Monday, December 31, 2012

New Years Eve

We had our second and much better snow fall today.  Grandma Judy is here for the holiday and she volunteered to stay with Marlin while we went sledding with Gus.  What a blast!  Sledding is way more fun with your kids then when you were a kid.  Thor and Gus built a jump thanks to a strategically placed rock.  They caught some good air as you can see.  Hope you all had as much fun on New Year’s Eve as we did.








Random December Photos


These are just a bunch of random photos from December. From the first snow fall to making pizzelles for Christmas. Gus turned out to be a great pizzelle maker.  Gus and I made a little trip down to San Diego again.  We wanted to use our tickets one last time before the end of the year.  We stayed at Aunt Colleen’s house (even though she was in Jersey – thanks Aunt Colleen) and when we got up in the morning Gus wanted to go to the beach before we went to Sea World.  We ended up staying there for a few hours because we were having so much fun.  We still managed to go to Sea World.  We saw the flamingos for the first time and the walrus too (man, they are big!). Also, a token picture of our little man, Marlin. He is all snug as a bug in a rug thanks to a beautiful blanket made by our friend, Christina.








Christmas Fun


We had so much fun Christmas morning.  Gus had a ton of gifts to open thanks to many of you and even got to open up all of Marlin’s gifts for him.  The big gift was a wooden train set.  Santa was pretty sneaky and set it up in Daddy’s workshop.  He left Gus a letter in his stocking that told him he had to do a scavenger hunt to find it.  Of course, Gus can’t read so the scavenger hunt consisted of pictures of Norman (my stuffed lamb dressed up as Santa) hiding in all different places like the dryer of the toy chest.  It didn’t take long for Gus to figure out how to play and he eventually found the train set.  He was super cute.  He said, “ Santa is a pretty cool guy for giving me this train set.” And yes, Santa did really bring an abacus for Gus.







Big Horn Sheep and Baby Jesus

Christmas Eve mass was pretty special this year.  Not only was Marlin asked to be the back up baby Jesus, but also Gus made an appearance as the first “Big Horn Sheep” in the Christmas story play.  You know, every church has a few sheep here and there, but how many have big horn sheep?  When Gus was asked to be a sheep for the play he had one condition – to be a big horn sheep.  So Mommy had to figure out how to make horns out of felt.  Let me know if you ever need that little secret.  Gus did a great job and unfortunately, Marlin did not need step in as Jesus.




Visiting Santa

We took Gus and Marlin to see Santa at, where else than, Bass Pro Shop.  They really have the best-looking Santa helpers.  Not to mention, they have reindeer, albeit, they are stuffed, but they look real.







Marlin's First Bath

Marlin’s first bath was enjoyable by all.  We couldn’t give him a real bath until now because of his illiostomy and then because his incision.  It took a few minutes for him to admit that he liked it though.  Here are a few pictures from the memorable event.



Saturday, December 29, 2012

Some Pictures from November

November seemed to fly by.  Marlin's surgery was the week of Thanksgiving.  This picture is from the day they released us from the hospital.  You can tell he looks a little under the weather, but not bad for having major suregery 5 days before.  The rest of the pictures are from the rest of the month.





Pumpkin Patch 2012


I realize I forgot to add these photos to our Halloween ones.  These are from a trip we took to the pumpkin patch.  Sorry they are out of order.





Ilieostomy Take Down


Many of you have asked about the reason for his surgery and I realized I never really explained what it was for.  So here goes…

When Marlin was a week old, he developed a perforation in his small intestine.  They operated that night and took out 4 cm of his small intestine.  This is when they created the stoma that he had for almost 5 months.  This allowed him to poop out his side.  His intestines were not connected.  When the hole occurred, the area around it started to die.  This is why they had to remove the 4 cm.  They did not sew it together then because they wanted to make sure they had all the bad parts.  Also, this is a pretty traumatic event for a little guy and sewing it backs together at that point could have been very bad.  The part after they cut it apart was still inside him but not being used.

They didn’t want to reconnect the intestines until he got stronger and bigger.  Ideally, he would have been about 10 pounds or bigger.  Our surgeon said he has done the reconnect on smaller babies, but found it was a lot more successful the larger the baby.  We felt comfortable taking care of his stoma, so we waited until he was 10 pounds.  Most folks have a bag to catch the poop in, but because he was so little, we just used gauze and an extra diaper and changed him often.  We also used some special ointment called Ilex that protected his skin from the acidic stool.

Basically, this surgery was to reconnect his intestines and make sure all the plumbing works.  Which it did and still does.  It took a few days before he could eat.  They wanted him to “poop” before he could eat.  I say, “poop” because it was really just dirty water in the beginning.   We expected to have weeks of diarrhea and terrible diaper rash, but we were very lucky.  We only had about a week of the loose stool and no diaper rash.  We were very proactive in that department and lathered his butt every chance we had.

He has made an amazing recovery.  The only little glitch is that his body didn’t like the internal “dissolvable” stitches and so it is trying to push them out of his incision.  The doctor has assured us that this is not out of the ordinary and that it will be fine.  The incision looks good even around those areas.  His little body is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing (getting rid of foreign bodies).

He continues to grow and eat well.  He has maintained his weight, which is very good for this type of surgery (and not eating for two days).

He amazes us every day!  He is smiling and trying to laugh all the time.  Overall, he is a very good baby and we are blessed to have him here.  If you look at the odds for this type of surgery, they were not in his favor.  The stubbornness of the combination of Ferrara and Peterson really helped him in this case.


Thank you again for all the support and prayers.  We couldn’t have made it with out them.

I have included a few pictures.  Warning: they are graphic.  They are the before and after.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Our Little Turkey

Thanks to Nonni and Sarah for the cute Thanksgiving outfits!


San Diego and Sea World


When we went to Sea World for Gus’ birthday we got these fun day passes that allow us to go as often as we want before Dec 31, 2012.  So Gus and I took advantage of them and went last Monday.  We went down on Sunday afternoon, played at the beach and stayed at Aunt Colleen’s house.  Gus thought that was pretty cool!  On Monday we went to Sea World.  We did the usually stuff like seeing the dolphins and Shamu, but the high light for Gus was touching a baby alligator.  He is in an alligator “phase” right now and they are his favorite animals.  His little eyes got so big when he saw it and then the lady let him touch it.  It was very cool.  His second favorite animal that day was the water monitor, which he thought was related to the alligator except it was yellow.  I tried to explain to him the difference but he kept saying, “Actually Mom, they are the same animal just different colors.”  I don’t know where he gets his stubbornness.  It must be the Peterson side.

Hanging out at Aunt Colleen's
Gus touching the alligator

This water monitor was very interesting to Gus

Friday, November 16, 2012

Halloween 2012

This year for Halloween Gus wanted to be a flat bed truck.  However, he needed a new pair of rain boots and he remembered ones we had seen in July that looked like fireman boots.  So I talked him into being a fireman.  The boots had a matching raincoat, which he also needed.  His personal shopper (Nonni) got right on it and sent us the set.  I then got online and found a hat that lit up and had a siren.  I also found a backpack that looked like two fire extinguisher that you could fill with water and spray it out on “fires”.  Gus thought that was pretty cool.  He put out pretend fires all along the parade route.  Mom also found a little sleeper for Marlin that had fire trucks all over it.







Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Darlin' Marlin

Our dear friend Madeline, gave him this nick name and we have been using it ever since.  This post is for those of you who just want more pictures of the million(s) dollar baby.




This one is for all the Spartans out there!  Thanks Uncle Brad and Aunt Kim for the great hat.
Mom bought him this outfit.  I think it it is adorable even if he looks like Johnny Cash in it. 

I love this picture.  I believe he is saying, "Look out world, here I am!"