HEART OF GOLD

 I took James to Jackson this morning for his 5th and final echocardiogram (he had two while in the hospital after being diagnosed with Kawasaki Disease, one follow-up at 2-weeks, and another follow-up at 6-months). That's right, he's in the clear and doesn't have to go in for any further re-checks (usually, if a heart issue were to arise, it would happen in the first 3-4 weeks, but we had a couple follow-ups just to be sure our baby boy is OK). The whole morning took longer than planned due to two accidents that caused long back-ups and re-routing on our way to Jackson, then 3.5 hours at the hospital while we waited for testing and the results. James was a great sport the whole time though, watching Dreamworks Spooky Stories on the way there (a VERY entertaining compilation of short Halloween-themed stories, especially the Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space -  you can buy it via Amazon, but we just rented it from RedBox), playing and reading in the waiting room (side note: Room on the Broom is a really great Halloween book), and being super patient with the nurses, echo tech, and doctors. The only thing he didn't cooperate with was lying down for the echo, so they did it with him sitting up (which was no problem - the tech said she'd rather do it that way and have it take a little longer than upset him by forcing him to lay down). Totally worth it to find out that his heart is perfect!

Being a pirate with one of the paper head circumference tapes (and wearing the required hospital arm band)

By the time we got out of there it was 12:30pm and we were both starving. There was a Wendy's across the street, and I promised James a cake pop if he ate all his chicken nuggets before we got to Starbucks (mama needed more coffee, and the nearest and only Starbucks in town was 15 minutes away). Poor kid barely lasted 5 minutes on the highway though (I leaned over to snap this picture while parked in the Starbucks drivethru - even the sound of me ordering cake pops didn't wake him up)

 And just for record keeping purposes, he weighed in at 37.5 lbs fully clothed, was 41" tall with his shoes on, blood pressure was 115/60, and oxygen level was >99%.