We will have to wait even one more day!

So today the surgeon came in to look at Kenadi. She found some swelling which she said would cause problems for the stitches from the surgery, but she is draining a lot of the fluid she had built up before the last surgery. So it looks like she will end up having surgery on Tuesday morning instead of monday afternoon. Bummer deal. But the surgeon said that because she is progressing so much in her breathing capability it will be better to wait longer for the surgery, and with waiting the odds that the surgery will be successful dramatically increase. So that is some welcomed good news.

Today we had fun hanging out with Kenadi. She stayed awake for a lot of the time that we were there which made it so much fun. EvenEmily and dylan came up to see her and she stayed awake for some of that. Here are a couple of pictures from today and if I can get the videos to work I will post one of those also.

Postponed One More Day

So because Kenadi is retaining a little bit of water (like 2 lbs) and is a little swollen, the doctors and surgeons decided to postpone her surgery from sunday to monday night. She is still doing really well, and while we were there today she even woke up and was almost interactive! It was so great to see her open her eyes and look at us! She was kicking and doing all kinds of movements, sadly we forgot our camera so we didnt get any pictures of it, but she is doing really great, just a little puffy!

She's off of ECMO!

Tonight at about 6:00 they removed the ECMO tubes from Kenadi! This is a huge step. Let me explain. Now with her not being on the heart and lung machine, it will be easier for the surgeons to operate on her insides. They needed her to be on it for a while to help rest her lungs and help strengthen them. Also to make sure the rest of her vital organs are in working order. SO they have done all of that and have scheduled her surgery for Sunday afternoon! This is of course depending on how she does over the next 48 hours. Here are a couple of pics of Kenadi post ecmo removal surgery.

Last Night

Well last night was a good night for Kenadi. They were able to move her down to 80 on the ECMO machine. As long as she stays stable, they will be able to take her completely off of the ECMO machine! This is great news! They are actually doing the Heart ECHO to test how her heart is doing and then they will test her without it. SO things are looking good so far!

New Pics of Jackson

Jackson playing with the pillows from our couch. He loves to pull them off and jump around in them.


Jackson was outside with his grandma and grandpa Trapp. Is he not one of the cutest little boys ever?

Thursday's News

Kenadi is progressing. her doctors are trying to get her off of the ECMO machine. She was at 140 (whatever that means) and today she was moved to 120 (which is good) and tonight they will move it to 100 and then tomorrow they will move it to 80. This is really good, because anything lower than 80 means she shouldnt be on the ECMO machine. So when she is stable on the 80, they will look to remove her from the ECMO by first clamping the ECMO machine for a short time and seeing how she reacts. If she reacts fine, they will take out the whole machine, and she will be almost ready for surgery. She will need to be stable without the machine for about 24 hours then they will do the surgery. Enjoy the videos below of kenadi moving around. We love seeing her move and have her react when we touch her. There is one video with her eyes covered. They were just trying to help her calm down because she was moving around too much.

We did talk to the doctor about the bleeding in the brain. He said it was no big deal, and is just something a lot of toddlers get, and there may even be a lot of children functioning normal that have it and nobody knows knows because it makes no difference. So as long as it doesnt spread, everything is fine in that sense.

Kenadi Videos

Pretty Flowers

Bobbie and her family sent us beautiful flowers. Jackson thinks they are beautiful too!

We have not forgotten our wonderful little Jackson. He is doing great and such a happy little boy! He has had a lot of fun having his grandma and grandpa Trapp here, grandma Muffler and Uncle Adam. Don't worry, we will keep putting up pictures of him as well!

Jackson in the Morning

So this morning I woke up at about 7 and hadnt heard Jackson...usually he is at our bedside by 6:30. Anyways so I went and looked for him in his bedroom and he wasnt in there...I looked in his bed and behind the chair and under his bed and in his closet. I started panicing then I went in the living room and looked for him in there cause maybe he was laying with Grandma and Grandpa...but he wasnt in there. So now really really worried I went and broke the news to Christina.She was way out of it, so I dont even think she understood why I was freaking out. Then I walked out of the room and heard a Jackson grunt. But I still couldnt find him. Then I realized that the bathroom door was closed. Sure enough I opened the door and there he was.

Kicking Legs!

So we went and visited Kenadi today at Primary Childrens. Let me just say she is one pretty little girl! Anyways...This morning when my mom went to visit the nurses told my mom that they were thinking of taking her off of the medicine that was keeping her whole body still. By the time we got there she had been completely off of that medicine. She was taking breaths every once and a while all by herself, she also flinched when we tickeled her toes, and when the nurses came in and had to adjust the monitors, she was kicking all over. She is soooo ticklish, we found that she is the most ticklish on her feet and just below the ribs, its funny to watch. The nurses said before we came in she was able to open her right eye, but the sweeling was still too much to open her left eye. There was a little bit of bleeding in her brain, but the doctors adjusted the amount of blood thinners she was recieving and then gave her an ultrasound on her brain and things appeared to look not so bad. We will find out more about that later on. Tonight and tomorrow morning, the nurses will start moving her to be less and less dependant on the ECMO machine. This is vital to being able to perform the necessary opperation. A big step, and one of the more difficult steps. The doctors we talked to all appeared to have complete confidence that she will be able to perform the necessary steps right on track. We will see....thanks for everybody's prayers and support!

A Video of Kenadi's Room

Kenadi Update

First off we are so grateful for all of the awesome people that have shown their support for us! As for Kenadi, she is moving more and more to the ECMO machine. Which is great for her. It is really hard to see her on the machines and devices. But she is still doing as great as she can be under the circumstances, yesterday we went up and brought Christina's parents, and also my Brother Adam, and my mom. They all got to see Kenadi and we had a pretty good time. Her nurses are incredible. They are very experienced and because of Kenadi's serious condition, she has two nurses watching her 24 hours. She is in the most serious condition in the NICU at Primary Children's.

We are now just waiting for her to be stabilized on the ECMO machine, and then they will start looking at possibly doing the surgery to move her intestines down into her abdomen. Here are a few pictures that we took last night at the hospital.

Its a Girl!

Kenadi Paige Muffler was born today January 22, 2010 at 5:01 PM. She was 19 inches long, and 7lbs 1 ounce. So just about an hour after they broke her water, Kenadi came on out. Christina started pushing at about 4:45 and did great. At about 4:50, and the sight of Kenadi's hairy head, I started feeling a little light headed and so I told the doctors and nurses about my feeling light headed and that I was going to go have a seat. I felt bad stealing some attention, but they kept saying, "you look very pale, are you alright?" But I survived...anyways back to the baby...

When Kenadi came out the Doctor said she had the ambilical cord wrapped around her neck and shoulder, which was causing a few dips in her heart beat while christina was having contractions, but the doctor said everything should still be fine. They tried getting her to start crying but were constantly unsuccessful. She would make very quiet noises, kinda like a baby cat (I wouldnt know what a baby cat sounds like but thats how christina described it). Then they called in the neonatal intensive care unit(NICU) doctors to come and see if they could suck out the mucus and get her to cry, but they couldnt, so then they wisked her away to the nicu. After checking on Christina who was doing marvelouly great, I went and followed Kenadi and all of the doctors. They hooked her up to a ton of different machines, and had of ton of nurses and doctors surrounding her.

The Neonatologist eventually came and he kind of ran the show. He ended up doing a lot fo tests. he could hear her heart on the right side of her chest but not so good on the left. SO he figured something was wrong internally. He got the x-ray machine out. They figured out that her diaphram wasnt fully developed, and so her intestines moved up into her upper chest, causing the lungs to have trouble forming. and squishing other important organs like her heart. Then they decided to life-flight her to Primary Childrens Hospital. There they can perform a surgery or whatever else they need to help her. Constantly I had nurses doctors and everybody else coming up explaining what was going on, they did great at helping me through it. Then the neonatologist came up to me and explained some more about what he found. Now I was on the verge of tears most of the time in the NICU, but as soon as he said she had to be life flighted to Primary childrens, I broke down. After calming down a little bit, I followed christinas obgyn back to the labor and delivery room, to explain to christina what was happening. She explained it very well, and appeared to be on the verge of tears herself. It appeared she left quickly so that she wouldnt break down in front of us.

Right before we Kenadi was lifted onto the stretcher and incubator to go on the helicopter, Christina and I got to go in and see her. Boy is she beautiful! Christina held Kenadi's hand and foot for most of the time we were in there. I was able to give her a blessing of health before she left. Then they loaded her up on the stretcher, and off they went. I did follow her out to the helicopter, and at first we got all the way out there, and there was no piolot, and come to find out somebody was planning on being lifeflighted also, so we had to wait for the next helicopter. But then it came and she went.

More updates will come as we find out more about her condition. Please keep her in your prayers, we need all the prayers we can get!

Getting Closer

Well they just broke christina's water about 15 minutes ago, and things are looking pretty good.

We are sitting in the hospital!

So Christina went in this morning to see her doctor...the doctor asked how she was doing, she said she had a couple of contractions, but nothing too serious, then the doctor decided to check her and was amazed to see that christina was dialated to a 5! then told her she should probably go get her stuff, and head to labor and delivery where they would start inducing her. So here we are. The baby is still kinda of high but because she is so dialated, it must be time.

Love this Kid

So a lot of people ask if Jackson knows that another baby is coming. He understands that when we point to my belly that that is where Kenadi is, but I dont think he understands that Kenadi is a little baby that will come out. I do think he knows that change is coming. The past couple weeks he has been more cuddly with me. I love it! He will just randomly come and sit on my lap and cuddle with me. This morning we were watching the morning news (like we do every morning, we like to be informed people) and he came and crawled onto my lap and laid on my chest like he was a tiny baby. It was great- its not often that he likes to sit still and cuddle. Thank goodness he is such an easy going kid. Ive been having to take it easy because my blood pressure is borderline on being too high (not so good).
He has been loving to take pictures but the problem is he usually gets too close to the camera because he gets anxious and wants to see the picture. Here are random pictures from the past couple of days.

He felt the needto try out Kenadis new carseat. We still had ours that we used with Jackson, but really didnt like it that much (it was a big pain) so when we saw that Babies R Us was having their 25% off trade in we decided we would purchase a new one. Don't worry, Andrew of course looked it up on consumer reports and this is the highest rated one. Actually, if we wanted we could almost use it for Jack!

These are just his random pictures. Silly kid!

2 of his favorite things

1. Ice Cream! He LOVES IT! These were after he had some andhe was acting so goofy (as you can tell)

2. Picking the toe fuzzies out from his toes. He recently discovered that when he takes his socks off there are little fuzzies between his toes. He will spend a good thirty minutes hunting and searching all the fuzzies out. Quite funny!

PS Notice the huge scratch on the side of his face? I have no idea how he got it. Two nights ago he went to bed without a scratch,  woke up crying in the middleof the night and I went in and checked on him and didnt notice it, but then when he got up in the morning it was there. I felt so bad! My kid doesnt get scratches and bruises!! (jk, hes a boy I know its bound to happen).

Also, just want to mention I am now 36 weeks which means next week Im considered full term and can have this baby any time. Hopefully soon!

Pictures from my Phone

Okay, I uploaded the pictures from my phone so here they are.

He played with this box for probably about a week until it finally tore and we threw it away. He would just randomly sit in it.

 were up at my great grandpas house and Jackson pulled this little stool fromthe kitchen. He then (with Andrew's help) sat on it and visited with grandpa.

One day we went to the park and all Jack wanted to do was go down the slide. He probably went down 15 or so times. He eventually got comfortable enough to climb up the stairs by himself and go down the slide by himself as well. Sure he went down backwards but he was still enjoying it.

One day, Jack was helping me fold the laundry. You can see how great he is at it.

We have this basket and Jack thought it would make a great seat. He got in it all by himself. Not quite sure why he thought itd be comfortable but he got in and out of it all day long.

We went to the little park in our complex. He loves going out there even if there is snow on the ground. He loved walking along the chain link fence and then watching the cars drive by.

One day I had put Jack in his bed fora nap. Well he got out and was playing and this was how he fell asleep. After a couple of weeks of taking naps on the floor he has realized it is is more comfortable in his bed.

We were up at grandpas last Saturday. Jackson had never before askedto sit in the chair next to grandpa but Saturday he did. We helped him up into it and he sat there for quite a while. He sure likes his great great grandpa Olson.

These last two are from today. The first one Jackson is showing his muscles and "juicing it." The second picture I just think he looks cute. (As you can tell we were having a comfy clothes day).