A long overdue update

Lately I've been thinking, "I should post that on my blog". I've also had several people ask to see pictures and it would be easy to post I here. My favorite line was, "I'm going to make sure I post a Lauren update now that someone reminded me that this week is Congenital Heart Disease Awareness week." We had nearly three feet of snow that week so I didn't get much time on the computer. Before I post funny things that have happened lately and before I post the pictures of what DC looks like buried under way too much snow and before I post pictures of Miss Fearless on the water slides, I'll post an update.

In a nutshell, Lauren's doing fantastic. She was in Philadelphia a week or so ago for another routine heart cath, and it showed absolutely no signs of rejection. It looks like we've finally reached a good dosage on her anti-rejection drugs so there won't be many early morning trips to the lab to get blood drawn at 8 am. She continues speech, physical, and occupational therapies each week, but its slowly becoming our new norm and not just one appointment after another.

On the feeding front, she's made remarkable progress. We're still waiting on an opening at the feeding program at Kennedy Krieger in Baltimore with hopes that she'll be tube-free. We were able to work with a local speech pathologist who helped Lauren immensely and even convinced her that barium tastes good. Lauren passed a barium swallow study in late January and is drinking part of her formula by mouth. She is willing to eat anything, but she still struggles with swallowing difficult textures like meat.

Now that I can put a check mark beside the line on my to-do list that says "Write blog update about Lauren", I can feel free to post other stuff without guilt.

I promise to post pictures soon. I'm also hoping to get back in the swing of blogging -- talking about our homeschool materials, books I'm reading, what the big kids are reading, what we're doing with our free time, etc, etc.