Julia loves to chew on her fingers. This day she was sitting up like a big girl and chewing on her fingers. How cute!!

Julia was weighed and measured at her doctor appointment. At 3-1/2 months she weights 11 lbs 6oz and measures 24-1/4 inches long.

We took Julia to see a pediatric heart doctor today to have a heart murmur reviewed. Overall the visit went well, we liked the doctor and felt that he covered her condition well for us. Julia was a good sport for all of the poking.

She has an ‘innocent’ heart murmur. This just means that it is not a significant murmur. I will be generic in the description to try to keep from being boring. There are two aspects of her heart that are not functioning normally. One problem is the vessel that takes blood from her heart to her lungs has not grown enough to handle the volume of blood. He said that this condition is common in little ones and should fix itself in the next six months.

The second problem is referred to as a PFO, which is an incomplete closure of a valve between the left and right atria. This valve is open during the fetal development to direct blood away from the non-functioning lungs. After birth, this valve closes and redirects the blood to the now functioning lungs. In 20 percent of the population this valve is not completely closed. The bottom line for Julia is that it is not going to cause any problems now and we will have her looked at again at age 3. At that point they will be able to see better how her heart is growing and how this closure has developed. It can close, it can grow to a point where the pressure of blood in her heart holds it closed, or it can be a hole between the sections of the heart. It sounds like the long term effects to Julia will be a concern for blood clots.

We will pray that in three years when she is examined again that she will be given a clean bill of health!

This is Julia sleeping in her cradle. It won’t be long before she fills it up and has to move to her crib. It dawned on me that I hadn’t taken a photo of her in it yet and might miss the opportunity if I didn’t do it soon. It is always a little dangerous to take a photo of a sleeping baby, but I got away with it and didn’t wake her up. This cradle was not only used by Emily, but Mommy and Uncle Philip also. The cradle was made by Grammy and Granddaddy while they were waiting for Uncle Philip’s arrival.

We were playing in the girls room and Emily discovered that she could check on Julia for Mommy. If she could figure out how to climb in with Julia, she would. This week, Emily also discovered that she could climb into her own crib with the side down. She didn’t think she could crawl out after she got in, so we kept playing the game with Mommy taking her out and she would climb in again.

Julia has been reaching out and touching things for a little while now. She has gotten much better this past week at grabbing hold of things. This is proved each time she grasps the frog on her bouncy seat. We know it because the frog plays a song that we hear often. So far we are not tired of the song yet.

Julia isn’t sleeping in her big bed yet, but we are starting to use it for a play space. We want both Julia to get used to her crib and Emily used to having Julia share the room. I thought the photo was a sweet photo of Julia. Once she gets a little mobile I will clean out the bed, but right now it is a combo of a play place and storage of toys.