July 2008

7/2/08
Nathan is 9 months old! Wow! Time really does go so fast. He is doing great. For the last week, he has been playing a lot with the soft crinkly plastic wipes container. He will see it and then move to it. When he gets close enough, he will reach out and grab it. He pulls it onto his chest to play with it. This is awesome. He is showing us that he can see things, and can concentrate on that object until he reaches it and then plays with it.

Another new toys he loves is the basketball. It is a regular size ball that the kids left out after we were shooting hoops at the local school. Nathan saw the ball and scooted on his back to it. He arched and hit the ball. It rolled of course. So he scooted on his back until he was closed he enough to hit is again with his hand. I want to get him his own smaller ball to play with soon.

He still hasn’t made much progress on sitting up. He still hates it with a passion. We are trying to him the cellophane paper that he loves only when he is sitting up. This helps him concentrate on sitting and enjoy the experience a little.

He is able to stay on all fours and raise his head up for a little longer this week. I am encouraged that that crawling will help him with his scooting on his back problem. He likes to be mobile.

Nathan’s giggle is so cute. He has a little squeaky belly giggle. I haven’t been able to get it on tapes yet but it is so cute. He still just squeaks instead of making real sounds but he tends to squeak when he wants to talk to us. He also makes a “hum/sighing” noise when he is putting himself to sleep.


Tara - Jul 17, 2008 9 ½ months old -- Cardiology Well, we had our cardiology appointment today. Our doctors wanted us to have an echo cardiogram just to make sure that nothing was wrong with Nathan's heart. Due to Ben's entertainment, Nathan was still enough to get this done without getting sedated. We come to find out that Nathan is doing great, and we don't have to worry too much. He does have something called a moderate atrial septal defect. This is a hole that should be mostly closed off about two week after birth. They tend to find this sort of thing when a child is about 3. She said that it might just close by itself over time. They may have to do a procedure where they go up through the leg and insert a clam-shaped thing to close it off. She wants to just monitor it for now and will do another echo on Nathan in December. She also found a mildly dilated aortic root which she wants to watch. Overall, she said that this is something to watch but not worry about. :)