Baby poop isn’t for everyone… for those of you who can relate to exploding diapers keep reading… for everyone else, this may be one you want to skip…

Peanut has gotten a lot more active the last few weeks. It’s a great thing – she’s catching up on a lot of her developmental milestones. She loves to sit by her box of toys and pull each toy out one at a time, play with it for a while, and then throw it. And though she can’t quite crawl yet (she’s getting very close) she’s figured out she can roll to get closer to what she wants. She’s also figured out how to push her self backwards and make a complete circle when she’s on her stomach – like I said before, she’s very close to crawling.

While all of this progress is great, there is one draw back – ostomy bags and mobility don’t mix. To completely understand this, let’s review the anatomy lesson the DW gave a while back. The intestines are made up of the duodendum, jejunum, ileum (these three make up the small intestine) and the colon (large intestine). Peanut lost her ileum and colon to the necrotizing enterocolitis, so when she has her reconnection surgery the end of her jejunum will be connected to what’s remaining of her rectum.

The photo shows Peanut’s ostomy covered with a new bag. (If you’re wondering about her larger red birthmark, you can read up on that here.) The bright pink dot inside the bag is Peanut’s stoma – which was created when the end of her jejunum (part of her small intestine) was brought out a surgically created “opening” for the discharge of waste.

To keep things simple, the ostomy bag is made up of two parts the wafer and the bag itself – there are other accessories for helping with removal and adherence, but that’s just details. The wafer is hard to see in the picture, but it is a tan colored pad slightly larger than the white ring on the bag that is super sticky on one side and smooth on the other. We cut a hole in the center of the wafer just large enough to fit the stoma through. The wafer is then adhered to the skin and provides a protective layer between the skin and the poop. The white portion of the bag – which is another sticker – is then stuck to the smooth side of the wafer. Poop comes out of the stoma and is collected in the bag without touching the skin.

Peanut is spending a lot of time on her stomach and sitting upright. Both of these positions are not ideal for the bag and means we end up changing her bag 2, sometimes 3, times a day. The bags simply aren’t sticky enough and flexible enough to withstand all the movement. Also not helping things are Peanut’s quick hands. There’s been at least a half dozen times now that she’s grabbed her bag and tore it off (surprisingly, it seems to hurt her less when she tears it off than when we need to remove it and use a adhesive remover to help). There’s also the fact that Peanut loves to roll over and sleep on her stomach now…

Her outfit was nothing compared to the sheets. Have I mentioned that the DW has become somewhat of an expert at stain removal? In the long run it’s not a big deal, as the bag is only temporary until her next surgery. Plus, if she were a “normal” baby it’d simply be the back of her outfit that looked like that instead of the front.

We’ve been busy lately and any free time during the last week has been spent in the garden (more on that later), so I haven’t put any additional time in on the swing set. With just under 5 hours in, here’s where we’re at…

Five Hours In

Lulu’s tickled with the swing and the clubhouse so far. Once the swing was hung the set was finished as far as she was concerned – there went my help. Hopefully it gets finished this week. It’s only a matter of time before Lulu remembers the slide is still missing.

Way back in February I mentioned our plan for some improvements on the house in the upcoming months. It went roughly like this… we wanted to add some more insulation to the attic, but needed to put a new roof on first since there were a few small leaks that would ruin the insulation. Some of the roof’s issues were associated with the chimney, so we wanted to get rid of the chimney before putting on the new roof. And of course, we couldn’t get rid of the chimney while the furnace still used it, so nothing was moving until we replaced the furnace.

During one of the warmer weekends in March, we pulled the old furnace out and replaced it with a new high-efficiency LP unit. As typical with most advances in technology, the new unit was much smaller than the old one.

The old oil furnace (brown) sitting next to the new LP furnace (gray).

With the new furnace in place the chimney could be removed and the new roof installed. The crew we hired showed up on Wednesday morning and got to work. Since they do this on a daily basis and have all of the equipment to install the new roof quickly and safely it wasn’t something I wanted to mess around with.

The basket on the lift can be raised up to the gutters.

The three man crew had steel on two sides of the roof before lunch. It would have easily been a one day project, but we’re also having them replace the siding on the two dormers. We want everything above the gutters water tight.

The old shingles are on the left, the new steel is on the right.

We decided to go with a steel roof. There’s a lot of differing opinions on steel roofing for residential use out there, but we thought the look would work – especially with the square-corrugated metal we used – it’s unique compared to the standard agricultural steel that used heavily in the area.

The chimney used to be on this ridge.

The above picture shows there’s no sign of the old chimney. You might have also noticed that the PVC pipe that’s now sticking out has a cap on it – that’s not typically how it’s done. The pipe’s there as a place holder and is capped to keep rain water out because it is just sticking through into the attic. As we remodel the house and update the plumbing the new “stink pipe” will come out in that spot. (It currently comes out the side of the house.) I figured it would be easier to have the required boot installed with the roof instead of trying to cut it in later. Now when we’re plumbing we won’t have to worry about it – simply slide the capped pipe out and the new pipe in – all from the attic. Are you starting to get the feeling that once these guys finished the roof I have no intention of going back up there for a long, long, time?

Finished

Now for a little caulk and paint for the rest of the house.

I guess I jumped the gun on writing about the mailbox last week – it technically wasn’t finished. Monday night after work, the DW wrapped up the project with the finishing touch – planting some flowers in the planter box.

For some reason, choosing flowers for our landscaping is normally harder than it needs to be for us. Luckily, we arrived at the green house 10 minutes before they were closing Saturday night and made a snap decision – sweet potato vines and pink snapdragons.

We’ll see how they hold up under a coat of summer road dust.

You’d be surprised how easy it is to adjust to a kitchen without cabinet doors and front drawer panels – especially with how nice the weather has gotten recently. But, the cold and rain last week put me back on task and I had the opportunity to finish painting some of the cabinet hardware and start putting things back together.

We saved all of the original hardware, cleaned it, and repainted it with several coats of spray paint.

The dark finish on the cabinets was de-glossed, primed, and then painted with a cabinet paint.

I finished the top row of cabinet doors before I was drawn away to a different project (more on that tomorrow). The next rainy day I’ll work on putting the front drawer panels back on. We’re still waiting for the flooring to be installed. Once the old flooring is torn out and replaced I’ll put all the doors back on the base cabinets – there’s no sense in putting them on now and having them scuffed or scratched during the floor installation.

Lulu has been asking for one thing since we moved. She was two at the time, so it started as “a park,” then “a playground,” and then once she figured out what she really wanted it boiled down to “Can we get a swing and a slide?” The DW and I had always planned on it, but looking at swing-sets can be a bit overwhelming. With the series, options, upgrades, warranties, and add-ons browsing swing-sets was worse than shopping for a new car. I stumbled upon one brand where the “basic” set was priced just shy of 5 figures. (I blocked that website on the home computer.) We needed a swing and a slide – for that price I’d expect a life guard on duty.

With the basic idea of what we wanted – a couple swings, a slide, and a loft area – we figured I’d take a couple weekends, draw up a plan, and just build what we wanted from scratch. Finding the time to pull that off was going to be the only issue, so when we found a ready to assemble kit on sale for about the same price as what I figured it was going to cost to start from scratch we ordered it. (If you’re curious, the lumber is the cheap part – it’s the accessories – swings, slides, etc – that really add up.)

We picked the kit up on Saturday night. It came in a box that measured only 11 x 22 inches and was just under 8 feet long – but that didn’t stop it from weighing almost 300 lbs. Poor Lulu was a little confused and asked “where’s the slide?” at least a half dozen times on the way home. We had a bunch of other things going on Sunday, so it was almost 7 Sunday evening before we opened the box and she got to see everything.

Lulu helped take everything out of the box. It helped both of us – she found the obvious pieces that made up the slide and I found out why the box weighed so much (there wasn’t a wasted inch of space inside).

The DW told me that a lot of the information she found online said it would take around 10 hours for two people to assemble the set. With the number of parts to sort through, I can see why.

Lulu was a great help hunting for parts and pieces still hiding in the box. That is, until she found it more interesting to just sit in the skid loader. (And don’t worry – the skid loader key was in my pocket, the park brake was set, and the additional safety mechanism was engaged. Even though she looks determined, she wasn’t going anywhere.)

I think Peanut was scouting things out as well. If you can’t tell from that image how she feels about all this, the next shot should help clear things up.

Lulu and I took the DW’s comment of “2 people 10 hours to assemble” as a challenge. At this point, we’ve worked about 3 hours on the set between Sunday and Monday night and used the majority of the lumber. I think we got this one.

Who would have thought that we’d still be worried about road conditions for Peanut’s May check-up? But with snow piling up in central portions of the state on Thursday, the DW and Peanut made the trip to the UIHC without issue – or even a single snow flake sighting.

It’s starting to sound like a broken record (and we’re ok with that), put Peanut had another excellent check-up. Her blood work is still improving and she continues to gain weight at a pace that’s catching her up to where she should be for her age. She’s currently at 15 lbs 5 oz. With everything going good, it means it’s time to challenge Peanut again with a slight change. Two weeks ago, a change was made to her diet – the addition of meat (if you consider “chicken and vegetables” pureed to a brown mush as meat). With the added food, this week’s change is going to be very challenging – Peanut’s doctor decided we could let her sleep through her 1 AM feeding. The truth is that part will be pretty simple. Peanut didn’t care for us waking her up at 1 AM every morning to change her diaper and empty her ostomy bag – even if it was followed with a warm bottle. The hard part will be in making up the missed bottle over the rest of the day. Peanut will still be fed every three hours between 4 AM and 10 PM, so those seven bottles will all need to be slightly bigger to make up for the one missing bottle. How Peanut handles the larger bottles the next few days will determine if she gets to continue sleeping through her 1 AM feeding.

Peanut’s also working hard at mobility. She’s starting to realize she can roll to get where she wants and on a smooth floor she can get up on her hands and push herself backwards. Her surgery and months of immobility in the hospital greatly delayed the development of some of the muscles Peanut needs for these activities, but with her physical therapy and natural curiosity she’ll be all over the place all too soon. Even with her interest in moving, Peanut’s new favorite activity is simply sitting upright on her own and playing or watching – and with the three other kiddos in the house, there’s always plenty to watch.

It’s probably the worst kept secret of the year, but the DW will be leaving her job on the last day of May to stay at home with the kiddos. There’s several reasons for it, but the main one is that Peanut is no where near ready to go to day-care with Lulu as originally planned. Though our parents love watching Peanut during the work week for us, it’s gone on for longer than originally planned and not how they should be spending their retirement. This is just the logical next step.

So as the school year wraps up, the DW’s student’s put together a tribute to her that ran during one of their recent shows. Here’s a peek:

The DW an I have a special fondness for Loras College, and not just because she’s worked there for the past seven years. We both graduated from there in 2001, we got married at the chapel on campus, and the DW’s colleagues and students have been incredibly supportive over the past year. Our Loras friends will always be a part of our lives, even after her last day of work.

Spring arrived in a big way over the weekend. (So much, that the kitchen cabinets still aren’t reassembled.) It was the first warm (in the 70s) sunny weekend since September – that’s a long time. So while the kiddos made the most of the sun, I thought I’d take care of our mailbox issue.

I wish I had a “before” picture of the old mailbox, but there really wasn’t enough of anything left to take a picture off. The old box had been chewed on by Pip and replaced over a year ago, but then the post was clipped by a corn planter and shoved a couple times by the snow plow. The post finally snapped off this winter and it spent most of February and March held upright by being stuck in a snow drift. It was time to start over.

So with a couple hours, a little lumber, a can of black spray paint, and 2 bags of potting soil we once again have a mailbox that doesn’t require a snow drift to stand upright.

I was actually able to salvage the mailbox I put up after Pip pulled the door off the original mailbox while chewing on it. It needed a fresh coat of paint to cover up the John Deere green paint it collected when it was knocked over last year. You can still see the dent in the back of the box in the above picture.

Once the weather warms up a little more, the DW is planning on adding flowers to the base. Hopefully this one sticks around for a few years.

The Preemie Project recently announced a new donation themed “It’s a Zoo in the NICU!” They will be collecting and donating animal themed hats, booties, and blankets in June to infants in Iowa Neonatal Intensive Care Units.

Click here for more information.

The Preemie Project website has more information on requirements (sizes, materials, etc) and leads on some creative ideas. The Preemie Project is only one of several great projects we learned about during our stay at the UIHC with Peanut that offered simple services that made our lives a little bit brighter during some very long days. Feel free to click the link above to see what over great things The Preemie Project is up to.

Peanut with her Preemie Project Hawkeye Hat