New Year..New Blog Title..

Happy New Year!! Our 'Little Logan' is not so little these days. I'm really going to try to update this blog more often for family and friends. Both boys are growing so fast before our very eyes and want to include everyone with great pics and info. Chris (Daddy) is great with words. I'm the photographer..I update pics on FB every...umm..week.. but thought I would include them to this blog for those of you who are staying away from the FB addiction;)
Brotherly Love...
Some pics from Christmas...LOVE Christmas!!!

18 MONTHS!

Our Logan boy is 18 months old today! He is so full of personality, can be very stubborn and is testing mommy and daddy more & more...we feel like we have twins anymore. Noah and Logan do a lot of the same things, monkey see monkey do! Whatever sound Noah makes Logan will repeat him. This is a very good thing! Not so much when they're both throwing match box cars down from the loft onto our hardwood floors...ahh boys :)

It's starting to feel a lot like Christmas in the Nye household! The most wonderful time of the year!

Noah's new favorite show is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. When we ask him what he wants for Christmas he tells us packages of presents.

Logan has been signing some words on his own without me asking. In this photo he's saying 'eat'. He also asks for milk, drink, more, all done and last night did sleep for the first time. We just started speech therapy a couple weeks ago. The therapist is skipping over the beginner course since Logan is already saying (while signing) hi, hello(when he picks up a toy phone or gets a hold of my cell), dad & sometimes mom(not fair). We are moving on to animal noises-which he picked up on moo & baahh right away. We are also working on 'touch your nose'. The cutest is when he tries to change the channel with the TV remote, we have 3 & he knows which one to use and if you give him a kleenex he will blow his little nose-too cute, I can't get enough of him!!

How big is Logan? SOOO BIG!!! Another new thing he loves to do.

Uncle Mark and Grammie made it to Denver for Thanksgiving!! Uncle Sean joined us as well! What a great Thanksgiving! I said to Noah the night before they arrived.."Guess who is coming tomorrow?" He responds "Santa Claus" He's too funny!

Earlier in the month we made a trip to Pittsburgh to visit with family and friends. The boys and I were there for a whole entire week! It was a nice and relaxing time for Mommy who was well overdue for a break! Thanks for all your help Grammie!!

Poppy drove from Virginia for a quick visit with the boys!

The boys with cousin Chris and Markee. Noah is into electronics already. He'll probably be asking for an iphone for Christmas.

Playing patty cake with Aunt Paula.

A fun filled visit with Uncle Tim and Chris. Noah had a great time singing, dancing and playing Uncle Tim's piano!

Great Grandma-ma and Norman!

Great Aunt Anna Mae!

Happy 18 Months Logan Christopher! We love you so much!!

Halloween!!!

Here's just a quick update of some cool shots of our Family Themed costumes for Halloween. Any guesses as to what we're dressed up as?
Logan makes a great Lion, especially because he growls so much, and also because he has lots of courage and no fear:)
Who's afraid of ghosts? Not Logan!
Our Trick or Treat night was actually pretty warm. Here's Logan hanging out on the front porch before we head out.
Noah was thrilled with Halloween, and had a blast:) He liked to idea of getting lots of candy. Now getting him to understand that he can't eat all of it at once...That's another story...
Kaia maybe needs to lose a little weight to pull off a good todo:)
Happy Halloween!!!

Up to 18 Steps!!

Logan started taking his first couple of steps 2 & 1/2 weeks ago & he is up to 18 steps in a row! Not every time, but he's getting there. He gets very excited to be on the other side of the gate walking toward the stairs....


...almost there. He is all about side stepping down the stairs but his little legs are too short (and it makes mommy very nervous).
Happy Fall to everyone! We've had a beautiful October here in Denver with very mild weather. I'm just hoping it doesn't snow for Halloween. Stay tuned for our Halloween pics & our family theme costumes!!

LOGAN'S FIRST STEPS!

LOGAN TAKING MORE STEPS!

VERY EXCITING NEWS!!

VERY EXCITING NEWS!!

LOGAN TOOK HIS FIRST STEP ON THE 7TH!
HE WAS HOLDING ON TO THE OTTOMAN, LET GO & TOOK A STEP!

THE VERY NEXT WEEK HE TOOK 2 STEPS....AND THIS PAST WEEKEND HAS BEEN PUSHING HIMSELF UP TO STAND FROM A SQUATTING POSITION & TAKING UP TO 4 STEPS!!

The first video I took Fri night. Logan was so excited..he was popping up and almost jumping..I think he wants to run!

The second video was Sat. & you can see he is taking it a little slower. We are so proud of him...Our amazing not so Little Logan anymore ;)

Logan's League

Alright, finally another update to Logan's blog! This post will focus on the Step Up for Down Syndrome Walk that happens once a year at Denver's City Park. This year we named Logan's team "Logan's League," and were very excited to gather a large team to walk to support Logan!
We had friends in from across the county to help support Logan's League. Auntie Ash was instrumental in helping the cause, and really rallied alot of her friends to come out and walk for Logan. This year we also had alot of virtual walkers, and all together we helped raise 2,885 dollars for the Mile High Down Syndrome Association!

The walk started early at 7:00 am, and the actual walk commenced at 9:00. During registration and team gatherings, everyone enjoyed the pancake breakfast. After the walk, we grilled some food and socialized for awhile before heading home.
As for an update for the well-being of Logan, we are pleased to announce he is doing quite well! He's so very close to walking, and we work with him daily to achieve this goal. He is able to free-stand for a few seconds, and he pushes a walker around at alarming speeds:) He side-steps everywhere, including up the stairs now. We hold his hands with minimal support as he takes his steps, so hopefully the next post will have a video of him walking.

Logan loves music and loves to dance! He's got quite the rhythm! Here he's doing his best Nana imitation!

Logan continues to impress us with his problem solving skills! He's doing great with placing objects in containers, such as shapes and puzzles. He's learning new sign language all of the time, and is doing well telling us what he wants. On the flip side, he's also becoming a little more of a handful for us! He's definitely testing us with the word "No," and really looks for attention. That being said, he gets away with alot because he's so cute:)
We couldn't have asked for a better day for the walk. It was a gorgeous fall day at City Park!


This year we had about 30 people actually walk, with many more Virtual Walkers. Thanks again so much for your support!!!

Surgery Successful!

Wow, so it's been awhile since we've updated the blog! We've had a busy past few months, so I'll try to get everyone up to speed! Logan is now 13 months old! He's doing quite well, and we're so very proud of our little boy!
Physically, Logan continues to excel at everything he puts his mind to. He is crawling, relentlessly fast, I might add. Logan's style of crawling is quite unique, however. Unlike the traditional crawl, Logan instead crawls like a bear with his feet on the ground and his knees in the air! It's amusing to watch, but that's just Logan's style!
Also, he pulls himself up to standing with ease, even with a flat surface such as a wall. He's walking with assistance, such as his favorite toy, a plastic shopping cart, which he can push across the room. Also, he can "transition" between surfaces, such as standing at the couch and moving over to the ottoman. Needless to say, our physical therapist, Terra, is always ecstatic!Cognitively, Logan seems to be progressing very well! While Kireta & I are not experts at spotting the cognitive advances, other therapists are, and more than one has told us that they believe Logan will have a mild cognitive disability. This, of course, isn't for certain, but their observations are certainly valued, and we continue to work with and challenge Logan as often as we can.
Logan is able to put blocks into a container consistantly now, and he plays with toys such as trucks (whenever his brother lets him, he hasn't yet learned to "share") knowing that their wheels move and how they operate. Logan knows to bang the drum, or shake the rattle, etc. We're working on signing "more" with Logan, and he's doing the sign with his left hand, but not quite his right. Logan loves to wave at people, especially daddy, to whom he'll do a special wave consisting of a wave with his left hand, and waving his fist in his right hand, at the same time. I think he's trying to tell me either that he's going to give me a knuckle sandwich, or power to the people, we're not quite sure...
As you might or might not be aware, Logan just got through a minor, albeit still scary, surgery. This one was an incisional hernia repair, necessary for a slight tear in his abdominal wall caused from his chest drain tubes following open-heart surgery. Dr Karrer, a fantastic pediatric surgeon, simply made an incision (actually over the same scar from the chest tube), and then proceeded to sew together the abdominal wall with three stiches, and that was that. Since the main concern for this surgery was the anesthesia, we double scheduled the surgery with his lacrimal duct probing (in layman's terms, the unblocking of his tear ducts). Finally Logan should be able to tear like everyone else, and so his eyes will be less red and puffy, and best of all, much less tears running down his face:) This procedure was done fairly "old school," in that it was a small wire that was inserted down the inside corner of his eyes, clearing whatever blockage was there and opening up some soft muscle tissue between his tear ducts and his nasal canal. All of this sounds a bit scary, and it was, but compared with open-heart, this was a walk in the park. Logan was done with both procedures in 1.5 hours, and we were driving home by 10:30 am! I literally waited longer to get my passport renewed!
As for follow-ups with his beloved cardiologist, Dr. Carrie, we have found that while Logan's VSD (the holes in the heart) have closed completely, and his pulmonary stenosis is good at 28%, the leakage between his pulmonary artery and the right ventricle (the bottom left chamber of the heart) has progressed to border-line severe. What this means is that every time his heart (in particular his right ventricle) contracts, it forces blood up through the pulmonary artery. This is good! If you remember, one condition of tetralogy of fallot is pulmonary stenosis, or a constriction of the artery so that not enough blood can get through, thus leading to patients turning blue! What is bad is that as his right ventricle expands, it also pulls blood back towards his right ventricle, which the tricuspod valve is supposed to prevent (think of it as a one-way check valve).
So what does all of this mean? Quite simply, that Logan will need another repair, perhaps sooner than we thought. How soon? We don't know. Dr Carrie has made the point that his leakage is still much better than if they had done the traditional repair (check back 1 year for details regarding his "valve sparring technique"), and so applying that logic, I'd expect his repair to be between 3-5 years of age. This is when most kids who had their pulmonary valve completely removed would have their second open-heart. (Their third would be after adolescence). Since Logan has had his valve remaining intact, we have a very good possibility that his repair can be done via the cath lab, i.e. through his arterial line in his groin. The only problem is that he will need to be 40 lbs. He is presently only 17. Also, in 2-4 years from now, there's a good chance technology will continue to advance, and that weight could very well drop, let's say, to 30 lbs. I feel pretty confident that Logan will be 30 lbs 2-4 years from now, as he eats like a champ:) So for those of you reading this wondering if our little Logan will require another open-heart surgery, I can say probably not, but nothing's for certain. Please continue to keep Logan in your prayers, and in particular, that he will be of a proper weight so that when he does need his correction, that it can be done in the cath lab.

Alright, I've spent plenty of time evaluating Logan. Now let's get to the fun stuff, shall we? Pictures! (Also, Kireta is much better than I at posting new pictures [almost at a weekly basis] on her facebook page. Since I am obviously poor at updating this blog, you might want to check her page more often if that's what you'd like to see:) Without further ado...

We had a large 1st birthday party for our little man! We bbq'd and had everyone outdoors on a beautiful day!

Logan even got his own cake. He dug his hands into it, and realized that while it tastes pretty good, he really wasn't that into the texture:)

Logan loves his Auntie!
Nana & Gabe made the trip out from PA! We had all of the grandparents (minus PopPop Geoff who should be out later) come out for Logan's 1st birthday! Grammie flew in from Pittsburgh, and Poppy from DC!
Lately, Logan's been sporting the baby-hawk. NICE!!!
Here's the before bedtime ritual...reading books!
Who's a stud? Logan is!
The family had a little retreat up to Aspen, which was simply breath-taking! Independence Pass is our new favorite for mountain sight-seeing!
Breath it in deep!
Here's a shot watching some fireworks on the fourth of July! Surprisingly, both boys loved the show...
especially Logan:)
Can you tell Logan's default is happy?
Last, but not least, we had a great time in the neighborhood fourth of July parade! Cya next time!