MichaelZullo.com

I’ll admit I’ve watched the John and Kate Plus 8 episode where the kids poop in the potty for the first time and Kate gets so excited that she not only shows it to the camera but she also takes photos of it. I NEVER thought I’d ever be excited like that, not until tonight. Gary and I were getting Mikey ready for bed and when I was changing his diaper I noticed that he was about to pee so I figured I’d take him to his potty chair so that he could get some practice. Well we were sitting there and sitting there and no pee. I then smell what I thought was a fart and then I get a glimpse of something I totally didn’t expect, Poo in the potty! I cannot believe our little 17 month old pooped in the potty for the first time. Of course its a fluke but what an awesome fluke!

We had yet another PT appointment this past Wednesday. Mikey was doing great. No tilt at all. I had told the therapist how he ended up with croup the day after our last visit so that’s why he was tilting for both her and the specialist. She once again told me that she is ready to discharge Mikey but wants to wait until our next specialist visit. She told me ultimately its OUR call. Of course it is! )

That next visit is mid-April so hopefully he won’t be tilting at all by then. And even if he is I think I’m going to tell the doctor that we are done. Because we are the ones that see Mikey the most and the majority of the time he isn’t tilting. If he’s still tilting at 2 then we’ll talk again, but for now we need a break!!!

Last Thursday Mikey and I went to work/daycare like we normally do. When we got inside the building I could hear like he had a little chest congestion but nothing bad so I got him ready and took him to daycare. He was acting perfectly fine so I didn’t think anything of it. Around 2:30 his teacher calls me up to tell me that he’s sounding pretty bad. I go downstairs and low and behold he is sounding a lot worse. You could hear major wheezing while he was just sitting there doing nothing. I went back up to my desk and called the doc. They wanted me to bring him in during their after hours so I stayed and finished my work and we went straight to the doctors from there. On our ride he just got progressively worse. At the doctor’s office we got called back relatively quickly. The doc looked him over and wanted to do a breathing treatment so we did that. He came back afterwards and he was sounding a little better but wanted to give him Orapred (an oral steroid) and check him 15 minutes later. He was still wheezing so he wanted to do another breathing treatment which we did. Then some xrays to make sure nothing was lodged in his airway. Turns out he had croup. Apparently croup can come on REALLY fast out of nowhere. We had to take him back to the doc the next morning to make sure he was ok, which he was. We were told to continue with the breathing treatments and the oral steroid and come back in a week.

Well that same day we were to head to Disney so thankfully he was doing much better so our plans were still on. We took it a lot easier on this trip since after a few hours he’d get cranky, everytime he’d cough it would hurt him so he’d cry so instead of hanging out at a park for too long we’d head back to the hotel to relax. I atually liked it this way. This is the exact reason why we have annual passes so that we can come and go as we please. There is no need to do every ride every single time. We focused on seeing characters since that always brings all of us joy. His first character was his pal Pooh. We found Pooh in a little toy shop in the UK Pavilion in Epcot. He was there with Eeyore and Tigger and honestly Mikey could care less about them. What was cute was when Pooh saw Mikey walking towards him he sat down on the floor so that he could come right at him. Which he did of course. He gave him a HUGE Pooh hug and Mikey was eating it up. He had his thumb in his mouth as he snuggled with Pooh, just like he does at home with his Pooh bears. On the rest of the trip we noticed that if Mikey really liked a character and would hug on them he’d always put his thumb in his mouth, almost like its the Mikey Seal of Approval. We even got a pic of him with Goofy both of them sucking on their thumbs. )

Here are some of our pics:

Part 1

Part 2

Things have been hectic over here the past few weeks so I haven’t had much of a chance to come update Mikey’s blog. I’m finalizing our little mini-vacation to Disney, we leave this Friday. And now I’m planning our trip to Washington D.C. so that Gary can get some much needed medical tests done at NIH.

As for Mikey he’s doing ok. He got all 4 of his canine’s at once so its been a lot of FUN! He is also having some major temper tantrums, especially in the car on our hour drive home from work. I finally resorted to buying us a portable dvd player and that thing has been a life-saver!!!!

This morning we had our follow-up appointment with his specialist for the torticollis. Of course of ALL days he chooses TODAY to tilt to his left. He hasn’t tilted to his left in MONTHS!!!!! And today he chooses to do it! The doctor felt his neck and had him walk up and down the hall. He has a slight tilt, I can’t deny it. The doc said that its still pretty mild and he would not recommend botox right now. He wants to wait until Mikey is 18 months old before we even revisit that. He said continue with PT, stretches at home, and attempt to use the TOT collar.

I was so ready to end this long journey but it just seems like it keeps going on and on and on. We have PT this afternoon and I’m going to talk to the therapist about what the doc said. She is actually ready to release Mikey from PT so I’m curious to see what she says about all of this.