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...

Prayers for Baby Vivian and her family

For those that keep up with us, I'd appreciate special prayers tonight for Evan's friend Vivian in the NICU right now. Her heart is close to failure, and we'd just like for you to lift them all up to Jesus right now. Her parents names are Kristen and Peter. They are amazing parents with equally amazing faith. Kristen and I have gotten to know each other after being put in touch shortly after Evan came home from the NICU. What is extremely frustrating, and we'll never know why this side of Heaven, but she did very well prior to some surgeries that were necessary for her to have, and then continued to need increasing respiratory support. As before, that's all I'll share to protect her family, but please keep her in your prayers. Vivian is a beautiful little girl who has touched so many lives.
Thanks, Misty

Vacation

Brianna and Evan

What can I say, I love the camera.
John and Sheila. I know John would be embarrassed to see the bandages are shown in this picture, but we're proud of him and Sheila.
Just Grandpa John and I having fun at the beach!
I love my Grandma!
Grandma Sheila and Davin, and Grandpa John and Evan before we left for the airport. Davin and Evan are wearing matching outfits from Grandma Sheila

Moms and babies enjoying the ocean at Punta Gorda, FL
Mandy and Misty
Evan dipping his toes in the ocean for the first time ever! Look at me now, NICU doctors and nurses! I just can't be stopped!
My "at the beach" outfit that mom picked out. I have swim trunks, a surfer shirt (that really ended up being a hunky belly shirt) and a beach bum hat! I loved the beach.
The boys both needed a bath, so we thought, what the heck...a bath together would be fun! I think they agreed!

Evan, Paul, Misty, Mandy, Andy, and Davin in the ocean at the beach in Punta Gorda, Florida


We had such a wonderful time in Florida, visiting Paul's mom and stepdad, Sheila and John. John has been enduring a second occurance of leukemia, and will undergo a second bone marrow transplant in the near future. As that takes a pretty nasty toll on a person, we knew he'd be unable to travel any time soon and all of us flew down to Port Charlotte, FL to spend time with Grandpa John and Grandma Sheila. By all of us I mean Paul, Evan, and I; Andy, Mandy, & Davin, and Paul and Mandy's brother, Matt. So, five adults and two carseats with exceptionally cute babies in them, piled into a rented minivan and drove two hours down the gulf to their beautiful home in Port Charlotte, FL. We went to the beach, did some shopping, ate out a couple times, ate in a couple times, took a sunset cruise on a small boat, visited with some family of Paul's (Aunt Dannee and Uncle Steve, his cousin David and wife Carla with their kids Brianna and Jacob).



Brianna and Evan have a whole lot in common, as she was born at only 24 weeks gestation due to Carla having preeclampsia. Brianna was born at only 1 lb. 3 oz. and spent nearly 5 months in the NICU in Indianapolis at Riley Hospital. You'll see a picture of her and Evan together with this post. She is truly a miracle, never experiencing any brain bleeding, cerebral palsy, or lasting effects of her prematurity. She did have a monitor like Evan's, and was on oxygen for quite a long time once coming home, but now she's a happy, healthy six year old girl. Its interesting to look at her when you know the subtle facial characteristics that many micro-preemies have, you can sort of pick them out. If you look at the picture and compare her and Evan, you can see that their faces are structured alike. Their cheeks are chubby not out to the sides, but the chub comes forward. Their eyes are placed slightly in the same place, and their chins are the same. This is because she also had what the nurses affectionately called "toaster head." Preemies that spend so much time lying down on their sides have thinner faces and elongated heads for some time until their soft bones shift and develop while they grow and gain more weight. It is encouraging to see that Brianna has a full, filled out face now as a young child. While we remember Evan having "toaster head," his has definitely nearly corrected itself, but he has not been spared a crooked head from preferring to lie on his right side! Maybe you think its insensitive to say that, but I'm perfectly comfortable pointing it out because if that's all we got from his extreme prematurity, then I'm thrilled to death!



Anyhow, getting to speak with her mother Carla and visit with Brianna was a highlight for me, as it is very difficult to find other parents of preemies like Evan who appear to have only mild effects of the circumstances of their birth.







We had the greatest time with Andy and Mandy and Davin, and visiting with Sheila and John. They seem to be in great spirits despite the difficulty of dealing with a long-term illness, for John as well as for Sheila as a caregiver. Sheila helps John take care of his PICC line (a semi-permanent IV line) each evening. John isn't behaving as he should (as any man would) mostly because he works in the yard outside, and generally won't just stay put and rest!







We had an awesome time at the beach, of which there are pictures posted, and Evan and Davin had a great time getting to know each other better. Davin is extremely fond of Evan, and wants nothing more than to touch him and squeeze him and love on him. He couldn't get enough of him, watched him all the time, and even shared a bath with him! Mandy said that he's still looking for him, from checking out all of the other strollers at their airport once they landed in Nashville, to trying to get to his picture on their computer screen. I'm sure if Evan could tell us the way Davin can, that he'd do the same.







Evan seems to be doing so many more things now, just after the week of our vacation. He seems so much more alert, he loves to stand up, he's making more faces, and he even tried cereal while we were at Grandma's! He wants to be like his cousin Davin.







This is an incredibly long post, so I'm going to cut it short. Enjoy our pictures!

Pictures!

Hard evidence of his new skills...no such luck capturing his rolling over. Stinker!

This is Evan with the famous Dr. Gilmore. It took some begging to get her to pose with him, and you can see he's smirking because of it. He gave her a great big smile as soon as he saw her. Nurse Laura was jealous because he smiled at Dr. Gilmore first! In case anyone is wondering why Dr. Gilmore is famous, it's because most times that Evan progressed in the NICU, it was because of a decision or treatment that Dr. Gilmore made.

This is Evan with Nurse Jan, from Labor and Delivery, that took such good care of Misty in the hospital. She nicknamed Evan "Bladder Boy" because he was stomping on Misty's bladder and Jan was the first one to believe her that he was making the catheter move and as a result cause her extreme pain. Jan also gave Misty a back rub, so she of course earned extra points for that.

Among the new things he's learning includes how to charm Mom's socks off. One look at those dimples, and its all over.

I thought I'd sneak up on him and take this picture of him in first thing in the morning. He heard me coming.