8 Months Old!!!

Charlie,

You are now 8 months old! It seems like yesterday that we checked into the hospital full of excitement that our family would grow. And, just like that, you turned our world upside down in so many wonderful ways. You made Jack and brother and stole my heart. I got to know the joy of bringing a baby home right away, the closeness that comes with successfully nursing, and the absolute wonder of watching a sibling relationship unfold. I never thought I could love TWO little boys so fiercely. I didn't realize how much time had already passed until I recently watched some little videos of you as an uncoordinated newborn!

So what are you up to these days?

You weigh 15 lbs, 4 ounces and are 26 3/4 inches long. You wear 3-6 month clothes and a size 3 diaper.

You have been sitting up unassisted for about 2 months now and army crawling for a month. On Monday, July 26, you started "real" crawling. You are still working on it but you are doing it! You can also go from a crawling or prone position to sitting up. This morning, Daddy found you sitting up in your crib!

No teeth yet but it sure seems like you are working on them! You like to chew on anything you can get your hands on.

You have busy little hands. When you don't have anything to hold onto but want something, you excitedly twirl your hands like little propellers. You have a vise-like grip and are FAST when you want something (like my glasses). You make cute little excited noises when you see something you want and waste no time scooting over to get it. You are starting to pull yourself up on things.

You have a temper! You get very angry when you are put down when you want to be held and when we take things away from you. You can scream pretty loud! You also put your arms straight out, lock your elbows, make tight little fists and get red in the face and scream. You are pretty funny to watch.

You are sleeping so well these days! You take 2 naps a day, a short one in the morning and a long one in the afternoon. You go to bed around 7 pm and generally sleep until 7 am the next morning. You may wake up once or twice but are easily soothed back to sleep. This is a big relief for your mommy and daddy! You are sleeping in Jack's big-boy room because he isn't ready to give up his crib yet. :-)

You love to be held. You are my little snuggle-bug and until just a month ago, you slept a lot of the night in my arms. I miss this but I also like getting my sleep--and I think you do, too.

You are a pro at traveling. You've been on at least one plane trip a month since you were 3 weeks old and you are always such a good boy. You often get to travel first class because we fly so often--it's a treat for both of us and you always behave like a gentlemen.

I love you, little Bear!

Don't worry--we don't often dress you in flowers but I love this picture. ;-)

Surgery Recap--Take One...

I am happy to report that after two months of surgeries for Jack, it seems we are finally on the other side of it all. It was a bit of a roller coaster but Jack's determination through it all amazed me! This will be a long post but I want to remember this experience for Jack.

My mother came up from San Diego on Sunday and we all drove to a hotel in Portland for the night before the surgery. We checked into Doernbecher Children's Hospital on March 29th for Jack's Nissen Fundoplication and gastrostomy ("g-tube") surgeries. The Nissen was meant to stop his reflux and therefore help protect his airway. They put in a g-tube not so much for feeding but so that we can "vent" his stomach and release gas and air.

The first challenge we had to overcome was our late surgery time. We checked in at 10:30 am for a 12:30 surgery time. He wasn't allowed to eat after 4:30 am and no liquids after 7 am. Anyone with a 2 year-old will know this is somewhat of an impossible mission. Jack generally wakes up at 7 am and his first word is "downstairs," meaning "get me downstairs and feed me!" So, we woke him up at 4, had him eat some breakfast and then put him back to bed in hopes he wouldn't be so hungry in the morning. He surprised us by doing really, really well that morning. My mom and I took him on a long walk in the rain through streets of Portland (and got to see some really cool old houses in the process!) to distract him prior to leaving.

Our first humor that day was seeing a picture from Jack's previous surgery prominently displayed on a bulletin board in the nurse's station with the warning "Crayons in Stomach on Endoscopy." At his first little surgery, they took pictures of his esophagus and stomach and found a bunch of crayon bits--that he had managed to sneak in pre-surgery. Ha! The surgeons were less amused that day.

Here is a picture of Jack in the pre-op area, playing "glove boy" a silly game we made up to pass the time on one of our visits while we waited in an exam room.


After we tried to force the sedative down his throat (he was NOT thrilled about this), it was time to send him back. Fortunately,our anesthesiologist was this very, very sweet man who took to Jack immediately. He also had a 2 year-old son at home. They let us carry him back to the OR but we had to hand him over at the doors. I did not expect it to be so hard to hand him over. I was so scared...scared about not knowing what was going to come next about knowing that he wasn't going to be the "same" after he came back out of the OR. Instead of handing him to a nurse, the anesthesiologist took him and assured us he would take good care of him. After they left, Jared and I shared some teary eyes as we headed back to the waiting area. It was doubly hard to see my husband so emotional about it.

The surgery took about 3 hours and our surgeon came out as soon as it was over and told us Jack did really, really well and that the surgery was successful (famous last words!). About 15 minutes later, we were able to go back and see him. He was in a lot of pain but I was able to hold him immediately. Apparently, when he woke up, he immediately got to work trying to pull his g-tube out (fortunately, he was not successful). Here he is just post-surgery in my arms:


The next two days were rough. On Monday, I was thinking it was going to be a LONG recovery. Jack was in a lot of pain and learned a couple new words: "hurt" and "ow." I think the most difficult part was that he couldn't tell us where it hurt and didn't completely understand when we would ask him. So, we had to guess and try to stay ahead of the pain. He was on morphine for the first two days and then weaned off onto oxycodone. Hard to have your baby on such big medications. He was very clingy to me and didn't want anyone else with him. At one point, I wound up stuffing myself into the pediatric crib just to cuddle him. (We did NOT take any pictures of that!) My normally very, very active little boy was a complete noodle--did not want to get out of bed or do anything.


On Tuesday morning, we forced him to have sponge bath, get dressed and try to walk. I kept reminding myself of when I was a little girl and sick and how my mother would make me take a bath or shower...and how much better I would feel when I did. Well...she clearly was on the right path because I was amazed at how quickly Jack rallied after we made him get up. Soon, he was toting his IV pole like a pro to the playroom. By Wednesday morning, it was clear that we needed to get out of there. Jack was going stir-crazy, as were we. So, we discharged and came home Wednesday afternoon.

Going home!!!



I think the next most difficult challenge was the "post-Nissen" diet, which is essentially a pureed diet, which you are supposed to be on for 4 weeks. Not to mention that for the rest of his life, he is supposed to avoid a lot of basic foods (fluffy breads, chunks of meat, chunks of firm vegetables, and carbonated beverages of any kind). Changing a toddler diet and essentially eliminating all foods he loved was rough.

We took it easy on Thursday but by Friday, we needed to get Jack out for an activity, so we headed to his little school so he could participate in the Easter party. He had fun hunting for eggs and seeing his friends (who were very impressed with his second "belly button" and the number of band-aids he got to use).

The following Monday, it was clear to me that he would benefit most from resuming his old schedule so one week post-surgery, he was back at school! Laparoscopic surgery is definitely the way to go if it is an option. Had we gone with an open surgery, as was originally recommended to us, we would have still been in the hospital that Friday and he wouldn't have returned to school for three weeks!

That's the positive part of this story. The not-so-positive part was that when we were still in the hospital, I thought I had heard him burp. He shouldn't have been able to burp or vomit after this surgery (which is why we have the g-tube). I tried to tell myself I was imagining it but by Thursday, I was sure enough that I called the nurse. She thought maybe I was hearing something different. But, by Monday, one week after surgery, he vomited. The nurse seemed pretty skeptical when I reported this but I knew in my heart something wasn't right. I knew that when we were still in the hospital. So, two weeks later, we were back up at Doernbecher's for a study to see if he was still refluxing when they put barium in his stomach. Sadly, he was "freely" refluxing as if he had never had the surgery at all. So, we were schedule for a re-do surgery exactly a month after the first one.

I am so thankful that my mother was able to come up and be with us. She took care of Charlie, cooked dinner for us after we got home, spoiled us with grocery shopping, and convinced my husband to smuggle some wine into the hospital so we could share a glass that first exhausting night. She took very good care of me and Jared.

I am equally grateful for my father--having a doctor in the family is a blessing for so many reasons but he has really helped us negotiate this difficult and confusing path of doctors, insurance, bills, etc. He did a ton of research to help us make the right decisions on evidence-based science, encouraged us to switch surgeons so we could get a laparoscopic surgery, reassured us we were doing the best thing and, on top of all that, was still "Bampa" and "Daddy" when we needed him to be. I am so blessed to have these two amazing people to call parents.

Jared's parents were equally as important. They suffered through Jack crying for three hours straight after he came home just to give me a break. They learned how to use his g-tube and were a constant source of encouragement. I'm lucky to have them nearby when my own parents can't be.

An Apple for Mother's Day

For Mother's Day, my sweet husband surprised me with a new MacBook Pro. For anyone who knows my husband, you know what a huge act of selflessness it was to humble himself enough to buy an Apple product--he is a PC man 100%.

I have been wanting a Mac computer for a while now and when my hand-me-down laptop that hit the end of its useful life, I started a campaign for a Mac. I honestly didn't think it would be successful so I was completely shocked when I came downstairs one evening to find a sleek, shiny computer with a red bow on top.

Since then, I've been having fun getting to know the computer. I haven't operated on a Mac since middle school, so it has been a learning curve but I right now, I am completely immersed in iPhoto and have managed to sort through and edit about half our gazillion pictures (one reason I never post on here, we are horrible about getting pictures off the camera and uploaded).

Mother's Day was otherwise quiet (well, as quiet as any day with two small children can be!). My mother had just left after visiting for Jack's second surgery and my in-laws were visiting my brother- and sister-in-law in Virginia. But, our little family was all I needed.

I feel very lucky to be mommy to Jack and Charlie. They truly light up my life in so many ways. Mother's Day is a gift to me every year; all I ever wanted was to be a mommy. I'm so glad Jack and Charlie made me one.

Refining

It's almost April and I'm wondering where the time has gone. A quarter of this year is nearly gone! Two small children keep a girl occupied, I guess!

I'm feeling very tired right now. I've been doing a lot of traveling these past three months. I've already been back to San Diego 4 times since January and I've lost count of the number of trips to Portland we've been making. That's been averaging at least once a week. Portland is an awesome city and I wish we were going up there for sightseeing. Unfortunately, most of our time has been spent at Children's Hospital. Next week Jack is going to have a fairly invasive surgery to (hopefully) prevent him from having the degree of reflux he does and the laryngospasms. At the same time, they will put a feeding tube in his stomach, with a "button" on the outside of his tummy. The feeding tube will be primarily so that we can "vent" his stomach or empty it if he is nauseous.

At the same time, Charlie has been showing many of the same symptoms and so he's been undergoing a few tests, as well. What we know from the initial tests is that he, too, is aspirating when he nurses or drinks from a bottle so I had to give up breastfeeding and go to exclusively pumping so we can thicken the milk to prevent it from going into his lungs. Funny--I was so reluctant about breastfeeding after my experience with Jack, I was thoroughly planning to pump like I did for Jack. I never dreamed how much I would wind up enjoying the experience of nursing. I have been so sad about giving it up but after seeing how much less pain Charlie is in when drinking thickened milk, I can see it's the right way to go. He has a couple more tests in April and then we'll go from there as to whether he will also need this surgery.

This has been a hard decision to come to. Every doctor he has seen, including some second opinions, are all in agreement that he needs this surgery. I'm still struggling with reconciling what appears to by my perfect healthy baby with what all these tests tell us is really going on inside of him. I'm so scared that we are making a decision that is going to make things worse than better. This is what I think is one of the hardest things about being a parent: being the judge and jury for your child's health. I feel very unqualified sometimes (well, most of the time!) to do this. So, nearly two years to the day Jack finally got released from the NICU, we are heading back to the hospital. I'm trusting God that this is the right path, the right decision, and that this experience is refining our faith.

On another note, I've written before about our struggle to find a church up here. We have been looking for the right church with the right community so we can meet some people up here, ideally some other young families. We did find a Catholic church that we like and have gone a several times, with the challenge that Jack lasts about 10 minutes in the nursery before we are called to come get him. He's not so good about sitting through Mass with us, though, so church has been a bit of a challenge. (How do you other mommies deal with 2 year olds and church????) So, although St. Mary's has been good, we still haven't found that community we were looking for. We made the decision to widen our horizons a bit so last week we went to a community church in our area. Wow--it was an amazing experience. This was the most family-centered, welcoming church I've ever been to. Jack still didn't last long in the nursery (I think we are going to have to keep working on this) but after the service, we were feeding Charlie in the common area outside of the santuary and at least 11 different people introduced themselves to us, realizing we were "newbies." We were invited out to lunch, to join a small group, and to join a mom's group. Everyone was so incredibly sincere and friendly that we immediately felt right at home. The service was different for us--defintitely more "casual" than a Catholic service but the sermon was good and the music was amazing. The community was just what we have been searching for. So, I think we are going to split our time. My Catholic faith is still very important to me, as is raising my kids in the Faith, so we plan to do Saturday night Masses and Sunday mornings at this new church. I'm excited to see where this brings us.

That's about it, please keep Jack in your prayers next week (and this nervous mama too!).

Cousin Love

Although I have a lot of siblings, we did not grow up with a lot of cousins and none that lived close or that we regularly got together with. It is such a special thing, then, to see our children having the benefit of cousins! Of the eigh grandchildren my parents have, 6 live within two blocks of eachother. Jack and Charlie are the only two that don't live close. But, whenever we are in town, they love my boys like they were around the corner every day.

Little C, in particular, had a special love for Jack when he was a baby and shows the same sweet affection for Charlie. She is a great cousin and it is so cute to see her dote on him!

Here is Little C with Jack as a baby:


And now with Charlie:

Baptism

Oh, Blog, how I've neglected you. It's crazy that four months has passed. Baby Charlie did make his appearance one day shy of 40 weeks on November 20, 2009. This birth experience was a breeze compared to Jack's birth...and I got to take a baby right home with me! What a difference!

So, in the four months since then, we've been incredibly busy. The week he was born, Jared's brother and family came for Thanksgiving, which we had at our house. Fortunately, we had lots of hands to help host since Charlie was less than a week old. The next week, one of my best friends, Michelle, came up for a visit. It was her first visit since we moved up here and she and I got to share some sweet girl time together. She and I have a long history together, including having lived and worked together, but we really made some very wonderful memories during this trip. I am so grateful she was able to come. My mother and father followed suit the next week and we were spoiled with my mother's cooking, lots of Christmas shopping and a really yummy dinner out with them while Jared's parents babysat. We then took a very short breather and flew to San Diego for Charlie's first Christmas! I can't believe we were able to take him on a trip when he was less than a month old! Jack wasn't even out of the hospital by then! Since Christmas, Charlie has been on 3 more trips to San Diego and too many car trips to Portland to count at this point. He's becoming a very seasoned traveler!

Charlie's Baptism

We decided to do Charlie's baptism in San Diego at the church we were married in and Jack was baptised in. We have been going to this church for a long, long time and leaving our church and finding a new "home" has been one of the hardest parts about moving. The priest, Father Matt, is very special to us. He married us, was one of the first people to visit Jack in the hospital to pray over him, he baptised Jack and we decided to give Charlie his name as a middle name. Fortunately, he was able to baptize Charlie as well. Here are some pictures of Charlie's big day!

This is my best childhood friend, Brigid, me, and Charlie. Brigid has become an amazing seamstress recently and given the amount of time we spent baptizing our dolls and pets as children, it was only fitting that she made Charlie's gown. It is so beautiful and she put so much care into the detail (right down to crosses in the lace edging!):


Our best friends, Jenn and Robby, came in from Texas for the baptism. Jennifer has been my best friend for years and I miss her so much! It meant so much to me that they came out for the big day and were Charlie's Godparents. Sadly, they weren't able to bring their two little girls with them (one of them my namesake and Goddaughter!) but I did get to meet her little baby bump, Addison (scheduled to make her arrival on or about June 7th!).


After the baptism, we celebrated the newest Christian with a brunch hosted by my parents. The weather was beautiful and so many people came to celebrate.



Daphne, with her husband Nick, was one of the leaders of our Engaged Encounter weekend. She and Nick were such an inspiration to us that weekend. I'm so glad we've kept in touch.


Finally, Jack was such a good boy and good big brother during the baptism. It's hard to believe it was only a year and a half since we were celebrating his baptism!


I am so grateful for the gift of my two little boys!