Outdoor Adventures

We had fantastic weather this past Labor Day weekend, so we spent a lot of time outside enjoying that sunshine and fresh air!

Sunday we went to a flea market and had fun browsing and looking around. We hadn't been in years and it's so much bigger. Daniel was a good sport and of course fell asleep on the way home.

Monday we went to the Arboretum for a couple hours and had a wonderful time walking around and exploring the grounds. We haven't been there in a long time either and it's also changed quite a bit- so we had a lot of fun seeing some new things there, too. Daniel was so good for us again- he really is a trooper. We walked around the lake, found our way through a hedge maze, explored the new Children's Garden where Daniel got to sit in a little "cabin" (check out his curious expression!), took a break for drinks (doesn't Daniel look so cute sipping from his cup?!), and even had some "grass time" which Daniel still doesn't love. Did you notice the black hat Daniel has in his hands in most of the pictures above? He LOVES that hat- he will hold onto that hat for the longest time whenever we go on walks. It's so cute the way he's content to just hold it and wave it around occasionally. Who needs toys when you have hats? (and straws, plastic ketchup cups, empty water bottles, and so on...Daniel loves all of these "free" things!)

The rest of our week has been pretty busy with errands, family get-togethers, and our doctor appointment today. I'm actually looking forward to a day at home tomorrow- hopefully Daniel can catch up on his naps!

Now on to the doctor update for you: After eliminating all milk from my diet, we went in to see how Daniel's doing now, since he should be absorbing his food better- Daniel now weighs 16 lbs 4 oz, just a 5 oz gain from our last visit about four weeks ago. The doctor still isn't pleased with his weight gain, not too worried, but still not pleased- so we're on to see an endocrinologist to check Daniel's growth hormones, so we can hopefully rule out growth hormone deficiency (sounds really scary! but I'm trying to relax and wait and see- this is not easy for me). So not really much news for you. We hope to have that appointment scheduled soon, since I'm just anxious and really tired of all this "waiting" for test results and I'm sure much more testing lies ahead. In the end, I know it will all be worth it- anything to keep my little guy healthy. We did learn that the levels checked in his latest bloodwork were all normal- so that was good news. Daniel also got the first part of his flu shot- the next part will be in a month. He did great for the shot, but we did have a brief rough patch this evening where he was really fussy and did not want anything- Tylenol finally did the trick and he got a second wind of quite a LOT of energy! He was crawling everywhere and playing with everything for quite some time- hopefully he wore himself out for the night! :)

That's all our news for the week! Please keep us in your thoughts as we figure out our little guy!