Upward and Onward

We cought the red-eye flight to Dallas last Wednesday evening arriving at about 2am Thursday morning.  Flying with two kids is always an adventure and adding those kind of hours to it is icing on the cake!  In all truthfulness, while our kiddos aren't perfect and certainly have thier moments, we really couldn't have asked for them to do better than they did with the travel.  (Expectations are everything!)  Experience has taught us to always plan a buffer day in between travel and Nathan's appointments so Thursday we recovered and Friday Nathan, Jonny and I headed to the hospital for an MRI of Nathan's skull and an appointment with his specialist.

They say there is a first time for everything and after the last 2.5 years we had our first.  Nathan's MRI looked fantastic and the doctor said he was in a "very Zen place" with how Nathan is doing right now!  Dr. F. was able to provide some really important insight into Nathan's upcoming eye/ear/throat surgery and we are exceedingly thankful for that.  We will confirm with his doctors back home and then hope to schedule that surgery for sometime in June.

We are forever learning and one of the interesting facts from this visit is that Nathan's midface only grows at about 1/3 the rate that it is supposed to which, as you can imagine, has some impact on his airways as he contiues to get bigger and needs more oxygen.  So, while he has made great progress in the last year and a half, this is something that we'll continue to monitor through sleep studies, etc. over the next several years.  Nathan's sweet little feet are also continuing to grow in a shape such that finding shoes is becoming trickier and trickier.  We may need to begin diving into the realm of some custom made shoes in an effort to best meet his needs and prolong any further reconstructive surgeries for his toes.

Developmentally Nathan continues to make strong strides.  He has speech thereapy weekly and physical and occupational thereapies bi-weekly.  He's still being followed by a team of 17 specialst but thankfully many of those visits are becoming less frequent.  The other big news is that Nathan has officially had his feeding tube totally out for about 2 weeks and his seems to be healing wonderfully!  That little tube went from dreaded to celebrated for the life it gave and it was with deep humility and  thankfulness that it was removed.

The last big news on this front is that we all got to find out the gender of Baby #3, Due at the end of July.  I was totally convinced I knew the gender and was willing to make bets all week - thankfully no one took me up on them or I would be flat broke!  We took a box to store and gave them the envelope with the gender and when we opened th box... well, you can see for yourself what color balloons floated out!  

We are thrilled!