July Then- July Now!

On July 12th- Blaise turned 15 months old! That day also marked one year since he was admitted to Children's Hospital for a month stay, including his second open heart surgery. I'm glad much of that month is blurred from my memory.

We are having one fantastic summer! If it's not evident by the lack of photos or blog posts, we are busy and having fun! As I'm downloading pictures tonight, I can't believe I haven't done this in almost three months!! I am starting to feel really guilty about how few pictures I've been taking since he turned one. Darnit! I hope I don't regret it some day!

Blaise loves anything to do with outdoors and water. He is a walking, crawling, climbing machine. He loves dogs, horses and cows. He knows the cow shed from about a half mile down the road and starts yelling with excitement. He also see's our neighbor kids from about half a block away if they are outside and starts yelling wanting out to play.

We've been having such an awesome summer! We went to Omaha for my birthday last weekend and took  Blaise to the Children's museum and he loved it! We went out to eat in the Old Market and did his fourth zoo stop for about an hour the next morning.  Blaise attends church regularly with us, and most times everyone there knows he is there too! He is a bit hard to keep quiet at times!

He did really well with the 4th and for the most part enjoyed fireworks. No tears and cries- he watched with open eyes. We met my parents for the Tekamah parade and he also really enjoyed that as well.

He is such, such a lover. He loves to cuddle,  give hugs and love pats. He is fairly sensitive and cries and sobs if he is told no. His big accomplishment is going to bed by himself without Mike and I rocking him to sleep downstairs first.

We love, love our big boy and thank God for him every single day.

 Ready for bed late May

 In my jammies early June

 Riding my doggy the wrong way early June

 Splashing in my swimsuit in the water table. Mid June

 Mid June

 Playing on my swing set with dad. Late June.

 At the Children's Museum early July

 Visiting grandma and grandpa Hartwell camping. Last weekend.

Not always easy!

Mike and I are proud parents to a sweet, outgoing, hilarious, loving, smart, perfect almost 15 month old toddler. We are always proud parents to a little boy with a life-threatening heart condition. Thankfully, most days it's super easy to forget that second sentence. Unfortunately, it's never, ever, ever going away. Sigh.

My amazing little sister Jenna gave Blaise one of the greatest gifts of all-time at his birthday. She went through and had every single blog post and photo printed and bound into a book that she gave us at his first birthday. I was crying before I could even get it unwrapped. It's on our coffee table, and every once and a while I'll grab it and read back through where we've been and what Blaise went through.  

Tonight was one of those nights. Yesterday "super crazy anal mom" went into high speed when Blaise randomly stopped walking and refused to do it most of the morning/early afternoon. Freaking out, I had Blaise packed, strapped in his car seat and was backing down the driveway to Children's because I was so afraid something was wrong with him. Thankfully, a second opinion stop at Grandpa and Grandma Hartwell's and he was off walking again. The thoughts that can run through your head in a second when you have a chronically ill child like Blaise are something else!

So quickly Mike and I have forgotten the stress of how sick Blaise really was during those first few months at home. Daily weights, measuring and recording every milliliter of milk he drank, nightly oxygen stat checks, multiple life/death heart medications and the ever dreaded blood thinner shots. Ironically, I wish we would have videotaped ourselves giving one of these shots. It makes me tear up now even, thinking about the stress we dealt with every time we did it. I think there was a constant lump in our throats for the first five months. Oh, the stress of feeding him. I will NEVER forget, the all-night tears and fears with Mike and both sets of parents as we tried every trick, bribe and method we could come up with to get our precious baby to just drink an ounce. We are so thankful to have families that have been rocks by our sides.

I absolutely cannot imagine going through the fears we've been through with Blaise again. I pray every morning and every night for God to make Blaise's heart survive a lifetime. I pray for zero complications or new developments or changes with his heart. I fear with all of my being having to hand him over for his next open heart surgery. How we will ever get through that is beyond me. Ironic, I just typed that last sentence but if you were to tell me three years ago I would have a child with HRHS, I would have typed the same sentence- how  would I ever get through it is beyond me- and yet- we have. We will. We do. All praises to our God!

Appointment Update

I totally forgot to post this a few weeks ago- better late than never!

Blaise is spending the night at Grandpa and Grandma Sudmann's and Mike is trucking in Virginia, so I have the house all to myself for the first time since Blaise was born! I'm checking stuff off my to-do list, and amazingly have already found myself bored!  Hence a blog update!! I've gotten an update on how Blaise is doing, and it sounds like he has learned how to make the water come out and fill up a glass from the Culligan Water Cooler. I sure am glad we don't have one of those at our house!
At the ripe age of 14 moths old, Blaise's first tooth finally popped through! YAY! I've been told this means he will have healthy teeth ;)

Blaise had a developmental appointment at Children's this past Monday. He weighed in at 20 lbs 12 oz which is in the 27%, was 31 inches tall which is 63%. He absolutely hated it and screamed bloody murder during all of the taking of his statistics. His SAT was at 75 (normal adult heart is 100) and his heart rate was 150 (should be 100). Even though I'm a heart-mom, neither of these numbers worried me at all, and I kind of laughed at how terrible they were because I was impressed that they were actually that good with how hard he was screaming and crying! His visit with Dr. Hammel's PA Carmen went well and she thought he looked good. Phew- that was the most important part to me of the whole appointment. He did well in the psychology evaluation and liked playing with the toys they provided. Physical Therapy went fine, but he was more interested in crawling up the stairs than doing anything else they asked of him. His developmental doctor was pleased and put him right at the 11-12 month mark developmentally on everything. Right on target if you ask me.

While at Children's we snuck up to the 5th Floor to see which of our favorite nurses were working. We got to see a few of them, and they were all impressed with how Blaise was doing.

This past week Blaise's four cousins from Aberdeen were here visiting. This was his first real expereince getting to play with other kids. Let's just say he obvoiusly does not have experience in this area! He did pretty good, but we do have a hitter/scratcher on our hands if someone takes his toys or he gets mad. He was almost as content taking his toys to other room to play by himself.

I think I am understanding a few new words or sayings, even though the average person wouldn't be able to understand. He is saying bye-bye, yes, and I ALMOST think i've heard love you.

His other new trick is putting things in our dryer, or throwing them in the trash. I've found my phone in the dryer and one of our glasses in the trash!

We are love, love, love, loving Blaise!