Caelen Gorman: Can you say Cookie Monster?

These last 2 weeks have been awesome as far as food goes! Literally, the day after my last post Caelen started licking biter cookies. He'd lick the cookie until it became a mushy mess. Slowly over the 2 weeks, he'd bite the cookie and spit out the pieces. Next he learned how to dissolve the pieces in his mouth, and now he bites the pieces and chews and swallows them!!! He has become such a cookie monster that he signs "more" every time he runs out of cookies, and throws a fit if he doesn't get more. So how many cookies are too much in a day? I don't know, but hey, my kid is eating!!! So we'll figure out the nutrition aspect later. Other than nilla wafers and biter biscuits, he eats puffs (finally) and licks tortilla chips. So we are off to a good start.

He is also starting to understand that other children are fun and he is becoming more interactive with them. We had a play date last week with our heart friend Rosie, her brother Lee and her awesome Mommy Lori, and Caelen had such a great time! It was like he was figuring out that this is what other kids do. We saw our friends the Laycooks recently and Caelen got to play with their 9 month old son Judd. This is Caelen trying to poke baby Judd's nose:

Caelen believes that this is an acceptable form of greeting. We'll teach him. But we're just so happy that he is finally showing interest in other kids.

We had our 3 month cardiology follow up on Monday (a few weeks early actually.) Love it when Caelen decides to change the game plan.

He was scheduled for the end of the month, but about 2 weeks ago his heart rate started dropping into the upper 50's when he sleeps. It doesn't stay there, but it is enough to set off the alarms and scare the crap out of me everytime he does it. We attributed it to his naps getting shorter and shorter (more on that later), and maybe that he was falling into a really deep sleep causing his heart rate to drop. But he also has an issue with his hands and feet getting cold from time to time. That's the one that really scared me. When you mix the 2 problems together, you get a set of freaked out parents. So our doc got us in on Monday and we had an EKG and an echo. Both were great, showed that his heart function is good, his venous return in his legs is good and he has strong pulses in his groin.

So our doc thinks that the pulse ox just isn't getting a true read of his heart rate, and more likely he is averaging in the mid 60's when he is in deep sleep. We were able to get the pulse ox machine reset with a new lower limit for his heart rate and voila! no more alarms. His oxygen has been really good thru all of this too, so we have started night time oxygen trials where the nurses turn off the o2 for an hour at a time and chart his o2 levels. So far, he's been staying in the 80's for his oxygen (scary for healthy adult but awesome for heart kids.) We hope to him weaned off oxygen by the end of the summer. As for the extremities getting cold, the doc thinks that it is probably ambient room temps and that he is more susceptible to the environment. So we will need to keep socks on him for now when he is on the wood floors, no biggie.

Back to the naps, what the heck man?!?! Why is he only sleeping 45 minutes to an hour at naptime now? Seriously, I am not ready for him to give up the nap. This is my time to shower, check emails, eat, you know, "me" time. 45 minutes simply isn't enough "me" time during the day. When do kids give up naps? He is almost 22 months, so maybe this is the time, but I am going to fight to keep the nap as long as I can.

Let's end on a cute note. Granpa and Nan Nan took us on a boat ride a few weeks ago, so here's a pic of Caelen with Daddy: