One Busy Week

So it has been a really busy week. Trace has his first visit with the "team" at Johns Hopkins, so we went to Baltimore on Monday afternoon. Tuesday was very busy and very informative. As I expected, all the doctors think Trace is doing great. I was concerned about his legs bowing, but Dr. Ain said that is to be expected with achon and unless he started complaining about leg pain frequently, he would just keep an eye on him. Dr. Hoover-Fong went a step further and drew the bones out to show us why his legs bowed - we saw a geneticist last year in Pittsburgh, and we were less than impressed, but I must say that Dr. Hoover-Fong was wonderful. Although Trace is 2 and we already know a lot about achondroplasia by now, she was very informative and thorough. We'll be going back sometime in the near future, because at all 4 appointments, they wanted a sleep study done and most likely a new MRI as well.

To reward the kids behavior from "doctor day", we went to the Baltimore Zoo Wednesday morning. The day started out bad - I didn't have any kid sunscreen, so my mom was putting her 30 on the kids. Trace is an eye-rubber (icky allergies), so, you guessed it, sunscreen in the eyes. That was a really bad hour that resulted in us having to have security bring eye wash. But, the zoo did have a baby elephant that was less than 2 months old, and a brand new baby camel. Both very cute. For a small zoo, it has some good exhibits, definitely worth a few hours if you are in Baltimore and sure to be a hit with the kiddos.







So we drove back from Baltimore Wednesday. Lucky me, I had to go to Washington DC on Thursday - so I got to drive to DC on Thursday morning and back on Friday afternoon. I totally felt like a truck driver this week - I drove over 1200 miles. That being said, I was still exhausted today. John left for Bike Week at Myrtle Beach, and the kids and I just hung around the house. We did get enough energy to go outside for a while in the afternoon. Trace is such a boy - he is obsessed with anything with wheels - especially the tractor. I'm pretty sure he would sit in the tractor all day long. We are actually going to bolt a carseat onto the fender to make him a little seat because I know that John will not be able to go near the tractor without Trace for years to come. Of course, we will be bolting Trace's seat in Bandit's favorite spot, so hopefully it will not result in any dog-child sibling rivalry :).






I also got some cute pics of the kids playing on their playset and around the pool. When we got the playset last year, Taylor loved it so much, but I was afraid that Trace would not be able to get up the ladder. Here we were trying to figure out how to put a ramp up to the playset, and boy did Trace show us. I have learned over the last few months that achon kids have the determination and courage to do anything they want - as shown in the pictures of Trace climbing up the ladder all by himself. Taylor is also very proud of herself - she has learned to swing all by herself (yeah - only one swing to push for me).