Week 2, Day 4

It is hard to believe that we have only been here for two weeks, but at the same time it kind of feels like two months already!  Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday and Eric will be here.  We went out to dinner tonight with some of our new friends, the other mom from the feeding clinic and her little boy Noah and a mom with a little baby in the NICU.  It was so nice to get out and feel like a normal person again!  We were finally able to get some much needed margaritas!!!  Alcohol is not allowed in the Ronald McDonald HouseL.  That was one good margarita!!! Noah’s last day at the clinic is tomorrow, and we were celebrating the amazing progress that he has made.  We are really going to miss them when they’re gone.

Gavin had an amazing day in terms of volume!  He consumed 34.5oz of food/PediaSure, which is more than he needs.  They track his weight pretty closely, so it will be interesting to see what happens.  We even moved up to toddler spoons on Gavin’s preferred foods, which are still really just yogurt and the banana/applesauce puree.  I brought the Mac & Cheese from last night’s dinner, and Anna incorporated into one of Gavin’s meals!  He ate .28oz of it before his chewing started to slow, and it was clear that his muscles were getting tired.

We also had to go for blood work today to check Gavin’s sodium levels.  The older Gavin gets, the harder this becomes.  He is extremely hard to draw blood from.  During our hospital stays in the past they have had to have nurses from the NICU come to get blood from veins in Gavin’s head.  Two of the most important people in Gavin’s life are the only two ladies who are able to take his blood at Texas Children’s Hospital, Rennet and Sophia.  I wish we could fly them up to Indiana for the next six weeks!!  We were sent to one lady in the basement of the hospital’s office building who is supposed to be a vein whisperer.  The room they have was so warm and inviting!  They had stuffed animals all over, even hanging from the ceiling.  It worked well to distract Gavin.  Unfortunately, this lady had numb fingers for whatever reason and at the last minute had to call someone else in to get the blood.  He was able to get it on the first time, but poor Gavin was very vocal for the rest of the day that it hurt a lot. L  Immediately after they took the blood, they handed Gavin a big Snoopy stuffed animal to have!  Apparently they don’t do stickers here… Gavin was happy about his new dog and carried him around all day.  I had also saved for after the blood work a little video that my sister in law had sent me this morning of Gavin’s cousins Ruth and Ben having a dance party.  Thankfully that helped to distract Gavin as we watched it 20 times!!!  Thanks Katie!

The other not so pleasant excitement for the day was the weather!  We had tornado warnings for most of the afternoon and evening.  It was pretty creepy when they came over the loud speaker in the clinic and announced that there was a Level 1 Tornado Warning!!!  Apparently that means you need to close all of the blinds.  Dr. Clawson, who is from the east coast and is also not a fan of these tornado warnings joked that it was so you don’t see them coming.  We couldn’t figure out how closed blinds would actually help during a violent tornado, so that seemed like a reasonable explanation!  It is also a little strange that the tornado warning siren in town also goes off as a thunderstorm warning.  How are you supposed to know when to run to the basement?!?  I would prefer to just stay in the basement all day if they would let us!!!  Thankfully, the tornado warning seems to be over.  I never thought I’d say this, but I actually miss Texas and the hurricanes that they see coming from miles away!

Gavin got another Valentine’s Day card in the mail today from Aunt Janet and Uncle Bob!!  Thanks you guys!!  Gavin carried it all around the room telling me Happy Valentine’s Mommy!!  He enjoyed the mailJ  

Here are some more pictures from the past week!