Preparations

Yesterday, we met with Dr. Weinhouse, Julia’s cardiologist for a longer-than-normal consult. She continues to do very well and gained another four ounces. But we are shifting from maintenance mode to preparation for the surgery, which is less than three weeks away now. We did another echocardiogram and EKG so that the surgical team at […]
A Few Pics from the Christmas Celebration…

Hey everyone – the Christmas holiday has been great and Julia continues to grow! I’ll not burden you with my writing today, but give you several shots of our girl having some holiday fun… enjoy and Happy Holidays.
Christmas Greetings from the Farm

It’s Christmas Eve at the farm on Willow Road, and the house is at rest after a busy day of visits, celebration meals, and a lot of calls on Skype to our loved ones as far flung as the U.K. We also had the annual stream of neighbors – some of whom you’ve been introduced […]
Autumn Headshots
Things have been pretty crazy with the new parent thing and the build up to my daughter’s heart surgery, but I’ve still been able to squeeze in a few assignments here and there…
Dare to Ask

If you’ve been following our story over the past couple of weeks, you’ll know that we’ve been dealing with kind of a roller-coaster regarding her weight gain. It had come to the point last week that were resigning ourselves to the idea that her heart condition was making her progressively more tired and unable to […]
Finding Her Smile

Julia has made some great strides and had an adventure or two this week. It seems like she has learned to do so much in the last couple of weeks that we need to take a moment and celebrate. One of the big ones is that she has found her smile and is using it […]
Challenges and Blessings

The first big Midwest snowstorm of the season has come upon us this afternoon in big, fat, wet flakes. It’s the kind of day that makes you really, really glad that you have your Christmas shopping done and can take in a lazy afternoon of comfort food and nostalgic movies. We, unfortunately do not have […]
Rounding Up

The feedings and medicine dosages continue, and the results are showing! Despite a few feeding challenges that we remediated with a dosage change in the reflux medicine, Julia hit seven pounds this week! Okay – full disclosure: her actual weight at the cardiologist visit was 6 pounds 15.8 ounces, but she was so close to […]
Thankful

The heavy rains of the day have subsided and I’m curled up by the fireplace in a rented house up on Cass Lake for the holiday. Epic sessions of Yatzee and Mexican Dominoes are in progress among the generations. Jocelyn’s entire family has gathered here from as far away as Texas to be together for […]
A New Milestone

We celebrated Julia’s two month birthday (minus a day) with a visit to her pediatrician on Friday. She got a clean bill of health (AVSD notwithstanding) and began her immunizations. One was the same Diptheria-Tetanus-Pertussus vaccine that every other kid in America gets (please, no comments on the merits or risks of immunization – that […]