Zion

Our family!
What a cutie!
Zion sleeping in his swing.
So big!
Zion and his Nanny Noo Noo (his great-grandma).

I need to update everyone on Zion's progress. He is just growing up so quickly!

Well, he is rolling all over the place now. Usually he just rolls once--from the front to the back or the back to the front--but today he was on his tummy, rolled to his back, then back to his tummy! What a mover and a shaker! He favors rolling to the left, but I have noticed the past couple days that he is starting to get the hang of rolling to the right too. So I have to be careful where I put him now. Our little patch of carpet on the hardwood seems to be shrinking everyday!

His little personality is starting to show through too. He giggles and talks to us all the time and is not afraid to let us know when he is unhappy in his carseat. But he remains a cuddler and it absolutely thrills us when his legs and arms go crazy when he sees us.

He has also found his fingers the past few weeks. He loves sucking on his index and middle fingers of his left hand. It is helping him self-soothe which is great because he has to put himself to sleep now. His little tongue likes to lick everything now too. It is such a joy watching him develop. We truly think he is a gift to us.

I do have some bad news, though. We found out a couple weeks ago that Zion has metopic cranio synistosis. I'll explain. . . . The skull is made up of many bones. The bones in a baby's head are not fused so they can go through the birth canal and the brain can grow. Well, the split between the two bones in the front of Zion's skull fused in the womb. This is just a fluke. They don't know why it occurs. Sometimes children (with other bones than the ones Zion has fused) also have cognitive or other deformities. But Zion is just fine. What all this means is that he has to have surgery in February. It is a serious surgery and we have cried many tears over thinking about him undergoing a procedure at 9 months that most never go through at all. He will have to have a blood transfusion so when the time gets closer, we will ask people to donate for him. The good news, though, is that this is a one-time fix. After the surgery, he will have yearly check-ups until he is six but that is it.

All in all, we are hesitant to tell people about this because we don't want them to treat him as if he is broken. He is just fine--not in pain, growing just perfectly, and cute, cute, cute! We would covet your prayers as we begin this difficult road.