A trip to the zoo!

Well, last week Evan took his first trip to the zoo. We were invited to go with one of his NICU nurses and now friend, Laura, and her three girls. He was treated like a king! I didn't even realize it, but he is definitely able to enjoy the zoo...he loves the outdoors, and is beginning to notice and watch our cats. At the zoo, he loved the aquarium with the sharks swimming all around and the colorful fish. He also enjoyed the log ride! I will post pictures on this entry soon.

We also spent the weekend with my parents in Walkerton, as we had a wedding to attend. Evan got to stay with his great-grandma and wore her out entirely! Then the next day, since our anniversary was the 23rd, Paul and I got to get away and his aunt Mandy watched him. Much fun was had by all when they got to feed him his rice cereal.

An update on Vivian:
While the last couple weeks she's done very well, and was scheduled for a surgery this week, over the weekend she took a turn for the worst and is now sedated and her respiratory needs have increased so much that she is on the oscillator, which is a step up from the ventilator, providing even more support. Please pray for her and her family.

Hot stuff

If you look closely, you can see that I just finished my first bowl of rice cereal. Well, I finished smearing it all over my face, that is.
Yeah, I'm pretty hot stuff these days. I can grab my toes, sometimes even put them in my mouth. My favorite time to do that is when Mom changes my diaper. Then she can't get the diaper on right. I keep telling her that this is only the beginning...

Evan is doing pretty well lately, though he's decided to only eat about half of his bottles sometimes. Supposedly its because of his reflux. If he keeps it up I'm taking him back to the doctor. And they can tell me again that as long as he's gaining weight and making 6-8 wet diapers a day, he's fine. To me, I feel that OF COURSE he's wetting 6-8 diapers...he's still eating even though it's 1/2 to 2/3 of what he's supposed to, so he's going to pee. But will he grow? And not just increase in weight, but will he grow in height and have healthy bones, and the list goes on. There's more to growing a preemie than weight, and I feel like that's all that matters to them.

Vivian update: While she's doing well some days, she's still on ventilator support and her oxygen needs continue to go up and down. She did get pnemonia again and is having difficulty related to that, though it appears she is fighting it off. Its still going to be a long road for her and her parents, so continue to keep them in your prayers...Thank you to those who check in on her!

And a big THANK YOU to those who check in on Evan, too!

We've just started to introduce solids (rice cereal, veggie 1st foods) and it's not always successful. I'm not sure what to do with his deciding not to eat his formula, because the formula has so many more calories than the foods, I'm not willing to try the foods more than 1x/day. So, he's not getting as much practice as he probably should have.

Anyhow, hope everyone is enjoying the warm weather!

More on Vivian...

Baby Vivian is having a rough time again. Her parents and doctors think that its possible she is trying to tell them that she has had enough. Please pray for Peter, Kristen, and Evan's friend Vivian. They're so weary after their 18 weeks in the NICU. Vivian was born on January 31st, so you can imagine how emotionally and physically drained they must be. Evan was there 12 weeks, in comparison.


Almost uncomfortable to put in the same post, but relevant if you keep up on us...
I (Misty) will be in Chicago this weekend for some training for work...Advanced counseling skills for use in the hospice setting, something I'm interested in doing someday. I have to do this every so often, kind of like how teachers have to get continuing education units (CEU's), I have to get continuing music therapy education (CMTE's) ...100 to be exact by Feb 2010, and I have zero as of right now! This class is worth 20 CMTE's.

Consequently, Evan will be home with Paul for the entire weekend! I'm not sure what condition I'll come home to find Evan in (or Paul, for that matter). So, Evan and his daddy will be bachelors this weekend. Some moms have serious anxiety over leaving their babies with their husbands, but I certainly do not. Paul is the best dad ever. He plays with him, takes him outside, talks to him, and all of the things that you would hope a dad would do. He's the best.

New pictures later...

Late night rambling

So sorry for the lag in postings.
I have an update on Vivian...she is doing much better! I'm not sure if she would be considered "out of the woods" just yet, but she's had some really good days lately. She is still ventilated, and her heart and lungs are consequently still pretty weak. But she seems to be doing better, so Evan thanks you from the bottom of his heart for your prayers!

We have made it through our first cold! Evan caught a cold on our trip to Florida, and so did I (Misty). Evan has been over his since the end of last week, and I have just now gotten over it. He had to do breathing treatments every four hours for awhile, and at one point we considered taking him to the hospital, because of course, it was a weekend and the evening when I (with the help of his Nurse Laura) decided he was having too much trouble breathing. We waited it out and he went to sleep fine and was not breathing too quickly in his sleep, so we avoided the ER during our first cold, so I'm pretty proud of myself! Some of his nurses and neonatologist still get some pretty silly calls from me when I have obsessed over something long enough and can't let it go until I talk to them. And when I say 'long enough,' I mean days, or weeks, not just hours.

We really don't have much news except that Evan likes to play with his feet, has discovered he has a tongue, and is now officially eating rice cereal. He's such a big man. Does everybody realize he's going to be 8 months old this month? 5 months corrected age, but 8 months!!! Only 4 more months until he's a year old! All of my memories of his birth and NICU days are still so vivid that it doesn't seem possible that its been that long, or that it is summer now. When three months of your life are all but sucked away, it takes forever to recover. Like a black hole. When I hear about something happening in March or April, I still think that it was "last month" or so. Maybe that's what having kids does to you anyway, whether they are in the hospital for three months or not.

More pictures to come soon...