Sorry this is sidways but I can not figur our how to turn it right now and i wanted everyone to be able to see Garet on trick or treat night.

Its a SHAAARRRRKKK!!

This is a new toy at grandmas house. I don't really think that Garet realises that it moves as of yet. He is more interested in sitting inside and honking the horn and then filling the back up with rocks. It is a good thing he is not trying to make it move

or grandma might have to run around more than she already does. It is Halloween time and Garet is a SHARRRKKKK!!!. We went up to the church pumpkin patch the other night for there trunk or treat and at first Garet did not know what to think. When we started walking around doing our trick or treating he did not want any of the candy to go in his bag he had to carry it all. Then someone gave him a sucker and then the rest of the candy did not matter. He had two suckers and a couple minutes after that he was running around everywhere in his costume making all kinds of noises. He would say SHAARRKK SHAAAAARRKK. I am not sure if he knew that is what he was dresses up as or if he just wanted to say it. Either way it was really cute. I am so looking forward to next Sunday when we get to do some more trick or treating around Grannies house.

Garet is 1 1/2 and baby Howard is 22 weeks.

Here we are, wow how time flies. Garet is now a year and a half. He is using his words well. Each day it surprises us what he says. It used to be we could only understand the last work of his sentence and now he is string 2 and 3 words together. Sometime I feel like I am talking to a parrot and he is just repeating what I am saying. He now things jumping on the couch is a game called "Sit down". That does not mean he sits down when I tell him to it just means that as he is jumping he says sit down, sit down. It is so hard to not giggle when he does those things. It is very cute but can very quickly turn into not cute. Matt has told me that I have to start being more strict with him. He always says that if Garet is anything like him when we was little he will be a very tricky little boy. I can already see his little wheels turning when we ask him to do something. It is like he is thinking of the fastest or easiest way to get it done or get out of it. It is so much fun to be able to talk to him and have him understand and respond.

The picture above is Garet and his Song. He loves anything that makes music. He has started a collection of maracas, drums sticks, and drum toys. This by far is his favorite musical instrument. He found it at a yard sale and loves to walk around the house with it singing his own song. We actually have to hide it when he looses interest or he will not put it away when it come bed time.

Now that the weather is cooling off it is so much fun to be outside. As soon as we get home from work and Grandmas we normally hang out outside while Matt cooks dinner on the grill. We have found that we have to find more outside toys to play with. Good thing Christmas is coming soon.

The above picture is of Garet and his new Bike. We found this at a Garage sale last week and he loves it. He still need to grow about 2 more inches to be able to peddle on his own. He can peddle a little bit till the peddles get out of reach. It does have a bell on it and it is so easy to ring so most of the time right now he sits on it and rings the bell till Matt or I come and push him around.

Garet dr update - The last visit to Shands went well. Dr Fricker only change one medication and that is just because of normal weight gain. He is now up to 23 lbs. That still puts him in the lower range of weight but he is still on the chart and that is good. He has also grown up quite a bit he is now up to 33 inches. His heart function is still around 35% so we are still just watching and waiting. We have been trying to get Garet ready for the new baby as well we can. He now has a big boy room with a big boy bed that he has slept in a couple times during nap time. We are getting ready to do the overnight transition. I just want to get a couple more naps in on his big bed so I can make sure I have everything blocked so he does not fall out of bed. That will help me sleep at night when we move him to that bed. So many thing going on and so little time to get used to it before things start to change again.

Below are the latest pictures of Baby Howard. These were taken yesterday at my high risk appointment. He were able to see the Little one for at least 30 minutes while they did a fetal ECO. It is so amazing what technology lets the drs do these days. They were able to zoom in to the heart and measure the blood pump in and out and how thick the walls of the heart are. The dr was very happy with what he saw. The heart structure looked perfect right now and the blood flow was good. I will have to go in every 4 weeks for a fetal ECO to make sure everything is still good. They have told us many option if something does start to look funny, but we will not worry about those right now. We are just happy that the baby is looking good and right on track in growth. After all the measuring and everything the computer told us the baby weights exactly 1 lb right now so that was cool to find out. We are trying not to find out the gender again this time. With ultra sounds that are this long it has to be hard to the tech to avoid that area. I secretly try to see if I can see anything but the tech we had yesterday was awesome in getting lots of pictures without getting that area in the pictures. Anyway here are the pictures enough of my talking. If you have any guesses on what gender that baby could be I would love to hear them. Have fun looking.

Some pictures for your viewing

Watching TV.
Grandma has a comfy couch to take naps on.

Garte Thinks it is fun to play in the dog cage. Thank goodness grandma had just changed out the dogs blankets.

Having fun swinging in at the park.

The weather the past couple days has started to cool off just a little bit. Instead of it being in the high 90's all day long, This morning it was 75. It is still suppose to get really hot this afternoon but at least we are getting a little relief in the morning.

We are still working on getting more calories into Garet. His pediatrician wants him to gain more weight then he is right now. He eats all the time and just burns it off as fast as he eats it.

Other than that everything is going ok in our world. We can not wait till it gets to camping time and the weather cools down for a while so we can get outside a little more and not have to take a shower as soon as we get in the house. Hope everyone is doing well.

Almost 16 months

We have had a crazy past couple of weeks. We have had some vehicle issues that we are working on getting under control. Then on the 17th we got the very unexpected news that Matts step dad at that age of 50 had suddenly passed away from a major heart attach. His step Dad has been heavily involved with raising Matt, his Brother and sister. He has been active in there family for about 20 or so year. Death is hard no matter when it happens, but to have someone take at a younger age with no warning is so scary. The services were this past Friday and they were very nice and I am sure we will never forget him and all he has helped our family with over the years. Please let this be a lesson to anyone that thinks they do not need to go in for regular check ups. The Medical examiner said that he would have gone into the Dr for any reason, even just a wellness check up, they might have been able to catch this ahead of time and he might still be with us. You need to treat your heart good and thing about what you are doing and how it might effect your life.

Onto the next subject. Garets Heart. Last Wed the 21st we went over to Gainesville for out monthly meeting with Dr Fricker and his group great people. The past couple of months we have had to go once a month. Since Garet has started to walk and run and be a crazy 1 year old, his heart function has gone down a little bit. Because this was happening they wanted to monitor him a little closer. Well it looks like things are starting to even themselves out a little again. They did there normal ECO and EKG. (These went a lot smoother this time since we brought one of Garets favorite moves with for his to watch) When Dr Fricker came in to see us Garet was running around and trying to tell him what was going on. It was to funny. Dr Fricker said that everything looks about the same as last times we had been over there. This was good news. It had not got worse. We can deal with that. He is still at about 30% function (70% is normal function) Before Garet started to walk he was almost up to 40%. We are hoping to climb back up there but will be ok with 30 right now. They did not adjust his meds or anything since he has not gained a lot of weight since the last visit. He is now up to 22 lbs and 30 inches tall. This was the first time that they used the big person scale and height checker with him. He thought it was so cool to get to stand up and get weighted and measures. We are now back to only having to go every other month. Yeah!

Onto baby #2. I have now almost reached the 12 week milestone in this pregnancy. I am hoping that the sicky feeling with start to leave me soon. I had this same feeling with Garet up till about now. At my last dr appointment they did another ultra sound since it was to early to hear the heart beat from the outside. It was very cool to see the little one. We did not get to see Garet when we was that small. My dr said that everything looked good. We were able to see the heart beating and the baby moving all over. They have me going in every month right now and then starting in September I will be going to a high risk dr as well. This way they will able to make sure everything with the babies heart looks good. It is amazing what they can do before the baby is even born. They said they will be able to do a ECO on the babies heart in September to make sure the function looks good. As long as everything continues to look normal I will be able to stay with my normal Dr and deliver at the same hospital as I did with Garet. It they see anything weird then I will have to be transferred to the high risk dr full time and then I would have to deliver at a different hospital. I really like my normal dr, he did a great job with Garet and he made me feel so comfortable about the hospital experience.

So for me I will be back to the dr next month and Garet will be back to Gainesville in September.

Sorry no pictures I have been majorly slacking in this area.

Vacation was a lot of fun

I was really bad at taking pictures on vacation. I am hoping that some of my family members that took pictures will email them to me so I can post more pictures for you all to see. One of Garets favorite things to do on vacation was take a bath. The bath tubs in the condos were very large and like a pool to him. He wanted to take them even if he was not messy. Lucky for him we did a lot of stuff outside so most evening he needed a bath.

We were able to go to the beach a couple times. At first Garet was not to sure of the sand and water but it only took a little while for him to warm up to it all. Below is a picture of Garet and Grandma Rose looking for shells.

We had lots of fun looking for shark teeth. Matt is one of the best for finding them. We were out in the ocean floating around and a guy near us found one down in the sand that was as big as my hand. I am just glad that he found the tooth and not the shark it belonged to. It was huge.

Beach time does wear you out. So what better place to take a nap than under the umbrella with the sound of the ocean all around. I wish I could just fall asleep anywhere and get some good rest this way.

The final picture I wanted to post is not from our vacation. Matt, Garet and I have some big news. We are going to be welcoming a new member to our family in late January early February. We are now expecting Baby Howard #2. Below is the first glimpse that we were able to get of baby Howard. We are very excited and nervous all at once. I saw the dr the other day and he said that they were going to do everything they can to get us to the correct doctors to make sure everything looks right with Baby #2 heart. We feel very blessed and thankful that we will have this addition to our family. We are now and have been praying for the health of the baby and all the doctors that will be with us on this venture to the next chapter of our lives.

Its finaly summer

Garet has always loved music. Even before he was born we would go and listen to a country band that we know the members of. He is now getting quite a collection on musical instruments. he now has a recorder, maracas, electric drums, and a banjo. His Great Uncle Paul gave him an electric drum set.(Shown in the picture below) Oh my goodness goes he like to play with it. It is to funny he will only hit it with the sticks. Even though he knows it will make the noise if you use your hands he will only use the sticks.

We went to listen to the country band I mentioned above and Garet was helping them set up. He is going to be so spoiled by the band. The drummer was getting all his stuff ready and Garet walked up and started to watch him play a little. Well before I knew it I looked up on the stage and Garet was sitting on the drummer lap and playing with him. He thought he was to cool. Uncle Bryce is a drummer so we may have another drummer on our hands.
Memorial day outfit. We had a cook out and Grannies house for Memorial day and she had star beads that Garet decided he was going to wear most of the day. I just thought you should all see this picture.

Packing for vacation is one of Garets speciality. He normally helps me put stuff in the suit case but yesterday he thought he should be what went in the suit case. He could not figure out why he could not get it to shut. I wish I would have took video instead of still frames. It was so funny.

Sorry So Long since Last post

Good afternoon to all

I meant to get on here a while ago and update on Garets dr visit. We have been going threw a time of ear infections. It started a couple months ago with an ear infection in the left ear. Antibiotics took care of that one. Then about a month later or 3 weeks ago he got an ear infection in the right ear. At the end of the antibiotics for that one he some how got an ear infection in his right ear. So this time they gave him an antibiotic shot and then another 10 days of antibiotics. We are now on day 4 of those. We will see what the next week or so brings with the ears.

Garets dr appointment with his cardiologists went really well. I was concerned that when we went in because he has not been sleeping as well. After his heart appointment I am sure the sleeping issues are having to do with teething and ear infections. Anyway he saw the main hear doctor this time and they did an ECO and EKG and also a chest x-ray just to make sure his heart was not pushing on his lungs causing sleeping issues. When all that was done everything looks to be the same as it has been. About 1/2 strength. He did ask that we come back every month for a while so we can try to adjust some of the meds to try to get the function to increase more. We will be going back on the 24th of June. At that time he will have to have blood drawn to see what his level of different stuff is doing. And then I am sure they will do another EKG and ECO to see if the increase in meds is doing anything.

I have had a couple changes to our Garet Page. I still want to keep everyone up to date on what is going on with Garet and his health. I would also like to start to add all the fun things we are doing as a family. So I have changed the title of this page to The Howard Family Blog page now. Maybe this will keep me updating it more often. Well that is what is going on with us right now. We have a vacation coming up and can not wait to just relax and have fun with all of our family.

One Year old Pictures

We had Garets pictures taken this past weekend for his first birthday. He did such a good job I just wanted to share them will everyone. Just click the link below and you will be able to see them all.

http://myonlineportraits.com/ViewSession.aspx?id=e3e8eafd2ac842b18dea770981fb6f10

We were also able to go swimming this weekend and go for a bike ride. It was a very busy weekend. Below is a picture of daddy and Garet in the pool.

We also took the Three wheel bikes out for a ride. I think Garet has the best ride. He only likes to ride for about 5 mintues and then we better be somewhere he can get out and run around. I did get a new two wheel bike for mothers day and I am going to try to get a baby seat for the back and then I hope we can take longer rides on that bike.

Fun in the water

It is feeling like summer in Florida. This weekend we were doing anything that had to do with water to keep ourselves cool. Garet got a cool water table from Grandma Rose and Grandpa Charlie for his birthday and we finally set it up and had a lot of fun. Garet also got a little swimming pool for his birthday and we had a great time in that.
Saturday we played in the pool and at first Gare thought it was a bath until he realised he could stand up and splash even more than he could in the bath tub. Below is a funny face from Garet to make you all laugh. We can not wait till Granny gets her pool all open and ready for us. Garet loves the water and I know he will want to be in the pool all the time. We have all of our floatation devises ready to go. Garet has even put them on at the house to get used to them before we get to the pool.

After all the outside fun we had to have a snack. This is the spot that we have for snacks at our house. when we get home from Grandmas house and mommy is getting dinner ready Garet likes to eat his snacks at his little fish table. It is the perfect spot. He can still see the tv and eat his snack at the same time. It is a little close to the carpet but he is learning really well that we do not take food in a bowl into the living room. Saturday we had a snack of tomatoes and strawberries. I think there might have been some pickle in there as well. What a combination.

It is getting closer to out next trip to Gainesville for Garets check up. The afternoon of the 27th we will be in Gainesville getting an EKG and ECO done to see how his heart is doing now that he is becoming so active. He has been doing really well. You can tell when he starts playing hard because he will start to cough. When this happens we just stop playing for a couple minutes and it seems to go away. Other than that he does not seem to be having any trouble that I can see. We will see what his doctors have to say after his visits. I am sure they will do some medicine adjusting since he has gained weight since the last visit. Well now that it is getting to be summer I hope to have more pictures to post. We can get out of the house and do not have to worry so much about colds and flu's going around. Yeah!!

If we could eat like children

I remember the days when I could eat anything I wanted and never gain a pound. Oh those days were nice. Well we are running into those days some what with Garet. This child eats all the time and everything we put in front of him and he is still not up to the weight that his doctor wants him to be. At his dr appointment this past Thursday he weighed 20lbs 5 oz. This puts him in the 5% for weight. He is now 30 inches long so that puts him in the 50% for length. So now we are having to try to give him a higher daily calories intake. This can be very hard to do this in a healthy way. Most of the food that have high calories are not the best for you in other ways. Eggs and Avocados have now become our good friends and we are soon going to try out peanut butter to see how that goes.

We go back to the Gainesville in a month and we will see what they have to say and see if they have any other suggestions for us. Other than the weight Garet is doing really well from what we can see. He is a nonstop 1 year old. He is learning so fast that sometime is can be scary. He sees us do something once and he want to do it right away. It is so much fun to watch him learn and grow. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to have all these special time with him.

Grandma Rose is living in Florida and is getting her house all set up the way she wants it. We will keep hoping and praying that Grandpa Charlie gets to move down here at some point as well. We really do miss seeing him all the time. Garet has now been staying with her during the day for the past couple of weeks. the picture above is Garet helping daddy replace the screens in the front window at Grandmas and Grandpa house
One of his new favorite things to do at Grandma and Grandpas is sit in the wagon. From what I hear it is now the spot he sits for his snacks in the morning and afternoon.

We are getting all geared up for swimming season. It is going to be so much fun to have Garet in the pool since he loves the water so much. Well until next time. God Bless

Now and Then

I have been messing around with some photo art for a chat site I am member on. On this site there are about 40 or more moms and we all had our babies around April 2009. So we are going to make a short clip with all of our babies when they were born and close to there one year old birthday. I have taken on the task of creating the clip for out group. So I thought I would post a couple and see what you guys thought would be best. Final work will come from he group but you guys always have a work to input. I look forward to your comments.

Happy Birthday Garet

We now have a 1 year old on our hands. What the difference it makes. Since Garet has turned 1 he has really started to show his personality more.

For lunch on his Birthday his daddy and a bunch of friends and family guys took him to hooters for his birthday. From what I heard Garet ate a lot of chicken wings and really had a good time. There were no girls allowed so I can not tell you exactly how good of a time he had. Ha Ha.


After hooters Daddy and Garet headed back to Grannies house were Garet got to take a nap and get ready for his big night out. We met up with some friends and family at Chuck E Cheeses later that evening for some pizza and game playing.


Garet like Chucky as long as he was not trying to touch him. We had a great time and played a lot of games and visited with friend.
Cake time. This was his first experience with frosting in any large amount. Thank you to Ganny for the cake and making it with Whipped icing instead of this icing.

Overall it was a very good day and I think Garet had a great time. We are going to celebrate a little bit more when Grandpa Charlie and Grandma Rose come in town next weekend. You can never have to much party time for your birthday.

Almost 1 year old

In just a week and a half we will have a 1 year old on our hands. Garet is keeping us very busy these days. He is now walking all over the place. He wants to help us do everything we are doing. It is so much fun. So far I would say this has been the best age. All he wants to do is play and read books.

He will do anything that make you laugh. If he sees you laughing at him he will continue to it over and over again.

His newest trick is climbing onto the couch all by himself. So now he think he is a real big boy. This picture below is from the first night that he started to climb all by himself. I went to the kitchen just a couple steps away and when I looked back in the living room he was chilling on the couch with his snacks and milk and watch tv. Thank goodness daddy already tough him how to climb off the couch safely.
He now has two teeth. You can kind of see them in the picture below. He is working on the two upper teeth. You can see the little bumps were the teeth are going to come in at.

Here is a medical update. We are now only having to go the cardio clinic every three months so we will not have to go back until the beginning of May. They changed some of the doses of his medication so now we only have to do the medicine thing 2 times a day instead of 3. Dont get me wrong he is still taking a bunch of meds those 2 times a day but now we can take med when we get up in the morning and then we do not have to worry about them again till bed time. It is so nice. It feels like we have some sort of normal like. We can go for a day outing and do not have to take the cold pack and make sure we go back to the car to give meds and 1. Yeah. Garet has been going to day care a couple days a week for the past month or so. He really enjoys playing with the other kids. Soon Grandma Rose will be moving down here and Garet will get to play with some other kids over at her house.

Now that the weather is finally warming up Garet always wants to be outside if someone else is. He even tried to put on daddies shoes the other day when I told him that he had to have shoes on to go outside. Well I will try to not make it as long this time between posts. I hope to get a new camera for my birthday so I will be super motivated to take picture and post them right away. Hope you are all doing well.

First Camping tirp

This was our home away from home Friday threw Sunday this past weekend. When I say home I mean it is almost as big as our home. HAHA. It worked so perfect.

We were able to sleep our family and then the 3 friends that Garet brought along.

We had to bring a lot of toys for Garet to help keep him occupied, but his two favorite toys were some sticks that he found on the ground and then a light toy that Dylan brought with him.

Here are a couple other toys that were lots of fun to have with us.

His walking toy that his aunt Amanda bought him for Christmas was a huge help. He was able to get around and not be on the ground not getting completely dirty all the time.

His Wagon was also a git help. Anytime he was getting tiered or just did not know what he wanted to do we would put him in the wagon and off we would go and that would keep him happy for a long while. It also worked well for a bed for naps and also so we did not have to put him in the tent all by himself.

Here are a couple of the friends that Garet brought with him camping. This is Dylan and Sierra being silly around the campfire.

Here is our other friend that came with us. Katy was our tree climber of the weekend.

Overall the weather was pretty nice for us. It did get a little cold at night but we had blankets and warm bodies in our tent so we did not get to cold. Below are just some more pictures I wanted to include. Hope you all had a great weekend.

Garet and Daddy.

Garet and his crazy morning hair

Garet and Mommy

Garet in his all our FSU outfit. Go Seminoles.