Hello from Garet

I am getting so bid and wanted to let you all know how I am doing. As you can see by my picture I am getting so big and starting to do so many new things every day. I have now rolled from my belly to back and back to belly. I do not do this very often but when I do mommy and daddy cheer for me so maybe I will start to do this more often. I had a cardio dr appointment on the 20th. It went really well, they did the normal stuff. They weighed me and on there scale I weighed 14 lbs and 11 oz. Mommy and Daddy thought there scale might be off so a couple days later they took me to my regular doctor to get a weight check and there scale said I weighed 15lbs and 9oz. They thought that was more like it. I am still right around 26 inches long. They also did the EKG and ECO and it looks like my heart function has gone up a little bit. It was around 30% and now they say it is close to 37% so yeah my heart is pumping a little bit better. I knew all the jumping I had been doing in my jumpy thing was going to pay off at some point. They took away one dose of another one of my diuretic that make me pee. Now I only have to take it in the morning so that helps with my super wet diapers in the middle of the night. Most nights I can go without Mommy or daddy having to change my diapi. They have also upped my medicine that is helping my heart to pump more. It seem every time they take a med away they are giving my more of another one. That is ok with me because I am getting really good at taking all my meds and most of the time do not give mommy, daddy or grandma rose to much trouble when they try to give them to me. I also got to go and visit some of my nurses in the PICU when we were in Gainesville. It was so great to see them and show them how big I am getting. Granny made some cookies for us to take with us. Those nurses always like to eat food.

Mommy, Daddy and Grandma Rose have starting to introduce a bunch of new and yummy foods to me. They will try a new one for 4 days before they give me another new one, just to make sure I do not have an allergic reaction to any of them. So far so good. I have had sweet potatoes, Carrot, and green bean. My favorites are the fruits. I have got to try bananas and apple sauce. I like them so much that they make me laugh as I eat them. I am still eating cereal with my fruit for breakfast and I of course still love my bottles. I am eating about 6oz at each feeding. No wonder with all this good food I am gaining weight so well.

Well that is about all that is going on in my life right now. Mommy and Daddy have been busy looking for someone that I can go and stay with during the day while they are at work. Grandma Rose is going to have to go home at the end of September and I will miss her very much but I understand that she has to go home and take care of Grandpa and Mugsey(there dog) We have visited with so many really nice people but they have not been able to make any decisions yet. I hope they find someone great that will help me learn all that I can.

Well I think I am going to try to take a nap now so I will talk to you all again soon. Thank you so much for all the prayers from everyone they are really helping me continue to grow and gain strength.

Busy and Exciting Weekend

This past weekend was a very special weekend for our family. We were finally able to have Garet baptised. We had planned to have him baptised before he went into the hospital but that was delayed a little while. So this past weekend we had a great time with family and friends. Garet looked like such a little man in his outfit. He is just growing up to fast. When we were sitting at the house before church I was kind of getting worried because Garet had not taken a nap yet that morning. Well the short car ride to church was enough to do the trick. He slept threw the first part of church and woke up just in time for his baptism.

Garet and Pastor Roger did a great job during the baptism. Garet was in a good mood and had no issue with having Pastor Roger putting the water on his head. Garet even gave a few smile as Pastor Roger walked up and down the isle with him to show him off to the church.

We were very lucky to have so many family and friends there to share in this exciting time in Garets life. Uncle Erik was able to come down from IL and stand up and take the responsibility of being Garets God father. Aunt Amanda was there as well and will be the best God mother that Garet could ask for.

Garet has started to like having his picture taken so he had no problem with all the pictures that we wanted to take after church and then some more when we got back to the house.

When we got to the Church Sunday afternoon, there were some beautiful flower waiting there for Garet. His Great Aunt Ginny from IL had sent flowers to the church to help make it look beautiful on Garets special day.

When we got back to the house we were all able to change into some comfy clothes. Aunt Sheri had bought all the boys matching outfits and wanted to take on the task of trying to get them to take some pictures together.
We got some pictures of the three cousins all together and from these we can for sure say that boys will be boys and it will be fun to show them these when they get older.

We had a great cake that Grany brought and Garet thought it would be fun to stick his foot in it while we were trying to take his picture. If he had been just a little bit older we might had let him lick it off, but we did not want to take any chances with giving him really sugary food like that.

Garet got some special gifts to help him remember the day when he gets bigger. He did a great job of opening them up. He was more interested in the paper than the gift but it was fun to see him try to rip the paper and put it in his mouth.

When everyone had gone home it was nap time for both Garet and Grandpa. This is the first time in a long time that he has taken a nap on his belly like this. He normally does not take very long naps on his belly because he always wakes himself up. But with it being such a busy day I think he could have slept anyway. What a better way to sleep then on Grandpas belly.

We ended the weekend with the Jaguar game and daddy had to make sure that Garet had his #1 fan shirt on to give the Jaguars as much help as we could.

We have many more pictures is anyone is interested I will have them burned on a cd or I can email them out to you just let me know. After this weekend we are ready to just have a few weekends to just sit back and relax.

One Answer creates many more.

We have finally got an answer, kind of. I got a call the other day from the Geneticists at Shands. They got the last of the genetics tests back for Garet. We have found out that he has a genetic mutation in one of his hear genes; we will just call it a bad heart gene. In most cases people never get an answer as to why this heart condition has happened. We should consider ourselves lucky to have an answer as to what has caused this. Most people are told that it can be caused by a virus or a gene mutation that is not traceable and that is what they have to live with. In Garets case they were able to locate the bad gene and tell us that it as the cause of his problems. Unfortunately it does not chance what we can do to help him. We will still continue with the same meds. This does not open any other doors for corrective surgery or anything like that. We still have to let his body along with the meds do what it is going to do. What this does mean is that Matt and I need to go in and have blood work done to see if either of us has the bad gene and that may be how Garet got it. It could be the case that Garet is the started of this bad gene and if that is the case there is no way to find out why he got to be the first in this family. If it turns out that Matt or I have the bad gene as well then we will know how he got it. I know some of you are most likely thinking that if we one of us has the bad gene why have we not had heart issues like Garet is having. Well I guess some people can carry the bad gene and it may never effect there health, or it can wait and affect the heart later in life. It is not very often that it affects people as fast as it did with Garet. So now that we have one answer it is opening the door for a lot more question. If one of us has it then we have to look at the option of what we can do to prevent it from affecting our heart in a bad way. It also brings the questions of if we decide one day to have any more children. If one of us has it and we decide to get pregnant on our own again it would be a 50/50 chance that that child would also have the bad gene. (Again we would not know when or if that bad gene would affect them.) Also if one of us has the bad gene then we would strongly suggest that our immediate family would get tested as well. That would be mom, dad, brothers, and sisters. Hopefully with this knowledge we can help to prevent this from happening to any other little ones in our family or help this from affecting anyone in our family as they get older. But anyway we have a few steps before we have to start worrying about that. Like I said it has given us one answer but has now opened a bunch of other answers we would like to have. We have our appointment on the 20th of this month for a check up for Garet and to have our blood work done. We will hope to have the next answer about 3 weeks after that. But right now we are so thankful to have Garet and to have him be doing as well as he is. He is growing and doing new things everyday. It is just amazing to watch him learn thing for the first time and see the amazement on his face.


We have his Baptism this Sunday and again we are inviting everyone out to help us celebrate and also for a cook out at our house after church. Please come and help us celebrate this special day in ours and Garets life.

4 months old

Yeah we are 4 months old. We had our 4 month old doctors appointment this morning to get a couple shots and see how we are growing. Garet is now 26 inches long and weighs 14.5 lbs. We are right in the average on the weight and we are a little bit above average on the length. Garet had to get a couple shots and a couple meds by mouth. He was so brave he only cried for a couple minutes and then he was ready to go home. It is so much fun to go to the normal doctors, they are always so excited to see Garet and see how much better he looks and how much bigger he is getting.
Above is a fun picture that grandma rose took of Garet with some of his friends from the hospital. These are friends that have stayed with him in the hospital and now they keep him company at home. We have hit quite a few milestone here lately. The other day Garet started to roll over from his tummy to his back and he tries so hard to get back over to his tummy but is not quite strong enough to get all the way over. His hand eye coordination is getting a lot better as well. if you hold something near his hands he will reach for it and most of the time he can line his hand up and grab it. Lets see what else is new since I posted last. he is so close to being able to sit up all by him self. He can do it for a couple seconds and then he tends to lean to one side or try to bend down and mess with his toes. I am sure it will not be much longer and he will be sitting up like a big boy all the time.

The dogs have been doing really well with him. They all have a really good tolerance for him. He can do pretty much anything to them right now and they just look at him and try to give him kisses. Above is a picture of Garet and Astro and Daddy's legs. They like to be around his so much that we have had to put up a large baby gate to section off the carpet in the living room. The dogs can still see Garet and he can still see the dogs but they are not allowed on the carpet anymore. Since Garet is starting to get down on the floor more we wanted to try to reduce the amount of dog hair on the carpet and it seems to be working really well.

Upcoming Baptism. We hope to see as many of you as we can at Garets Baptism. This is going to be a big celebration. We had it planned to have him Baptised before he went into the hospital but all that has delayed things a bit. But we are ready to see everyone and celebrate that we have been giving the blessing and opportunity to have him baptised. The church service is going to be on August 16th at 11:00 and then we are going to have a little lunch cookout at our house after church. Even if you can not make it to the service we would love to be able to visit with as many people as we can at our home. hope to see you all there.