Pediatricians and Paint Strokes

Walker spent the morning engulfed in artistic pursuits.  I prepped three canvasses by spray painting them yellow.  He did the rest.  Walker is now coordinated enough to pour his own paints.  Big boy!

Here are the final products:

And of course, here is the dreamy Mr. Charlie Baird enjoying 

a snooze before his chiropractic appointment this afternoon.

 

Charlie Update:

Its been a big week for Charlie.  We had two chiropractic appointments, a meeting with our ECI therapist, a spinal ultrasound and our two-month check up with Charlie's pediatrician.  Overall, he is doing very well and learning all sorts of new things.  He is beginning to suck on his thumb and is easily gripping hold of fabric (or mommy's hair) with BOTH hands, which is very promising.  Charlie is still packing on the pounds - he is now 12 pounds 5 ounces and almost 24 inches long.  His head circumference is small due to the craniofuse, but still growing.  Again, great news.  Because of his larger size and increased coordination, Charlie is having a much easier time taking his daily medications.  We've gone almost two weeks without a major gagging, choking scene!  

The new information this week was gleaned from Charlie's spinal ultrasound, which revealed that Charlie has a tethered spinal cord.  The spinal cord normally hangs loose in the canal, free to move up and down with growth and bending and stretching. A tethered cord is held taut at the end. In children, this condition can cause the spinal cord to stretch as they grow and can lead to progressive spinal cord damage if left untreated.  We're not sure what this means for Charlie.  We'll have to see yet another specialist who will take some more pictures and we''ll decide what needs to be done.  He may require a kind of micro surgery where they snip the attached portion of the spinal cord so that it can float free in the spinal column.  Again, we'll know more later.  

Our pediatrician has suggested that, given this new finding with the tethered spinal cord, we follow up with our Geneticist to see if Charlie's many odd organ and structural abnormalities aren't part of some larger syndrome.  Our chromosome labs all came back negative, but it seems unlikely that these issues are unrelated.  It seems like every time we pick up one of Charlie's rocks, we find more worms!  We're taking every day and every doctor appointment in stride.  Charlie's bright light continues to shine through, reminding us all to seize the day and love each other unabashedly.