Day 28 - 4 Weeks!!!

Today is day 28 (4 weeks, can you believe it????) of Joshua's life which leaves us with 78 days!! Yay, we made it under 80 days now!! That means we're 1/3 of the way to the surgery date. Just 8 more weeks to go until then and then a few more weeks of recovery after that and then we'll be home. I can't wait!!

I know it's been awhile since the last post. I've been busy during my at home time with lessons with Abby and Noah and trying to make sure we have clean dishes and laundry. Plus I'm still pumping at least twice and sometimes 3 times after I get home in the evening and that alone takes almost an hour total. But enough with the excuses, how about an update.

Joshua is doing very well. He weighs around 9 pounds 6 ounces now. He's really gaining weight well. He now has a tube in the nose again, but this time it's a feeding tube. He's getting 2ml of breastmilk an hour into the nasal tube. They said it's not for nutritional value because the milk supposedly just runs right through and doesn't slow down enough to be absorbed, but I believe in miracles and I know he's getting some benefits from it. So that makes me happy!! His bowels are moving both on top and bottom as they are supposed to be right now. Maybe a bit slower than normal, but still moving. He's all around pretty healthy and the doctors are amazed at how well he's doing. He's our little miracle baby.

Enjoying his breastmilk!

They upped his feeds in the lower portion to 11mls an hour. They are trying to up him 1ml a day until he gets to the max feeds which is 28mls an hour. So that'll take another 17 days as long as everything goes well.

I decorated the pin board in his room with fall leaves and pumpkins. Then at home, Abby, Noah and I decorated their bedroom doors and our back sliding door with the same decorations, so that all 3 kids had the same fall decorations.

All of our Fall decorations!

Noah and Abby started lessons again on Monday. It's actually going quite well. They are moving right along in Math and English. Daddy's doing Science and Spelling with them. They're learning about dogs in Science. They also learned more about mammals and the different kinds of teeth. I'm doing Geography with them and we're working on learning the the names of the 50 states in alphabetical order. We learn it in small increments a day. We're up to Nevada. We also use a lightsaber (I don't have a real pointer!!) to point to each state on a big map as we say it, so they're learning the states in ABC order and also where they are on the map at the same time. They are totally loving this and they're doing really well. We even did an art project on Tuesday. So it's going well. We finished reading a really good book that I'd recommend called Ginger Pye. We started it before Joshua was born and just finished it last night. We all loved it. I'd recommend it to anyone with kids from 5-12.

The kids working on their art project.

Well that's what we've been up to this week. We're doing ok overall. We're still getting 2 meals a week from our church and that's been a huge blessing. And we've gotten other meals, gift cards and other things from other friends and family. And we've gotten so many cards and emails. I'm always overwhelmed with how thoughtful people have been during this time. So a big thank you, to all of you. We appreciate you all so much and you're definitely helping us get through this.


Well that's it for now. Good night!!