Summertime and Surgery

Brotherly love

Here it is, late June, my summer is almost half over, and I feel like I haven't even processed it starting yet. Hence the usual slowness for updating. Declan has hit the big nine months, although at this point, he's already almost ten months old! We're still seeing good developmental improvement out of him, and I have been able to add a few more foods back into my diet, which is great. I've even gotten to go out to eat for the first time in over three months, so that was a huge deal for me! I definitely now have a new appreciation for people who deal with food allergies on a regular basis, and now know to be more aware and cautious of what ingredients are in our food in general.

Nine months!

On the downside, Declan had surgery last week, but on the upside, he's doing well overall recovering. For those unaware, this was a planned surgery--he has had bad kidney reflux (Basically we've learned gravity just doesn't work on this child--he has been dealing with both that and acid reflux. So we know never to hang him upside down or everything will probably fall out!) and had been on antibiotics for the last six months to avoid getting UTIs in hopes he would grow out of the problem. Unfortunately, the meds weren't working well enough and he's had several bad UTIs--his most recent one was a strain the hospital hadn't seen in about five years, which is saying a lot since they're the third best pediatric urology department in the country. Plus, a recent test showed he hadn't grown out of the problem at all. He had the surgery last Thursday morning which took about three hours, and after dealing with a rough night of him being in pain, he recovered well and got to go home on Saturday. This was the shortest hospital stay we've had with him, so it was rather odd (but good!) to be home so soon. He had a stent (drainage tube) coming out below his incision that was taken out yesterday, but other than follow-ups, we're hoping the surgery has taken care of the problems and he can be off of antibiotics completely in a few months.

Pre-surgery

All fixed and sleeping

standard hospital life

crazy sleeper

back to the good life

Not to leave Callum out, but he is as busy as ever. My parents are working on having an extra garage/barn built, and he has had a lot of fun playing in the dirt piles. Today he got to watch them unload the supplies--he loved it because he got to sit in the cab of the semi and pull the horn and was also able to sit inside of a little scoop. Also, while Declan was in the hospital, Callum went on an adventure with my brother and got to ride the Thomas train. So we'll probably be hearing about that for the next six months.

Oh, and because we've been a bit bored around here with nothing to do, we've also put our house on the market. We have always talked about eventually buying land and building. We figured it would be in a couple more years, but the timing works out best right now, so we put our house up for sale at the end of May. Yes, we're crazy, but I just remind myself that when we're sitting in our new house that we completely chose, it will be worth it. We close on the land next week, and we have a builder picked out and ready to start the blueprints, so all we need to do is sell our current house. So if you're looking for a new home, let us know and maybe we can work something out :).

First time swimming!