnish Hip Hop / Electronica while I was cleaning the house in preparations for my Mom and Sister coming tomorrow. He's also quite the piano player. Rachel's got a nice keyboard that does all the drums, 150+ different instruments and plays full songs and the like. He sits there banging away, turning on and off the drums, changing instruments, making the keyboard play Celine Dion's "My heart will go on." It's all pretty amusing. I did get some of it on the camcorder and will see if I can figure out a way to get it online. His casts bare...

I've still got to pour over the code for the date problem with the new look, but I've got less time to do it now since I've found a new job! Only 3.5 weeks fully unemployed, with one of those being Isaiah's surgery week. I'm actually working today already at a nice small architecture firm 5 miles from home. Isaiah's been super crabby lately and we're trying to figure out why. He's gotten used to the casts again, and his separation anxiety, while still there sometimes, has diminished some. I'm wondering if his teeth are bothering him since he has yet to cut one. Its hard to tell if he's running a bit high temp from having the casts on right now, or from teething. Soon enough though we'll get it figured out since the legs come off monday next week and the arms are off on thursday. I can't wait to see his little fingers and toes. Got to get back to work

So with my spare time right now, I've been updating the look of the blog to a more permanent style than the interim one we had during this last surgery. This one should stick and be pretty simple to work with. All the sidebar elements are now on the right with a handy link to our online photo album right underneath the slideshow. Most of the other links made it over there as well and the labels and archives are there too. A new little handy dandy feature is when you click on a posts title it opens the post and shows all the comments below and gives you an easy url to copy if you'd like to email a specific post to anyone. I know the post dates on the main page aren't working properly right now and I'm working on fixing that, but if you've got any problems finding things, or find links not working, please let me know in the comments.

So we ended up getting back late on Sunday night. I think Rachel and I have spent the rest of this week trying to catch up on sleep. He's not sleeping through the night right now, partially because of the casts, partially because he's stuffy. He's usually up 2-3 times a night right now and has been getting up at 6:30am every morning. We've been switching off who takes the early shift and then letting them nap later in the day. We accidentally left Paulie, his puppy blankie, in the hotel in Shreveport and luckily the Hurds were able to ship him back to us. We now know we need to find a better exact match because Isaiah was too smart and realized our makeshift replacement was no match for the 4 nights he was without. We're off the pain killers right now and he's back to swinging his appendages around like weapons, but no bruises, black eyes or bloody noses as of yet. He actually has been doing really well compared to last time other than sleeping. He's...

I swear the rain keeps dogging us this whole trip? Is it monsoon season or something? Anyways, we did start the drive home tonight, but we only made it about a quarter of the way to Shreveport. We were planning to stop here to visit the Hurds, whose son Aiden was born 2 weeks after Isaiah, and also has Apert Syndrome. We stopped off at a hotel to meet with them, and because of all the rain decided just to stay. Shawn, Aiden's dad, was nice enough to get us a free room and breakfast, so it was hard to pass up getting a bit more rest, especially since I really don't have work to get back to right now to rush home. The Hurd's are great and Aiden is so cute. he just had his first stage of hands done by Dr. Fearon a little while ago and was crawling all over the hotel lobby and standing up with the help of the nearby furniture. Isaiah seemed to like him too and it seems like he has a new friend! We've got some great pictures that we'll post when we get home. I...