Grandma Susan's Visit

Grandma Susan came for a little over a week to spend time with us. We whisked her away to Palm Springs for an overnight trip since we wanted to take a mini vacation mid-week and she has never been there before. It is the land of country clubs and golf courses. Even their golf carts are all decked out.

We happened to arrive in 105 degree weather, so we hit the pool for the first day. Kalista had a fun time since they had a beach area that she could run around in.

Grandma and Kali shading themselves on deck

Dad and Kalista after a day at the pool

Kali resting on her bed after a long afternoon by the pool

We ventured to the artsy district and passed some memorable landmarks from the last time we went to Palm Springs (which was when Matt proposed). Since art galleries and high end shopping weren't tickling our interests, we thought long and hard about whether we were going to do the Palm Springs mountain gondola lift. In the end, we decided to just head home. Maybe we will get to do it the next time we head back to Palm Springs.

Grandma Susan got to go to a few doctor appointments and playgroups whiles she was here. It was cardiology week, so Kali had to do an EKG and be hooked up to a Holtor monitor for 24 hours. We thought she was going to pull a Godzilla moment and rip off all the sticky wire leads, but it really didn't seem to bother her at all. She played everywhere with her monitor on. If her arrhythmia isn't too severe, then we get to push our cardiology appointments to a yearly basis. Yay!

Grandma Susan also got to a chance to go to one of Kalista's "Toddler and Me" groups. Kalista showed Grandma all her furry stuffed friends and her favorite toys. It was oil-dough and painting day. Kali had fun poking the oil-dough, but tears came flowing when it was time to paint her paper pumpkin. Guess it was not a Picasso moment!

Cardiology and Physical Therapy Updates

Cardiology Update:
We saw our cardiologist on Monday and he said Kalista's echocardiogram looks fine. He had no concerns, so we won't have to see him again until October.

Getting ready for bed

Physical Therapy Update:
We had a fantastic physical therapy session today. Kalista showed off all her skills and Ms. Tami was totally excited of all the new things she could do. Crawling still seems to be our biggest goal, but we have been encouraged to move on to one handed assisted walking. Woo hoo....one step closer towards running! We asked about what we should do about Kali's belly when she does start becoming more mobile and Tami told us to wrap her belly with an Ace bandage to give her more support if she falls.

Ironically, Ace bandage "compression wrapping" was one of our after-dinner family conversations as a way to shrink Kali's belly bump. We follow the blog of a family whose little girl has a giant omphalocele too and shares many of the same doctors as Kalista. They recently saw the same plastic surgeon we go to (Dr. Gosman) and compression wrapping was suggested as they await surgery. We also found out that she is preggos and due in July...congratulations Dr. Gosman! How will this affect any surgical decisions about Kalista? We're not sure...but we will keep you posted after our appointment with her next week.

Kalista proudly showing off her mode of transportation

*The Gift of Life*

If you know someone walking in a future March of Dimes walk, please support them and donate. Millions of babies born prematurely and/or with birth defects benefit greatly from the support of the March of Dimes. We will be missing our walk in San Diego because Jen is working and Matt will be getting off from his shift early that morning. The only person available is Kalista....and she can't walk by herself! Please put your feet in her shoes and pay it forward!

Standing By Ourselves???

Can you believe it? Kalista standing up without holding on to anything. She has made some huge strides in the past two weeks. We saw her teacher today and she said the same thing. It's cute since some poses she squats like a sumo wrestler and other times it's so grown up like. Our baby is turning into a little girl!


What have we been up to since our last post? Hmmm....plenty of doctor appointments. We spent the past three days visiting Rady Children's for all of Kalista's appointments. It kinda felt like the movie "Groundhog Day"....we wake up...get ready....head to Rady's...come home...feed Kalista a few times...go to bed and then it starts all over again. So here are the latest specialist/doctor updates:

Nutrition:
Yahoo...we got samples. We are about to start Peptamen Junior as her new meal mixed with breastmilk this weekend. That means Jen still needs to pump for another few more months ("Maybe"....says Jen). The great part about all this is that we don't have to feed Kalista as often since it packs in a whopping 30 calories per an ounce (compared to breastmilk of 20 calories). This means we can spread out our meal times farther apart to encourage Kali to get hungry enough to try new things by mouth. We'll see how it goes as we do a trial run.

Cardiology:
Kalista made it through her sedated echocardiogram yesterday and she did fabulous for the hour long procedure (...and she did look like Sleeping Beauty by the way). The echo technician said that everything looked great, but we get the final results from Dr. Perry on Monday. Kalista was not a happy camper since the sedative weakened all her muscle tone. She ended up being one floppy gal for about four hours after we got home. You can tell that she wanted to play and stand...but her legs kept giving out on her. Poor thing!!!

Occupational therapy/Feeding therapy:
Um yah...not much there to update all of you on.....fresh fruit smoothies and keep working on what we have been doing. We got the suggestion to try seaweed since Kalista likes the texture of paper. How Asian is that? Too bad she can't have rice and raw fish with it...mmmm...Sushi.

It has been a truly busy week and we still have Friday to go. We are so glad this is going to be a low key weekend. We are in the midst of planning a big birthday party for some little person we know and would love to finish tying up all the loose ends this coming weekend. Whew!

Back From the Bay (updated*)

We are officially back in San Diego after our mini trip to the San Francisco/ Bay Area.

It was a pleasant, yet non-stop family and friends filled five days. It seems like we need a vacation from our vacation. Maybe it is because we took the road trip route instead of flying.

I'm home everyone!

We made it in a record time of 7 1/2 hours (which included our 45 minute gas and rest stop break). Matt did all the driving since Jen was sandwiched between Bella and Kalista in the middle row. Poor Jo-Jo had to ride in the back of the car in his crate with all our luggage. Let's just say it was a well packed car.

We stayed the first few days at Matt's parents' house and spent time visiting friends and family. The remainder of our trip, we stayed at Jen's parents' house and enjoyed some down time. Kalista got to meet up with her baby friends while she was up there and even met some new ones.

Kalista and Beya had their first playdate

Spending time with Beya and her mommy

Kalista likes touching (more like poking) eyes and mouths now.
Watch out!!!

No tears for Tyler this time around

Kalista with Kylah's mommy

Kalista and Kylah also had their first playdate together

On our trip, Kalista got a chance to catch up with her cousins and play with them since they had the week off for spring break. Cousin Alex has a way of getting Kalista to smile when no one else can....he must have the magic touch! She has a natural migration towards him when he's in the same room as her.


Even Joey and Bella took some time to absorb the Northern California fresh air.

Joey sun-tanning again

Bella snoozing mid-morning

Kalista found one of her favorite items...the remote control

She even decided to do some yoga

We had many large dinners....three to be exact. We got to see pretty much everyone on both sides of the family. Jen's mom also celebrated a milestone birthday and turned 20 again for the third time. Kalista finally got to meet her aunt Dorothy and second cousins "once removed (???)", Naomi, Ethan and Ryan. This whole "once removed" family tree labeling is mighty confusing and ended up being one of the table topics ironically.

Grandma Susan's birthday banquet

The Lam Family banquet

Kalista with Grandma Susan and Great-Grandma Tam

As timing would have it...we were up in the Bay Area in time for a Chinese tradition similar to "Dia de los muertos (Day of the Dead)" called Qingming. This is the day where you tend to the graves of those who have departed and pay homage to their spirits. We took most of Monday on our trip to visit our loved ones who have passed; Matt's step-grandmother, maternal grandparents, Jen's paternal grandfather and maternal great grandparents. We burned incense, gave our respected bows, brought flowers and food (oranges, in our case) as part of the Chinese tradition. We even went to the temple in San Francisco Chinatown to pay respect to Matt's great relatives. At the end of the day, never did we imagine how tiring it was traveling to every resting place. We are trying to show Kalista the various Chinese traditions our family has followed in hope that they do not get abandoned as we move on from generation to generation.


On a different note...we have some medical and milestone updates for Kalista:

1. This IS the month of doctor appointments. Our visit to the dietitian is next week and we will be starting a new formula pretty soon instead of breastmilk and milk-based formula. Now that Kalista is getting older, we have been recommended to change her over to a higher calorie packed formula/nutritional drink called Peptamen. It looks like an expensive form of Pediasure, but is more easily digestible. We'll let you know how it goes in the next few weeks. As you may know...the ultimate goal is to end the gagging/retching and get Kali to eat and drink by mouth. Kalista has been more willing to put things is her mouth since we can see two little bottom teeth sprouting and the gum massages have been well received.

2. Our appointment with Dr. Gosman, our plastic surgeon, got pushed back another week, so we will have to wait until the very end of April to see if we are ready for tissue expanders as a precursor to Kalista's final stomach flattening closure surgery.

3. We have a sedated echocardiogram and cardiology appointment also planned to make sure her little heart can handle another surgery because of the WPW arrythmia.

4. Kalista can also show off her standing and partial crawling skills at our next physical therapy session in two weeks. She can pretty much scoot herself to any piece of furniture now and pull herself up to standing without any help. Ms. Tami is going to be so proud!

Standing next to the sofa after pulling herself up

Whew...that was our trip in a nutshell!

All Is Well...FINALLY

Whew! Everyone in the house is back on their feet again and have made a stunning recovery. We may have spread to each other the entire flu and cold season germs all in a matter of three weeks... but hey..if it means no more ailments for the year then it was worth it.

We saw the pediatrician yesterday and we have been weaning her off pedialyte since she is still not having the best looking diapers yet. Hopefully by tomorrow she can return to her full milk amounts and tolerate it.

Due to the craziness of this week and slow recovery, we had to reschedule Kalista's cardiology appointment and sedated echocardiogram. We couldn't follow the regimen of not giving Kalista anything to eat or drink for a few hours, given all that we have been through this week, just to be sedated. It took them almost 9 months to realize that they should have double checked to see if her PDA ligation surgery was successful, a few more weeks won't matter.

It was also supposed to be Kalista's first one-on-one OT session this week, but we had to be put that on hold until next week. She's hungry, but not really in the mood to eat still. A few finger swipes of applesauce here and there, but that was it. Hmmm...stubborn (just like her mama)!

Cardiology Update

Kalista saw Dr. Perry today for her cardiology follow-up. He confirmed that she does have WPW (Wolff-Parkinson-White heart arrythmia) after further EKG testing, but it looks like it is not causing any SVT (supraventricular tachycardia) at this time. He told us we should not worry and if there are any symptoms that need treatment, Kalista will be old enough by then to tell us how she feels. So...we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

We have scheduled an echocardiogram in February 2011 to double check and make sure the PDA ligation surgery that was done way back in May is truly patched up. Not sure why this was not done while we were in the NICU since it seems like proper follow-up, but better now than never. The cardiology team wants to make sure Kalista is properly fit to undergo another surgery next spring.

Other than that....no other medical information at this time. They did measure her growth and she is at 25 inches in length and a little bit over 15 pounds. Her hair has to contribute for at least 2 pounds since it is so thick....just kidding.

Another Week...Another Day

Enjoying some time in her high chair

We had our cardiology appointment with Dr. Nigam today. Jen had to go to work, so Matt took Kalista to the appointment with chest X-rays and EKG results in tow. We realized that it is the same pediatric cardiology department that we passed by for 3 1/2 months when Kalista was in the NICU.

So...the results....Dr. Nigam confirmed the previous diagnosis of Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) Syndrome after looking at the EKG and X-ray. Kalista had a few other doctors look at her and listen to her heart and told us that she seems fine at this point in time. We were advised that WPW is characterized by SVT (spontaneous ventricular tachycardia) and can last for up to 20 minutes. The doctor said that when her heart rate goes sky high for this long period of time, she will most likely be uncomfortable and sweat a lot (which she does) and should Kalista ever turn into a "devil child" or turns super red or blue, then we need to be seen immediately. We have two more follow-up visits scheduled to further investigate the severity of this condition. She will need to do another test called the Holter test next Friday. It monitors the heart's electrical activity more closely and involves little electrodes stuck to her chest. The other follow-up won't be until the beginning of December for another repeat EKG. We hope it is mild and only needs monitoring. If it is worse, then we may need medication or cardiac surgery to ablate (zap) the part that doesn't seem to be working properly. For more info...you can also visit: WPW info

Who me? A "devil" child?

We have an occupational therapy evaluation this coming Wednesday and it will be interesting what they discover about her feeding issues and oral aversion, since she is a bit more accepting of bottle nipples and things in her mouth. We'll keep you posted! We have been working with her sitting activities and she can easily reach for items in front of her now while supporting herself. She has also taken a new liking to the crawling stance (also known as the cow pose in yoga). She is getting better at rolling on to her belly 75% of the way. We have to supply the remaining 25% of support because she can't quite get over her bump.

Socializing with Mallory the Monkey

She continues to build her vocabulary through babbling and laughs at our jokes now. She enjoys hanging out with her NICU friend, Mallory the Monkey. It seems to be the only toy she smiles at when we bring it close to her. They have been through a lot together!