11 months

Our boys are 11 months old. ELEVEN months (8 months adjusted). We can't believe it. We are in the countdown mode to their 1st birthday. An entire year in some ways feels like it has slipped like sand in our fingertips. In other ways it feels like there were times our feet were stuck in glue, firmly planted in spots we couldn't wait to get through. So much has been crammed into this last year of our lives. Even though we've certainly had more peaceful times lately, I don't think its been possible to process it all.

All I can see from this view right now though are these two incredibly precious miracles that we have been given. We couldn't be more humbled, more grateful that these two beautiful boys are ours, and that they are doing so well given their rough start. I know we will reflect on this past year many times over and I hope to be more articulate in the future but wanted to thank every single person who has and continues to send positive thoughts and prayers for Nicholas and Alex. We know we have been so blessed!!!!

Current update:
We continue to wean Alex's oxygen. We have had him off of it completely for up to several hours at a time now while we watch his monitor and make sure that he's not having to work too hard to breathe. He was seen by pulmonary last week and had another chest xray. We walked away very confident about the plan to wean him from the oxygen like we've done before. But we got the xray results that his left lung is not exchanging air fully. They are not entirely clear why. Found out today that its really partially collapsed--fancy word is: atelectasis. I know you want to, but don't google it. I love google. I'm not sure I go a day without using it. Maybe I am addicted. But its never good to try to learn medical stuff from google, never. Thats why we have doctors....and phones....I have another call in now as a matter of fact. They however might not like the fact that I have google AND a phone, ha,ha. 


Anyway, when Alex was in the hospital, it was his right lung that had the pneumonia and then a day or two later his LEFT lung also sounded "gunky" as well so they suspected a virus on top of the aspiration. Pulmonary said it was possible that a virus caused this and it will just take time to get back to normal. They don't seem overly concerned which I guess is a good thing. They say he is not showing any "clinical" symptoms so there is nothing to treat basically.They will do another xray in 6-8 weeks to follow up and in the meantime just to watch him closely during our attempts to wean him. Ofcourse it makes us a bit more anxious to take away the extra oxygen knowing one of his lungs is not performing optimally. Ofcourse I googled right after I got off the phone with the nurse from pulmonary so now I have a bunch of questions. I have a call into his pediatrician to get her take. I think I just need reassurance that he really doesn't need something more, some sort of treatment, further assessment or at the least an xray sooner. It seems concerning to know this and not do anything or even check again for almost two months. I guess maybe because he's not acting "sick" which is a GREAT thing, but after doing some "reading" (me + internet=bad), I'm afraid we are missing something. I need to get some more questions answered but for now we'll just take it one day at a time.

We also got a letter in the mail recently reminding of us Nicholas's upcoming surgery (urology surgery). We've known about this pending surgery for months, and we were just waiting for him to be bigger. He has a pre-op appt in a couple weeks and his surgery is scheduled for May 10th. The surgery is not expected to take very long, and its outpatient but still leaves us feeling a bit queasy about the whole thing. I"m sure it will all be fine but we'll be happy to have another one behind us and our little ones.

Other BIG news for both of our sweet ones is teeth. Yep, they are coming in. We felt Alex's tooth last week just sprouting through the gums. We are just starting to see it (actually two side by side are starting) but boy can you feel them, ouch! A couple days later we felt the same with Nicholas. They are growing up, its soooo bittersweet.