We are getting out of here and going home! Gavs a happy talking machine and Lauren wants a tea party! Gavin waved at his docs today, too cute! Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s day 3 and things are looking a little brighter, Gav is up and moving and seems to be doing well without his pain meds. He looks normal again so I am starting to relax some (okay so there is no such thing as relaxing in a hospital, but feel less anxiety for sure). He played with his cousin Annalyse today in the hospital crib and managed to steal her nuk right out of her mouth. You would have thought that he won a gold medal in successfully swiping the nuk because he was grinning from ear to ear, he just kept taking it out and putting it back in – Annalyse on the other hand did not appreciate the gesture!

Thanks Julie for calling and keeping me optimistic (I hope that the small fire has been extinguished), sometimes you just need a little nudge to keep going. Jay always tells me that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, at first I thought it was catchy, but now it drives me somewhat crazy, but it’s 100% true. Can’t let anything knock you down too long. I heard a quote, life is not about how many breaths you take but how many moments take your breath away. He does take my breath away. I could just kiss his dialysis machine and whoever invented it. It gives him life, all this, all these battles are so that he can live, what an innate survival instinct babies come with—now it’s our job to make sure that his life and world are worth it! Hope you are all having fun, still no expected date of release, but we will see, I hope not too much longer! Hugs, Jill

Day 2 at the hospital and things are looking a little more complicated than we hoped. They think that his right kidney may have gotten bruised (which is apparently common) so we may be in here a little longer than my overly optimistic prediction of two days. Today he woke up and looked like the stay puff marshmallow man so we just hooked him back up to his machine.

Sometimes because he looks so normal, you play this mind game with yourself, maybe the doctors are wrong, maybe his kidneys started to work, and with every surgery, maybe this will be what fixes everything, and it will all go back to normal—-but seeing him today made me realize all over again how sick he is.

I know that I have to come to terms with all this, and for the most part, most days I am, but it just keeps happening. It’s still happening, over and over, and when your kid is sick, you just can’t function. Even when Lauren is sick, it’s like the world stops until she is better. And THIS is like a whole new level of sick. There are always like a million doctors around and none of them can do a darn thing to make him better, to fix him. I can’t wait until this hospital stay is over, and we get our happy, giggly, curious baby boy back. Time stands still here, it’s like it sucks out the world and you exist in this new hospital world, it’s weird.

Anyway, I am going to get back to Gavs, hopefully I will find some time to sneak away and give some more updates. Your comments and guestbook entries really help liven up our spirits. It helps to know there are an army of people out there thinking of him and wishing him well. I think Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving is on, so Gavs may get his first dose of Charlie Brown!

Gavin is out of surgery and doing good, his pain seems much better controlled today then on Wednesday and he’s talking and just ate. Surgery was a success so now we will wait and see how everything plays itself out. We are hoping to be out of here in about two days so let’s cross our fingers that all goes as planned! Thanks for all the good thoughts!