Today we met with the surgeon Chris' GI referred. He seems more than capable. He said that he's done 100's of colectomies in children under 9 (we asked in reference to small children as Chris is only 5), hundreds more in older children and teens as well, and that in colitis cases he always does mucosectomy. He's also written/been published in text book chapters on laproscopic colectomies in children, and he spouted off the names of some of the leading GI pediatric surgeons around the country that he's been involved with (not that I knew who any of them were).
He said in small children they can do the whole process all at once and that a J-pouch is not necessary because with his body still growing, the end of the small intestine will grow and adapt to what is needed. (of course it sounded a lot smarter how he said it. 
) Chris will have to stay in the hospital for about a week or so on IV fluids to allow the connection time to heal. It will be done laproscopically. The surgeon said he needs to meet with the GI to go over a few things and then we'll schedule surgery after that. He told us that for about the first year he'll have very frequent BM's but that eventually his body will heal and work things out and he can just be a normal kid. He also told us that people without colons generally have a harder time with the symptoms of stomach viruses because they don't have a colon to slow things down (sounds logical).
I'm feeling really good about this.
On a funny little side note: As the nurse was checking chris over she had to check his nether-regions for hernia, when she wiggled his balls around Chris grinned the biggest grin i've ever seen. it was too funny.
on another not so funny note. he got bit by an ant (we assume) the other day and due to the 2 immunosupressants he's on developed a staff infection in it. luckily we caught it pretty early and the antibiotics are helping a lot. i've seen far more than my share of puss in the last few days. guess it comes with the territory...