Hi!

My name us Salvador Arrona, and here are a few things you need to know

I am a C.
I am a C-H.
I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N
And I do have Christ in my heart, and if everything goes well I will live FOREVER.

I am married to an awesome wife who I don't deserve.  Her name is Deborah Arrona and you can check out her blog here.

I am a dad to a little girl named Aria Magdalena Arrona who has some special needs.

My wife became very sick when she was carrying Aria and at 25 weeks into her pregnancy Aria was delivered.  Aria was 1 pound 4 ounces when she was born and that day was crazy.

I remember the second when Aria was born, she made this little meowing gurgle sound...and that was it.  We didn't hear her again for at least 2 months.  You see all these movies where they pull the child out of the mom and give them a slap on the bum and that kid just cries and cries, but what I heard (and Deborah still doesn't remember hearing it) was closer to a death rattle.  It was New years Eve.

Aria stayed 110 days in the NICU.  For the first 5 days Deb and I didn't get to see her.  We were so young.  I was 19 and she was 20, and we had no idea what was going on.  We would go in every day to see Aria, and just watch her.  The day they took her breathing tube out, we were surprised because no one had told us.  We just heard her little fussy voice.  We didn't take enough photos.

If your child is premature, even if things are looking grim, make sure you take A LOT of photos.

We left that hospital with oxygen, a pulse ox, and hope.

A pulse oximeter is the medical fields equivalent to nails on a chalk board.

Aria did okay for a while.  Eventually, she was spending too much energy eating and not getting enough calories. At 2 years old, a feeding tube was surgically implanted into Aria, and she began to grow and grow!

Now Aria is 8, and she has some special needs, (Cerebral Palsy, Cortical Visual Impairment, Epilepsy, etc..), but it's cool.  She is a really sweet and awesome kiddo, and we couldn't ask for a more well behaved child.

Here she is starting 3rd grade a couple of days ago!

So yeah, I hope with this blog, that I can reach out to some other special needs dads.  I am a plumber, musician, and have an awesome rugged beard.  So I probably won't always be really emo about everything after this blog, and hope to provide some manly insight into parenting a special needs kiddo.

-Salvador