Fetal Echo

Greetings!

I had a fetal echocardiogram this morning at the Eller Congenital Center ( St. Joe's). The result is great! My baby Madison have a healthy heart! Yehey!

Easter

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter! My family surely had a great Easter at my mother-in-law's house. We had a great dinner, and it was good to see all the members of our family.

My kids had fun egg hunting at their grandma's backyard. I didn't grew up in egg hunting, so I don't know how to do it :-). What I did was I put all the eggs in the basket and gave it them this morning after church. Which I think my little daughter enjoyed the colorful eggs. So, when we arrive at grandma's house, she took the kids in the backyard and teach them how to find the eggs. Thanks MOM! 

I was actually surprise that the kids knows what to do after they found their first egg. My daughter kept saying, "anymore?" here are some of our photo this Easter!

Big balls for the kids waiting in the backyard :0)

Happy to find the first egg!

 Gj has no idea what was going on

 Kathlyn found the egg again.

 He saw the egg, but he ignore it so I made him take it before the little girl does.

 He found it by himself..good job baby G!

 nice car you got there baby G!

 Kathlyn found the last egg.

Kathlyn and big brother

Good Friday

I missed celebrating Holy week with my family! I came from Philippines which is almost 90% of population are catholic. My family is one of them. We do not eat meat for holy Wednesday until Easter Sunday. Holy Monday and Tuesday as much as possible we avoided to eat meat as well. Holy Thursday and Good Friday we go to church and joined the procession. My dad normally help push the cart where the dead of Jesus laid down for few hours depending on the route that the church planned to cover.

Here in the US is totally different. Holy week is the same as the ordinary week. I remember only one Good Friday I went to church in 2004 since I came here a week before the Holy week. After that I celebrate most of my holy week at work or at home because we do not have a car to go church.

Today, I woke up planning to go to church with my kids. The station of the cross will start at 3pm, but I still don't have a car to use for transportation. Renting a cab is quite expensive and I cannot afford that. I was thinking to take the bike trailer to haul my kids , but the weather is quite warm, they will be cooked in that trailer for few hours...sighhhh oh what to do! what to do! Nothing actually, but pray at home from the bottom of my heart. HAVE A GOOD FRIDAY EVERYONE!

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I was able to go to church before my husband went to work today. I saw the church schedule that they were having a station of the cross from 12nn. So, I went and did  the station of the cross by my self and offered some prayers for our friend who is in the hospital recovering from the major heart surgery. Thanks to our Lord for saving us from sins.

School celebrate Spirit Week! - Outfit inside out

 This week GJ wore weird outfit. Dad read the letter from the school , and he did chose the clothing for Gj that day. I was not gonna let him participate, but dad already planned for it :-) good for him.

 I was in KC's room when I saw them outside the front yard. I took some photos of them as a remembrance of that day.

 He was happy as you can see. He is feeling great and enjoying the life of a 4 years old.

 Of course my little daughter always takes him to the bus stop. SHe is a happy girl too. This is dad's job every morning..taking care of the kids and take them to the bus stop. Mommy on the other hand ...sleeping in :D.

Kathlyn's 2nd year Well- Check

Kathlyn had her second year well-check today. She received only one poke today ouchhh! She is a tough girl, so she didn't cry much. About KC's health wise, "she is perfect" as Dr. Gerald Golner said. Oh by the way, we love Dr. G. He is "THE BEST" pediatrician in town :-).

Kathlyn and Dr. Golner

 She was very good of following instructions during the well- check. No problem at all! Good job baby girl!

Gerald Jay and Dr. Golner

Well,  of course brother GJ was jealous that Dr. G was holding KC. Ralph had to take Gj out of the rooma nd came back later after KC's was done. And it was his turned to be on his lap :-).
What we like about Dr. G is that he gave the kids fair attention even it wasn't GJ's time to be check!
Thanks a lot Dr. G. Golner !

Eller Congenital Meeting--- Goodbye to Dr. Cleveland

I don't know where to start of today's(4-19-11)  event . Gerald and I attended a meeting at the Eller Congenital (St. Joe's) basically just to say "thank you and goodbye" to Dr. Cleveland. But my little heart hero show off to the crowd how well he is now :D. He run to the stage and play hide and seek with me when I tried to get him off the stage. Off course the program just started, then he laid down on the stage. I chose the very end seat  and give him some toys to play with; however, my boy just couldn't keep his growling noise low. So, while Dr. Cleveland saying goodbye I had to take GJ back home ( it took me about 35 minutes back and fort) and came back to the meeting. Dr. C was already left and I didn't get a chance to say " thank you and goodbye". But he saw how well was GJ after the fontan and as far as I can see from his face, he was really happy to GJ was doing well. GJ gave him a hug!

To Dr. Cleveland,

My family are grateful for saving our son's life. He won't be here to this day if it wasn't your and Dr. Nigro's saving hands. Please accept out gratitude from the bottom of our hearts and goodluck! God bless!

I didn't have any picture of Gj and Dr. Cleveland. If my son ask me who did his surgeries, I don't have any picture to show him what his surgeon looked like :(. I am so sad for that. But the Laura the NP at cardiac clinic told me she'll give me a picture of Dr. C from thier office. Thanks to that.

Also, ST. Joseph's Medical and PCH are merging in June. Too bad I didn't hear all the information about this merging because I left before Dr. C finished his farewell message. When I cam back, I only hear the portion of " questions and answers". But I am pretty sure that either hospital will take care of our heart kids.
 

Mended Little Heart of Phoenix Family Pinic 2011

Last April 2nd the Mended Little Heart of Phoenix organized a family picnic at the Indian steel Park. My kids had a blast, and I had a chance to talk to other heart moms. Thank You MLH.
Here are some of the photos that the official photographer that day. Thank you very much for the ocmplimentary photo.

My daughter and I

My family-- Ralph, Gerald Jay (HLHS), Nelda  and Kathlyn

Kathlyn had a great smile

Kathlyn and the dog... they call it a therapy dog or something :-)

 I didn't know that the took this picture until I saw it on the MLH wedsite :-) Thanks it is a great photo!

She like the dog

Little girl's skirt

Tonight, around nine o'clock I didn't hear any noises around the house. I locked-up my self in the study room and let my husband takes care my kids. Well, hubby had a good sense of taking care the kids :-) they put them in bed. Well, normally between 8 pm to 9pm my kids are saying " night night".

Anyway, since my kids are in bed, I feel bored. So I decided to take all my scrap fabric and laces, I laid it on the floor and stared at it for 15 minutes thinking of what to do with it. Then I finally came up with making a new skirt for my little daughter. I read some blog that have tutorials for making skirts from this blog . It was very easy to follow. So, here is my finished product...

Cardiology Follow-up visit

Gerald had a cardiology visit and everything went well. Although the kids behavior was the worse behavior I ever seen. But my son was very cooperative during the vital signs, EKG, and body check.

 Kathlyn on the other hand didn't score a good point from us tsk tsk tsk. As you can see in the photo.

Anyway, Dr. Nowlen was happy to see us and Gerald Jay. We are gonna start weaning Gj from the sildenafil starting on Monday. I am excited about it, because one less meds the better. But our Dr was very conservative which we love about him :-). He want us to watch closely for some signs of fatigue and etc from the .01- 0 dose because that is where we see some difference. He will have 3 echos within 15 weeks and follow-up visit with Dr. Nowlen on the 16 weeks. All was good and it was a great cardiology visit!

Psychologist visit

Greetings!

As I mentioned in my previous post that Gerald is going to be busy this week and this is one of them. We had a psychological evaluation since our last eval was couple years ago. But this time we mentioned the doctor about the result of the kindergarten transition meeting. Which he falls on the mental retardation category. The doctor is just gathering all the information from all our providers and will help us to determine if he is or not. Some providers that I talk too are not agreeing with the MR category either. Anyway, there are more visitation to the psychology to be done and don't know who would really diagnose him as MR. For as parents, he looks really good rather than not talking Gerald is fairly a happy kid.

Typical Gerald! When we arrived at the clinic he liked to check out every corner of the clinic and get on the chair. We are discouraging him to do that, but he still does it. Anyway, Daddy helped him get off the chair and he stayed playing on the floor with his sister and the other kid that was there before us.

During the evaluation the doctor brought out the blocks in which he wasn't interested at all. Only Kathlyn played with in and Gerald focuses on the dual phone which was located on the corner of the office. After 10 minutes Gerald started to get bored and tried to find something else to in such a small office. But he couldn't helped himself whining a little bit. When gets really tired whining he sat on dad's lap and feel asleep :-). We ended the visit with a peaceful Gerald in dad's arms.

This is it for now. Thanks for stopping by!

Appointments

The week is a busy week for Gerald Jay. He will have the psychology evaluation by tomorrow and on Thursday he will have his cardiology follow-up. So far, Gerald is doing real well and can't complain. Thanks to our Almighty God!

Chicken intervention

We have chickens in our backyard for almost five years now. So its basically since Gerald was born. As far as I can remember Gerald jay has been feeding those chickens everyday. It is a good job for him. Those chickens has given us lots of organic eggs for years and just really sad that some of them died during summer when it get really really hot here. Anyway, everyday after school Gerald jay come out the yard and visit his chicken friends. The chicken knows him well and they are excited all the time the see him. Here are some chicken bonding moments.

Gerald and the chicken

I don't know what kind of meeting they have that day, but it sure looks very serious lol.

Every meal after Gerald tasted the food, he give it to the chickens. As you can see the chicken what really anxious what he got for them :-). At least he learned how to share!

Pre-K to Kindergarten Tansition Meeting

Greetings!

It has been awhile since my last update, and I'd like to apologize to all my followers and visitors for not posting anything here. I was a little occupied of lost of things here at home and with my family.

 

UPDATE

Gerald Jay is doing very well health wise and as well a his daily activities. He had a huge progress on his feeding issues. He can now lick and suck every food that we offered him and take a bit of some cookies and crackers. As what the speech / feeding therapy at school said that he ate a birthday cake at school. I was really happy to know about his progress.

 

 Another, we had a new feeding button on his belly. It is called the mickey button. We changed it from the bard button to a mickey one and I like it too although it is a little bigger than he had before. But it is also easy to take care of.

TRANSITION MEETING

Also today, we had a transition meeting at school from pre-k to kindergarten. My husband and are very thankful to the whole team (total of 12 persons) that everyone had a chance to express their opinions and concerns about my child. I also would like to thank his current pre-school teacher Ms. T Jonhson for being an awesome teacher for our kids.

Anyway, before my husband and I went to the meeting I read the whole draft of Gj's progress from 2009-2011. We all agree that Gerald has come a long way. One of the team member who is his OT met him when he started to go to pre-school, she's also amazed how GJ's progress in two years.

 Anyway, for the first hour of the meeting each of us had the opportunity to share about GJ's progress at home and at school . They have done the evaluation since the 8th of March and today we got the results on when he falls on for the kindergarten. Currently he is receiving all the therapy at school and at home based program.

Here comes the sad part. After all the good news that he is doing well at school and the sweetest student he falls on the mental retardation category. As I was listening to the psychologist when she told us the result my mind went blank and said to my self " oh my Lord, my poor son"! I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. Our meeting went on and lasted one hour and half. When my husband and I finally left the building we held our each other hands and I asked him," did you heard it?" and he said, " Yes, but he's come a long way, and we should be very thankful that he has come this far". My husband understand it more that I do, and he was more prepared for it. As for me, I will do my best to get him where he should be for his future.

Praised God for keeping my son healthy and alive!