2nd Birthday

We have been enjoying our time together that we forgot about our blog! Elijah is getting stronger and has fewer restrictions so we have been able to experience many new and exciting events the past few months. We celebrated Elijah's 2nd birthday on April 25th, we were able to take him to the zoo and down to Milwaukee to visit family for a 4th of July picnic. We will continue to share his developement, our thoughts, and latest happenings. More to come...

Our First Christmas......at Home!!!

We have been very blessed with the continued health and improvement of Elijah over the last year. The trips that we have made down to Children's Hospital have been for minor issues and should be the case from here on out.

We made a calender for our family as our Christmas present to them....I do have to say it, it turned out really, really good!

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AaN2bZu3cuGLjw

This year is the first Christmas at home for Elijah. He loves the sound paper makes when you rip it, and he was giggling away as we opened up his presents for him. Of course both sets of Grandparents spoiled with the amount of Christmas presents he recieved...but that is to be expected. We are now looking forward to bringing in the New Year at home....all happy and healthy!

I got inked!

My older brother came home last month to visit and we went and got tatted....crazy, huh!

I got the symbol for STRENGTH ( I chose red because it also represents strength) with Elijah's name over it. It is over my heart....to always remind me of the strength he has and will continue to show us!

Say What!?!

On December 9th we headed down to Children's Hospital bright and early for Elijah's hearing test/stint removal, as you can see he is looking stylish in his Spongebob pj's (courtesy of Grandma). His stint removal was very routine...in with the scope and out with the plastic stint in less than an hour. The hearing test took a little longer to conduct. The outcome of the hearing test stated that he had minor hearing loss in both ears and will need to get hearing aids for both ears. We are hoping that once he gets the hearing aids and gets accustomed to wearing them (the doctors said it usually takes about 2 months for kids to get used to them) that it will help with his attention span and speech development.

Elijah also has been working with a Physical Therapist for the last couple of months on a weekly basis. He is making great improvements and we definitely can tell how much stronger he has become. The PT has decided that he will need to get some ankle braces to help support his ankles and make him keep his feet flat on the ground. This also should help with his standing exercises and getting him to learn how to stand up and eventually walk.

Zipper Club

On this day last year, Elijah had open heart surgery and became a member of the zipper club(named for the scar on the chest that resembles a zipper).

It is hard to believe how much he has been through, and what strength he has. This time last year we spent our holidays at Childrens Hospital and now we are very thankful that we get to be in the comforts of our own home, with our little boy! His strength has taught us a lot and we are so proud of all that he has and will accomplish.

Kidney issue....all fixed...we hope!!

Well, it has definately been a while since we had to spend time in a hospital. We were down at Children's in Milwaukee for Elijah's kidney procedure. We went down on Wednesday morning to have him admitted for pre-op lab work and just general observation before his procedure Thursday morning. Steve and I definately had a hard time trying to keep Elijah ocuppied while confined in a hospital room. Now that he is more mobile it was difficult to keep him still, the minute we put him in his crib he just wanted to roll around. We had to put some blankets on the floor and barricade with pillows because while in his crib he kept bagging his head against it. It was funny to see some of the specialist and nurses check his vitals while crawling on the floor with him.


Thursday morning they took him down to surgery holding around 8am. They told us that were going to have to take a series of x-rays of his ureter tube and then determine what they were going to do. The x-ray showed that there was 2 blockages. The good news was that they were able to do the procedure scopically, so they did not have to re-cut him. One of the blockages was up higher on the ureter tube and they had to use a balloon to loosen up the blockage since it was slightly bigger than the other. They wound up leaving a stint in which will eventually have to come out. They decided to send him to the ICU unit for recovery, just because of his past medical history. After 24 hours, they decided to transfer him to a normal recovery unit becuase he was doing so well. We only had to stay until about noon on Saturday.

We are going back down in 4 weeks for a Renal Ultrasound and then 4 weeks after that we are going to have the stint removed.

Continuous Progress

Elijah has been doing great! He has been off the oxygen during the day for over a month. This is a step in the right direction from his heart surgery. By having the hole repaired in his heart, his oxygen levels are more stable and where they need to be. The doctors were so encouraged they were willing to take away the oxygen machine altogether! Michelle and I weren't that ready to just cut it out cold turkey.

He does dip at times when he gets into a heavy sleep, so we choose to continue to use it just at night. We are being patient with it because he's had the hole in the heart for almost a year, so our thought is that it will take all that time to get stronger and regulate itself.

Elijah has so much more energy when he is awake which is awesome to see...and he's got a smile that will make you melt. Somewhere along the way he has developed this laugh that is staight off the "Revenge of the Nerds" movie...must be from Michelle!

Thanks for checking in on us, talk to you soon.