7 Months Post-Transplant

Jaisal is 7 months post-transplant. I can't believe how time has flown! The steroid wean continues. We had labs last week and Jaisal's numbers were a little elevated. We suspect they were because of his cold, but we'll be repeating labs this week. We hope (and ask that all of you do as well) that his numbers have come down and we can continue to wean. Next step would be no steroids and if he tolerates that well, then he'll actually be a little bit less immune suppressed.

What is this kid doing these days? Well what isn't he doing. He is starting to have preferences and will pick what books he wants to read, what pajamas he wants to wear, and he was even at a store and picked out a hat for himself. I mean he can get a little bossy trying to tell us which way we should walk down the street or what toys he must play with, but for the most part it's great to see him starting to develop preferences.

He continues to torment the dog, but one day I was in the kitchen cooking and turned around to see this.

Completely voluntary and with no prior attempts at coercion. I loved it! And then he started tugging on her ear. Baby steps.

Jaisal loves the alphabet. Loves it. He hums the alphabet song to himself all the time. He can recite up to the letter G (at times), can fill in quite a few letters if we pause while singing, and can identify at least 5, if not more, written letters. We're encouraging him with alphabet bath toys, which means longer baths, but also sheer excitement on everyone's part when he identifies a letter.

The kid loves his cheese. He seems to have taken my love for cheese (which is significant) and Kirk's love for cheese and doubled it. The mere mention of mac n cheese sends him into near hysterics. He nearly devoured this whole pizza today.

A few more notes about the picture. I'm wet because Jaisal and I were playing in the rain earlier. There have been crazy strong storms rolling through periodically, and I love running out into the rain with Jaisal. Also, the bandaid is to cover up one of a few small abrasions I received when, due to some user error, I took a tumble on my bike on my way to work on Friday. I hold a fellow liver mom from Scotland accountable for my injury. She mentioned to me how she's fitting exercise into her life lately, so I convinced my lazy self to bike the whopping 1.5 or so miles to work since it wasn't insanely hot and I could pretend like I was getting exercise. Whether the fall was just due to bad luck on Friday the 13th or a cosmic sign that exercise really isn't important remains unclear at the moment.

Jaisal's favorite way to read a book is while sitting on him. I think we can oblige him until he packs on a few more pounds.