Thanks Aunt JJ

My Sister is one of the most crafty, domestic housewives I know. She has been working on a quilt for Stockton since before he was born. She finally dropped it off this week and it is absolutley adorable! I know it will be something that he will always adore and cherish. Thanks for your hard work! Here is the finished product...

Dad, this one is for you

My Dad came up a couple of weeks ago and helped me plant my garden. We were a little worried about how thing would grow with our bad soil. Well, yesterday I went out and I had little baby corn stalks, so IT"S WORKING!!! This is what I saw...Thanks Dad for all of your hard working and for sharing your knowledge with me! Hopefully things will continue to grow.

Just some cute pics...

You wouldnt even know that Stockton had surgery just a few weeks ago. He is just the happiest, healthiest baby. He has his first follow up appt with the plastic surgeon next Wednesday to see how everything is healing. He had his 4 month check up with his pediatrician yesterday. He was a little on the small side, 12 lbs 15 oz, only in the 10th percentile for his weight, but 50th percentile for his height. His doctor said he probably just fell behind a little because of losing a little weight in the hospital, nothing to be concerned about. He has been eating cereal for the last week and he said we could go ahead and start giving him a couple fruits and veggies each week. We started with bananas and sweet potatoes. This kid just loves anything we put in his mouth so far.

Yesterday we were bored,

so we decided to give Stockton some rice cereal. Needless to say, anything that involves eating, he LOVES.

Stockton 2.0: Before and After

Some of you have been asking for the Before and After pictures of Stockton's head and now that the swelling has gone down i took some this morning. It is amazing to see the differences.

From the top:

Here you can see how long and skinny it was and you can kind of see how it sunk in at his temples.

In this one you can see the ridge on the top of his head and how it made his forehead pop out.

Here is the after picture. It is round and no more sunk in temples or ridge! Perfect!

From the side:

You can see how the back of his head is rounded and the front of his head stuck out a little and you can almost see the ridge that goes down the side of his temple. I can see it because I know that it is there, but I don't know if you can notice it in this picture if didn't already know it is there.

I had a hard time getting a good profile picture of him so it still kind of looks like he has a big forehead even though he really doesn't. But you can tell the back is flatter and the ridge on the top and side is gone.

From the front:

You can tell how his temple look sunk in and how it makes his forehead look really big and his whole face looks kind of long and skinny.

Now his head and face looks round and full and just as cute as can be!! :)
I am so glad that we were able to do the surgery and at such a young age so we could get it corrected before it became more noticeable and, of course, to prevent any type of brain damage that could have occurred. Now he is our little upgraded Stockton 2.0! :)

It's GREAT being home...kind of

Well, we aren't at the hospital anymore, I thought that was supposed to be a good thing, right? Since we have been home Stockton has been kind of a stinker! I keep telling myself that he is adjusting to being home, but he didn't act like this while he was in the hospital so I am wondering if he was just too spoiled while he was there? Or maybe they reprogrammed his brain while they had his skull off? Whatever it is, I hope I get my baby back soon.

He wont sleep through the night anymore, I'm sure part of it is that we have to wake him up at midnight to give him his medicine. He wont just go back to sleep after we give it to him, he wants to eat like he is starving his brains out or something. Then instead of going back to sleep like you would expect, he wants to stay up and talk. Then he will go back to sleep for MAYBE a couple of hours and wake up STARVING again. Maybe we have just been spoiled all this time having a baby that slept so well and this is just a reality check, but I am still going to say NOT FAIR on this one! I want my sleep back!!

When he wakes up from naps or at night, he wakes up SCREAMING like he is having a nightmare or something. Doesnt he trust his own parents enough to know that we arent going to wake him up sticking a needle in his extremities or a thermometer where the sun dont shine? I miss his sweet little smiles when he wakes up and our fun play time before he wants to eat.

He also wants for me to be holding him constantly. Of course I would love to be able to do this, but it doesnt work out too well when you are crawling in and out of our little storage space putting away the years supply of cereal you just bought. At least I got a good leg workout squatting up and down.

One more thing that annoys me, he became a pacifier fene while we were at the hospital. Being one of his sole sources of comfort during his tramatic couple of days, he's an addict now. This also goes along with his unusual sleeping habits now, part of the time he wakes up screaming for no reason, you just go in and pop his pacifier in and he shuts right up. I miss the days of indifference to the pacy.

On the bright side, when he is awake and feeling good, he has been laughing like crazy at us. Yesterday he had me laughing so hard I couldnt stop crying. He would laugh and I would laugh, that would make him laugh more which would have the same affect on me and we just went back and forth just laughing harder and harder. So I guess it's those moments that make the bad ones seem not so bad anymore. I just hope they start coming more and more and the bad ones go away and NEVER come back! I want my precious little angel to come back soon!

We are going home!!

We got the green light to go home this morning and we couldn't be more excited!!  Troy is on his way down to pick us up and then it is Good Riddance to this place!!!

We are STUCK!!

It looks like we are here indefinitely.  His sodium levels are down this morning so we are going to recheck them this evening.  If they are up, we can go home (not likely), if they are down we will probably have to put him back on an IV to get them up to where they should be.  It is so frustrating being here because he looks so good and is acting like his normal self.  It feels like we are just wasting time here.  

Stockton's picture update of the day

It's nice to see he's still got that deer in the headlights look. 

Pete, this one's for you...

I went to Gandolfo's on 1300 E by the U to get lunch for us today.  While I was standing in line one of the employee smiled and winked at me as I walked by.  I thought to myself even though I am a married, slightly over weight, mother with stretch marks, I still got it. :)

It's Official

We have to stay at least one more night.  :(  They say his sodium has to be at 135 before he can go home.  Yesterday it was at 132, this morning it was at 133.  We are hoping at this rate that we dont have to stay until Wednesday.  We will just have to see.  They are letting us take him outside and walk around so we arent getting too much cabin fever.  Stockton is enjoying getting out of his bed and getting some fresh air.  

Crap

It is sounding like we are going to have to be here another night.  Stockton's doctor's assistant says he thinks he will need to because of his sodium levels, but the doctor will be up here later today to make the final decision.  He needs to be at 135.  Yesterday morning he was at 132, this morning he is at 133, so it is coming up slowly but surely.  He is really starting to hate being restricted to only 2 oz of milk every 3 hours.  Anyone who knows Stockton's eating habits should know how crazy this is making him.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.  Sharing a room and being woken up by someone else's baby is really starting to get old...   

Happy Mother's Day...

...to the best Mothers in the whole wide world! We love you both so much!

We have our baby back...Well, almost.

It is amazing how much Stockton has started to come around this evening.  He has been smiling and laughing and talking to all of the nurses.  He is getting so much attention from all of them that I think it is turning him into a ladies man.  A little flirting never hurt anyone, right?

Today's update

So far today's noteworthy updates:

*BOTH of his eyes are open wide and he his able to look around at us.  He is really alert but you can tell he isnt feeling good.  We are both so amazed to see how patient he is through all of this.  He hardly cries at all, just lays there so calm.  It is so sad, but I would rather him be like than crying constantly.

*The doctor took off his bandages and drainage tube this morning.  His head is pretty misshaped and tender looking.  They say it is normally but we are both a little worried about.  We will just wait and see how it shapes up over the next  couple of days.  

We will probably be able to go home tomorrow afternoon/evening, but if his sodium levels arent up to normal by then, we might have to stay until Tuesday.  I was really hoping they would tell us we could go home today, but I guess that was just wishful thinking. 

Making Progress Already!

We've got good news, Stockton just opened one of his eyes, YAY! They told us that probably wouldnt happen until tomorrow night or Monday morning so we are definitely making progress.  Hopefully by morning he will be able to open both of them.  He has been awake and looking around, but he is obviously frustrated that he cant see as well as he would like to.  

Stockton's surgery update

Thanks to my fabulous brother in law who trusts me enough to let me borrow his brand new laptop, I am able to update everyone on Stockton's progress.  The surgery went perfectly and he is healing really well.  Of course seeing him the first time was heartbreaking for both of us.  We both heard him before we saw him and it was the saddest sound I have ever heard in my life.  He cried and whimpered for the first hour so they suggested that I hold him.  He immediately calmed down but he was still really sad and whiny.  Once he was able to eat and got some pain meds he felt alot better and was able to sleep.  We left the hospital that night feeling really positive because he had minimal swelling and he looked really good.  He is a picture of him the first day.

Friday morning we could tell the swelling was starting to come in but he was still able to open his eyes.  They moved him from the PICU to a regular room.

By Friday afternoon, his eyes had swollen shut and he looked pretty sad.

This is how he looks today.  

We were definitely naive to believe that the worst behind us after that first day and that he was going to continue to look normal.  They say the swelling will continue to get worse until tomorrow night, then it will start coming down.  They will also take his bandages off tomorrow morning.  You can already tell how round his head is now but i am anxious to see what it looks like with the bandages off.  He seems to be feeling OK as long as we stay on top of his pain medication.  He is eating really good.  The only kink so far is that he has to have another blood transfusion because he isn't producing enough on his own to recover what he lost like they hoped he would.  They will be doing that anytime now.  Other than that his sodium levels are low.  If they come back up by Monday we should be able to go home.  If not, we will have to stay another day or two.

Thank you to everyone for all of your support and prayers.  I know that it has really helped all 3 of us.  We will continue to keep everyone updated as long as we have a computer.  

I sure do miss seeing this face. :(

We FINALLY have a date!

We found out today that Stockton's surgery will be this coming Thursday, May 7th. After 6 weeks of waiting to find out when it will be, we are glad that we wont have to wait much longer to get it over with. I know this next week is going to be torture worrying about it. I just wish he didnt have to go through it at all. It makes me sick just thinking about it. We will keep everyone updated on how things go.