May 18, 2007

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

What can I say, today was another good day! Kyle was doing so well with his feedings being moved to his stomach that the doctor decided to begin compressing his feeds over two hours. Whereas before Kyle would receive 12 cc's of milk each hour of the day, now he receives 36 cc's of milk in two hours, then his stomach has an hour to digest the food. After the hour of digestion is over, his stomach is checked to see how much, if any, residual (food) is left in his stomach. So far today, Kyle has had very minimal residual left each time. When his nurse was changing out his feeding once today, she put a couple drops of milk in his mouth to see how he would do and he loved it! He kept wanting more and each time she gave him some he would swallow it just fine. The nurse said this was a good sign. Hard to imagine Kyle is 3 months old and this was the first time he had "food" in his mouth!

On Tuesday Kyle was moved to a real crib and as such we now have a place to hang a mobile. I wasn't sure if he would even notice it, but he actually really seems to enjoy it. He watches it very intently, and seems to focus on one animal at a time. With the mobile spinning, eventually he'll loose track of the animal and then his eyes start darting around the room looking for it, which is what Kyle is doing in the bottom picture. It is so fun to watch as he becomes more and more aware of his surroundings!

In response to Aunt Sandra's questions on the comments section...The interview ended up being completely different than what we expected. As it turns out, there was a movie premiere in Orlando on a documentary called Heart of an Empire: The Life and Times of the Fighting 501st. The documentary is based on a Star`Wars charity that visits children and their families who are facing some sort of crisis. In conjunction with the movie premiere, local papers and a local TV station were doing a story on the group and wanted to take pictures of them "in action", hence the visit to the Ronald Mc Donald house. We were the family that was featured. There were about 15 Star Wars characters at the Ronald Mc Donald house, and, while on camera, they announced that Madison was the special girl they came to see. They asked her to come up because they had brought her some gifts, but she was so afraid she refused! Madison is someone that is to frightened to sit on Santa's lap so you can imagine her fear with Darth Vader! Joe had to finally pick Madison up and hold her while she received some Star Wars toys from them. A couple of the characters took off their masks to show her they were just in costume and she eventually began to relax and enjoy herself. Afterwards they asked us some questions about how this sort of visit helps to cheer us up, which was the "interview" portion. Anyways, I misunderstood the story, and thought it was going to be about the Ronald Mc Donald house, but it ended up that it was about this Star Wars charity who happened to visit the Ronald Mc Donald house. I am not sure how much we were featured in the story but it should be posted online soon. When it is, I'll let everyone know the link.

We are amazed at our God and His people. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your thoughts and prayers.

In Christ Alone,

Jennifer, Joe, Madison and Kyle

P.S. My date is (or was supposed to be!) June 7. :)