You are all invited to Garets Baptism

I just wanted to stop in quickly and let you all know that we are going to be having Garet Baptised on August 16. We would love for as many of you to come and help us praise God for this opportunity to he has given us with Garet. He will be Baptised at the 11:00 service at Middleburg United Methodist Church. We will also be having a lunch cook out at our house after church. Please if you plan on coming to the cook out give me a call or drop me an email to let me know. We want to make sure we have enough food for everyone.

Sorry its been so long

Sorry it has been so long since I last updated. Since I have been back to work I have even less free time when I get home. Lets start with the health stuff. I think this is the most exciting part right now. We had a Cardio doctors apt this past Thursday and it went very well. Dr Fricker said that from the ECO it looks like some of the swelling of Garets heart has gone down. It looks like his heart is 25% smaller this time then it has been on the past ECO's. This is so exciting. The function is still only at 30% instead of 70% but with the swelling going down that means that the medicine they are giving him is starting to work a little bit. They have upped the dose of his medicine that is helping his heart to squeeze better so we hope that that starts to show some improvement as well. So overall the medicine is starting to do what they hoped it would. That is going to be a very gradual increase as he gets bigger. So that is our exciting new update on the doctor side. Now onto some fun pictures and some more things that are new and exciting.

Garet is now 24 1/2 inches long and weighs 13lbs and 5 1/5 oz. So he is growing really well. This is something that the doctors track very closely to make sure he is grown enough. They did tell us that we could start to introduce some cereal to him a couple time a day. So on Thursday we got to experiment for the first time with solid food. He did a really good job for his first time.
He is now getting used to what he is suppose to do when the spoon is in his mouth. I can already see we are going to have a patience issue. Not with me but with Garet. Once he got the hang of swallowing the food, I was not fast enough and finally had to stop and give him a bottle. Each time we try to feed him cereal he is increasing in the amount he eats so I think we are getting the hand of it.

The picture above was taking at Garets first Jacksonville Suns game. We were hanging out before the game and got this cute picture. We had a great time and Garet did a good job of watching the game. Daddy almost got us a foul ball that came right to us. I think he was just worried about it not hitting us so he did not concentrate on catching it. But we were so close to having a foul ball at our first game. Once Garets bed time his he was ready to go home. We could tell that he had a good time because that night was the first night that he slept all the way threw. He fell asleep at about 9:30 at the game and did not wake up till about 6 am. YEAH for mommy and daddy. He has not slept quite that long since but he is starting to put a little more time between his wake ups.

It is so much fun that he is starting to grow into a lot of the toys that we have around the house for him. The picture above is from is rain forest bounce thing. He really enjoys sitting up and this is a great way for him to sit up on his own and also with all the lights and sounds it can keep him happy for about the same time as it takes me to clean and sweep up around the house. It is perfect. Garet has also been doing a great job of sitting up and most recently he likes to stand all the time. We have been trying to do tummy time so that he will want to start crawling but I think that when he is on his tummy it puts extra pressure on his chest and heart and he does not like it at all. I have said it from the beginning that he was not going to do to much crawling, I think he will go almost straight to walking. I stood him up the other day and put his hands on the coffee table and he stood there on his own for about 2 seconds or so. Don't get me wrong we still have a long way to go before he is walking around the house but every little thing he does is exciting to us.
The picture above is Garet in the little wagon that my work gave me with flowers in it when I had Garet. Grandma Rose took this picture. I am glad that she remembered to do this. He is almost to bid for the wagon now.

Well I think that this is long enough so I will wish you all a great day and hope to be able to update a little more often. Thank you again for all the prayer. We would not be able to post all these happy pictures if it was not for all you keeping us in your thoughts and prayer.

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July to everyone from Garet. We made a trip down to Orlando to visit family that lives down there. It was nice to have Friday off of work so we could get down there a day earlier and have plenty of time to hang out and relax. Matt was able to play a round of golf on Friday. They had a great deal were they got to play as much golf and eat as many hot dogs as they wanted for a very good price. I know he was excited about being able to get out and play some gold. It has been a long time since he has been able to do that. Garet, Grandma Rose I got to relax and do some swimming.

The picture above is Garet sporting his new sunglasses. He did not mind them so much for about 5 minutes or so. I think if it was sunnier out he would have liked to have them on, but since it was about 10 in the morning that he went swimming there was not much sun on the pool at that time.
Above it a picture of Grandma Rose and Garet. Grandma Rose was helping him jump up out of the water and them splash a little in the water and Garet really enjoyed that. If you look close you can see a smile on his face.

We got to test out his new floaty toy for the pool. It was almost as big as the Jacuzzi part of the pool so he did not get to float around to much but we did get to see how he liked it. He is still a little bit to small for it. It is for 6 months and up so someone had to make sure to hold him up so he did not fall forward. It will not be much longer and he will be floating around all over Ganny's pool.

It was so nice to take a weekend and just get away. Matt and I got to go and see some fireworks on Saturday night. We did not take Garet because we did not know how he would react. We really wish that we would have since we sat far enough away that I don't think the noise would have bothered him.

Garet is doing so great with his eating and taking of his medicines. He is now up to 12 pounds and 1 ounce the last time that we took him into see the transplant doctors. That was a little bit over a week ago so I am sure that he has gained more since then. He is not out of all of his 0-3 month clothes. Most of his little outfits are right around 6 months in size. He is just getting so long that we have to go a little bit bigger so it does not ride up. Well that is all for right now. I should be getting copies of the pictures from the poker run, and as soon as I do get them I will post a bunch of them so you can all see them.

Thank you to everyone that has been donating money to help with medical bills. It has been such a big help and financial relief to not have to stress about were the money is going to come from to pay all the bills that are rolling in. Most of all thank you for the continued thoughts and prayers, they have been great and please keep them coming.