Brayden 6 months/Kaylin 3 years!!

On June 3rd, we celebrated Brayden's 1/2 birthday as he turned 6 months old! It's so hard to believe he is already 6 months!! He is doing awesome and weighed in at a whopping 13 lbs 4 ozs (at least whopping for our family!)! He is 24-1/2 inches and in both cases is just below 3rd percentile on his "actual" growth chart, not adjusted. In other words, at 6 months of age he is almost on his regular growth chart which took Kaylin 2 YEARS to get on her "actual" growth chart for her age! We were thrilled to get the "go ahead" from our doc that Brayden could start on solid foods. Again, Kaylin was not able to start them until about 1 year of age because she had so much catching up to do. So this week Brayden had his first taste of cereal and he LOVED IT! He literally lapped it up like a dog would water out of his bowl. It was so funny to watch. It was almost like he was saying - "what took you so long to give me some REAL food"! The next day I gave him 2 bowls of cereal and he lapped it all up and seemed to want more. Each day I add more cereal and he eats every bit of it. If I'm not quick enough with the spoon he starts to eat his bib and then his hand until I get more cereal in there! He also had carrots yesterday and loved those as well. It is just so amazing to experience what a difference this is than what we went through with Kaylin. As I said to Chris, a small jar of baby food would feed Kaylin 3 different times. At this rate with Brayden, it won't be near enough for 1 meal!

Brayden is also rolling over - front to back, back to front, rolling and rolling and rolling! He LOVES to watch his big sister and laughs hysterically if she hides and then plays "peek-a-boo" with him. He also giggles quite a bit when mommy changes his diaper or takes off his clothes and is quite ticklish on his belly. It is so great to hear his belly laughs and giggles! Nothing better than that! He loves to chill in his bath at night and watch big sister splash around like a fish out of water and he enjoys spending time in his exersaucer. He is just so cute and so much fun - oh, and he's already grabbing his toes. I know this may not seem like a big deal to some, but I just remember fretting over Kaylin not grabbing for her toes until she was over 9 months old and I worried about it forever. He's already doing it now and I'm just so happy that it doesn't seem like we will need any ECI therapy for him even though he was 2 months early!

And speaking of big sister - she turns 3 YEARS OLD this coming Sunday, June 21st!! She is such an amazing little girl and I just want to freeze time with her right now. Many of her tantrums have stopped and her behavior has been really good these last few weeks. She is very excited about turning 3 and going to "Gram's school" next year. She will attend Casner Christian Academy in the fall where her Gram teaches 4 year olds and she just can't wait. Before then, however, we must get her potty trained! You probably remember well the potty training sagas I was writing about here. Well.....she completely ceased going potty anymore and I just let it go. But now that we are approaching 3 years of age and have the beginning of school looming over us in August it's time to get back to work. Two days ago we started it up again and I would say it's going "average". She likes wearing panties but it doesn't hinder her at all to go pee pee in her panties so we've had several accidents on the floor so far. Poop is a whole other issue and I don't know how we'll EVER get her potty trained for that. At this point her doc has said to cut a slit in a pull up and let her wear a pull up when she has to poop. At this point, I can't get her to tell me she needs a pull up and he is so attached to her "poop corner" that it's impossible to get her near the toilet like the doc also suggested. If you pick her up and carry her in there, she screams and cries and then won't poop. She has enough constipation issues as it is - the last thing we need is for her to start holding it in now. So we'll have to see how that continues to go. I just never knew potty training could be so hard!!

Now for some health concerns with Kaylin that we would love you to pray about. For the last year Kaylin has taken swim lessons at an indoor pool - one that is heated to 90 degrees and they also keep the building temp at 90 degrees by the pool as well. Well, as Kaylin would wait for her turn in the pool she would just sit on the side and shiver and tremble because she was so cold. Some days were worse than others, and sometimes the instructor would put a wet suit on her because she seemed so cold. It didn't inhibit Kaylin from getting in the water, but she was shivering so much that she just couldn't control her movements as well. Neither of the other 2 kids in her class were shivering like this, but I shrugged it off to her being so skinny and slight for her age. Then came Memorial weekend when we blew up her inflatable pool and filled it with water and let her play around in it in the 90+ degree heat outside in the sun. After only a couple of minutes in the pool she again started shaking and trembling, her teeth chattering (mind you it was 90+ degrees out in the Texas heat) and her lips turned blue. She also couldn't catch her breath and actually wheezed a few times trying to get her breath. We forced her to stay out of the pool, which she didn't take well at all, and she shivered until we could get her dry. Seemed quite odd to me, but we thought the water must just be too cold for her. Then last week we went to swim at her Gram's house (can you see the common theme here - this girl LOVES water!) at 5p in the afternoon when, once again, it was about 97 degrees again. And again she started shivering, trembling and her lips turned blue. Again she also didn't want to get out of the pool but I was getting quite concerned at this point so we made her get out and play in the hot tub which was warmer. At this same time, her 20 pound niece and little Brayden were both in the pool and neither of them were shivering or trembling due to the cold.

The next day I called her cardiologist just to be sure. That's the thing with Kaylin, you just can't shrug things off with her - I feel like we always need to make sure something is not wrong with her heart. In this case, I worry that her blood is not profusing to her extremities correctly which would be due to her heart. I also worry that her getting so cold and shivering so uncontrollably is taxing on her heart. As I guessed, her cardiologist was concerned and determined to see Kaylin before she leaves town this Thursday. She is completely booked before her vacation, but double-booked us so that she can evaluate Kaylin. Needless to say, I am quite nervous and concerned and just hope that everything is going OK with her. We go see the doc tomorrow at 2p - but like i said, we are double booked so it may take several hours to get an echo and get evaluated so it may be a while before I can update. Please pray that everything is OK with Kaylin's heart and that she is just too darn skinny to handle cool water. I can't imagine a Texas summer with no pool time, but even worse I can't imagine something already being wrong with Kaylin's heart after the success we had in March. However, because what we did was experimental Chris and I are pretty nervous to see if some problem has arisen.

I will update tomorrow once we are home from her appointment. Thank you for your prayers! Gotta run as Kaylin is tugging at me now to go play!:)