Hunter's reconciliation

Hunter celebrated his first reconciliation about a week and a half ago.  Father Mike does it differently than when we had ours back when we were 2nd graders.  He does the sacrament in the church and as a family.  So we waited in line all together and when it was Hunter's turn we all went up to Father face-to-face and each said a sin.  Hunter had a "target" that he was to fill out with his sins ahead of time.  Father Mike explained weeks before at a parent meeting that over the years he has found this to be helpful to the kids because it serves as a reminder.  He learned that without the target the kids would have trouble remembering what sins they had.  Hunter received a wooden cross made in Bethlehem as a token to remind him of his reconciliation.  He's gearing up for his First Communion in a few weeks so this is one big step toward that big celebration!

Greyson's 2nd surgery

 
I've been a very bad blogger lately.  Been WAY too busy with other things going on in my life.  Good things, don't get me wrong.  Business is picking up and I hosted a party, which forced me to get the house clean and somewhat renovated!

Last Wednesday Greyson went in for his second surgery on the dermoid cyst that grew back and got infected.  Well, we thought it had grown back but the surgeon believed that it was mostly infected tissue that he removed.  We don't have results from pathology yet so only time will tell.  Regardless, he had this HUGE bump on the bridge of his nose (five times bigger than when he first had it removed a year ago) that had to come out.  Even the surgeon agreed when I asked about whether or not it was necessary, given that it wasn't a re-grown cyst.  He said he didn't even need to make the first cut to know that it was necessary; he could tell just by looking at it.  He told us that when he got down to his bone during surgery he found that the bone had a small pit in it that never grew shut which is a perfect place for bacteria to collect and cause infection.  I asked if we can expect
this to happen again and he said it could.  He also said that the only way of insuring that it won't happen again is to remove part of the bone which would cause deformation.  He suggested that smaller surgeries every so often is a better solution and we agree.  I guess it's something that he will eventually grow out of.  I don't know how that can be because that pit in his bone is never going to go away but I'm no doctor.

When he went in last year for the original removal he was mostly just really sleepy when he came out of surgery.  This time was much different and we were warned ahead of time by the nurses at Children's Hospital.  They told us that kids his age (between 1 and 5 years old) usually are mad when they come off of anesthesia.  Sure enough when we got to see him in the recovery room, he was crying and thrashing around a bit.  He couldn't get comfortable and would not stop crying, that was until he got his juice.  I couldn't blame him though.  He went 17 hours without eating by the time everything was said and done.  He fasted from after dinner the night before (about 6:30 p.m.) until he came out of surgery at around 11:30 a.m.  I'm sure he was just starving.  They gave him some saltines which he ate along with the the juice we brought with and that calmed him down a bunch.  They also gave him popsicles, which he loved.  He had never had a popsicle before so that was a real treat.  John and I thought it was pretty funny that every time he got down to the stick (after eating just the top of the popsicle) he'd start crying and the nurse would run and get him a new one.  This happened three times.  After the third one we switched to the crackers.  He looked a mess with the iodine on his face mixed with the orange-stained mouth from the popsicles and the bandage on his nose.  But he was a cute mess and he gave us one big smile right before he was released which made him even cuter.  He really liked that sliding glass door in the recovery room.  He was allowed to walk around a bit but we had to be really close to him spotting him because he was very stumbly from the anesthesia.  He was playing peek-a-boo for a bit inside and outside of the door.  We are happy that it's over with and are hopeful that it'll be the last.