Let it Snow!

We woke up this morning to a beautiful blanket of snow on the ground, and more on the way! It's still coming down fairly heavily; we expect 2 inches total by tomorrow. Not very much, but enough to start getting in the spirit of Christmas. It just isn't Christmas to me without snow!

Our little man is currently lying on the floor, drifting off to sleep. We spent the day with family yesterday, and he only had about 4 30-minute naps between 8am and 10pm; there was just too much going on! So he's been catching up on his sleep.

I think his weight is trending a little better. The day of his surgery, he was weighed at 13 pounds even, and two weeks later at his cardiology appointment, he still weighed 13 pounds even. At that point, our scale said he was 13 pounds 7 ounces. Now it says 14 pounds, so hopefully that means he's gained at least half a pound. We'll see on Wednesday.

Speaking of Wednesday, we have lots going on then. Owen is up first with a cardiology appointment in the morning. Then he and I trek off to my regular OB/GYN for a monthly checkup. And later that afternoon, Mark will meet up with us for an appointment with the perinatologist. This is the big appointment: our ultrasound to get a good look at whether Bean is healthy. I know there are no guarantees, even if all the "parts" are there. So we may still opt to have amniocentesis, or we may decide to wait until the baby is born and have a blood test drawn then. I don't think we will ever have another child without having its chromosomes tested. There are quite a few families in the trisomy 10q group who didn't have diagnoses for their children until they were a year or older, simply because those children were physically healthy. It wasn't until they started falling behind on developmental milestones that they noticed a problem. The luxury of having a prenatal diagnosis for Owen is that we knew he would fall behind, and we can take steps now to help him progress and keep him from developing bad habits in the meantime.

Developmentally, we're about to reach a huge milestone. That's right - no more sternal precautions as of tomorrow!!! We are VERY excited about this. Owen has become more and more steady holding up his head, and he wants SO badly to sit up and roll over. However, we haven't been able to let him do anything that would put pressure on his chest. So he hasn't been on his tummy in several weeks, and we can't hold him with our hands supporting his chest. It really has set him back, because he can't develop the muscles he needs to sit properly without being on his tummy and rolling over. Hopefully we will make some good progress over the next few weeks.

We set up our Christmas tree on Friday, and Owen adores it! Of course, he loves anything that lights up. Santa has Owen's Christmas all set, and Mark and I are interested to see what Owen thinks of Christmas overall. It was difficult to keep Santa from going overboard, because there are just so many toys that look like fun for Owen, but I think we did a good job.

I'll definitely update again on Wednesday to let you all know about Bean. But don't be surprised if you don't hear the gender of the baby just yet; we probably won't tell our family until Saturday, so look for news next weekend!