March 2006

Kevin continues to grow into a little boy! He’s ‘coo’ing more every day and making lots of new sounds. He thinks a lot of things are funny and is just barely starting to giggle a little. It looks like he’s probably going to figure out how to roll over in the next week or two. We took him and Emily out to get pictures last week. Since he is over 4 months old, we figured it was probably okay to make one trip out into ‘public’! But we’re still being cautious and we still haven’t taken him very many places yet. It feels strange that he’s almost 5 months old and hasn’t used his stroller yet!

This week Kevin’s cousin Elyse jumped rope in her schools “Jump Rope For Heart” program. She raised money for the American Heart Association in honor of Kevin. The pictures above are of her at the event - we’re so proud of her and happy that she would think of Kevin. They have each gone through their own unique but similar situations and we’re sure they’ll have plenty to talk about someday.

We had an appointment with the pediatric cardiologist on tuesday for another checkup. He’s now 13 pounds 5 ounces! That’s about double his post-surgery weight, and still just under the 25th percentile. He ate a bottle while there, so he fell asleep and they could do a good echo on him to check his heart. Things look good - she commented that the coarc repair looked really good and his heart was functioning well. His blood pressure was good too. She looked at his valves and commented that he would be a candidate for repair rather than replacement if they decided later that they did need to fix his valve. He went up a bit on his medication doses because of his weight gain. The cardiologist said that he will probably be on at least some heart medicine his whole life. We have our appointment with the dermatologist on April 4th in Iowa City to follow up on his rash. The bumps seem to be changing a little bit and they want to figure out what is causing them. Luckily they are mostly on his back and don’t seem to bother him at all.

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March 2006 (2)

Kevin is now just over 4 months old! He had his 4-month checkup today with the pediatrician, and he’s just a hair under 13 pounds and 23 3/4 inches long - that puts him up near the 25th percentile in weight and 10th percentile for length. He’s moving up! One concern that we still have is a rash on his back and on some other parts of his body. The dermatologist gave him some cream, but it didn’t do anything. We were going to wait until our June appointment in Iowa City to see the dermatologist there, but the pediatrician today suggested we make an earlier appointment just to check them out further. They may be just a reaction to one of his medications or they may be something else, they aren’t sure. They will probably do a simple biopsy of one of the bumps to check it out.

He’s still eating pretty well and spitting up much less often. He’s not to the levels of most babies his age, but he is taking 3-4 ounces at a time about 6 times a day. He sleeps very well at night, usually from 8 or 9 at night until 5 or 6 in the morning, but he doesn’t nap much during the day. He hates going to sleep and still fights it. He’s discovered his fists and likes to stare at them quite a bit. He’s also grown quit fond of the lamp in our living room. Whenever he sits in the chair with us to eat or rock, he always looks up to the lamp and gives it lots of big smiles and coos. It’s truly his first love

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