Catching Up...Again

It seems time has flown by again and it's been a while since the last post. It's been an eventful two weeks...

-Hurricane Irene made her way up the coast and poured A LOT of rain on us. Ridgewood had a lot of flooding, including the sports fields across the street from the Seavers' house. Our new house in Midland Park ended up with about three inches of water in the basement. Turns out we weren't alone, our neighbors had water in their basements too. We were very lucky, though, to just have that water in an empty basement....there were so many that were without power for a while, lost a lot of belongings, etc.

-My parents came up for a visit which was great. Henry enjoyed having his Grandad and Ding Dong around to read with and to play with. One of the highlights of their visit was our fun field trip to the Morristown National Historic Park, which showcases the site of George Washington's Headquarters from the Revolutionary War. Our docent was excellent and we learned lots of fun facts. Henry "earned" another Junior Ranger badge for his hat...this time they made us fill out the booklet!

-Henry's Heart....During his 1-year doctor's visit Henry's pediatrician noted that he had a slight heart murmur. She wasn't overly concerned but wanted him to see a pediatric cardiologist to see if it was something we needed to watch or just let go. We took him in and he had an EKG and a ultrasound of his heart. He was a real trooper having to sit still and the staff was great (blowing bubbles, having Nemo on the TV, etc.) The cardiologist didn't see anything wrong anatomically with the heart but was concerned with some extra little blips on the EKG. They sent Henry home hooked up to a Holter Monitor (Click here for a picture to get an idea of what he was hooked up to.) to track his heart beats for 24 hours. He was pretty unaware that he was hooked up to it and didn't try to rip it off or anything, which was nice.

His cardiologist called back on Tuesday around 1 to give us the findings. She wanted to wait until Eddie and I could both talk so I had to wait anxiously for five more hours. It was a long wait because all I could think about was what she was about to tell us. Turns out he has a 2-to-1 beat pattern where the top part of his heart beats twice while the bottom beats just once. This basically means there is a disconnect in the communication between the two parts. This causes his heart rate to be slower than a normal one-year old.

His cardiologist said that he seems to be tolerating everything just fine and we don't need to do anything differently. We just have to watch for him to be dizzy, faint or extremely pale. He will have to go in for appointments for an EKG and the Holter monitor every six months. In the long-term if he starts showing symptoms of it affecting him they would look into a pacemaker.

The doctor didn't seem overly concerned about the condition so I'm working to not think too much about it either. As she said, he's still the wonderful, active little boy we brought in last week. I still have much more to be thankful for than to be worried about so that's a good thing.

-Walking...well, sometimes....Henry took his first real steps on September 1st. Of course I was the only home but managed to catch it on video thanks to my smartphone! He was kind enough to take some more when my parents arrived and since then has only decided that walking is fun a few more times. I guess he figures he's much faster when he crawls.

-General joys of parenthood....Henry continues to be an amazing little boy. He seems to really like making people laugh so tonight's bathtime became the biggest splash-fest I've seen in a long time when Henry saw that it made me laugh. We were both hysterically laughing! It's a good thing the bathtub/shower has sliding doors because it allowed me to just get my right shoulder and arm wet...until he caught me off-guard and got it right in the face. It was a real hoot. He's such fun and I love that his temperment is such that it is. We really got lucky!

That's all for now. I will do a photo/video post this coming week to catch you up with those.