Yesterday Brad and I went to LA with Mia for an appointment with CHLA (Children's Hospital Los Angeles) with the head of their division that deals with craniosynostosis. His opinion of Mia's head is that it might need to have another surgery to correct the skull shape. He doesn't think it is impeding the growth of her brain, but cosmetically we might want to get it fixed. He also said that maybe they could camouflage it later in life with some bone grafts, but because it is quite a difference that might not be feasible. He wouldn't want to do anything until her heart was fixed and we got another CT scan of her skull to give him more of an idea of what was going on with the plates. He also gave us a different helmet person to talk to who he thinks may possibly have a better idea of how to proceed with her head, so we've called her and are waiting to hear back from her. We will at least have her take a look at Mia's helmet and see what her thoughts are for reshaping her head. Because a child's head is still growing, but slowly, we are praying that the helmet will correct whatever is going on. And as you know, her head hasn't really grown in the last month, so please be praying that it would continue to grow and the helmet would work to correct the misshapen head. Pray for wisdom for us regarding future surgeries because of her past experience we are hesitant to go forward with this, but know that teasing can be a huge experience for children also. We think she looks beautiful, but not all others might hold to the same opinion.

We also had some measurements at her current helmet place done and her head is the same shape as last month, which follows along with no growth change either. Please keep that in prayer. Please also pray for her cardiac doctors on Thursday as they evaluate whether or not now is the right time to proceed with her heart surgery. Lots to pray for, we'll keep you updated as we learn more.

More Fair Pictures

Here are some more photos...we also ran into our friend Gil, there's a picture of Mia and Uncle Paul, Mommy, and Gil. And another photo of Mia eating fair food...well, it's not a deep fried twinkie, but she likes her green beans just fine. :)

The Fair

Today we went to the fair again and had a lot of fun. Mia saw an elephant, horses, goats, pigs, chicks, bunnies, cows...oh my...and of course those beautiful Clydesdale horses again. It was a lot of fun and she really liked looking at everything, here are a few pictures! Enjoy!

Fat as a CindyCat!

We've been joking for a long time how our cat Cindy is bigger than Mia, but when I weighed Mia today, she's now bigger than the cat! She weighed 15 pounds 2 ounces, which is amazing because the last time I weighed her she was only 14 pounds 12 ounces...I had to put her on the scale 3 times to make sure that I was seeing the numbers correctly. She hasn't been eating her formula very well lately, but I guess she's getting enough calories from her solids and the oil I put in them. We're very thankful because the more weight she gains the easier heart surgery will be and also we just want to see her grow...maybe even get back on the growth curve. Plus her head hasn't really grown in a month, so please be praying for that.

Mia's also getting some top teeth...we're not really sure what it will be like because the doctors told us awhile ago that she has only one central front tooth, we'd like to pray that isn't true and they are mistaken, we know that God can make her teeth right, but we are ok regardless of the outcome. So we'll see in the next few weeks what we get.

Later today we're going back to the fair, so we'll post some pictures of that!

Yesterday we went to LA so Mia could have another Echo done on her heart and then we had an appointment with the cardiologist. It's been a couple of months since we've done the echo so he wanted to see how her heart and the PA band were doing. He said that the job of the PA band is to restrict the flow of blood to the longs, as a result the heart has to work harder than a normal baby's heart, not to mention it has a hole where the blood mixes so that also makes it work harder. What they find is that the heart tends to develop thicker because it is a muscle and the muscle is working harder. It's not ideal, but instead of doing an immediate surgery, it gives the baby a chance to grow and get bigger. In light of that, he said that Mia's thickening is moderate on a scale of mild to severe and that maybe it's time to do her heart surgery instead of the intestinal surgeries. It is not a definite, but the doctors meet collectively once a week and so next week Thursday they are going to decide if that's the way to best proceed with her surgeries. They did say that after the surgery the thickening would go down and the heart would return to "normal" because it wouldn't be working as hard. The concern is to not let the thickening go on for too long. So please pray for wisdom on the part of the doctors and for us because we know that God is in control and we trust His plan for Mia, but heart surgery is still very scary for us. But we want what is best for our little girl.