Update on Julia and Aaron

Julia weighs 16 pounds 7 oz!!!!!  That's almost a whole pound gained since we brought her home.  She is thriving in the hospital.  Last night she was smiling, laughing, playing and very rambunctious.  As of yesterday she was up to 55 mL of continous feeding an hour....that's up from 30 mL when this started and their initial goal was to get her up to 42 mL.  Last night they upped it to 65!!!  Today they are also discontinuing the "continuous feeds" during the day and switching her to bolus feeds.  She will get fed at 9, 12, 3 and 6 and then go back to continuous feeding throughout the night.  I am sure she will contiue to gain weight steadily.  Yay!!  So the dr. told me that she is doing so well, that she may come home by the end of this week.  We cannot wait : )  She will have to continue to be fed through the NG tube for about 2 months.  Then she will be evaluated to see if she will take enough food orally or if she needs to have a GI tube placed in her stomach.  Some of this will depend on when she is strong enough for surgery.  But for now, when we bring her home,  we will need to be placing the tube down her nose to her stomach.  They had me do this once a couple of days ago and it's not easy.  Not because it's difficult to feed it through, but she is a fighter and is very strong.  The nurses are impressed with her strength.  It takes two people to hold her still and one person to actually put it in. 

Aaron continues to thrive here at home.  He is coming out with more English on his own.  We are starting to realize that he understands more than he can say.  We will be at the dinner table and talking about something and all of the sudden he chimes in (in Russian) with hand motions and such and we realize he is joining in on our topic of conversation.  He knows what we had been saying.  It's so awesome.  He loves to play outside with all the kids.  He got a little bit of a sunburn on his arms a couple of days ago.  Good Vitamin D for him though. The mosquitos LOVE him.  His poor neck, face and arms got bitten up as it got to evening time.  His favorite is the sandbox in the back yard.  He was so proud of himself when he mastered the monkey bars dome.  His upper body is very strong and his muscles are very defined.  He pulls with his arms and draws his legs up to the bars.  As he was accomplishing this feat, he yelled, "Ethan! Look!"  He wanted his "big" brother to watch him. 

We are off to the hospital again today.  Since Julia's roommate was moved out of her room, they said they will make an exception to the rule of no children under 12 allowed back in the rooms....as long as no one is sick.  Grandma (Steve's mom) wants to visit Julia today too, so she is driving here this morning and we will all drive down together this morning.  On Saturday, we all went down and we were able to bring Julia out of her room to a family/toy room, so the kids could see her and play.  Yesterday, I went down by myself and left the hospital at 9pm and didn't make it home until 11:30pm.  It's normally a one hour drive, but two lanes were closed down on 95N for 3 miles of paving.  I was in almost complete stand still traffic for almost 1 1/2 hours.  I was very exhausted by the time I made it home.

We will continue to update you on Julia and Aaron's progess.  Pray that Julia continues to thrive and that she can come home before the weekend!!  My mom, dad, and brother from CT are coming down for Memorial weekend, as well as my brother from Chicago.  They all can't wait to meet both Julia and Aaron and it would be such a blessing for her to be home and not to have to meet and visit her in the hospital.