A month already?!?

Yep, it’s been a while.  We have been home for just about a month.  I guess you can always suspect we are home when the blog goes quiet and we are tending to our little man.  We want to first thank everyone for their kind words and inquiries during this time.  Thank you especially to the Jackson, Hakala, and Spilson families for your complete kindness and generousity.  Thank you to our amazing colleagues who pooled money and  sacrificed gift cards so that we can have an easier time balancing everything when we get home.  Time is one thing we don’t have and by taking care of meals we get it back.  You have no idea the amount of peace that exists when you know dinner is not something you have to worry about.

We get asked a lot but we are always up for talking about Evan; it can just be a little hard to figure out what to say.  How into detail should we go?  Where did I last leave off when talking with this person?  It is kind of a loaded gun, but honestly I don’t know what I would say to me either.  In short, here are some recaps from the past month to get everyone up to speed:

• Evan got his second toofer in the hospital, so now he has a pair of sharp little bottom teeth.  It amazes me how hard he can bite.
• We were discharged after a 25 day stint on Feb 23! Yay
• We finished our 6-week course of special-fat formula Enfaport to treat Evan’s chylothorax.  So far it hasn’t come back since eating breastmilk again.  Wonderful news!
• We finished our 6-week course of antibiotics to treat his Psuedomonas infection.  Aside from the wound slightly opening up a couple times and it looking a little sketchy in the beginning, everything has gone great and the infection appears to be gone.
• Evan has been smiling and feeling much happier – much more like the boy we’ve been looking for all year
• Evan has learned to sit up on his own and has decent stamina.  He is also able to roll around.  He’s not quite mobile but he is working on it for sure.
• Evan still receives 100% of his food through his g-tube.  Eating will be an issue.  We have an assessment with OT, PT, and speech therapy next week to come up with a game plan.  Evan will put cereal puffs into his mouth but will typically start gagging, spit it out, have a moment, but then he will grab another puff and try.  He knows very much what to do, just needs to get over the texture/taste/sensation issues.
• Evan scored some sweet threads at his first Mom-2-Mom sale
• Evan went with Daddy to Daddy Bootcamp as an assistant to  help show daddies to be what lies ahead.
• Evy met his new baby friend Ari Filippine, who arrived a month early
• Evy sported his “Member of the UofM Zipper Club” onesie in support of baby friend Maggie McLaren’s heart transplant!
• He has been spending lots of time outside on walks with Nana and Papa and taking advantage of this incredibly warm and sunny March
• March 18 marked the first day that we have been out of the hospital more than in the hospital this year.  Yay and keep it that way!
• And of course Evan has been proudly sporting his Spartan Green while cheering on the MSU basketball team.  My good-luck little monka!
• Aaaaaaaaand finally Happy 8th Month Birthday little guy!  You are growing up so fast it is incredible.

And in no particular order, here is the cutest baby ever…