Emily and Kolby

Samuel: 9 Months Old

Samuel is getting to be more fun every day!

He started crawling soon after he turned 8 months old and has been on the move every since! His favorite things are computer cords, the dishwasher, dog food, Maya's water bowl, and shoes. He also loves to close doors, and often he closes himself in a room and then sits right in front of the door so there's no easy way to retrieve him. He's also been pulling up to stand for quite awhile and can sidestep along the couch or coffee table to get to wherever he wants to go. He can say Dadada and says it all day long. He's also waved a couple times.

His favorite toys are whatever Beckett is playing with at any given time. And Beckett is certainly his favorite person on earth. When I'm carrying Sammy I always know when Beckett comes within sight because his whole body surges with excitement.

On a less positive note, his sleeping at night is still terrible. We started giving him a bottle of formula at bedtime to top him off and helped him learn how to soothe himself to sleep (which took us letting him cry for about 10-15 minutes twice... he's a fast learner apparently) and maybe a week later he started waking up just once at night, sometimes twice. It was glorious. But also short lived. He had a couple of pesky little colds that I think threw a wrench in things but I'm not sure what to even blame. Waking up 3-4 times every night is pretty typical again, and now it's not easy to get him to go back to sleep each time. I'll be honest and say that there are times I dread going to bed because of how rough I know the night is going to be. But I know it'll pass soon enough.

And the boy is so fun and cute and sweet, I'll forgive him the sleeplessness :) Here are some pictures over the past few months...

Hanging with Daddy

Lots of love from cousin Sadie

Six(ish) month checkup

He's a hair grabber so Maya is his wonderland

He loves to grab my face. Just one of those things I want to remember.

Cute boy

He still loves to sit and play with toys (this was before he learned to crawl)

Tiny human

In Wimberley with Gran and Daddy Monk

At the ranch with his girlfriend, Emma

Starting to fill out

Our little sunshine boy with Mimi

Because I can't get enough of sleeping baby pictures. That face, though.

Hanging out with his cousin, Kirby (they are just a few weeks apart!)

His first Rangers game!

F is for freakin' cute

Just hanging around

He loved the neighborhood pool, which is good because we went all the time

Getting so big (and trying so hard to crawl)!

His hair got pretty blonde over the summer. It's lighter than Beckett's was at this age.

Relaxing with Grams

This is Samuel with his babysitter, Megan. She kept him while I worked part-time after my maternity leave and before Kolby was out for the summer (Beckett continued to go to preschool). Then she kept both boys a couple mornings a week over the summer. They were buddies and we all miss her so much!

Cousins!

Samuel and Gran in Wimberley

This was us at one of probably 3 doctors visits over the summer where we thought he must have an ear infection or something since he was sleeping so terribly, but nope...

So glad we had another boy to wear this onesie because I still think it's funny

What do you mean we had a rough night?!?

Nine month checkup. He made it up to the 30th percentile!

And the mischief begins...

Visiting Mimi (and Great Grandfather)

Cutie patootie

You know it's a good Tex-Mex dining experience when you make such a mess you get stripped naked and banished to the parking lot.

At the Webb Family annual reunion over Labor Day we had three new babies! Samuel is the oldest (by a few months) but smallest.

Another useless doctor appointment. Little stinker.

First Baylor football game!

Update: Beckett's Lymphangioma

Beckett's sclerotherapy procedure went smoothly yesterday and he did so great!

This kid.... he is really something else. He was happy as ever all day at the hospital despite not having eaten anything since dinner the night before. Of course the fact that the hospital had a huge model train exhibit didn't hurt, nor did the fact that as soon as we got called back to the room Mickey Mouse Clubhouse came on TV. He was so brave while they did their checkup on him-- he'd developed some anxiety about having his blood pressure taken several times these last few weeks but we talked for days about his big strong muscles and how the nurse would check the muscles in his arm and he handled it like a champ. He also hates getting the little oxygen reader on his finger ever since he had to get his finger pricked when they did the blood work at the beginning of all this, but even that he took in stride. Kolby and I died laughing though because he was sitting in the hospital bed with his hands in his lap, then the nurse walked in and talked about testing his oxygen and without saying a word or taking his eyes off the TV he just casually slipped both hands under the blanket to hide them. Sweet boy.

This was his third time under general anesthesia (all in the past six months too... adenoids out, MRI on his neck, now this) and thankfully he handles it really well. The procedure took about an hour and the doctor said everything went as planned. Now it's a waiting game--the doctor said there's about a 50/50 chance the cyst will recur and if it's going to it usually happens within a few weeks. If that happens (which we are praying it doesn't!), he'll need this same procedure one more time. But whether it's a one-and-done or two-and-done thing, we're holding tight to the "and done" part and are ready to have this all behind us.

We were on the road home by mid-afternoon yesterday and Beckett fell asleep in the car then napped at home for a few hours. When he woke up, he was back to his same old chipper self. He didn't need the pain medicine they prescribed and you would seriously never know anything had happened (he still doesn't know anything ever happened, ha). And we are so thankful for people in the medical field because we had wonderful care all throughout this process and if it weren't for advances in medicine our only option would have been surgery. Instead, Beckett came home with just two tiny band-aids that are already off and was running around like a wildman by dinnertime. His neck is still quite pudgy where they cyst was, but we hear it should go down some over time and is already only noticeable if you look for it.

Thank you all for praying for him and for us. And I'll leave you with a few more pictures of this resilient little trooper yesterday after we got home.

Beckett's Lymphangioma

*We had a medical issue arise with Beckett (he's fine though!) and I'm going to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to give some details here to keep our family and friends informed.*

Just over a month ago Beckett developed a swollen area on the right side of his neck. It looked just like the typical toddler pudgy neck or double chin, except it was just on one side. He had a little cold so I assumed it was a swollen lymph node or something, and we weren't worried about it. After a few days it hadn't gone away so we took him to the pediatrician to get it checked out.

Cute kid, huh? :) You can see the bulge here, if you look for it. It does not bother him in the slightest, in fact he has no idea it's even there.

The pediatrician said it wasn't a swollen lymph node and was a bit stumped as to what it would be. She wasn't concerned about it per se, but did think we should figure out what it was. She ran blood work (to see if it was due to an infection, and also to rule out cancer). The blood work all came back fine, and the next step was getting an ultrasound done on it. I'm not sure what was really learned from the ultrasound, but we were then referred to a pediatric surgery group. The pediatric surgeon suspected it is something called a lymphangioma (also known as a cystic hygroma or lymphatic malformation), which is a rare non-malignant mass consisting of fluid-filled spaces thought to be caused by the abnormal development of the lymphatic system. They are almost almost always found in the neck and are usually detected prenatally and apparent at birth, but can occasionally appear in children up to two years old after the onset of a cold (when the immune system--which includes the lymphatic system--is in high gear). The latter is what happened in Beckett's case.

The surgeon ordered an MRI, which we did (unfortunately it involved putting Beckett under general anesthesia, but thankfully he did fine with it) and it confirmed the lymphangioma diagnosis and gave the surgeon a detailed sense of what to expect when he were to go in to surgically remove it. Side note: the reason we can't just let it be (since it doesn't bother him) is it can get infected, and also that as it continues to grow it can interfere with his airway or other structures. Thankfully the MRI showed that the cyst is "not very involved"--meaning it is not entangled with major veins, arteries, muscles, and nerves, although it is in close proximity to all that stuff. Bottom line: the neck is just not an ideal place to operate on. We asked the surgeon if there were any other options besides surgery and in short, his answer was no. He said Beckett's case is a good candidate for surgery and likely would have a really good outcome, but the surgery comes with some risks and the main one is a small chance of nerve damage to the arm. Plus he'd have a pretty sizable scar along his neck.

For a few reasons I wasn't really loving the surgeon, and we decided if we're going to do this we might as well do it all the way and go ahead and seek a second opinion. I got in touch with my best friend Laura's oldest sister who is a surgeon in the area and asked if she had any suggestions, and she got back to me right away with a pediatric surgeon at the big children's hospital in our city, saying he is "phenomenal."

We met with him this past Wednesday and right from the start I felt a million times better about him than the previous surgeon. And that was even before he gave his recommendation, which was that he did not need surgery (!!!!!). He basically said surgery is an outdated approach to dealing with lymphangiomas and that they are now able to treat them with a minimally-invasive approach called sclerotherapy, which is performed by a radiologist who pokes the cyst and drains it, then injects and flushes it with an antibiotic to cause inflammation in the outer wall of the cyst, collapsing those vessels to prevent it from recurring. Another side note: the chance of recurrence is one of the problems with these things--if you don't get the whole outer wall (either by attacking it directly with antibiotics via sclerotherapy or by attempting to remove it surgically)--the cyst can come back. But it's our understanding that there isn't reason to think the chance of recurrence would be more or less likely with sclerotherapy versus surgery, and sclerotherapy has the obvious benefit of avoiding major surgery. And if it were to come back, doing sclerotherapy a second time would be no big deal whereas operating on his neck a second time would be "a mess."

Our sweet boy waiting on the doctor on Wednesday.

These pictures below show the mass/cyst, which has grown substantially in the past week or so after being hardly noticeable for a few weeks.

How handsome is he? :) He's been such a trooper through all of this. And he still has no idea anything is even going on.

So, we met with the chief of radiology at the children's hospital this morning and Beckett is scheduled for the sclerotherapy procedure on Monday. Needless to say, we are now big fans of academic-based children's hospitals, which are at the forefront of innovation and at least in this case, superior to the private-practice group. And of getting a second opinion!

Anyway, so Monday is the big day. The procedure will be done under general anesthesia, but Beckett will go home right afterward with simply a band-aid to show for this whole ordeal. We can hardly believe it! We are so thankful for the Lord's provision through all of this, and after spending time in waiting rooms at a children's hospital, we are more grateful than ever for the good health of our children. But please to join us in praying for Beckett's procedure Monday--for no fear and for full and complete healing.

And speaking of waiting rooms, here's one last picture just for fun.