Katie is 3!

Little K. turned 3 this month. I really can't believe it. Rick made a slide show for her birthday of her first 3 years and it brought back a lot of feelings from those early months. More and more I realize how lucky we are to have Katie--and with two working ventricles. The doctors in Houston completely changed our little girl's life.

An update on her heart--we've found a cardiologist that we really like. We went last week and she has a couple of issues. Some that we already knew of and were watching, and also a new one. That's not fun. They've been watching two of her valves--mostly the aortic one. It's small and is malformed and is tight. That's not great, but it's not causing big problems with the pressures in her heart right now so we're just watching. He also mentioned that the patch that was put over the hole between her ventricles is leaking. He said that happens sometimes, but for now we'll just watch. He told us to come back in 6-9 months. One of the hardest things about this is I feel like I have no control over how Katie's heart is doing. When my children are getting a lot of colds I know to give them more vitamin c, more rest, and less sugar, etc. I can prevent and treat most of my children's ailments. But with this, I can't tell if her heart valves aren't working well or that her heart is enlarged or that one of her patches is leaking or whatever. And really, her pedi can't really tell me that either. So I just wait and wait for those echos every 6 months--wishing I could go every month. Maybe I should become an echo-tech and buy my own machine.

Despite all of that, she is doing well. She's still off all meds and seems to keep up with kids her age. She naps nearly every day--but I'm great with that. She has quite a personality and keeps us all laughing. I love my little Kate.