New info from the howard family.

So lets start with the fun stuff. Garet is doing really well with sitting up on his own. Here is the past week or so he has been getting much stronger. He is starting to like his stomach and is starting to move around a little bit as well. I do not think it will be much longer before he starts to crawl all over the house. It is so amazing how fast they change and learn new things. We are now eating solid foods at dinner each night. That is helping with sleeping all night long. He can now go from 8:30 at night till 5:30 in the morning without a bottle. He does still wake up a couple times but goes right back to sleep.

So as most of you know we have found out that the condition Garet has is caused by a genetic mutation in one of his heart genes. Well Matt and I had to go and get tested as well to see if one of us has the gene mutation as well. Well we got our results back and Matt has the same mutated gene that Garet has. This shows how unpredictable this mutation can be. Matt is now 27 and it has not effected him yet in his life. He has been very active in sports and every other activity you can think of. Garet was only 1 month old when if effected his heart. So we are now starting to see why it is so hard to understand what is going to happen next with this genetic stuff. So now Matt has an appointment with a Cardiologist next week to have an EKG and Eco done to see what his heart looks like right now. We are praying that everything looks fine. If it does they will tell him things that he can change in his life style to keep his heart healthy. If that is the case they will most likely have him come in once or twice a year just for checkup to make sure everything is still looking ok. So this is the step we are on right now. WE are now working on informing all of Matts family so they can make the decision to get tested if they want to. The first two people that we are hoping will get tested is Matts mom and Dad. If it comes back that nether of them have it then no one else will have to be tested. This can eliminate a lot of unnecessary stress on the rest of the family. If they choose not to be tested then both sides of the family will have to get tested so they can have peace of mind. If the rest of them do get tested and it comes back that someone of either side is positive as well, we will then know what side of the family it has came from. Having the adults in the family get tested first is not just for them but for there children as well. And also if there children decide to have children one day. We now have this information in our hands and what we all decide to do with it our decision. I would just hate to see someone not get tested and then have something like what happened to Garet happen to them knowing it could have been prevented or seriously reduced. Well that is all the info that I have on that. I am working on getting some web sites together with more info on what is going on and what could happen in the future.

I will end with another cute picture. This is Daddy and Garet selling shrimp last weekend. Garet really love being outside and thinks it is so much fun helping daddy sell shrimp.