Early Christmas Presents

Today I picked Jacob up from school and his teacher met me at the sidewalk with three bags in her hands. "These are his Christmas gifts.  One was a donation from a nearby church. The other two..." she shook her head apologetically. "He chose them. I swear!" She shrugged and rolled her eyes. 

I thanked her profusely for the gifts, and ushered my kids back to the car, thinking nothing more of the comment.

When we got home, Jake snatched the gift with his name on it and ripped it open before I could get it under the tree.  Nerf guns and candy.  No wonder he was excited! 

I peeked inside and furrowed my brows before pulling out a leather day-planner from one bag, and a hand-made tissue holder in the other.  I looked at my daughter, and she looked back at me, equally puzzled. 

Jacob stopped playing commando with his Nerf gun and walked over to me, took the day-planner,  and nudged it toward my chest, indicating it was for me.  Then he did the same with the tissue holder.  He smiled briefly before returning to his Nerf gun and taking off toward the cat making shooting noises.

I stared after him, then at the gifts. He picked those gifts out for me? 

My heart swelled as I thought back over the last four weeks of sneezing and runny noses because of my allergies to our new cat.  He'd often brought me tissue whenever I sneezed. Had he thought of me when he saw the tissue container at school?

But the day-planner? Maybe he saw the two calendars I have on the wall next to my desk or the shelf of tabbed folders for each project I'm working on. Or maybe he just associated it with books because I have hundreds of them in my bookshelf, along with binders for my mystery game business, novels I'm editing, or half-written novels I'm writing.

I don't know what was going through Jacob's mind when he chose those two gifts. But he was clearly thinking of me. 

For the briefest of moments, I realized there is much more going on in that little mind of his than I give him credit for.  Though he may still be non-verbal, he is very aware of us. Of me. Of his family, and all those he loves and cares about. 

As he drifted off to sleep tonight, I hugged him extra tight and thanked him for his gifts.  He held up his hand, dropped the middle two fingers, and signed "I love you" before rolling over and closing his eyes.

This year, I got the most amazing early Christmas gift: Hope.

No News is Good News

Christmas was wonderfully uneventful at the Allred home this year!

Jacob laid on my chest as we watched our children and family open presents. Particularly fun was watching Courtney, our 19-month-old, open presents. Last year SHE was the baby in my arms as presents were being opened. But this year she discovered Christmas in full force!  The entire time we opened presents she was squealing with delight and we'd hear a chorus of, "Oh my goodness!", "Awesome!!!", "So Pretty!", and so much more!  I wish I'd had enough forethought to break out the camcorder for the event.  That little girl was in her element!  And it seems that each and every present she opened was received with the most enthusiastic squeals.  I don't think there was a single present she received that she didn't absolutely adore. Watching Courtney open presents with all of her enthusiasm was absolutely precious!


As for the rest of the day, it was wonderfully low-key.  I had spent much of the few days prior to Christmas secretly holding my breath that Jacob wouldn't suddenly find himself in the hospital again. So when Christmas came and went, I was able to sigh with relief and silently give thanks to Heavenly Father for the little miracles in our life.  Especially since December 26th, I came down with the crud.

So, Monday I dutifully called our pediatrician to have her check on Jacob (with the sheer amount of time I've been holding him, there was NO WAY that little boy was not going to get what I seemed to have caught). In deed, Jacob did have a small cold, but so far there is nothing to worry about and we just needed to break out a humidifier and keep an eye on him. Yesssss!!  I'll take "relatively healthy" any day!


Oh, and he BROKE 10 LBS!!!! :)

Our little boy is now 10 lbs 2 1/2 oz.

Yay!!!

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Miles of Smiles

When all is said and done, today can be considered one of those good days.

Last night I pulled an all-nighter (Yep! Not a wink of sleep!) trying to finish Christmas presents, working on GAINs (assessments) for my sister, taking care of Jacob, and even trying to squeeze in a little bit of house cleaning along the way.  But today was the day we got to spend with the cardiologist going over Jacob's progress and discussing his heart surgery.  This was supposed to be a Dr. appointment that would last at least 2 hours long, so if I was going to get anything done it had to be while the family was sleeping. 

Our appointment with the cardiologist had been set weeks ago and we had even received a packet in the mail reminding us of our appointment, which I diligently filled out in anticipation of our visit. I started getting Jacob ready for the appointment at around 6:30 a.m. - bath, re-dressed his ND tube, got him dressed, packing his diaper bag, etc.  When we showed up at 8:30 a.m. the first thing out of the receptionist's mouth was, "We have you scheduled for 11:30 a.m.".  I looked at her and said, "No.  You have us scheduled for 8:30" and tossed her the paperwork, complete with the scheduled time on the front page, to her.  She looked at it and said, "Oh.  Hmmm".  Apparently they had 'lost' our appointment.  So, they had to scramble to find a way to fit us into their day.  We were told, "You're lucky! The doctor's next appointment is running late so we can squeeze you in!"  Um, no.  Apparently these ladies had no idea what kind of bullet they had just dodged.  I had not slept the night before, I had not eaten yet, and I was on my period.  Strike 3.  You're out!  Out of patience, that is.  With those three factors in play I was in noooo mood to play nice this morning and those ladies were darned lucky they didn't try to make us go home (which is a 30 minute drive, by the way) and have us come back in a few hours. 

So, we sat down and waited to have Jacob's name called......and waited....and wait...and waited.  45 minutes later, they finally called us. We got to weigh Jacob and he was up to 9 lbs 13 oz!!!  Just a few more ounces to go until he reached his 10 lb goal! The nurse did an EKG, which took longer to put all of the stickers and monitors on than it did to do the actual test!, took his blood pressure, measured his oxygen levels, and asked about his medicines.  Then we waited....and waited.....and waited some more for our doctor. FINALLY, he came into our room and sat down to talk to us about Jacob.

He asked us about his medical history and hospital visits, problems with feedings, whether he was getting the RSV shot, etc.  He asked us what our expectations were with the heart surgery, etc. He explained to us that he believed that Jacob's feeding issues were not going to go away any time soon and that lots of people usually have a surgery to close off the esophagus and put a feeding tube in through his stomach before they do the heart surgery, which is a much more permanent solution to his reflux.  I told him that I'd been told that Jacob would grow out of his feeding issues eventually and that I was prepared to wait it out rather than do a surgery to put a tube through his abdomen into his stomach permanently.  He was not too keen on this idea stating that he is an impatient man and that he doesn't like to wait for things that take too long and said that we could probably wait 6-8 weeks and if he isn't improving by then we should get the surgery done.  I still was not sold on the idea of creating a permanent solution to something that may resolve its self in time - especially a solution that resulted in feeding Jacob through his stomach for the rest of his life.  So, I'm opting to be very very patient with his feedings.

After much discussion, the doctor convinced us that it would be in Jacob's best interest to wait another 4 weeks before he gets his heart surgery.  So, we are tentatively scheduled for his heart surgery the 3rd or 4th week of January to do Jacob's heart surgery.  We will be going back to see a cardiologist in 2 weeks to choose a hard date and meet with a surgeon.  And the guesstimate that Jacob will be back in the hospital for about 2 weeks for recovery.

He warned us that this heart surgery would not make Jacob any less fragile and would probably not fix any of his issues. It was only going to fix his heart.  Hmmm.  That's not what he said at our initial visit.  I guess at this point nothing should surprise me and I should take everything with a grain of salt.  So, that's what I'm going to do.  Whether it fixes Jacob's other issues or not, this surgery is still a necessary part of his development and an essential step to his progress. So we will go forward with it.  If it helps with his other issues then BONUS! If not, we'll address each issue after he recovers from his surgery.  After our 20 minute conversation, he changed Jacob's prescription by increasing his Lasiks to .5 mg 2 times per day and sent him down to get an X-ray to make sure his heart hadn't grown too much.  By this time we'd been at the doctor's office for more than 3 hours and had a total of 30 minutes face time with the doctor and his staff.  Ugh.

On the up side, while we were waiting at the cardiologist's KC and I got to watch Jacob laugh in his sleep. It was sooo cute!

Then, later this evening we were having our nightly 'interaction' time where I'd smile, talk, and sing to Jacob to help him interact and begin working on mimicking the facial expressions he sees from me.  Lo and behold, I was grinning and talking to Jacob and he began to give me half-smiles right back at me!  Not just one random gassy smile, but several deliberate half smiles that just melted my heart! I wish I'd had my camera with me!

So, even though my day had a rocky start, I can definitely say that it ended with miles of smiles that makes all the other crud just melt away to the back of my mind.  It's the moments like that which remind me of why it is that I chose motherhood over the military and why I don't regret a single minute of that decision!

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