La cuccaracha

No comments other than she was looking in the mirror all this time ;)

Art

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Abi's first potty time in a restaurant.

I'm so proud of my big girl. We have been trying to encourage her to tell us when she wants to go to potty before it's too late.
We have been practicing at home without the diaper. And here we are at Olive Garden and Abi tells me she wants 'peepee'. So I took her to a restroom and she managed to hold until she was sitting on the toilette. I was soo proud of her! She flashed and washed her hands and ran to daddy to tell him what she just did.
I don't have to mention she liked it a lot and we ended up going back there 2 more times :)

My baby girl is growing up. Thankfully I just bought her new pairs of cute underwear. :)

Yey. Potty training is becoming more fun! :)


Jo


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Cardiologist Appointment

As we have already mentioned, today was Abi's cardiologist appointment, first in 9 months. This was the first time we stretched the appointments so far.

The nurses were all excited about seeing little Abi after such a long break and were really surprised with how much she's grown.

First the nurse checked Abi's blood pressure and ran a quick EKG and then we talked to Dr. Greene. He was thrilled to see how Abi has changed and to learn about her day to day life. Abi let him listen to her heart and chatted with him about stickers and a prize neckless she was promised ;-)



















Next we moved on to heart echo. Once again Abi did great so it didn't take long at all to take great pictures and check everything.

After the echo Abi went for a walk to get more stickers so we could talk to her doctor.








Here's what we heard. Her blood pressure and EKG were perfect. Her heart sounded wonderful and the echo showed all functions of all 4 chambers, greater arteries, pulmonary baffle and the new aorta are GREAT!!!! Her Ebsteinoid tricuspid valve is holding up very well with very little regurgitation, so we talked about Abi most probably never needing it fixed, if it keeps doing as good as it's doing now.

All results came back as good as she had a healthy, never repaired heart!!!!

Next visit in 12 months and from now on, we will go to visits annually, unless there's something going on.

There is a chance Abi could develop arrhythmia due to scarring so this is something we will be monitoring over the years, but it's nothing to be concern about now.

We are so happy with the results of today's appointment and can't believe how blessed we are by this lil girl ;)

Art

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Cardiologist Appointment This Friday

This Friday afternoon we're going with Abi for her first in 9 months cardiologist appointment.

Seeing how she's growing and changing we are pretty peaceful about this one. She is very active, doesn't slow down and doesn't get tired. She grows physically and develops mentally and emotionally as should, keeps talking and talking a lot, not only single words, but actually in full sentences being able to communicate very well.

Details from the visit soon.











Art

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2 Year Old Pediatrician's Check Up Today

I took Abi for her 2 year old pediatrician's visit and it went very, very well. She did great, having fun, dancing, singing and coloring on the bed in the office.

Her weight is fantastic, 30lb and 2oz (13.7kg) which places her in 83rd percentile and her height 36in (91.5cm), 92 percentile.

Everything went really well and I couldn't be more proud of her.

Next month, cardiologist appointment, first in 9 months. I hope it will go as well as today's pediatrician one and we will get only the best reports on everything.

Have a wonderful night,
Art

Time for doctors appointments again

We can't believe that it has already been this long and time for both, pediatrician and cardiologist appointments is here.

Based on our calculations and observations Abi seems to be on track, but we will know the details soon.

Next week- pediatrician, 2 year old check up. Next month, first cardiologist appointment in 9 months.

As much as we don't mind the first one, we are not really looking forward to the second one.

We will post the results.

Art


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2 Year Old Eating And Food Pyramid

There are days when Abi is a picky eater and since she has a CHD (Congenital Heart Defect) we had to watch her eating habits closely and keep record of every milliliter of milk she had since day 1. I think this has stuck with us, or at least with me and sometimes, I must admit, I am stressing too much about her eating, or rather not eating.

During one of the last cardiologist appointments we talked to Dr. Greene and he said something very important, especially for me. He basically said that if children are offered food and have some choice they won't starve themselves and if Abi was not interested in eating at times, not to stress about it and let her be.

It helped a lot at the time, but couple months later I'm back to stressing about it again, so I started reading a little bit on the subject and thought I would share some of what I read here, with others who may be like me ;-).

Melanie Shay, a registered dietitian, in her article on BabyCenter.com, says that it's common for 2 year olds to seem like they don't eat, but as long as they grow normally, they most probably are fine and we should not force them to eat or eat more.

Here is the best part. Per Melanie Shay, a recent study of children and their eating habits, from the American Dietetic Association showed that when children are presented with variety of foods, almost all of them will eat enough to meet their nutritional needs. How awesome is that?!

Since I am the one usually making deals with Abi just to make her eat a bit more, after reading the entire article and couple others, and looking at the Food Pyramid for Young Children I decided I will give Abi a break. If she doesn't want to eat enough, and by enough I mean according to my standards and expectations, I won't bother her and will let her be. We'll see how this works out for all of us. Her weight gain and my nervous system ;-)

Below I put the screenshots (with the links) of the Food Pyramid for Young Children and couple other links you may find interesting interesting:

Nutrition Guidance for Healthy Children Aged 2 to 11 Years

Kids Eat Right

Art