Happy Birthday!!

It's hard to look back to one year ago and believe that we made it to celebrate Brendan's first birthday! He truly is an amazing boy, and we can't wait to see what the next year holds for him!

Trick or Treat!

We had a lot of fun on Halloween. Sleeping Beauty and her Prince Charming had lots of fun collecting all the candy and wearing their costumes! As a side note, for those looking at this picture, yes, we are having another baby...Surprise!!! The newest member of the family is due in late January!

Buddy Walk 2008

This weekend we participated in our first Buddy Walk in Kansas City. It was an incredible experience for all of us! There must have been 3000 or more people there, and there were so many activities for everyone. Rory's favorites were of course the pony rides, the jumping house, and the fire engine! We met some incredible people, including one family whose son was born about 3 weeks after Brendan, and they both have the same heart defect. They even had their surgeries about 2 weeks apart..talk about a small world! We are hoping that we'll still be here next year so we can participate in the walk again!!

Happy 4th!

Home Again!

It's hard to believe, but a little less than a week after his open heat surgery Brendan is home!! His doctor's were amazed at how quickly he recovered, and we are too! Big sister Rory was more than thrilled to have Baby Brendan home after the doctor fixed the "boo boo on his heart". Looks like we are just about back to a normal home life routine!

The Progress Continues!

What more can I say, than Brendan is certainly an amazing little boy! His recovery has been amazing. Thursday morning he came off of the vent, and has been doing great!He is still on a little bit of oxygen, but they are trying to wean him off of that. He has NO IV lines in anymore, he is off of all heart medication, and the drain came out of his chest yesterday, and he got moved to the step down unit!!

He is well on his way to a full recovery, which is so hard to believe! It's been less than a week since his open heart surgery, and he looks incredible! We are looking forward to having a couple of our friends from Ft. Hood down to visit today, and then tomorrow Brendan's nurse Karen from his NICU days after he was first born, will be coming to visit tomorrow!

He is all fixed!

After one very loooong day, we are happy to report that Brendan came through the surgery very well! All of his doctors were very happy with how things went! The next 12 hours are the tough ones, so please keep saying your prayers for him! We'll post another update hopefully, tomorrow!

Today is the day!!

Today is the big day, hopefully! Brendan was scheduled to be the first case this morning, but there was a newborn who is a lot more critical than he is, so we were pushed back to case 2. Hopefully the first surgery won't take too long, but if it does then we'll be #1 tomorrow. As of this moment, Brendan could be going into surgery between 2-4pm Central Time. Brendan was a champ through all of his surgery prep yesterday, he had an echocardiogram under anesthia, he had a chest x-ray and an EKG (which is what he is hooked up to in the above picture!). He had a great night sleep last night, and is napping now.

We'll post more here when get a moment!

We have a date!!!

We will be heading down to San Antonio this Sunday to get Brendan checked into the hospital. He will be having a detailed Echocardiogram on Monday and then the actual heart surgery on Tuesday.

6 months already??

Isn't he funny! 6 months old and everything is a joke to him!!

5 Months Old!

It's hard to believe that Brendan is already 5 months old! The picture is from his very first Easter, which he was more than happy to sleep through! I was happy to get one picture with his eyes open.

Brendan continues to thrive in the Early Intervention program. He gets physical therapy twice a month and his therapist and service coordinator continue to be amazed by how well he is developing! He is already rolling over from his belly to his back on a regular basis and also rolls from his back to his belly at least once a day! He also seems just about ready to sit up all by himself!

He is such a wonderful, happy baby! He is my little snuggler who is so content to be held or to fall asleep in your arms. He smiles and laughs all the time, and you just can't help but to smile when he looks at you! Big sister Rory continues to be the best big sister. She takes very good care of her little brother! Brendan is constantly trying to find her everytime he hears her voice!

We are still waiting to get a date for Brendan's full heart repair surgery, which we are anticipating to be in mid-May. We'll keep you posted here!

He's Growing Like A Weed!!

As you can see, Brendan is getting huge! He weighs about 12 pounds and most of it is in his cheeks! At his last cardiologist appointment she was so thrilled with how he was progressing that we are able to go about 3 weeks until she has to see him again. That is a huge change from the weekly visits that we were making. The hope is that when we go to see her next week she'll take him off having to be fed every 4 hours which will mean I can get more than 2 hours of sleep at a time!

Rory is a wonderful big sister who loves Baby Brendan to death! She always asks to hold him or help feed him, and she can give a good play by play on a diaper change! Brendan loves looking at her and listening to her. He can hear her coming and he automatically starts smiling and laughing, such a wonderful thing to see!

Bryan has gone back to "work", if you know what I mean! He is doing well, busy as always, and getting into the groove of things!

Thanks for all of your love and prayers, you can see that they work wonders!

Home Again!

After 5 days in the hosptial, Brendan is home and doing well (fingers crossed!) We're now just having some good quality family time for a while before you know who goes you know where! We'll post more later!

San Antonio is nice, but seriously!

Well, let's be serious, things seemed a little too perfect with Brendan being home for the Holidays, and as luck would have it, it was a little too perfect! Brendan came down with what we thought was a little congestion, maybe a cold, on New Years Day. After a call to the cardiologist and trip to the Dr the next morning it was confirmed that poor Brendan has RSV. RSV, when anyone other than a baby gets it, is nothing more than a very bad cold. In babies, because of their small airways and sensitive lungs, it becomes more serious. In Brendan's case, because of his heart defect and his lung disease it much more serious. So Brendan and I are down here in San Antonio having him monitored by all of the wonderful dr's and nurses for a few days. Thankfully he had his RSV shot before we left San Antonio the first time, so the symptoms of RSV were'nt that bad. We are now just waiting to make sure that his lungs clear without any problems and that he begins to eat again. We are hopeful that we'll be home this weekend, and our family will be under one roof again!