Happy Happy Birthday!

Two years ago... "The day a wonderful little heart melter came to brighten everyone's lives." I couldn't have said it better myself, this was the text message Bran received from his Dad on Friday morning. I can hear Danny saying that, he always says "there's just something about him, he just melts your heart."

Wow, I can't believe it has been two years already! The other night I looked at pictures of him when he was born, its hard for me to even imagine him that small. It doesn't seem like the same little person, he has come so far!

We had his party last weekend, we decided to celebrate a little early this year so we could have it when my Dad & Rose were in town (and it was my Dad's birthday last weekend too). Abby had a great idea that we should have a Lucas-Abby-Don birthday party (her's was March 3). Its ironic, I remember being in the hospital holding on a day at a time trying to keep Lucas from being born, I first started having contractions on March 22 (Dad's birthday). I told him, "don't be offended but I really don't want you and Lucas to share the same birthday," only because I didn't want him to be born yet. Little did I know, we'd be celebrating them together a couple years later!

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We've had a busy few weeks which is why I haven't updated in awhile, we had my Mom & Blain visiting the prior weekend. Having visitors always puts us into a frenzy of getting those unfinished rennovations done, on top of everything else we have going on!

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Lucas is doing well, we had a bit of a scare this past week with a visit to the ER. He'd been acting funny the last couple weeks...sleeping more, very cranky, head drooping to the side, his eye dropping more often, etc. As I've explained in the past, although it wasn't an "emergency", the only way to get a quick CT is to go to the ER. There was something unsettling about his behavior and if it was a shunt malfunction, I didn't want to let it go to the point that Lucas was throwing up from the pain being unbearable. So we spent 6.5 hours in the ER Wednesday night, which turned out to be nothing. It was worth it for peace of mind though, I hate the feeling of analyzing everything he does and worrying about every little thing we see that seems out of the ordinary. They tested him for RSV and ran a full set of blood tests, to make sure there was no sign of meningitis... but that came back normal too. I love being able to walk "out" of the ER, and not be transferred to a room!

We think we figured it out a few days later, we started the process of weaning him off the seizure medication a couple weeks ago. We are weaning him very slowly over a month's time, so it didn't even occur to me that this could be affecting him this way. I did a little research online on withdraw symptoms and read how patients some patients describe the way they felt when weaning off of Keppra (aggitated, very irritable, weak, sleepy)... maybe this explains it all.

So a no-fun evening, but it was worth it to know for sure that the shunt is ok. I swear, I will never relax with it. I guess that is what having three malfunctions in a row and five hospital admissions in a year will do to you. Knowing the shunt is fine also brings comfort to weaning him off the meds right now... I was really nervous about taking him off if he was having another failure that may cause a seizure. I'll be anxious to see how he is in a couple of weeks when totally off the medication (the stories I read about withdraw often ended with feeling great and "free" after being completely off, like a cloud was lifted). He deserves that!

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Here's a few pictures from his birthday party, I'll post the rest of them this week.

Happy Birthday Lucas, Abby & Grandpa Don!

Hi Mom!

Make a wish! Abby is waiting for her "trick" candles to light again

Birthday Boy! How handsome is he in this tie?

Quick Update & Alabama Visit

All is good, I think everything is behind us now post-surgery. We did end up with another ear infection this week (I know, really??)... but this time we were given some simple ear drops to clear it up topically instead of oral antibiotics. This is a much better alternative! And he's eating GREAT, we are back up to 20 pounds (the number we just haven't been able to break since September). Gotta keep going and catch up further to appease the GI doctor though.

We got our last Synagis shot for RSV this week, did I mention these things are $2500 a pop? He's had 5 of them, thank goodness insurance approved us for this year, but we still have to pay $200 each shot. This will probably be the last year he will get approved. We may have one more month if RSV sticks around for the season another month, they will let us know. He really cries with this shot, so I'll be glad to be done with them. He has to get two--one in each leg, as soon as he calms down from the first one, they get him in the other leg.

We went back to the ophthamologist last week and finally had a positive appointment with her. I was happy Bran took him this time, I really despise going to this doctor. But she had all good things to say and remarked on his alertness, visual tracking, and just overall improved deameanor. We gave her a copy of the report from Dr. Roman (the CVI expert in Pittsburgh) and she was excited that we sought out this doctor and are working on fully understanding his condition and specific ways to help his vision become more functional. I need to share some of the comments from that report on the blog, we were very happy with it.

Lucas had his first dentist appointment on Tuesday, our little man. We noticed that his teeth started discoloring a few weeks ago, and they've really been slow coming in this past year. He has some that are about half way in and appear to have stopped. Preemies tend to have a lot of dental challenges to add to the list of issues, so I was really worried that he could be having missing enamal or decay issues (I've been scouring the Internet looking for answers again... I should know better by now... I had him diagnosed in my head with all kinds of horrible scenarios from looking up "discolored teeth"). But we got good news today, the enamel is just fine and the greying is just from too much iron, which is superficial and can be removed on our next visit. We weren't able to identify where he's getting the excess iron, but she said the greying could also be from antibiotics. She wasn't concerned about his delayed teeth, so that was good too. She did say the ones on the bottom may stay irregular in size though (they are three different heights several months after erupting). These teeth may not have been able to form properly due to being born so early. I absolutely LOVED this dentist, she was very sweet. My friend, Courtney, gave me her name (who has the 25 weeker too), they went to school together and have known each other since childhood. I'm relieved we don't have anything to add to the "worry list" right now and we get to go back for a "checkup" in 6 months like everybody else!

We took a trip two weekends ago to Alabama to visit Bran's family - he's hanging out on Mima's recliner in the picture above. Since Lucas and I couldn't make the trip at Thanksgiving due to his surgery, its been about nine months since seeing everyone. We had a very quick couple of days, but got to have dinner with Red & his adorable daughter, Arden; spent time with Jimmy & Joanne (& fam), and were happy Jackie and Bruce delayed their trip for the last Auburn game by a day to see us. We didn't tell Bran's grandmother, Mima, we were coming and tried to surprise her. We put Lucas in his car seat on the front porch and rang the doorbell. Here's a couple cute videos of our arrival and playing...

Special Delivery

Playing Pattycake

Kisses

Hanging out with Jimmy & Joanne

Lucas did all of his tricks for Mima & Aunt Betty

Don't let the door hit you...

... on the way out! We said goodbye to all the oxygen last week! Yeah! We still have to do another sleep study in a couple months for pulmonology to officially release us, but since the tonsils and adenoids are out that were causing his apnea, we got to send all the O2 back! Happy Day!!