Gabby's First Christmas

All the preparing for Christmas and then it is over so quickly! We had a extra special Christmas this year with having Gabby here to share it with. She was a perfect little angel. She has this fantastic huge gummy smile and has now started to chew on her tongue. I am guessing teeth are on their way! We went to see Santa and Gabby was enamored with his beard and gloves. Alex was petrified and wanted nothing to do with him. At least he did not scream like last year;) We got record amounts of snow this December - I believe at least 40 inches and more to come today. I am ready for spring now:)

Mark and I were able to get away earlier this month for a vacation that was planned well before Gabby was born. Mark earned a rewards trip through work to St. Maarten and the company went in March. We got to postpone due to my pregnancy. This year Mark has once again earned the rewards trip- Way to go Mark:) !! This time the trip falls right when Gabby will be having her surgery, so we will see what happens. Grandma V had Gabby all to herself for 5 days and Alex stayed with his Aunties. I thought maybe he might be sad and miss us, but not a chance. As an example, he was with his aunt Linda visiting his other aunt Tricia and his cousin Jamison. Linda told us that she told him it was time to go home, and he said NO! I want to go to your house!! So I think he was just fine without us. He did get his one request-- an orange fish. We thought we would be stopping at Walmart on the way home picking up a Nemo fish, but got lucky and found one there!

Not much else going on around here otherwise. I need to call the blood bank and find out some info related to our donors. I found out that Marks sister Tricia is also a match. She has offered to donate for Gabby as well. I am again reminded how blessed we are to have such a wonderful, supportive family!

I also got connected with a sponsor through the Cappskids support group. It is so helpful to me to have people to talk to who have gone through the same things. My sponsor actually lives in Appleton! We are going to set up some time to meet. I am really looking forward to that.

2008 has been a rough year around here, so here's to a great 2009!!

Gabby

What a cutie!

Being their mother, I may be biased... but how cute are these kiddos?!! We had some pictures taken this past week by an awesome photographer- Aubrey- http://www.photobyaubrey.com/. She does such a good job with the kids- getting a 2 year old and a cranky 6 month old to cooperate is not a small task! I thought I would add these cute pics to Gabby's blog as she is such a doll and I love sharing that!! These will be the last professional pics until after the surgery. Some day it will be interesting to compare the before and after pics.

We have a date

Carol from Children's Hospital called today with the scheduled surgery date- Monday, February 23rd. February! I knew they said it could take 2 months to set up a date, but this is well over 2 months! She said that Dr. Kaufman is really busy and hard to schedule with. I guess the surgery is going to be pretty lenthy and they need to book a whole day for both surgeons so it is tricky. I was a pretty disappointed that it is still so far away, but am ok with it now that I think about it a bit more. She will be 8 months old- almost 9 months. I did question right away if this was to late for the surgery- they said between 6-8 months was the ideal time, and she will be going on 9 months. No one better get sick (doctors included!!). I guess she will be bigger and stronger each day, so maybe this is a good thing. Waiting is just getting old. I cannot stop thinking about this every day and am looking forward to being on the healing side of things rather than the waiting side.

Anyway, Carol said that we will need to go down to Children's about 5 days prior to surgery for a pre-op appointment that will include lab work and checking her out to make sure she is ready for surgery. She said 30 days prior to surgery they will send orders over to the blood bank so that Mark can go in and donate blood for her surgery. Carol said that he is only able to donate 1 unit of blood and we will need 2 units for the surgery. She said we look to family or use the blood bank. I would much rather go with family and am blessed to have a big and very supportive family! I sent an email out with Gabby's info and my sister- in- law called the same afternoon to say my brother- in- law has the same blood type and is willing to donate. That is sooo awesome!

The next thing we have to do is send updated insurance info because our insurance is changing. All I have to say is how thankful I am for insurance! I don't know what we would do without it.