Update on the Hammer

For the first time since the big kids were born, Gary and I are getting rid of baby stuff.  Clothes, gear, etc. are all finding a new home.  It is AMAZING how much has entered our house and not left it.  We had 2.5 closets full of stuff, plus we have stuff in the attic, and we had stuff in a storage building.  This past weekend, Gary rented a truck and got everything out of the storage building.  When Gary got home, the Hammer was ready with a swiffer duster to help supervise the unloading of the truck. . . .

About a month ago, we unloaded the 2.5 closets and put all the stuff in the guest bedroom.  I’ve been spending anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours a day sorting through those things since then. 

Just this week I finally saw some progress in that bedroom.  I’m making four piles:  donate, sell (in the local BAMOM consignment sale the last weekend in February), keep, and trash.  Thankfully, so far, the smallest pile is the keep pile.  I hope it stays that way.

Gary is going to pull down the rest of the things out of the attic this weekend, then we’re going to start tagging and pricing for the consignment sale.  Hopefully we’ll be done and ready for the sale in time!  Then we need to log our donate items and get those donated.  Then we can organize the keep items and we are done!

We have several things we want to organize this year, and once we finish our current project, the goal is to get Henry moved into the guest bedroom.  It’s probably going to be a few months before we get him in there, but he’s fast approaching the point where he will need his own space in his own room.  Once we get Henry in his own room, our next goal is to turn the playroom back into a dining room!  These projects may take all year. . . .

On Monday, the Hammer had his first appointment with the neurosurgeon about the holes in Henry’s skull (we originally thought there was one hole, but we now know there are two – one on the right that is a little smaller than a dime, and one on the left that is smaller than that).  It went . . . okay.  Gary went into the appointment expecting bad things, so he left the appointment feeling good about everything.  I went into the appointment expecting the doctor to tell us there was nothing to worry about with a couple of holes in his skull (which, in retrospect, was stupid), so I left the appointment pretty freaked out, though I’ve mostly recovered from that. 

In short, the doctor has ruled out all but a couple of things.  The main thing left that we need to rule out is histiocytosis.   The doctor doesn’t think that Henry has that because he has no other symptoms, but it is something that we need to rule out. Unfortunately, that is something that can only be ruled out once some time has passed.  We started that process by Henry having a few x-rays of his head, which turned out fine.  That means that we wait and go back in 6 months for more x-rays.  Then if those x-rays are okay, then we go back in another 6 months for more x-rays.  Hopefully at that point, we can officially rule out histiocytosis. 

Once we rule that out, we are left with Henry having holes in his head due to genetic or hereditary reasons.  There won’t be much to do at that point, other than follow Henry just to keep an eye on everything.  Henry’s brain looked good, and the macrocephaly that he had as a baby (when he had his first CT scan) has completely resolved itself on its own.  Probably, and hopefully, these holes in his head will never affect Henry.  I just hate that we have to wait at least a year to know for sure.