Trick or Treat

October came and went in a blur of visitors and therapy appointments. Henry continues to be seizure-free, and he is making slow, steady progress with his various therapies.

In physical therapy, we are focusing on rolling over. If we initiate the roll through his shoulders, he can complete it with his legs and vice versa. Now he just needs to figure out how, when, and why to initiate the roll.

We now feed him a small amount of meltable solids (aka cheese puffs) each day. The primary goal is to teach him to chew solids. Becoming an obedient consumer of corn-based foods is secondary.

Henry's neurosurgeon confirmed that he believes the shunt is now functioning properly. We will measure its progress with a fast MRI on November 11.

Dori and Nate spent a weekend with us. It was our first chilly weekend of the year, but that didn't stop us from exploring Millennium Park:

For children, the month of October is filled with the anticipation of Halloween. Although Henry does not yet know the sweet taste of candy, he had three Halloween costumes from which to choose.

The tiger costume was a little too scary. We wouldn't want to frighten the neigborhood:

He wore his bear costume to a Halloween party with his cousins:

But for Halloween day, we chose the cutest (most humiliating) costume we could find:

The highlight of our month was a trip to Pennsylvania. Here is Henry hanging out with his great grandmother, Grammy:

His aunt Talisa:

and his Pap:

Here he is practicing head control:

And enjoying the great outdoors with his dad:

Henry's friend Owen came for a visit earlier this month. They had a great time playing, and Owen got to practice being a bully by stealing Henry's pacifier.

Henry gets to see his Gramma Judy on most weekends:

And he always has fun hanging out with his cousins. Here they are gathered around the newest addition:

Some days, Henry gets to spend a few hours with his good friend Luan:

Finally, here are a couple of pictures of Henry fresh out of the shower:

October already

October finds us with much good news to report. Henry has been seizure-free since our last post. His latest MRI showed a decrease in ventricle size. This indicates that his shunt, now on its lowest-pressure setting, is finally functioning correctly.

He also has new glasses. Not only is he taking an increased interest in the world around him, but he looks like an older, more sophisticated baby.

We were very lucky to find a fantastic babysitter for Henry. Jennie spends two fun-filled days per week with Henry, and he adores her.

We have been encouraging Henry's love of nature with trips to the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Finally, Henry is starting to laugh for us. Meade is quite good at making him laugh while playing with his "squeaky mirror."

End of summer

Summer is coming to a close. Henry loves to be outdoors, so we have greatly enjoyed the mild weather in Chicago throughout this season.

Henry is using his vision a lot more. He is becoming increasingly interested in faces, but his favorite objects to look at are trees.

We recently discovered that his glasses prescription needs to be significantly increased. Once we receive his new glasses, his world will be all the more clear. This picture shows Henry with his developmental vision therapist playing with the lightbox.

Unfortunately, Henry's seizures seem to be returning. We have gone through several rounds of increasing his seizure medicine, observing a seizure a week later, and increasing the dosage yet again. We still have a few dose increases of his current medicine before we hit the maximum safe amount, but each increase is an indication that we may need to choose a different seizure medicine to keep his seizures under control.

We finally found something Henry enjoys that does not involve someone holding him. Here is a video of him playing with a mobile that was given to us by our friends Bryan and Adele. He not only watches the hanging animals drift by, but he attempts to grab them.

Our friends Peter, Sarah, and Ian spent a weekend with us in August.

We had a lot of fun playing on the slip-n-slide with the cousins.

We have had many other visitors this summer.

Carol visited from Michigan.

Jess dropped in from San Francisco.

Mark braved the journey from the wilds of Elgin.

Molly came from LA.

Bobby stopped over on his way from Vermont to Vancouver.

Mom spent a week with us. We all greatly appreciated her help and company.

Henry is pleased to have a new baby girl cousin, Holloway (Holly). As you can see, she was cute from day one.

Our friends Mike, Angela, Isabella, and Will are moving to Minneapolis later this month. We will miss them terribly. We had a fun excursion with them to the Morton Arboretum.

Here are some random pictures of a Happy Hank.

Finally, here is a shot of Henry getting clean with his cousins.

Busy summer

We have had quite a busy summer. Besides Henry's many ongoing therapy sessions, we have had a few highlights.

Here we are with Henry's cousins looking quite patriotic on the 4th of July:

We finally found an opportunity to spend a weekend in Door County. Here we are getting ready for a road trip:

Here is lunch time with cousins:

Jim and Susan's house is surrounded by lush vegetation. When Henry spotted the fireweed, he broke into a huge grin:

Henry also got to spend some quality time with Diana:

We have been lucky enough to have quite a few visitors this summer. To name a few...

Ted took a brief hiatus from the glitz of Los Angeles:

Kate moseyed in from Montana:

Will also get to spend a couple of days with us:

Henry has been progressing well with his therapy. He is eating baby food several times per day:

He also gets lots of sitting practice:

In other exciting news, Henry has a brand new cousin, Emika Alice. Here she is with Peggy:

And on Daddy Wesley's shoulder:

As far as Henry's general health is concerned, within a week after his shunt implantation he began sleeping through the night about half of the time. To put that in perspective, prior to the surgery he had slept through the night a grand total of three times. We are all a lot happier with the dramatic increase in our dormant hours.

We had a little bit of a scare this past week. On Tuesday, Henry had a runny nose and a slight fever. By Wednesday, the runny nose and fever had subsided, but he refused to nap or eat and spent the day whimpering to himself. We were instructed by our surgeon to take him to the emergency department at Children's Memorial Hospital to make sure that he did not have an infected shunt. Once we arrived, we learned that the analysis of his cerebral spinal fluid would take up to 48 hours. The good news was that they could remove the fluid directly from the shunt valve rather than doing a spinal tap. Fortunately, our stay was cut short when Meade and I both contracted terrible colds. The doctors were convinced that Henry's symptoms were completely consistent with a cold and that the best thing for everyone was lots of rest in our own beds. We spent a total of 24 hours at the hospital, and we were all happy to be home again.

We have a lot more going on in August, and we are especially excited that Henry's Nanna will be visiting from Pennsylvania.

To close this post, here is a picture of Hank fast asleep.  The feet belong to Bean, his pet moose.