Isaiah 7.17 : Updates, etc.

First off, surgery negotiations with the providers and insurance company are still in progress and looking positive.   It’s almost a full time job for Rachel dealing with all this, especially when certain provider’s staff don’t feel like they’re giving it much effort at all.  I guess we can expect some of that since we 'choose' to go to Dallas because of what some of the Doctors here in Atlanta did and were saying they were going to do, but to us its not really a choice.  Unlike 4 years ago Rachel is working now, albeit part time, but it eats up a bunch of time and is making her worried about having enough time to ready her mind for the surgery.   I don’t know if you ever can really get yourself psyched up for these things.   I think you can only try to clear your mind of everything else that gets in the way, but even that’s difficult at times.   We’ve been lucky to have a very supportive family and since we’ve finally found a home church here in Atlan...

..is no fun of course which is why yesterday we bought Isaiah a playground/swing set for the backyard. We pooled up all of his birthday money, saved and scrimped ourselves this whole summer and got a great deal this weekend on a nice wood playset for Isaiah. It won't be delivered until Friday but we're excited. It's got a little tower with operable windows, a slide, rock climbing wall, telescope, steering wheel, a trapeze like swing and a couple of standard swings. The best thing of all is that its got a wooden roof. We learned very quickly with our canvas roofed gazebo/cabana that very few fabrics can handle the pine cone grenades that fall 40-50 feet from our pine trees, not to mention any branches that might fall. In development news Isaiah is starting to talk more and more. Still its just word approximations, but its getting better. 'Cheese' & 'Shoes' are still the clearest, but he's getting there with other words. He can approximate m...

Well so much for my New Years resolution. 2 months later and I still don't have photos up and they're mounting. Its takes the little free time I have on my birthday to sit down and write something. We always seem to be busy lately, mainly just trying to keep up with the two year old. This kid is into everything and has been in a screeching phase for the last month plus which has been putting Rachel and my eardrums through some enduring times. Partly its due to his communication frustrations, but mainly its because he knows we hate it and he gets our attention. He is making some progress in speech though as yesterday he had his first two word 'sentence' by saying "lights on" in his bedroom. Speech doesn't count things like "Thank You" because to kids in their minds its just one long word since the two words are always together. Lights On is a big step in him piecing things together to help tell us what he wants. My Mom came to Atlanta last...

So lately things have been relatively good with Isaiah. I say relatively because I don't want to jinx myself. Its funny how little we post when all is well and how there are flurries of posts around the bad and stress filled events in our lives. He's been making good progress with speech therapy and approximating more and more words. He's got this cute little sound he makes when counting things. He just points to each item in succession going 'Dee' ... 'Dee' ... 'Dee' He's starting to recognize more things in his color and shapes book like stars and hearts. He can pretty much approximate all of the Mickey Mouse clubhouse regulars and point them out. While 'Mih-E' is still his favorite 'Dah-O' and 'Ooh-E' aren't far behind. He says 'A-E' for Daisy and 'Ni-Ni' for Minnie and can point out each and every one of them including Pluto. It's just so exciting to see the wheels a' turning as t...

So today was mostly a lazy Saturday avoiding the oppressive humidity outside resulting from last nights crazy crazy lightning storms. It also meant doing a little tidying around the house and converting Isaiah's crib into a toddler bed. In the last month or so Isaiah has been leading us to his bed at night, grabbing his Woody doll and his milk, standing near the gate to the hallway waving to us while saying, "nigh nigh." After about the third or fourth time of him doing that we figured he's probably ready for the big boy bed and doesn't need to be 'trapped' in his crib so today I finally got around to converting it. Basically the drop side comes off and the top portion that used to swing down to allow Rachel to reach in now acts as the side rail. Isaiah is just barely big enough to climb up into it and slide on his belly back out, though he's still a little wary of it right now. He's had one nap in it so far and while we're a bit worrie...

I'll let the video speak for itself...

Isaiah is a walking machine now! To think little more than a month ago he just started walking and now he's starting to run all over the place! Its getting hard for us to keep up with him. Its so funny now to come home from work and have him stand up and run over to me, but its still so odd to turn the corner and just see him standing there after 21 months of crawling. We're learning fast this walking thing has meant he gets into things more and more now. His reach has now doubled in height and he's grabbing things all over the place. His latest interest is reorganizing the DVD's, but only the R-S ones that are just above his eye level. He repeatedly pulls them off the shelf, gives them a good look, like he's pondering which one to watch, and usually either brings them over to us on the couch or tries to put them back in the shelf. He's also intrigued by the refrigerator door. We've got a freezer on the bottom setup so every time we open the fridge w...

Sorry about the lack of posts lately. I guess without having a stressful surgery or quite as many bills hanging over our heads lately I haven't had much to write about. Wait a second, we have a 20 month old child who's doing something different and new almost everyday now, of course I have something to write about! Today we took Isaiah to the ATL Opera's family day and he sat through a production of The Ugly Duckling and seemed to tolerate it, but we're not sure if he fully liked it. We toured the Opera's office with him and Grandpa H. We saw the Costume Shop, the musical instrument 'petting zoo' and much more. They had a little demonstration of stage combat and how they make it look real. Well Isaiah has this little thing, he rather enjoys when someone dies or gets hurt on stage and he laughed and clapped his hands when they had a swordfight and the one woman was 'killed.' He's done this before at Disney when The Beast from Beauty and th...

Sorry about the long lapse between posts. My new job has been good and keeping me very busy. I also threw out my back a couple weeks back and haven't been up and about much, but its doing much better now. Anyways, on to the important things that have happened in the last 3+ weeks. Isaiah's been making some pretty big strides lately. The last Monday in September he finally started started acting like he wanted to crawl. Mainly it was the bringing the knees up under him, and then collapsing as he tried to move forward. Not even a full day later Rachel calls me at work all stressed out because Isaiah is driving her crazy getting into everything and crawling all over the house. It took him little less than a day to master crawling, which while great, scared the crap out of us because we had been lazy and had yet to babyproof everything and get gates. As soon as I was home from work we ran out to Babies'R'Us and bought a couple gates and cabinet locks and all of the ...

Sorry I've been a bit off topic lately. Isaiah's been doing so well lately that our other stresses have kind of come to the forefront. It's kind of funny how you always remember to write about the bad things happening and not all the good ones, so here's a post with some updates on how good Isaiah is doing. He started up with Physical Therapy again a couple of weeks ago and we're trying to cram in as many sessions as possible before his next surgery in a couple weeks. When Sherry saw him for the first time she said he's like a different baby. Keep in mind the last time she had a session with him was back in mid April. His coordination is getting much better, and we're trying to give him sippy cups more now than bottles because he can grip them pretty well and hold the bottle completely on his own now. He's still not crawling, but you can tell he wants to, so Sherry has been helping us do transition moves with him to help him move from his back to s...

Isaiah's been doing pretty well lately. His demeanor is as happy as ever the majority of the time and we've finally got him taking naps in his crib rather than our arms. He's been flipping over to his tummy much more lately too. Unfortunately he still hasn't mastered getting back to his back yet so for the last week or so we've woken up to a crying baby 'stuck' on his belly. All we have to do most times is put him back on his back, he gives a little whimper or two. Nine times out of 10 goes right back to sleep which is great. All in all it's not so bad except for the fact that some nights it happens 5 or 6 times which puts a bit of a wrinkle into our sleep schedules, but doesn't that happen to all parents? From what I understand we've been pretty lucky compared to most parents. With him being on his tummy more and not throwing as bit of a fit as soon as he used to we've been trying to encourage him to crawl more. He's slowly gett...

Sorry I haven't updated in a few days. The good news is we haven't been back to the ER, the bad news is when Rachel took him into see our pediatrician on Monday she discovered Isaiah had dual ear infections on top of his other maladies. For a couple of days there he was on 8 medications. We're down to 5 now including his nebulizer treatments. He's doing better but still has the occasional coughing spell and is vomiting once in awhile. In development news he fully flipped over on his own finally and didn't like it one bit. He hates his tummy time since his hands are so sensitive, but for the last month he's been hanging out on his side a bunch more so we knew it was only a matter of time before he would make it all the way over. He's a bit delayed in doing this compared to an average kid, but much of it has to do with his hands sensitivity and the pain/discomfort being reason enough not to try to do it on his own earlier. Speaking of his hands, we just ...

So here's the weekly wrap up. We had a relatively busy week this week. Wednesday was our trip up to Shriner's in Greenville, SC and after our visit we've pretty much eliminated that as an option for his hand surgeries. Nothing against Shriner's hospital, after all free care is free care, but their idea of what they could give Isaiah for functioning hands just didn't meet with our approval and we weren't comfortable going to a place without a pediatric ICU in case something serious happened. It was a bit of a bummer, but at least we went and we know now. Thursday Izzy had his weekly Physical Therapy (PT) visit. His therapist showed him how to knock over blocks and he seemed to have a good time doing it. Maybe it had something to do with the fact he was given licks off of a cherry dum dum sucker as reward, but he liked doing it. His face is hillarious when he has the sucker though. After he gets his lick in he closes his mouth all cute and pulls his lower ...

Well happy 5th day of the New Year to be exact. Things are going here. He's been really crabby the last couple weeks, probably from being paraded around so much and with all of the going to visit family and family to coming visit us we think he's been a bit overstimulated. We completely love that he got to spend so much time with family and I'm sure he'll be better in a few days now that things have died down some. Not much news in the way of hand surgery stuff. We're still sitting at the same place we were before but Rachel and her Dad have started to see what help some of his contacts can help us out with so there's a reasonable amount of hope. Rachel and I are both a little worried about waiting until April for his surgeries which is the soonest the Shriner's up in Phila. could get us in. For lack of a better term his pinky pads (the areas of skin where his pinky fingers would be) are very sensitive and we think it may be preventing him from crawlin...

Saturday Izzy had his 4mo check up with Dr. Leonard, his pediatrician and got another round of immunizations. He's officially 15lbs 13oz (the 16lbs earlier this week was with his clothes on) I didn't catch his height, but both his height and weight are in the 75th percentile. His head circumference is 41cm and is only around 25th percentile, but its still growing outward which is good. The doc said he's doing pretty much everything a 4 month old would except turning himself over, but she did say that its not much to worry about yet. Next month we get to start adding some rice cereal to his diet and at 6months we may even start him on the jars of food. Its all pretty exciting. Yesterday night I had a good break and got to go to an Atlanta Thrasher's hockey game with my neighbor Josh. I'm a huge hockey fan if you didn't know already, and its a close third on the things I miss about Minnesota behind my family and friends. The Thrashers lost, badly, but it w...

Sorry for the lack of posts. It just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day for everything we need to do sometimes. FYI if you sent a check to Bands for Baby that hasn't been cashed yet, don't worry, it soon will be. The person maintaining the account for us has been traveling a bunch lately and hasn't had a chance to get to the one bank that the account is in, but she should be doing so soon. As for Isaiah, yesterday was his four month Birthday and he had a ball of a day (at least what Daddy saw last night) We didn't really do anything special, but he's been a happy bubbly baby lately. He's starting to 'talk' a ton more lately and he's got smiling down pat. Occasionally we now wake up to his giggling instead of crying. He went to the neurologist last week who says his brain is developing quite well and that Mom and Dad are doing a great job. His muscle tone in both his arms and legs are good, but he's favoring his right arm ...

I finally found the camera cord and got the photos onto our computer. Now I just have to upload a month's worth of photos! I've got a sleep study tomorrow to help figure out what's wrong with me and an MRI on Thursday. I haven't let everyone know personally yet, but we've been dealing with a bit of stress lately (go figure on what!). Rachel has been handling it pretty well, but my lack of sleep the last 3+ months has really caught up with me and its been a rough last couple weeks for me hence the lack of posts. My main problem is I stay up worrying all the time since I've never had to provide for a total of 3 people all by my lonesome, but I know I just have to trust in God and know that we will be provided for somehow. We're doing better now and we just need to pinpoint some of the things affecting me so I can be put on Ambien or whatever else I need to be on to get some sleep. We completely jinxed ourselves with the sleeping through the night post as...

We're finally getting abit more sleep now. Isaiah virtually slept through the night for the first time on Tuesday, from about 9pm to 7am, but he's yet to repeat the feat to my chagrin. At least he's usually only waking once a night now though, so there's still hope! Anyways his development is coming along quite nicely. He's figured out he can move his head on his own now and enjoys looking around the room a bit. He's also loving the fact he can make his bouncy seat bounce all by himself. He just gets this huge smile on his face nowadays like he's proud of his accomplishments, however small they may be. (Both Rachel and I get that big smile on ours the same time too!) We're constantly amazed at how happy and bright he's become since the craniotomy and hopefully it was done in time to prevent, or at least reduce the amount of developmental delays he may endure. I've been fairly busy and was back in Minnesota last week for my Buddy Steve and ...

So good news, lately he's been sleeping more and more through the night. We haven't gotten to a full night yet, but the other day he was down from 8:30-5am! Both Rachel and I were like ' did you get up in the middle of the night to feed him and not wake me up?' but nope, he slept that long. That was Monday night and the last couple nights have been pretty much the same. Rachel's been trying to side sleep him to work on the flat spot on the back of his head. Our Physical therapist from Babies Can't Wait gave her some good pointers that help keep him from wiggling out of it. She also gave us this special chair to sit him in since his legs are getting a little 'froggy'. Its basically designed to help keep his legs more in vertical alignment with his body than to allow him to end up a bit bow legged which is where he is starting to lean a bit. Development wise he's still swatting at toys very well, he's getting more and more tolerant of tummy...

So I'm stuck at a gas station waiting for them to turn on the pumps since the corolla is nearly on E and ATL is still admist a gas shortage due to Ike. They said about a half hr about 15 minutes ago, so hopefully we can get some gas soon. As for the hydrocephalus the CT scans came back negative today, but it was still enough to stress both Rachel and I out beyond belief. We still need to watch out for it and I think we'll be going back for another CT scan in a couple weeks, but for now at least we don't have to worry about them sticking a shunt into his brain to drain the fluid. I mean c'mon can anything else go wrong? We're finally coping better with everything after the surgery and then this scare happens. In other news rachel called while I was waiting here and said Isaiah swung at some of his toys unprovoked today! We've usually had to show him first and then he'll copy, but Rachel saw him concentrating real hard and then taking a swipe at one of his...