December 25, 2007

Happy Christmas everybody! We've had a lovely day today, and Father Christmas was very kind to Charlie! Although he was very excited last night, Charlie was asleep by 8.30pm and didn't wake up until 7am - which we thought was very civilised, having been half expecting a 5am call!

He was totally amazed by the fact that Father Christmas had been and left him a huge pile of presents, and had brought all the things he'd asked for (and some!)

We had a really leisurely morning, and went to take some flowers for Will before lunch. Mum and Dad came for dinner and we spent the afternoon building the new Spiderman scooter they bought for Charlie, and playing with all his new games. He also had loads of fun marching up and down the lounge on his new stilts (another fab present from Nanny and Grandpa!!) Photo to follow!

Charlie's looking forward to seeing Nanny and Grandpa again tomorrow, because Boxing Day is always a family get-together at their house.

I'm attaching a couple of pics of Charlie (who, as I type is zipping around the house on his new scooter.... I'm praying for a dry day tomorrow so he can take it outside!)

The only other news is that we've had the date come through for Charlie's cardiac catheter. The hospital rang yesterday (3pm on Christmas Eve... talk about poor timing) and we've been asked to take him in on January 6, for the procedure the next day. All being well, he should be home by January 8. In all honesty, having the date set in stone has somewhat taken the shine off Christmas for Pete and me, although Charlie has carried on blissfully unaware. Although we knew the catheter was imminent, we were hoping to be able to avoid having to think about it until after Christmas. Hey-ho. We're just hoping and praying that it will be a fairly positive experience for Charlie, so he won't be phased at the prospect of having to go back to hospital for his Fontan surgery - probably later on in 2008. It is so hard to contemplate stepping back onto the hospital rollercoaster, when life has been so wonderfully 'normal' since April 2004 when Charlie had his stage two surgery. Charlie knows that he will have to have his heart fixed again sometime soon, so he can run faster without getting so puffed, but as yet we haven't told him about the catheter. I think we'll wait until after New Year, so he doesn't have so long to think about it. We'll keep you posted.