Pretty Flowers

Bobbie and her family sent us beautiful flowers. Jackson thinks they are beautiful too!

We have not forgotten our wonderful little Jackson. He is doing great and such a happy little boy! He has had a lot of fun having his grandma and grandpa Trapp here, grandma Muffler and Uncle Adam. Don't worry, we will keep putting up pictures of him as well!

Jackson in the Morning

So this morning I woke up at about 7 and hadnt heard Jackson...usually he is at our bedside by 6:30. Anyways so I went and looked for him in his bedroom and he wasnt in there...I looked in his bed and behind the chair and under his bed and in his closet. I started panicing then I went in the living room and looked for him in there cause maybe he was laying with Grandma and Grandpa...but he wasnt in there. So now really really worried I went and broke the news to Christina.She was way out of it, so I dont even think she understood why I was freaking out. Then I walked out of the room and heard a Jackson grunt. But I still couldnt find him. Then I realized that the bathroom door was closed. Sure enough I opened the door and there he was.

Kicking Legs!

So we went and visited Kenadi today at Primary Childrens. Let me just say she is one pretty little girl! Anyways...This morning when my mom went to visit the nurses told my mom that they were thinking of taking her off of the medicine that was keeping her whole body still. By the time we got there she had been completely off of that medicine. She was taking breaths every once and a while all by herself, she also flinched when we tickeled her toes, and when the nurses came in and had to adjust the monitors, she was kicking all over. She is soooo ticklish, we found that she is the most ticklish on her feet and just below the ribs, its funny to watch. The nurses said before we came in she was able to open her right eye, but the sweeling was still too much to open her left eye. There was a little bit of bleeding in her brain, but the doctors adjusted the amount of blood thinners she was recieving and then gave her an ultrasound on her brain and things appeared to look not so bad. We will find out more about that later on. Tonight and tomorrow morning, the nurses will start moving her to be less and less dependant on the ECMO machine. This is vital to being able to perform the necessary opperation. A big step, and one of the more difficult steps. The doctors we talked to all appeared to have complete confidence that she will be able to perform the necessary steps right on track. We will see....thanks for everybody's prayers and support!

A Video of Kenadi's Room

Kenadi Update

First off we are so grateful for all of the awesome people that have shown their support for us! As for Kenadi, she is moving more and more to the ECMO machine. Which is great for her. It is really hard to see her on the machines and devices. But she is still doing as great as she can be under the circumstances, yesterday we went up and brought Christina's parents, and also my Brother Adam, and my mom. They all got to see Kenadi and we had a pretty good time. Her nurses are incredible. They are very experienced and because of Kenadi's serious condition, she has two nurses watching her 24 hours. She is in the most serious condition in the NICU at Primary Children's.

We are now just waiting for her to be stabilized on the ECMO machine, and then they will start looking at possibly doing the surgery to move her intestines down into her abdomen. Here are a few pictures that we took last night at the hospital.

Its a Girl!

Kenadi Paige Muffler was born today January 22, 2010 at 5:01 PM. She was 19 inches long, and 7lbs 1 ounce. So just about an hour after they broke her water, Kenadi came on out. Christina started pushing at about 4:45 and did great. At about 4:50, and the sight of Kenadi's hairy head, I started feeling a little light headed and so I told the doctors and nurses about my feeling light headed and that I was going to go have a seat. I felt bad stealing some attention, but they kept saying, "you look very pale, are you alright?" But I survived...anyways back to the baby...

When Kenadi came out the Doctor said she had the ambilical cord wrapped around her neck and shoulder, which was causing a few dips in her heart beat while christina was having contractions, but the doctor said everything should still be fine. They tried getting her to start crying but were constantly unsuccessful. She would make very quiet noises, kinda like a baby cat (I wouldnt know what a baby cat sounds like but thats how christina described it). Then they called in the neonatal intensive care unit(NICU) doctors to come and see if they could suck out the mucus and get her to cry, but they couldnt, so then they wisked her away to the nicu. After checking on Christina who was doing marvelouly great, I went and followed Kenadi and all of the doctors. They hooked her up to a ton of different machines, and had of ton of nurses and doctors surrounding her.

The Neonatologist eventually came and he kind of ran the show. He ended up doing a lot fo tests. he could hear her heart on the right side of her chest but not so good on the left. SO he figured something was wrong internally. He got the x-ray machine out. They figured out that her diaphram wasnt fully developed, and so her intestines moved up into her upper chest, causing the lungs to have trouble forming. and squishing other important organs like her heart. Then they decided to life-flight her to Primary Childrens Hospital. There they can perform a surgery or whatever else they need to help her. Constantly I had nurses doctors and everybody else coming up explaining what was going on, they did great at helping me through it. Then the neonatologist came up to me and explained some more about what he found. Now I was on the verge of tears most of the time in the NICU, but as soon as he said she had to be life flighted to Primary childrens, I broke down. After calming down a little bit, I followed christinas obgyn back to the labor and delivery room, to explain to christina what was happening. She explained it very well, and appeared to be on the verge of tears herself. It appeared she left quickly so that she wouldnt break down in front of us.

Right before we Kenadi was lifted onto the stretcher and incubator to go on the helicopter, Christina and I got to go in and see her. Boy is she beautiful! Christina held Kenadi's hand and foot for most of the time we were in there. I was able to give her a blessing of health before she left. Then they loaded her up on the stretcher, and off they went. I did follow her out to the helicopter, and at first we got all the way out there, and there was no piolot, and come to find out somebody was planning on being lifeflighted also, so we had to wait for the next helicopter. But then it came and she went.

More updates will come as we find out more about her condition. Please keep her in your prayers, we need all the prayers we can get!

Getting Closer

Well they just broke christina's water about 15 minutes ago, and things are looking pretty good.

We are sitting in the hospital!

So Christina went in this morning to see her doctor...the doctor asked how she was doing, she said she had a couple of contractions, but nothing too serious, then the doctor decided to check her and was amazed to see that christina was dialated to a 5! then told her she should probably go get her stuff, and head to labor and delivery where they would start inducing her. So here we are. The baby is still kinda of high but because she is so dialated, it must be time.

Love this Kid

So a lot of people ask if Jackson knows that another baby is coming. He understands that when we point to my belly that that is where Kenadi is, but I dont think he understands that Kenadi is a little baby that will come out. I do think he knows that change is coming. The past couple weeks he has been more cuddly with me. I love it! He will just randomly come and sit on my lap and cuddle with me. This morning we were watching the morning news (like we do every morning, we like to be informed people) and he came and crawled onto my lap and laid on my chest like he was a tiny baby. It was great- its not often that he likes to sit still and cuddle. Thank goodness he is such an easy going kid. Ive been having to take it easy because my blood pressure is borderline on being too high (not so good).
He has been loving to take pictures but the problem is he usually gets too close to the camera because he gets anxious and wants to see the picture. Here are random pictures from the past couple of days.

He felt the needto try out Kenadis new carseat. We still had ours that we used with Jackson, but really didnt like it that much (it was a big pain) so when we saw that Babies R Us was having their 25% off trade in we decided we would purchase a new one. Don't worry, Andrew of course looked it up on consumer reports and this is the highest rated one. Actually, if we wanted we could almost use it for Jack!

These are just his random pictures. Silly kid!

2 of his favorite things

1. Ice Cream! He LOVES IT! These were after he had some andhe was acting so goofy (as you can tell)

2. Picking the toe fuzzies out from his toes. He recently discovered that when he takes his socks off there are little fuzzies between his toes. He will spend a good thirty minutes hunting and searching all the fuzzies out. Quite funny!

PS Notice the huge scratch on the side of his face? I have no idea how he got it. Two nights ago he went to bed without a scratch,  woke up crying in the middleof the night and I went in and checked on him and didnt notice it, but then when he got up in the morning it was there. I felt so bad! My kid doesnt get scratches and bruises!! (jk, hes a boy I know its bound to happen).

Also, just want to mention I am now 36 weeks which means next week Im considered full term and can have this baby any time. Hopefully soon!

Pictures from my Phone

Okay, I uploaded the pictures from my phone so here they are.

He played with this box for probably about a week until it finally tore and we threw it away. He would just randomly sit in it.

 were up at my great grandpas house and Jackson pulled this little stool fromthe kitchen. He then (with Andrew's help) sat on it and visited with grandpa.

One day we went to the park and all Jack wanted to do was go down the slide. He probably went down 15 or so times. He eventually got comfortable enough to climb up the stairs by himself and go down the slide by himself as well. Sure he went down backwards but he was still enjoying it.

One day, Jack was helping me fold the laundry. You can see how great he is at it.

We have this basket and Jack thought it would make a great seat. He got in it all by himself. Not quite sure why he thought itd be comfortable but he got in and out of it all day long.

We went to the little park in our complex. He loves going out there even if there is snow on the ground. He loved walking along the chain link fence and then watching the cars drive by.

One day I had put Jack in his bed fora nap. Well he got out and was playing and this was how he fell asleep. After a couple of weeks of taking naps on the floor he has realized it is is more comfortable in his bed.

We were up at grandpas last Saturday. Jackson had never before askedto sit in the chair next to grandpa but Saturday he did. We helped him up into it and he sat there for quite a while. He sure likes his great great grandpa Olson.

These last two are from today. The first one Jackson is showing his muscles and "juicing it." The second picture I just think he looks cute. (As you can tell we were having a comfy clothes day).

Picture Catch Up

Since I have so been lacking in blogging lately, here are some pictures fromthe past little while. I actually have more that I need to put up that are from my phone (Andrew had the camera for church a lot so I didnt know where it was). But here are some from our regular camera. Most of them are just really goofy. Jack likes to help take the pictures.

Here he is at church. He was over at the clerks office with Andrew doing bishopric stuff.

Jackson and his best friend Emily. Im pretty sure she is his best friend (after us of course). He loves seeing her and almost always will choose her over me when we are visiting. They were being so cute together!

One night we were just playing around and he wanted to take pictures. This was the best one we got. Look at all those teeth! He has more trying to break through as well. I can feel the bottom side ones as well as the first molars trying to come through.

So cheesy!

Doesn't that face just melt your heart?

A moment to brag

I have to take a moment to brag about Andrew. This past week he had his first evaluation. Basically the principal comes in and watches him teach. Well, since Andrew's classroom is very different then the average classroom the principal just talked with him and asked him questions about what goes on in the classroom. That day, Andrew was telling me about it and told me that it went very well. Well, he had the follow up to the evaluation on Friday where the principal goes over his scores with him and makes comments. Andrew scored the highest he could on everything! The principal told Andrew that it would be extremely difficult for him to replace Andrew and that he really hopes he is planning on coming back for next year. He kept telling Andrew how he wished he could pay him $300,000 for the job he does because there are probably only 1% of people in the world who would be able to do the job that Andrew does! I knew Andrew did great and I knew that the district special ed supervisor loved him, but it is also good to know that the principal of the school where he works loves him and wants him back. Gotta love job security! Way to go Andrew! (I guess I should mention that Andrew is a teacher for autistic children. They are all severe autistic and can not even speak).

Thankful

Boy am I so thankful for my two boys! The past two weeks I haven't felt that great. Between every part of my body aching all the time and sleeping maybe 3-4 hours at night it has been difficult for me to do everything that I usually do during the day. Andrew is so great though. He doesn't mind if in the middle of the night I turn on the tv, take a shower, basically do whatever I need to to be able to sleep. He also has been helping so much around the house when he gets home from school.
Jackson is the best kid in the world. Holy cow! Every morning we all are up by about 6 (if Im lucky its 6:30). Seeing as how I did not sleep very well the previous night, by about 8:00 I can barely keep my eyes open. I turn on Handy Manny on disney channel and Jack watches that and plays while I doze a little (I never get into a super deep sleep, I can always hear whats going on, but it definitely helps me get through until Jacks nap). He is so good at playing by himself when needed. Actually he sometimes just chooses to play by himself. How could I not be so thankful for these two guys!

Relief

I went to the doctor yesterday and measured at 35 weeks (Im 33). What a relief this is to me. I measured 2 weeks ahead the entire time with Jack and he was 7 lbs 12 oz. My dr thinks that it is because of how high I carry. Boy am I relieved that Kenadi shouldnt be huge!

A Surprise from Andrew & Jackson

One of Jackson's favorite "toys" are my measuring cups & spoons. A while back I told Andrew that someday I want a nice stainless steel set that are just mine and I dont share with Jack (the ones I have now are just plastic ones that work just fine). Anyways, yesterday, Andrew came home and said that him and Jackson wanted to take me to go get a surprise. Andrew said that he had read reviews and that what him and Jackson wanted to get me were the best and will last a lifetime. He said that him and Jackson talked about it last night and Jackson said that they should do it. So anyways, Andrew wont tell me where we were going and I had no idea what it would be that he would get me that would last a lifetime. Well, we end up at the RiverWoods and he pulls in front of Williams-Sonoma. I still had NO idea what we would be getting at Williams-Sonoma. I love this store so told Andrew that I was going to look around (and dream of all the cool pots and pans and gadgets that I can't afford). As Im looking he picks up the set of measuring cups and measuring spoons and told me that he was buying me those. Man, was I excited! I know kind of lame to be so excited about measuring cups and spoons, but they are so pretty!! The ones we have I had got in highschool. Anyways, here are my fancy new measuring cups and spoons that Jack will not be playing with.

Happy 15 months to Jack!

  Jack turned 15 months on the 1st. Man, he is getting old! To celebrate, first he got a new haircut! Andrew cut his hair and Jack didnt even cry! Yay for him! His hair was getting kind of long and it was coming over his ears (I cant stand that!) so Andrew sat him on a little stool in our bathroom and cut it. We were both amazed that he didnt cry and that he actually sat pretty still for him. The last time we cut his hair he was screaming bloody murder. Anyways, he is looking super handsome now.
  Also, we moved him into a toddler bed. We had set his toddler bed up about a month ago but just decided to finally make the switch. The first two nights we gently put him to bed. One of us stayed in there with him until he fell asleep. On the third night, I was too tired and figured maybe it would be better if we werent in there because we never stay in his roomwhen he is going to sleep. We put the baby gate up in his doorway so we could keep his door open and still be able to hear him, put him in his bed and let him be. Sure he cried, he usually cries when we put him to bed (I think he thinks we are partying out here, little does he know we are in bed too!), but he only cried for about 10 minutes and then was fast asleep in his little bed. The next day I decided that I would try using it for naps. We werent quite sure how he would handle taking a nap in his bed, but he actually did great. He stayed in it most of the time. It was quite funny though. I went back to his room a couple of times to tell him to get back into bed because he was playing with his toys. Well, he was being quite but I heard a kind of clicking/knocking sound. I thought maybe he was playing with teh blinds so I peeked my head around the corner and what did I see? Oh he was playing with one of his toys IN his bed. Smarty pants! He knew he was supposed to be in bed but I didnt say anything about not having toys in bed also. I wish I had had my camera because his face was priceless. When he saw that I was looking he looked over at me and gave me the hugest grin. It was like he was saying, "Hey, you didnt tell me I couldnt bring toys in so dont get mad at me!" That definitely gave me a laugh. I went in and told him that it was time to sleep and put his toy away, and sure he got a little mad but a couple minutes later he was out. We packed up the pack n play last night so it is now all about the toddler bed.
  We started potty training yesterday as well. Yesterday went pretty well. He had gone poop and pee in his little potty and had only had two accidents! Well, until Andrew came home. I dont know what happened but after Andrew came home Jack didnt want to sit on the potty and became afraid of peeing again. Yes, he gets afraid of peeing. But this morning he was back to being better and wanting to sit on the potty so thats good and he remembers the sign for "potty" so that is good as well.  We had to take him to the doctor for his 15 month check up so our schedule has been a little off, but we will start back up working on it right after his nap. I am hoping I can get him daytime trained before Kenadi gets here. Not only will that save money in diapers but also me changing diapers (probably my least favorite parent duty).
  Oh, I almost forgot, I need to give his stats from his doctors appointment. His doctor said that he is doing wonderful and that since he is growing so well he doesnt need to come back until 24 months! Wahoo! Anyways, here they are:

Weight: 23 lbs- 29%

Length: 31 inches- 47.96%

Head Circumfrence: 19 inches- 80%

So, he still isnt a very big kid, but thats alright. He is definitely growing! There arent a lot of pictures for today, but I do have two from just right now. I had put him in his room so he could take a nap. He wasnt very happy about it and just wanted to play but he is super tired. Well, he decided he didnt want to sleep in bed so he is sleeping on the floor. I actually think it is because of the super soft blue body pillow. Maybe I should try putting that on his bed.

Happy New Year!

For New Years Eve we went up to Emily's parents house with Emily & Dylan (obviously), Eric & Cynthia, and Mckay & Chelsea. We pretty much just hung out, ate lots of tasty food, and played rockband. Jack even got to stay up until 10:00. He did great staying up that late, but by that time he was starting to get a little restless and tired. Luckily we had brough his pack and play and put it in a bedroom and within a few minutes he was asleep. Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera in, even though it was in the car, so I dont have any pictures. I will need to steal some from Emily or Cynthia. I was also pretty amazed that Andrew & I were both able to stay awake the whole time! It was pretty amazing if you ask me.