Sledding

It snowed slightly last night again and it wasn't too windy and cold this morning like it is this afternoon so we went outside sledding with Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Shirley. There wasn't a lot of snow but it worked well for us.

Oliver in the big toboggan

Going down with Grandpa

Now Oliver's sled which is more his size

Racing Grandma

Ian and Annaliese's birthday party

Last weekend we celebrated Ian's 5th birthday and Annaliese's 2nd birthday with a party in Elkader. I think all the kids had fun. It's hard to believe they're getting so big! Time does go by so much faster now that you have kids to watch grow and see how they change in personality and cognition each time we see them. Ian's into Star Wars now and Annaliese is all about babies and clothes. Oliver didn't mind the clothes either. It made for a soft place to rest awhile.

Ian's cake had "Cars" cars on it and Oliver liked playing with them after the cake cut.

Bubbles!

He was so tired out from not having a nap all day that he fell asleep before we even got out of Elkader again.

Happy Birthday!!

Hair cut

So I was uploading pictures finally onto the computer and writing blogs so I thought I'd post my lovely work as a beautician on Oliver's hair since everyone wanted pictures when I wrote about it on facebook. I did this around Feb. 10th so it's starting to grow in now but at first you could really tell that I buzzed his hair where it shouldn't have been buzzed. I thought to myself, "oh I'll just take a little off the back with Shawn's hair clippers" and just then Oliver moved his head.

Here's a before

Here's the after of the front

And of the back

Oops!

Iowa City follow up

So last Friday Shawn and I went down to Iowa City for Oliver's appointments at the University. We first went to the neonatology follow-up appointment where they track his progress developmentally both physical and cognitive. And, as we know, he's a little behind in most things but they're expecting him to catch up by the time he is 2-3 years old like most kids do. His measurements are: 21 lbs 11oz and 30 & 5/8 inches long, both still making a nice curve on his growth chart. Next we went to his hematologist to follow up with him regarding Oliver's anemia. Great news there with the lab results, his hemoglobin was Oliver's all time high at 11.6! His ferritin (iron level) is also in the normal range so we're doing well with the low iron diet. Our hematologist couldn't be happier and neither can we that Oliver is doing so well. He doesn't want to see us back for 6 months and we only have to get lab work done locally if we're thinking that he's showing signs of his hgb being low. Since bony deformities go along with Oliver's condition we had the Dr. check out his bump on his chest again because to me it looks bigger and lower down than it had been previously. Now, I know that he is growing so I thought that this was okay but thought I'd mention it anyway so they did another x-ray on him. Since Oliver is still growing the area that this spot is in is hard to visualize on x-ray because it is so cartilaginous so they didn't see anything abnormal. The x-ray showed his sternum (the bone in the middle of your chest that connects to both sides of your ribs) is midline of his chest and the ribs were equal bilaterally. They even had the head radiologist of the U of I look at it carefully and our Dr. and they radiologist both recommend Oliver have an ultrasound done in 6 months when we go back and if that is inconclusive they would do a CT scan. Now this bump doesn't seem to hurt him if pressed on, I think it just annoys him when people touch it so I'm not that concerned but would like to know what this is just because of the bony deformities being part of this disease. Other than that we had a great day, even got some shopping done and the snow that they were talking for Friday didn't even amount to anything.