Please pray for Rhyer

Grant is now officially enrolled in our local school's Early On program, so we have someone at the house working with Grant Sunday-Thursday. It is quite busy, but Grant enjoys the interaction and is improving quickly in all areas.

Our attention right now is focused on Rhyer, a sweet baby boy born to our friends, Bill and Courtney last week. Like Grant, Rhyer was born with a rare and serious heart defect. He will be having the first of his three open heart surgeries tomorrow at U of M. Please pray for Rhyer and his family during this time.

Getting older

Grant seems to be growing up overnight. He now says "mamamamamama" and he's figured out that if he says it when I walk away I won't leave. :) He is trying to walk and loves to push his little lawnmower around the room. We are having a lot of fun lately dancing , singing and rolling the ball back and forth. He heads for the stairs any chance he gets and so far we've only had one tumble. (Now we use the gates.) He loves balloons and toilet paper and spicy enchiladas. Yep, you heard me right- enchiladas. Yesterday for lunch he went bite for bite with me on my enchilada. The night before had ate veggie curry burgers. I guess he just had too mature of a palate for formula. :)

A Visit from Friends

This week we have our good friends, Justin and Lauren, visiting from Colorado with their baby, Pierce. He's just 4 weeks younger than Grant. Here are some photos of the dads enjoying time with their sons.

Good News

Two bits of good news to share-
1. Jim's mom's surgery was successful. She's in the hospital recovering overnight.
2. Grant went to U of M today for some routine tests and they went great. They took him off Viagra!

Get Well Soon!

Jim's mom is having surgery tomorrow. Please pray for a successful surgery and a quick recovery.

9 Months Old

Now that Grant is mobile, he really isn't into sitting still for his picture. So, Grandma helped us out in this one...

A new toy

We're still working on Grant's crawl. Because of the way Grant uses the right side of his body (and mostly his right leg), the experts think it is very possible that Grant had a stroke during his heart surgery. So, we're currently working with two different occupational therapists, two physical therapists and one speech therapist to try to retrain the brain.

Grant has a funny looking pair of biker shorts that are sewn together in the middle that he is supposed to wear for 15 minutes a day. They force him to crawl with his legs together and not "cheat" by only using his left leg. (His preferred method of transport is a bear crawl using only his left leg, while dragging the right.) In order to motivate Grant to crawl from one end of the room to the other, we got out a big box and found that if we throw the ball through the box, Grant will go retrieve it. Here's a picture of Grant and his box. He's not wearing his special shorts though, because we find that there are not many smiles while the shorts are on. :)

Transitions

Little Grant has had a tough time since my ankle surgery. He does not like transitions, whether it be from the highchair to the stroller or from inside to outside. Once he's there, he's happy; he just doesn't like the process. That has made the past six days and multiple care givers really hard for him. I'm so thankful for all the people that have volunteered to care for Grant. It is unfortunate that it is so confusing for him. I wish he could just enjoy all the love that is being poured out on to him.

Last night grandma and grandpa had Grant over for a sleepover. (Thank you, thank you!!) Unfortunately, he woke up quite a few times in the night and would only stop crying if they would hold his hand. So, around 4:30 they brought him in their bed and he finally fell asleep on his back with one grandparent's pinkie in each hand.