Big things happening at the Waggoner house!!

I don't even know where to start! Since Jack's "episode" right before Christmas there has been an explosion of development! This is a list of all the new things he's doing. Here we go!!


1) Jack now LOVES soccer! There was an episode of Blues Clues he became addicted to where they went to soccer practice. Since starting to watch the episode (12 times/day) he has been incredibly interested in everything soccer. I bought him a sweatshirt that has a soccer ball on it that he loves to wear! He looks down at it all day and points out the ball and gets excited. He also has a nerf-like soccer ball that he now kicks all around the house. He even follows the rules of soccer and doesn't use his hands! It is so cute!!!



2) Jacks sign language skills are really taking off! Earlier this week he learned 6 new signs in one day!! He is now learning the power of signs and communication. He can now sign: mom, dad, bath, green, yellow, purple, red, blue, black, white, orange, ball, carrot, apple, cracker, table, chair, circle, elephant, fish, more, all done, please, thank you, water, soap, car, dip, and more to come!



3) We are discovering paint! Jack has really enjoyed making some beautiful masterpieces. We also got him a paint set where the paintbrush lights up the color of the paint (thanks for the idea Crystal!!!!). He absolutley loves playing with it and signs the colors as it changes. He gets the biggest belly laugh when the color changes!



4) He loves his baby sister. He will snuggle with me and lay his head on my belly. He'll also point to my belly and make a "b" sound. When we ask him to, he'll kiss my baby with his lips. It is all very sweet. We're hoping these behaviors of affection will carry over when she's born. Jack is going to make a great big brother.



5) Jack now has his own room. He is such a big boy! We were expecting a transition period and for it to take time to accept his new room but he took right to it and loves being a big boy in his room. He has a fish tank that he looks forward to seeing when he wakes up in the morning. He also loves to close his door when we go to read stories for bed. It has really made a huge difference in everyone's sleep patterns.

And now for the biggest news of all!!!

6) For 2 weeks Jack has taken all of his daytime meals orally!!!! By trial and error we learned that Jack LOVES baby carrots dipped in ranch dip. When we started we went through so many bottles of ranch dressing! The problem was that Jack is severely lactose intolerant and was having trouble with the commercial dressings. I tried the seasoning packets but as it turns out, they have more lactose than a bottle of dip. While working through this we were able to use food coloring to make the dip orange. Then we slowly added orange vegetables (carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash) to the dip to make it a little healthier. I finally found a recipe for seasoning and make it by the cup. I have tried so many different things for him to eat. Now, he eats every 2-3 hours. We are able to add this ranch seasoning to full meals blended together. Honestly, I think it is pretty gross. He'll eat a dip made of rice, ham, potatoes, carrots, pears, and banana all blended together with the ranch seasoning. For breakfast this morning he had oatmeal with applesauce and sweet potatoes (to make it orange) and yes, it had ranch seasoning. He digs right in and gobbles it up!! Hey, I'll do whatever it takes to get him to eat!!

Now we are starting to work on drinking from a sippy cup. It's not going well so far. I think I need to find the right cup. I truly believe that if it had Blues Clues on it he may go for it. The problem is that they don't make Blues Clues sippy cups anymore. I'm trying to find Playtex design your own sippy cups (not with straws) so I can design them with Blues Clues stickers. Today at the grocery store I saw a sippy cup with cute little cars on it. Jack has been really into cars recently and I thought he may like it. I let him hold it, he looked at it and then threw it into the basket. Unfortunately when I got it out of the package and he realized what it was he didn't want anything to do with it. :-( I even go to the extreme of drinking out of it myself while he's eating and offering it to him every few minutes. I thought that if he thought I was really liking it he may try it! We'll see what happens in the next few weeks! We need to get the liquids in him orally and then we can start weaning him off his feeding tube!!

Like I said, we have so many exciting things happening with Jack! There have been so many developments. Philip and I look at him and can't believe how big he is. He's not a little boy anymore. He's turning into a little man!

We also have big things happening with Jellybean. We found out what is causing the problems with her kidneys. She has what is called a double collecting system. This means that the inner part of her kidney has two sacs instead of just one. They will have to do some testing after she's born to see how the collection system is affecting her kidney function. We pray that this kidney issue is not associated with CHARGE. We will be nervous and worried until the day she gets here. What is frustrating is that I feel like I am going to have to choose between jellybean's care and my care during the delivery. There is a very real possibility that my doctor doesn't do c-sections on the same day as a pediatrician that I trust. I need a surgeon that will be able to take care of my high-risk delivery which becomes more and more complicated by the day as I creep over the line of having polyhydramnios. I also need Jellybean to be in the care of a pediatrician that knows about CHARGE and also about her kidney problem and can make rational decision if there is a problem. We pray we don't have to face any difficult situations but there is just no way to know. I go to my doctor next week and then back to the perinatologist the first week of March. We pray for some better news in the coming weeks.

It's getting late so I don't have time to post pictures tonight. I promise I will post some new pictures and videos in a day or two so keep checking back!!

It's a.....

GIRL!!!!!!!!

We are so excited to be expecting a little girl!! We went to have our 20 week ultrasound today with our perinatologist. Within 3 minutes they told us our little Jellybean is a girl! I was in tears I was so happy. The ultrasound lasted almost an hour. They did discover that Jellybean's left kidney is larger than it should be indicating some reflux but we are hoping this in an isolated anomaly and that it will correct itself before birth. We may know a little more in a month when we go back to see him. Other than the kidney Jellybean appeared healthy! Here are some of the 3D pictures that were taken today.

This picture is a little hard to make out but it is actually a big mischievous ear to ear smile. The ultrasound tech was laughing so hard! We couldn't believe that she caught such a good shot. Say "CHEESE", Jellybean!!!

Jellybean Update

It has been an interesting week as far as Jellybean goes. On Monday I went to the doctor because I had some cramping and then I hadn't felt the baby move. They did a quick ultrasound and we saw the beautiful heartbeat and a little leg kicking. It is possible that since I am incredibly sick my focus has been on my headaches and not the sweet little kicking. (about 5 hours after the appointment Jellybean was kicking pretty hard for about 3 hours!!!) The doctor offered to listen to my heart and lungs to make sure the cold hadn't settled in my chest. He lisened to my heart for quite a long time and then asked "have you always had a murmer?". I was shocked by this and he said that it was a little loud for his comfort and wanted an echocardiogram. I went and had that done yestarday. We went back to the doctor today because he wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure the baby was ok. The ultrasound tech pulled up my chart, saw that we saw a perinatologist and siad that she wasn't going to do a full ultrasound because the perinatlogist would do it. I thought it was ridiculous that she wouldn't follow the doctor's orders. So we weren't able to find out the sex of the baby today. We do have a detailed level 2 ultrasound in 2 weeks so hopefully we'll find out then. THe good thing though was that there was a perfect amount of fluid and on the scan we saw a HUGE stomach! These things are exciting for us because I had way too much fluid with Jack because his esophagus was in 2 pieces and we never saw Jack's stomach on an ultrasound because of the esophagus as well. Seeing that big round stomach was an absolute miracle to us.

Here are some pictures from the ultrasound today!

Another trip to the ER....One month later

Well, exactly a month to the day from our last trip to the ER we had another eventful day filled with medical challenges. Jack went down for his nap as usual but then had some difficulty breathing. I went in to check on him and he was limp and unresponsive. We couldn't wake him up. We called 911 and did our best to suction and had to so some rescue breathing. He was going from rigid to limp quite frequently during the whole ordeal but was ok when he finally woke up in the ambulance. Once we got to the ER he had a full seizure that required some serious medication to sedate him. They had to give him a double dose because the first one didn't bring him out of the seizure. They told us he'd be out for about 8 hours. Well, 3 hours later he was awake and wanting to eat my fruit. They did a CT scan that looked normal so they transported us to Strong for a neurology consult. They did an EEG yesterday before we left the hospital. I wish I had my camera because I know that tomorrow I won't believe that he slept through having his head marked, the probes attached and then being taped up. They came to give us the results and told us that there were some patterns that would be abnormal on an adult but were normal for some children. They want to follow up with an MRI in the next month.

On Tuesday we were supposed to go to the grocery store after Jack woke up from the nap. Well, the seizure kind of messed up that plan. The problem was that all grocery stores closed at 6 pm on Christmas eve and I was missing at least 1 ingredient in every single recipe for our Christmas dinner. The doctors were really dragging their feet getting together the discharge papers so we finally went out and told them that we wanted to get to the store before it closed. They finally got everything together and we signed the discharge papers at 5:05 pm. We ran out of the hospital and drove to the Wegmans in Rochester. We had never been there so we had to manage the chaos and still find everything we needed. The funniest thing though was that the markings from the EEG, which were 20 bright blue crosses, were still on Jack's head! It did not come off with a warm washcloth like they promised. We had to wait until we got home to scrub his head with shampoo. I can't imagine what people were thinking at the store!

We then had an uneventful 2 hour drive home. Jack, surprisingly, stayed awake the whole trip playing with his toys and reading every single book we had in the car. We were all so thankful to be home before Christmas morning.

It is amazing how quickly Jack recovers from his various episodes. He usually falls really hard and then bounces back very quickly. I mean, back in June, he was life-flighted and was moments away from being on life support and 4 days later he was discharged straight from the PICU. He is truly an incredible miracle. We are so lucky to have him for our son. Jellybean will have a wonderful brother to look up to!

Another trip to the ER

We had quite a scare on Tuesday night. Jack woke up at 11:30 with his teeth hurting so we watched a blues clues and I went to put him to bed at midnight. He got upset when I got to the crib and pointed to our bed. I knew that he just needed to snuggle. I put down pillows and blankets in case he rolled out of bed. Well, about an hour later he did fall out of bed. He didn't hit anything and landed on the pillows as expected. He let out a cry and then all of a sudden it stopped. I was holding him when it happened and he just went completely limp. I tried to wake him up but he just layed there in my arms. We ran out to the living room where I called 911. I started yealling at him, shaking him and pushing on his chest. I was about to start CPR when he let our a huge cough and started to breathe again. It took him a while to come out of it but as soon as he did he wanted blues clues. By the time the EMT's got here he was sitting up watching TV. We still went to the ER to make sure that he was ok. They observed him for about 2 hours and we were cleared to go home. It seems what happened is that his teething is causing an increase of secretions and when he fell out of bed it scared him to a point that the mucous plugged his airway and he needed some agitation to get it loose. It was a very scary situation and it was even harder that Philip was at work and I was alone. I am so thankful everything turned out the way it did. We are so lucky.

fish

Jack has recently discovered how fun fish can be. After 2 years of showing him our fish in a bowl he has finally realized what he is looking at. He now will make an "f" sound and point to the fish. Last night Jack saw for the first time the swimming fish on the screensaver. He was so excited about it! He actually climbed off Philip's lap and on to the computer desk to get a closer look. The entire time he was squealing and making the "f" sound. It was really cute!

Just one Jellybean!

We had our appointment with our high-risk OB today and got some very wonderful news! Jack is only going to have one baby brother or sister! Some of you know that we have been worried about it being twins because of my size and feeling the baby move so early. Thankfully Jellybean is just making me fat and is incredibly active. We saw proof of that on the ultrasound! It lasted about 15 minutes and Jellybean was kicking, rolling, and literally jumping all over my uterus! We were able to record the ultrasound on DVD so we can watch it over and over. It is so amazing to see this tiny little baby moving so much. At one point Jellybean made up a game called "Kick the Cord". He/she got the cord wrapped around the arm and then tried to kick it off. At least our little one is creative because with 27 weeks to go Jellybean could get pretty bored in there. We hope to scan and post the pictures tonight but we may not get them until tomorrow. Check back again!