A preview of our family pictures!

Here are just a few of our family pictures taken today, more to come I promise!

Baby smiles, priceless!

I love the newborn smiles, they're so goofy and so beautiful! I was laughing at how awkward Gavin is at times, and Jim put it perfectly, he said "You take something as complex as the human body and try to figure out how to work it in only 6 weeks!" Yep, he's right! Gavin is learning how to use his body, and we're getting some cute pictures while he experiments :)

Big grins...

Found his tongue!

Laughing at daddy!

The world is a hilarious place to a 6 week old!
Here he's looking at one of the dogs who was standing just out of the camera's view.

He was laughing at Ian here!

He can't figure out his eyes yet, he tries to focus on something, then they cross, and they often get "stuck" like this! Jim says he's tempted to smack the side of his head to "unstuck" his eyes (joking, people, of course we won't hit our baby!!)

Darn those eyes!!

We are scheduling family pictures soon, either this weekend or the weekend after Thanksgiving. We're going through a private photographer this time, hopefully with the extra time and one-on-one attention (vs the mall where you're ushered in and out in 15 minutes whether your baby is crying or not!) we're hoping to get some good shots of ALL of us together! We'll see how it goes :)

In a complete circle...

SO, here we go again, back to where we started. Well, sort of. Connor went back to the cleft palate team today, and he was diagnosed with exactly the thing that I suspected which is why we got referred to that team in the first place!!! 2 years ago I was told that Connor did NOT have a submucous cleft palate, today we discovered that he likely does.

I ran across the term Submucous Cleft Palate when I was researching the feeding issues Connor had as an infant. I mentioned my research to his pulmonologist (who just happened to be the next dr we saw after I had researched) and he referred us to the cleft team. The surgeon on the team completely brushed us off at that first appt, saying "Connor can't possibly have a submucous cleft palate because he doesn't have a bifid uvula."

Today at Connor's appt, while looking in Connor's mouth, he said to a med student who was with him, "see that bifid uvula? That's the first sign you look for in a submucous cleft." Huh??

So here comes a lesson in submucous clefts and bifid uvulas, and an explanation of what's likely going on with Connor.

Here's a picture of a normal palate with the anatomy labeled (although this person's tonsils are rather large!) With your tongue you can feel the roof of your mouth (your hard palate) and if you reach back far enough (hoe you're not tongue-tied!) you can feel where the bone ends and the soft palate begins. Connor's hard palate is structurally normal, although is rather narrow and very high/arched. His soft palate, though, has never functioned correctly. We've known this since he was 4 weeks old and had his first swallow study.

If the soft palate does not form correctly, the uvula can have a bifid appearance like this one:And here's a drawing illustrating it:The bifid uvula is not a problem in and of itself, it's just a possible sign of a larger problem. Connor's uvula has always appeared normal, but today he was crying when they were looking in his mouth, and every time he inhaled, his uvula took on a slight bifid appearance. Here's why him crying was significant...here's a picture of the anatomy in the mouth (side view):See how behind the soft palate is the back wall of the throat, and where it connects to the nasal passageways? When you inhale through your nose, the soft palate is relaxed to allow air to pass through your nose into your lungs. When you inhale through your mouth (or exhale through your mouth, as pictured here) the soft palate is supposed to close the back of the throat so the air goes only down (or up), and not also out your nose. The same thing is supposed to happen when you swallow (so food doesn't come out of your nose) and when you speak. Here's an illustration of that, the first picture shows the soft palate closing correctly so speech sounds only come out of the mouth, the second picture shows the soft palate closing incorrectly so sounds are coming out of both the nose and the mouth (see the arrows?):So the bifid uvula is a sign of a muscular problem in the soft palate, and Connor's speech progression is also indicative of a soft palate problem (there are certain consonant and vowel sounds he ca'nt make before they require him to move his soft palate. For example, make the long E sound, can you feel your palate move? The same with the hard G and hard C or K sounds.)

So what does this all mean (besides the fact that I'm highly annoyed that doctors STILL aren't listening to me when I've proven again and again that I know how to research my kid and I often diagnose him long before they do!!) For now it doesn't mean anything, if he has a submucous cleft, he's too young to have it corrected anyway. The dysfunction of the soft palate is called Velopharyngeal Insufficiency (VPI), and that also can be corrected but he is too young and too small. Besides, some kids with submucous clefts and VPI are able to compensate and never need the corrective surgery. So for now we keep doing what we've been doing, which is heavy speech therapy and assistive communication (in our case we chose sign language in place of assistive communication devices). There is a specialty clinic in Cincinnati that specializes in these kinds of palate problems, and I will definitely take Connor there for any repair that he may need, especially since I really don't like the head of this team here in Dayton (mostly because he's brushed me off so many times!)

Thus ends this cleft palate lesson!

Me and the boys...picture attempt #1

I remember now why we PAY someone to take our pictures!!! It's hard work to get just two little boys looking in the same direction--and maybe even smiling!--but now to get three?? It might be impossible for a while :) I had Jim try today, though, and here's the results:

Take 1...Ian wasn't looking, Connor was crying.

Take 2...Ian was blinking, I was kind of hunched over, Connor was still unhappy.

Take 3...Ian was looking, but making a weird face, I was caught in half-blink (or something!), and Gavin was trying to latch onto Connor's face!!

We'll keep trying!! Someone asked for an upclose picture of me and Gavin's face to compare to the last post's picture of Jim and Gavin's faces. I'll see what I can do tonight...he usually has a happy time right before bed, maybe I'll try then. I think Gavin looks more like Jim than either of the other boys did. He definitely has my chin and his eyes are more similar to mine than Jim's, but they're not exactly like mine either. And since he kept his dark hair, he just looks like Jim I think!! I dreamed several times when I was pregnant that we'd get a red-haired baby, but it looks like I was wrong, maybe he'll be a brown-haired kid!!

Daddy and Son

And the winner is...CONNOR!!

The winner of the "who gets stitches first" game, that is! I knew it was coming, there's no stopping my boys, and frankly I don't WANT to stop them, they are naturally fearless, very curious, and very strong in gross motor skills (both of them are weak in fine motor skills, probably because all of their energy goes into gross motor!)

Anyway, Connor is officially the first to have an owie bad enough to need stitches, and boy, was it bad!! He cut his eyeLID on a hook on the closet door. Not his eyeBROW, his eyeLID. At first it didn't look that bad, didn't bleed much really, just looked like a scratch. But when I looked closer, I saw that it was a gaping gash across his whole lid.

So to the hospital we went where poor Connor braved it through quite the ordeal getting it stitched (it's not easy to numb an eyelid, and also not easy to stitch it...you know, since the eyeBALL is so close to it!!) It's an experience I don't care to repeat anytime soon!!!

SO...here come the pictures now...and beware, they're somewhat graphic!

This is right before we left for the hospital. See how it's hardly bleeding? At first glance it didn't seem that bad. This is what he looked like 12 hours later, the cut stitched and significant swelling setting in. About 24 hours later, bruising starting, swelling still pretty bad. Two days later, bruising getting darker. An up-close on day 2.

Never a dull moment in our house, I tell you!!!

It's Halloween!

Happy Halloween! There's one major problem with it being Halloween already...that means Gavin is FOUR WEEKS OLD ALREADY!!! HOW did that HAPPEN?? My goodness I need to catch up on a bunch of stuff (like posting my birth story! and finishing packing away my maternity clothes, and I don't know, a whole bunch of other stuff!)

Anyway, it's Halloween, and we had a good time. Somehow I managed to FORGET to take pictures of the boys in their costumes though, I might try to re-dress them tomorrow and take pictures, but honestly I'm afraid that Connor will think he can walk up to stranger's doors and get more candy!!!

We did our short walk around the block and the boys went inside to examine their loot, costumes were shed, and I completely missed my opportunity to take pictures. I did go back out later and take pictures of our decorations, though! This is Ian's pumpkin: This was our candy bowl. We had the "enter if you dare" tape strung along our drive way leading to the bowl of candy that was surrounded by orange lights and our decorated pumpkins. Every year I say that I want to do more to decorate for next year, then I never do. It's always too expensive to buy stuff, or Halloween sneaks up on me and I just plain forget. These were window hangings I bought this year, they're 4 feet tall! (we have windows in the front of our house that are very tall) I think they're cool! Here's the pumpkin daddy carved.Ian went to Fulton Farms near us for a school fieldtrip yesterday. Here's how he "measures up".And here he is overwhelmed in the pumpkin patch. He was allowed to pick one pumpkin to bring home, and had a hard time choosing one!!Here he is lost in the corn maze.And here Daddy gives Gavin his first bottle!! Gavin had some trouble getting a good latch on the bottle and never did finish the ounce or so that was in it. We might have to experiment with different bottles to find one that he likes. Or maybe he just wasn't hungry enough! I go back to work in three weeks though, so he has to figure it out soon!