Little Drummer Boy

Taiko loves to play with drums sticks. Here he is helping Yuta with Rock Band.

Ant Farm

I ordered an ant farm online, along with a tube of 25 ants. They're pretty cool to watch, but started dying off sooner than I expected. We got them on June 2nd, and we still have some alive, but they won't be for long - the info that came with the farm said the life span is 1-3 months (there is no queen). It was neat to do this once, but now sure if we'd try it again or not.

Taiko & Tupperware

Taiko sometimes likes to empty out the tupperware cabinet. The cats, Taipan & Taisim like to help too!

The Basement is Done

The work to finish our basement was completed in early June - all of us are enjoying it quite a bit. We've got lots of room to run and play down there, and there are two rooms, so Taipan & Taisim has some space to themselves now. Taisim has set her room up with dolls, dress up clothes, a tea party and a play tent. Taipan's room is the base for his battle team, and is essentially an armory.

Surgery is scheduled & other stuff

The cardiology department called today to schedule Taiko's surgery. It will be on July 7th, and we will plan to be in the hospital for eight or nine days.

Our pre-op appointment will be on June 29th where we will meet the surgeon (Dr Kouretas) and get an x-ray and have some blood work done.

My sister happens to be in town that weekend, which is awesome, and my mom will be here for all of July to help out.

We are loving the sunny weather - it's great to be able to get off work and walk over to our neighborhood park in the evenings. And it's an easier time getting there now that Simi rides her bike and Taipan takes his scooter. Taiko's tried out the slide, but isn't so sure about it. He more enjoyed sitting on the steps of the play structure and watching everyone around him.

Taisim, Taiko and I will be going to Pittsburgh on Saturday for Yuli's baby shower - I'm looking forward to celebrating the impending arrival of this little guy! We're going to leave nice and early to leave time for breaks; I don't think Taiko is quite up to 2.5 hours in the car yet. I don't think we'll have time, but I'm keeping a trip to Ikea in the back of my mind too.

The other big activity around here is that our basement is being finished. They started work on it in mid-May, and will be done this weekend. It's been a hustle and bustle of people in and out of the house, and right now we are overwhelmed with paint fumes, but it's looking great, and we can't wait for it to be finished. This will give each of the kids their own room too. If we can get decent pictures after the weekend I'll post those. We will also have more than enough room for visitors!

All about Taiko & his heart

We've a had a whirlwind of activity lately with Taiko. As some folks know, about a month ago he had some blood work done, and we found out that he has Trisomy-21 (aka Down Syndrome). As a result of that, he had a cardiologist appointment last Friday, where I thought we were just doing a cursory check to make sure there were no heart issues, as our pediatrician had never heard any murmurs or anything else to cause concern.

While at the cardiologist they did an EKG and an echocardiogram on him. The echo showed that he has an AV canal defect. There is only one treatment option for this: heart surgery. Needless to say I was shocked.

Our next step was to have a sedated echo so that they could get good, clear pictures of his heart to determine the severity of the problem. Our instructions were to be at Rainbow Babies (at the UH Case Medical Center) at 7am, and that Taiko could not nurse after 4am.

So today Yuta and I got up at 5, Taiko got up at 6, and we took him for the echo (and a big thanks to Hannah for coming over to stay with Taipan and Taisim so early in the morning). I was nervous that Taiko would be upset about not being able to nurse after waking up and while waiting for the echo, but he did great. There were a few moments where I know he wanted to nurse, but we walked around, and Yuta played with him and we got thru them pretty easily. The worst part was getting the IV put in, but even then he calmed down pretty quickly once it was in and we were able to pick him up. The nurses at Rainbow were fabulous and couldn't have been better.

They gave him Propofol, and I was able to hold him until he was out, which took only about 40 seconds. The echo took about an hour or so. Towards the end a cardiologist and a resident came in to take a look, and then they paged the cardiologist we saw last week to come and chat with us. While we were waiting, Taiko came to, and seemed happy and rested, though a little groggy.

So, here's the skinny that the cardiologist told us:

• Taiko has an atrial septal defect, and a ventricular septal defect. Both of these are holes between the chambers where there oughtn't be. The atrial one is bigger than the ventricular one
• His valves (I think two of them) do not close all the way
• Surgery will repair both defects and the valves
• Next Wednesday (June 8) the cardiologists & surgeon(s) will review Taiko's case, after which we will get a call to schedule an appointment with a surgeon and I think at that point they will also schedule the surgery.
• Surgery is likely to happen within the next month or two. Prior to surgery we will have to get some pre-op labs done too.
• There is a small possibility that they will want to do a catheterization (where they go in thru the leg to look at the lungs & heart) - they will determine if this is necessary during the review next Wednesday.

A lot of our surgery questions are still unanswered, but hopefully not for long - the surgeon will be able to answer them all when we get that appointment.

I'll post updates as we have them.

Oh - one more thing - Taiko got his first tooth on Tuesday!

We went to Florida and Taiko turned 1!

Earlier this month we took a week long vacation to the Orlando area. We timed it so that we would be there for Taiko's first birthday - it was nice to celebrate it with my side of the family. My sister, brother, niece and nephew had never met him, and it had been nearly 11 months since my dad and step mom had seen him.

We stayed at the Orange Lake Resort, which we liked quite a bit. They have quite a few pools, some with water slides, a splash pad, lake, beach and water sports. We also tried the Magic Kingdom one of the days. Taipan was lukewarm about it and didn't stay too long; Simi enjoyed it more and was happy to see some princesses and go on some rides with Yuta and Grandma & Grandpa.

Here are some pictures from our vacation (most of these Yuta also put on facebook).

The day before we left, Taiko had first birthday pictures taken. These are some of my favorites (they were taken by Michelle at http://mdleighphoto.com/ - she is fabulous!!!):

April Update

Well, if only I'd waited a few more days to get around to this I would have gone a full six months without any blog updates. Oh well.

I was inspired to post by the huge amount of pictures we took last weekend. Before that, though, in case you missed the pictures on facebook, here are some from February when we went to Kalahari and celebrated Simi's 5th birthday. And here are some from March.

April so far has been rainy and cold (I believe we've had rain on 22 or 26 days so far). We've taken advantage of the handful of sunny days we've had and gone outside - Taipan spends a lot of time on his scooter, and Simi on her bike.

Easter was so much fun this year. Coloring eggs:

While doing our bunny cake, Taiko realized how much fun foil can be:

We had our egg hunt as usual, and the kids got Easter baskets, and were very excited to see new superhero capes for Taipan & Taisim and a bubble machine for Taiko. We've gone through nearly a gallon of bubbles in the past 48 hours I think. We started with the machine in the basement, but it has since moved to the master bath.

My mom also sent cookbooks to Taipan & Taisim for Easter. Taipan's cookbook is Star Wars themed recipes, and Taisim's is Tea Party themed recipes, and they wanted to make things right away. Unfortunately there wasn't much we could make with what we had in the house already, so the kids planned a Tea Party menu, I made a shopping list, and Yuta ran out to the grocery store for the ingredients.

We also made two smoothie recipes from the cookbooks on Sunday, and then another recipe from each the next day (I highly recommend R2D2 treats - bananas, kit-kats & peanuts = delicious).

Taipan & Taisim ended the day by making a family of marshmallow/toothpick people:

So that was Easter. Taiko is 11 months old now, and is such a happy baby, and his love for Taipan & Taisim is so evident. The pic of Taiko was taken while Taipan, Simi and I were using my scrapbooking tools to cut paper and make cards:

Lots of other pictures from April are here.