Happy, Happy Twenty Fourteen

Where has the time gone? It's almost been 14 years since I graduated high school. It will be 12 years in April since Pete and I first met. We will celebrate 7 years of marriage in September. Andrew will turn 2 in March! And we will bring Alexander home...healthy! This will be our 2014 - filled with many more happy celebrations, faith, love, hope and health. And that is our wish for all of you!

For the most part Alexander had a relatively uneventful start to the new year for such a little guy. He continues to struggle with his lungs and for the past week has had more desats (oxygen desaturation, when he stops breathing and needs more oxygen and the higher vent settings to force him to breath) than we can count. Many of these got so low he required bagging (when they take a rubber bag, attach it to his chest tube and manually force him to take breath). Every day I pray that he's better, but he's got a long way to go. We are thankful that this is his greatest challenge for now. We were told that sometimes it's a chicken or the egg situation. He needs to grow bigger to produce more, healthy lung tissue; but when he first grows it puts a great strain on his lungs because they are working harder to support a bigger body.

Today he started a regimen of Albuterol and that has helped him to become more stable so he hasn't had the ups and downs or the number of desats. We hope this is an upswing in management of his lung disease. 

The good news is he's growing!! And turning into such a big boy. Pete and I are amazed each time we see him on how big he's grown. I feel like he looks like I could just pick him up and take him home, considering what he once was - and then I hold my friend's 9 lb babies :) Alexander is now 3 lbs 11 oz and tolerating his food very well. We couldn't be more excited and hope this growth continues and starts to help him develop new, healthy lung tissue. 

I started back to work last week so our travels to Iowa City will be more restricted. I have to give a shout out to the entire Marketing Department (including Sally) for holding down the fort and thriving while I was out - especially to Becca for leading the charge. It means so much to me that I could focus on my family and didn't have to worry about a thing at work. Tim, Becca, Chelsey - you all are the best!

Take a peek at our growing fat man - we hope he's on par to compare to his brother!

FaceTime when Nana and Papa (Eckhardt) were visiting New Year's Eve.

Snuggled and sleepy.

Bundled up for errands - it's supposed to be -15 degrees tomorrow for the high (with -45 windchill!)!