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.

10 months old and on the go

Garet is now 10 month old and there is no stopping his now. At 10 months he is now
31 inches long
20lbs
crawling like a crab
Walking around as long as he can hold onto something
Eating everything he can get in his mouth
He will eat baby food as long as there is no other food around
As soon as there is anything other food around he wants to eat that
Drinking out of a sippy cup but still prefers his bottle.
His heart is still stable at about 40% or normal pumping
Sleeping most of the night threw
Loves being outside and can not wait for the weather to stay nice
Babbling all the time
He also mimics everything we say not with the word but the sound
Plays ball and can not wait till he can play fetch with the dogs
Loves to ride in his wagon
No longer wants to be held unless it is almost bed time and you have a bottle for him
Needless to say he is doing really well and we are so proud of him. Below are a couple pictures and I am trying to get better about taking more pictures again. I have been slacking.
the above picture is at Uncle Dons house and he loved having a chair that was his size. Now we have to find him one before we go camping for his first time in a couple months. The below pic is Garet watching Daddy cook dinner. This is were you will find him when anyone is outside. Talking to the door thinking that you can hear him outside.

I hope you are all having a great new year.

9 months old and big boy toys

I can not believe that 9 months has pasted already. We no longer have a baby. I am already starting to miss the days that I could hold him all night long I wanted to. The only time that he will let me do that is when he is so sleeping and does not have the energy to be moving. And that does not happen very often. Even when he gets this tiered he is still trying to play with toys until he pretty much falls asleep playing. Well I was just looking back at some of the pictures from when we first brought him home from the hospital. I really just wanted to get on and show you the two new pictures of his big boy toys. I now understand what people mean when they say do not make then grow any faster than they already do. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

I just thought I would add this picture. This is from the first day we brought him home from the hospital.

Getting everyone all up to date

It has been a while since I have done an update and I am so sorry about that. Because of that this post will be kind of lengthy. We had a great holiday season in the Howard House. Garet was such a help with wrapping gifts and getting everything ready for out trip up north.

We left my work around 2 in the afternoon on the 17th. Garet did a great job in the car. We were able to stop and let him out and play a little bit and we got a hotel room later that evening and arrived at Grandma Rose and Grandpa Charlies around 11 in the afternoon on the 18th. The 18th was Matt birthday so we went out with my two brothers to help him celebrate the big 28. We had out family Christmas on the first Sunday that we were there. It was so much fun. Garet at first was sleepy and we thought he was going to fall asleep during gift time but he decided to stay up and have a good time with us. He got so many new toys and also got a new Wagon with big wheels that are perfect for out dirt yard. He was more interested in climbing on top of the box instead of what was in it.

Later that evening Garet and Daddy decided to put together his Wagon. I am not sure how much help Garet was but it sure was a cute picture opportunity.

Out of everything that Garet got for Christmas his favorite thing to play with was not a toy. It was his Great Grandmas walker. When ever she would get into his view he would stop everything he was doing and make a b-line for the walker. There were many times that we had to stop him or he would have walked right under her feet to try to take the walker from her. It was to funny.

We all went to church together Christmas eve and then when we came home I put Garet into his Christmas pj's He was to cute. I could not believe that he left the hat on but he did. He wore it for the rest of the night and for all the pictures that all the family wanted to take of him that night.

The ride home was a little longer than we might have hoped for. By the time we started home Garet has a little cold and was in no mood to be in his car seat for long hours. We did manage to get about 9 hours under our belts on the 26th. We then were able to stop and get some sleep and had to get up early the next morning so we would get most of the driving done while Garet was still sleeping. Needless to say we were packed to the roof on the way home.

When we did stop that night. The last thing that Garet wanted to do was sleep. He kept moving until he just collapsed on the bed and was out. It was just to much excitement for one little guy.
Well all I need to add now is all the new things that he is going. Garet is now crawling and there is no stopping him and then as soon as he gets to the couch or the table or anything that he can pull himself up on he is doing that and walking around as long as he can still hang on to something.
It is so exciting to see him doing these new things but it is also scary not knowing how his little heart is going to handle all the new movement and excitement. We took Garet over the Shands once we got back from out trip since he was not acting like his normal self. Dr Fricker did say that his heart function is down a little bit and the size of his heart has gone back up a little bit. He said this was ok. This was going to happen a little bit as he starts to walk and do more activities we just have to make sure that he is getting enough calories to keep his weight up in case something does happen. Our next apt is on the 28th and hopefully everything will be back on the right track of getting better. He is now up to almost 19 lbs and I am not sure how tall but he just keeps growing taller and taller. He is also eating real food. I now have to watch what I order off of a menu when we go out. It no only has to be what I want to eat but it has to be what Garet can eat as well. If we are at a restaurant we will not eat his baby food he will only eat food off out plates that we give him. I know it will not be much longer and we will have three to pay for when we go out and we will have to start finding the kids eat free places to help us save money. HAHAHA. Well I hope this gets everyone up to date and I will try to not take this long to update again.

Getting ready for Christmas and our first hair cut

It has been quite a while since my last post and I am so sorry. Things get crazy around the holidays. We are getting very excited about going to IL for Christmas so we have been trying to get everything ready to go. One of the things on our list was to get both Garet and Matt a hair cut. Garet hair was starting to get long and a little messy all the time. We had a little bit of time on Saturday afternoon so off to the hair cut place. He did really well. He wanted to keep looking at the scissors and Barbara cutting his hair. As soon as we started having Daddy take pictures and getting his attention focused somewhere else it actually went very smooth.

He looks like such a little man.

We have also been working on crawling, and going from his tummy to a sitting position. Garet gets so mad when he gets to him tummy and then can not do anything once he gets there. All evening Friday and most of the day Saturday and Sunday I played with him on the floor as much as possible. I would crawl around on the carpet as much as I could as well. Well after only a couple days of doing this he is now moving across the floor. He is also able to go from his tummy to sitting. He is so much happier now playing on the floor. He no longer gets stuck on his tummy and he can not get his hands on just about anything he wants to so he no longer gets upset about that. I can not believe how fast they learn.

We also cleaned out Garets room of clothes that are to small and toys and swings that he no longer used or is to big for. I took them all apart and got them packed away good just in case we ever need them again. It was kind of sad packing that stuff away. He is no longer a little baby and has become so independent.

Garet should be going back to his normal dr's this week some time to get his next synagis shot so we will be ready to go up north in the cold weather. I am excited to see how much he has grown. He really loves food and we really have to watch what we eat in front of him. No matter what it is he things that if we are eating it he should be able to eat it as well. Below is a picture I just thought was to cute not to post.

I hope everyone has a great holiday. Just in case I do not post before we leave to go up north. Have a Merry Christmas and and Happy New Year.