Continuing with Good Appointment News...

Ethan's oncologist has decided that our follow up appointments will be pushed back from every 6 months to annually.  Our next appointment of the month was with Ethan's Orthopedic Surgeon and he is happy with the correction we're getting with Ethan's new brace, which means we will be able to hold off on casting/surgery.  We will see him again in October to be sure the brace is still keeping his spine stable. We have managed to increase his brace time to 7-9 hours a day and need to work towards the end goal of 18 hours per day.  His final hospital appointment in July was for a bone density scan.  Although the official results are not back yet, it seems that his bone density is improving...which is great news especially since his weight bearing time has been cut in half from December 2011.  Ethan's OT brought us a bath seat to try and Ethan seems to enjoy it.

Ethan is employing his sleep deprivation torture techniques again, and it slowed me down...and I missed a great photo opportunity.  The other day I looked at him and he had the bottle from his feeding pump off and by his mouth while his feed was running.  I guess he wanted to try having it by mouth again.  ;)  Just after I got there he tossed the bottle and managed to put more air bubbles into his line that I then had to clear.

Lorelei has also had a busy summer including a two week art camp.  She had her gallery show the end of the second week.  She was pretty pleased with her progress, and we think she did a great job too!  Part of her show day was to have one of us do a craft with her describing the technique.  Since part of the craft was to dip your finger into glue, I volunteered Clayton to do it.  (Someone had to be available to take pictures too. ;))

The start of this month saw another statutory holiday.  Lorelei, Clayton, Uncle Jon and I headed to a nearby beach.  In the 12 years Clayton and I have lived here we've never really made it to the beach.  Now that we've scoped out the area, we hope to bring Ethan sometime.  There were lots of waves and Lorelei had a blast!

I think Clayton loved being at the beach again too...although his one complaint was that it doesn't smell the same as the ocean...  He's already planning our next visit.

Where Clayton & Uncle Jon first set up the umbrella they disturbed some old drift wood with a family of frogs.  I think they had some lasting anger issues towards us as they kept jumping at me (we'd moved the umbrella about 6 feet away)...but it could be they liked the way I shrieked like a little girl when they got too close. 

In the end we had one that burrowed under Clayton's sandal and we were able to co-exist during our stay at the beach.  I was the only one who managed not to get burned that day.