Hats off to our hero (and his cardiologist!)

Bodie's cardiology appointment today was FANTASTIC!!! We really couldn't have asked for a better appointment! He did great during vitals. The nurse blows on a little shiny windmill to distract the kids - Bodie kept blowing raspberries at it - as best as we could tell, he was trying to copy the nurse and blow on it. Really funny to watch - we were both cracking up (actually, since he was cracking himself up, all 3 of us were laughing). Then, it took us a few tries to get a good ekg, since he decided it would work better without the stickers and was pulling them off as fast as the nurse could put them on. Poor lady. But he was much more cooperative during the echo. He was pretty squirmy, but didn't really cry too much, so the tech was able to get the pictures she needed and I don't think it took longer than maybe 15 minutes or so.

Dr. Kim said the echo looked great! His heart function is fantastic (for him, anyway) and his tricuspid valve regurgitation had gone down a lot (some triscuspid valve regurgitation/leakage is expected with HLHS, just because the right ventricle is working harder than a normal heart, but your best case scenario is that it's minimal and no intervention is required). She suspects the lowered heart function and increased regurg that we'd seen 2 echos ago had just been a result of surgery and now everything has settled back down. PRAISE GOD!!! So, we get to cut his Digoxin in half (that's the med he was put on to help with his heart function post-Glenn), and, as long as his next echo looks ok, we'll be able to come off of it entirely. GREAT news! (We always love appointments where we get to come down on meds.) Thank you so much for your prayers for a great appointment!

(In honor of our good news, Bodie decided to have a celebration of sorts this evening, by having the biggest blow-out diaper I have ever seen a child have (I had to call in reinforcements (aka Daddy) to help me handle the damage - the only time I've ever had to do that with 2 kids!) - turns out, for those of you who might need to file this away for future reference, antibiotics and prunes don't go so well together. ;-))

We came home from the appointment to a lovely surprise. My friend Amanda, who makes the cutest hats on the planet (she made the pink one Sierra's wearing in the picture on the right of the blog, and the blue one Bodie's wearing at the top), had made Bodie a new hat!!! (His noggin was outgrowing his old hat, so the timing was PERFECT!). Thank you Amanda! (Check out her blog Pardon my Chaos to see her amazing talents at work.)

Bodie modeled the hat (seriously - how cute is this thing???)...
for a second...

before deciding he's not quite as fond of it as Mommy...
Can you just see that look of pure victory? LOVE this kid...