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.
Monday, December 31, 2012
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.
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