Super boy

Macsen is still battling the cold he caught 2 weeks ago. We are managing symptoms with the humidifier, saline nose spray and daily torture sessions with the snot sucker. He's been vomiting more - sorry about your rug Danni- and sweating more but it's all hopefully just related to this nasty virus. 

His cardiology appointment went well last week though. They weighed him at over 23 lbs! And he ran circles around the staff - literally! They haven't seen him in a few months and he wanted to show them how he can now run. He also used the exam table as a slide, grabbed his own Echo probe to perform his own echo, and thwarted the blood pressure cuff in its quest to get a good read by wiggling and refusing to sit still. He was a wild man. 

We went for the appointment and came home the same day. - all the kids were coughing and snotty so we opted for our own beds and we all survived the almost 6 hr round trip road trip. 

That's good to know bc we have to drive to Philly next month - Thanksgiving week- for a cardiac and brain MRI and a heart cath. Not looking forward to the cath:( I 'd take a cath over surgery any day but they are not without their own consideral risk. Thankfully it will all be done at the same time so we only have to hand him over once. 

We are ready for Halloween. We've had tons of fun at a few Fall Festivals. We needed to have a little fun as a fam - the kids were sick their entire Fall break and we stayed in, watched movies and drank lots of honey tea. We were supposed to do more fundraising at the Downtown Fall Fest but the kids needed a dose of normal where they could participate in the costume contest, eat festival food and not think about their brother for a while. 

The yard sale went really well - the girls sold lemonade and told everyone about their brother 's half a heart. They are wonderful advocates. They are so matter of fact about it but occasionally they stop to think and ask me the hard questions- "is he going to be ok? Will he die?" For now I am usually able to get them to focus on how well he is doing and that is enough for them. I still believe looking at the positives is the best way for us to keep moving forward. It's harder to do at times - like when I realize he's wearing a 12 month outfit at 24 months, or I hear other 2 years carrying on a conversation and he won't even say Dada, and especially when he spits out of chokes on the one and only bite of food he's attempted that day- but focusing on all the cant's only shoves me deeper into a dark place where I can't live. So I climb out, put him in his push car and we race down the driveway while he enthusiastically yells out "Ahhhhhhhhhhh" and we both laugh our heads off.