Happy Birthday Graysen!

We celebrated Graysen's birthday this entire week. It is such a joy to watch him turn two! He is a very spirited little toddler

We had a mini-party for Graysen at 6:25 AM on his actual birthday, 1/26. I made blueberry muffins for the special day.

He got to open his presents from Mommy and Daddy: Baby Kota (He calls it his "baby" and loves on it like a baby. It is so cute. He also calls it a cat, which he calls every animal.), Two Transformer RPM mini-Hot Wheel-type cars, and an Imaginext "Bobby" with a steam roller.

We had to cancel Graysen's scheduled football-themed birthday party due to the snowstorm that hit the southeast. It was dissappointing, but the safety of our friends and family is too important.
I bought a last-minute Dragon cake at Publix for us to celebrate with Graysen on Saturday since he couldn't have a party.
He did not like the lit candles. He has a safety instinct, just like his older brother. He did, however, love eating the cake and ate every morsel that he could.

No Dinosaurs!

Laura and I took the boys to see the Dinosaurs: Mesozoic Monsters exhibit at the South Carolina State Museum on Saturday.  The exhibit features a collection of large, life-like animatronic dinosaurs.  I don't know why we didn't anticipate Caleb's reaction, because true to form, he panicked as soon as he saw his first mesozoic monster.  After seeing Caleb's reaction, Graysen decided he should probably be scared too.


Both boys refused to walk though the exhibit, so we carried them through quickly, determined to at least get a little bit of our money's worth.  Caleb clung to my shoulder, repeating "No like dinosaurs" and refusing to even look up.  The boys played at a table of toy dinosaurs briefly but never really relaxed.  We snapped a few pictures and left the exhibit after about fifteen minutes of what seemed like torture, at least for Caleb.


We toured the rest of the museum afterward.  Caleb thoroughly enjoyed the cars, the Hunley, and the space suits, but each time we got on the elevator, he repeatedly insisted that we not go back to the dinosaurs.  In fact, he insisted that we not go back to the entire second floor of the museum.


We ended up spending about two hours there.  When we were all done and were driving away, Laura asked Caleb what his favorite thing was in the museum.  "Dinosaurs," he said.  

Asleep in the Floor

This is how we found Graysen the other night. It is the only time that he has fallen asleep in the floor instead of his bed.

Cooking

I am addicted to the game "Cafe World" on Facebook. I "cook" just about every day, and the boys always like to cook when I do. Recently, my blinds have turned into the stove. I am not crazy about this, but have yet to fuss at them for it. They are just too cute and have too much fun cooking.

Screen shot of "Geoffrey's Grill" in Cafe World.

The boys "cooking."

Beautiful Day for the Park

Fun at Monkey Joe's

Blood

(This picture is terrible. I ended up passing out a minute after the blood donation was complete. This picture was taken a few minutes after I woke up, when I realized that I had forgotten to get the nurse to take a picture earlier.)

Lee often jokes that I am a vampire since I am obsessed with blood, "True Blood," and "Twilight." However, I do feel strongly that it is important to give back to our communities by donating blood.

Everytime that Graysen has surgery, and the cooler of blood is brought to his bedside, I am thankful for the people that have taken time to donate so that it is readily available for all who need it. It is just one of the medical miracles that has allowed us to share two wonderful years with our little boy.

Graysen has received a significant amount of blood. He has been on the heart lung bypass machine three times, which requires 450 ml - 1000 ml of blood to prime each time. Also, he had a significant bleed from the reconstruction of his left pulmonary artery during the second surgery. A standard blood donation is 450 ml, so it took donations from multiple people in the Charleston area to provide blood for each of Graysen's surgeries. He will continue to receive blood since at least two more open-heart surgeries are in Graysen's future during his childhood.

As an interesting fact, the average newborn's blood volume is only 225 ml. So, when Graysen came out of surgery when he was nine days old, most of the blood circulating through his body was from donors and not produced by his body.

I do not think that it is important where blood is donated, all communities are in need of blood. Please let me know if you decide to donate blood this month in honor of Grasyen. Feel free to send a card, email, or picture. I think that this is something very special that can be done to honor Graysen and all children that need medical help during their childhood.

50 Quick Blood Facts

Preparing for Graysen's Second Birthday

Our first glimpse of Graysen:
Happy, healthy Graysen!

Graysen's second birthday is in a few weeks! To prepare, we mailed invitations, purchased party supplies, and planned his cake.

We feel very fortunate that Graysen is as healthy as he is now, given the heart defect that he was born with. There are many parents of babies born with congenital heart defects (CHD's) that are not able to celebrate this milestone with their baby. We have hope that future medical research will be able to give more parents of CHD babies the blessing that Lee and I will have on January 26th.

We want to invite you to make a donation to The Children's Heart Foundation or to give blood locally in celebration of Graysen's birthday. For those of you who were intending on giving Graysen a present for his birthday, either of these acts would be a wonderful gift to Graysen.

The Children's Heart Foundation

Story Time

Graysen enjoyed Story Time. He was enthusiastic the entire time.

Caleb is always the attentive student.

Lots of hugs for everyone!

Caleb's New Camera

Yesterday, we used some of Caleb's Christmas money to buy him a Fisher Price camera.  Caleb didn't seem too excited about it at the store, but once I showed him how it worked, he became an instant shutterbug.

Graysen likes it too, but he just likes to push buttons.  He's managed to delete a lot of pictures, get a few good shots of the floor, and take numerous up-the-nose self portraits (see below).

Here are a few of my favorite photos by Caleb:

Caleb also likes to hand the camera to us and ask us to take his picture:

And Graysen's not about to let any button go unpushed...: