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**Nathan was born January 2008 with Achondroplasia dwarfism. Achondroplasia is the most common form of dwarfism. This blog welcomes a look into our family as we raise our son as a Little Person.**

A New Playmate!

Sunday, Nate, Audrey and I went to have a play date with our new friend Olivia. We first met in December 2008 at a LP chapter Christmas Party. I was surprised to find out a few facts. Olivia is just 2 days older than Nathan and her family lives 10 minutes from us. How great and odd that an event as unique as "hitting the lottery" (as they term being born with dwarfism from AH parents) but it happened twice at the same time with only a few miles of separation.
It was nice to talk with Deanna (Olivia's mom) to see what has been going on in Olivia's first 18 months of life. It's amazing how different they can be in their development even though they are the same age. Olivia is scheduled to have decompression surgery on Aug. 5th, knock on wood, Nate's foramen magnum has not been an issue. With that said, Olivia hasn't walked yet, she has been starting to pull herself up to stand. Nate has been walking for a few months now. So, since Nate is mostly upright, the other difference we see is in height. Deanna mentioned how tall Nate looked already. I thought that Nate was doing pretty good keeping up in that department and figured he would start to trail off in height now compared to an average sized toddler. But something she said has really got me thinking.
Since Nate was born, we had him looked at and x-rayed to confirm the diagnosis of achondroplasia. I wanted to hold off on blood testing since he was so little. As time went on, I thought I really don't need a blood test to tell me he has achrondroplasia. I guess just knowing he was a dwarf was good enough and that the other test were a good indication of that. But Deanna asked if he was hypochondroplasia because she felt he was taller. So know I think what if he is? I don't know much about hypochondroplasia. Maybe I should find out so we know where we stand medically. Something I will have to talk to our pediatrician about at our 18 month check-up.
Besides all that we had a great time and it was nice to see the kids play together or not. They're not use to sharing and Nathan was playing with all of Olivia's toys. Olivia was so cute wanting to give kisses which I couldn't get a good picture. The delay on these digital cameras can make you so mad. But I'm sure that we will have plenty of tries since we are such close neighbors. Here are some pictures of our play date.











No Pot of Gold yet (can you see the rainbow?)
Saturday morning I was making pancakes when I thought my house was too quiet. That always makes me nervous. This is what I found, my kids sitting quietly watching cartoons.

5 comments:

Jaime said...

Looks like a fun playdate! And so wonderful to have Olivia's family so close. That's how we are with the Chase's - they live about 20 minutes from us. Caitlyn and Aidan are about 6 weeks apart and we first met when Caty was about 5 months old. We're pretty lucky!

Kim said...

Laura,
You can always have him tested-that said, the only reason I think he has achon-albeit mild, is the hands. There are achons that don't have the trident hand, but I don't think hypos have the trident hand at all. Just to give you a bit of comparison-Preston is tall for an achon-not for a 3 1/2 year old. When he was Nate's age you could not really tell that he was all that small. He also has mild facial features and infitismal frontal bossing. A friend of mine's son was off the charts in height for achon and it was thought he had hypo, but blood test came back achon. If you want, you can have the x-rays read by a dwarfism specialist or have a geneticist take blood.
Either way, Nate is 100% cute and perfect no matter what, but at least you would have a concrete answer!

Unknown said...

I had Aidan tested when he was about Nate's age. Came back positive for achon. I felt pretty certain of achon since his xray and verbal dx on day 2 after birth. Months later down the road his orthopedist mentioned that Aidan's features appeared mild and wondered if possibly hypo which made us get a blood test so we had on the record a for sure dx. As Aidan's gotten older more of the achon traits have surfaced.

Melissa Swartley said...

How awesome that Nate has such a cute girl to hang out with! You all are lucky to be so close! I wish I could toss in some advise on the achon/ hypo situation, but we are in a whole other realm with OI. I never read much on the more common types of dwarfism since Sonya was always in the rare category. Like Kim and Melisa said though, you could always just do a blood test to find out! It would be nice to know for sure, just in case certain issues are associated with hypo that you would want to know about ahead of time. I think Nate is just plain ol' cute no matter what! Keep us posted! Glad Nate and Olivia had a great time together!

Greene Family said...

Adorable pictures - Nate and Olivia are cuties! It looks like they had a fun playdate! It's great that they are so close in age and live close by!

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