Busy Busy

Well, we have had a busy few weeks since my last post update! Lets hope I can remember everything. I have just been updating Eli's baby book, and realized I hadn't done it since November! I am a bad mommy!!! But good thing I have tried to keep up on the blog, so I just used that for a lot of it.

Well, Eli ended up having his eye surgery on Friday March 9th at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. Everything went very smoothly and we love the nurses there! I was able to go back with Eli while they put him to sleep, for the first time ever, which was nice. Since he is beginning to have a bit of separation anxiety, I knew it would be the best for everyone. Then the surgery lasted about 45 minutes, so Ryan and I ate some lunch (at 9:00 in the morning), and played on our phones for a bit. Then I was able to go back right when he woke up. Eli woke up the first time completely upset. We weren't sure if he was in pain or scared or hungry or what. It was probably a combination of all of the above, with being confused and disoriented thrown in. So he had a little while of some major freaking out. He ate for a little bit, and then freaked out again! It was really abnormal freaking out for Eli (and he can have an opinion about things), so the Anesthesiologist gave him a bit more pain killers, and he was knocked out completely. After another 4 hour nap he woke up completely back to his normal self! He ate the rest of his bottle, ate some apple sauce and graham crackers and was his smiley and laughing self! We were able to go home after that, and he seemed unaffected by his eyes over the next few days. Even though they were crazy and red. He wasn't a fan of the eye drops we had to use though, but that was the only time he acted bothered by his eyes. We had our follow up appointment with the doctor last Thursday, and she said so far everything looks really good. Everything is healing well, even though his right eye is still quite red. And his eyes look like they are tracking together much better. We will have another recheck in April after everything is completely healed. But for now everything looks successful.

Monday of this week both boys had an Audiology appointment. Caleb heard just fine, even though one of his ears looked like there was a bit of fluid in it. So that is good. Eli however, did not have normal ear drums, and it looked like there was quite a bit of fluid in his middle ear and did not appear to be hearing normally (I won't get into the details of the tests because people get mad at me when I do that!! Let me know if you want an explanation of infant hearing testing and I can give you one though!). His ear didn't appear to be infected and both boys have a bit of a cold so at this point we are just waiting and will retest in about a month to see if the fluid/hearing loss has resolved itself. If not, then we may be looking at getting some ear tubes put in...which consists of another surgery! Poor little mini boy! Please be praying that it just resolves itself because I really don't want to have to do more surgery. But am a firm believer in tubes when middle ear fluid is affecting hearing and speech/language development (I have tons of success stories!!!)

Eli has also been having weekly therapy with an Occupational Therapist. Today was our second session. Last week Eli was a bit grumpy and didn't like Katie (his therapist) getting close to him or making him do stuff he didn't want to do. So we didn't do a ton. But this week, Eli was all smiles and giggles for her, and he "performed" beautifully! We are working on helping him get from a sitting position to a crawling position and back again. He did that wonderfully for about 40 minutes then we had some breakfast. We are also working a bit on feeding so we eat breakfast with Katie there. He has, however, been doing amazingly well on feeding. He started eating cut up kidney beans and carrots and doesn't choke on them anymore, and LOVES them. I also gave him some spinach cheese raviolis yesterday and he didn't gag on those either. He seems to really be enjoying food more and more, and is willing to try new foods. And when he likes them he eats a TON! So I am glad that concern is getting less and less for me, and he seems to be making progress. Now we just need to work on getting him to drink out of a sippy cup!

Eli has also been improving in his speech. He babbles all the time and has started saying mama, dada, and baba (we are trying to assign meaning to each of those (mama, daddy and brother) but he mostly just calls me dada. He has also started waving "hi" and "bye" to people when he sees them. He signs "all done", however I do think he is saying "more" when he signs "all done" as he gets mad when I start putting the food away! He also seems to be imitating us more and more with the sounds we make, which is a good step. Yesterday he was giving us all "kisses" by making kissing noises with his mouth after we would do it to him!

Eli has also made some great gains in his sleeping! I know that has been an ongoing prayer request for us. But he is taking a good consistent 20-30 minute nap in the morning and a good few hour nap in the afternoon. That has been so nice! He has also been sleeping through the night beautifully! It was such a lame and dumb fix for us, that it cracks us up every day. So a few weeks ago I had his mattress off his bed to change the sheets on it and we all (Ryan, Caleb and Myself) decided that his mattress was really firm and maybe that's why he didn't like it because our bed and the guest bed have big fluffy feather beds on them, and he sleeps great in those two beds. So that weekend we were at Ikea and bought a more squishy mattress topper for a crib and put it on his bed that night. Well it worked like a charm and he has slept through the night ever since!!! Isn't that crazy?!?! That was the best $12 I have ever spent!!

Last of all, (I know this post is getting really really long, but it feels like so much has happened this month), I could really use some prayer! Some of you may know that I have been on a leave from my job this past school year. Well, sadly that leave is up at the end of this year. I had origionally hoped that I had next year off too. My school district allows for 2 years, and if Eli had been born on his due date (which is Friday by the way) last year wouldn't have counted. But because he was born in February then last year counted for my first year and this year counted as my second year (lame huh?) Well, I am now to a point where I really really really need to decide if I want to go back next year or if I want to give up my position and stay home with the boys. It is a really hard decision for me because I know if I give up my job I won't ever get that one back, and it's a risk if I will ever get another school district job again, since there aren't that many out there. We are also not sure if we can swing me staying home indefinitely financially. One more year would have been tight, but we probably could have done it. On the other hand, I also love being home with my kids full time and wanted to be able to do that when they were little. So please please please be praying for me. Or if you have any advice for me give me a call or send me an e mail! This has been keeping me up at night and I really don't know what to do. Every day I feel differently!

Thanks everyone for all of your continued support and prayers!!!