Almost 8 Months of Social Distancing: Thankful for the Beautiful Weather

 Dear Kiddos, 

A quick update about Hailey. Hailey, you are now taking a beta-blocker, which basically helps ease the load on your heart. The main side effect that I've noticed is that you are not as energetic as you usually are. I think you are sleeping better because you wake up actually pretty happy. 

After some more research and joining a support group on facebook, we now know a little more about the condition. It's actually pretty serious. It's most likely a genetic disorder (we have to get a test done to verify) where the genes that control how the muscle fibers are arranged are mutated. Instead of the muscle fibers being orderly, they are actually the opposite, which makes the heart more rigid than normal. To compensate, the heart beats harder and over time, the heart walls start to thicken. 

The danger comes in different forms: blood obstruction (where the wall becomes so thick that it blocks the blood flow out of the ventricle) or heart arrhythmias, where the heart starts to beat to its own tune. The treatment, depending on the severity is medication, pace maker, surgery, or heart transplant. 

For now, we await testing to be done and you are on your medicine (which thankfully tastes good to you). Cherry flavor, bleh! 

The diminished energy level can be noticed when we go on walks. You used to be able to zip around on your bike or scooter for about 30-45 mins, but today, we traveled snail paced, and half way through the 1 mile trail, you wanted me to hold you the rest of the way. Luckily the balance bike we brought was pretty light and Nathan was able to help you carry it. 

I decided to venture out of our neighborhood for an outdoor outing today and we went to a nearby playground to play. It was nice that we had basically the whole place to ourselves for a little while. 

We've also been spending a lot of time at the neighborhood playground. The weather has just been too good to stay inside. 

Some days we just do homework outside. It's really that nice outside! 

In the evening, we are still playing board games (sometimes we read a couple of chapters out of a book). Your favorites are currently Cover Your Asset (which Hannah is still a dominating force in) and Pandemic. It's kind of neat to be living out a real pandemic (said no one ever!). 

With the whole family on the Whole 30 program, I'm having to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking. I'm finding that I can get you guys pretty excited about the food if you help cook. Hailey, you are more likely to eat it during the meal if I offer you a sample of it beforehand. Otherwise, you will push your food away and ask for fruit. (But I'll make a separate post about whole 30 later). 

Well, that's all for now, 

Love, 

Mommy