So Much to be Thankful for!

Good morning!  I just realized it's been awhile since I posted and update and now is a great time!  It's Thanksgiving Eve and we have so much to be thankful for!  Honestly, I could go on and on!  We are most thankful for our family, our friends, our jobs, our coworkers and this year, our health!  We celebrate Austin daily, but today is special! Today he is officially 3 months old!  It's seems surreal as Austin has spent over half of his life in the hospital, but that is behind us!  He is stable, happy and making leaps and bounds with his progress!  Brian and I are thankful for help!  The nurses from PHS started last week and we are in the middle of another large adjustment, but I would say we are doing very well at handing over most of Austin's medical cares to them.  We trust them and know he is in amazing hands!  We can be parents to both Max and Austin and spend our time playing, loving, and enjoying Austin's coos and smiles and Max's hoops, trains and airplanes!

From a medical standpoint, Austin continues to make slow progress (which is very expected).  We have been able to increase his enteral (tube) feeding to 9mL/hr and he now gets 5-5mL bottles orally a day!  His TPN/lipids recipe has remained the same as his labs are very stable!  He has gained a healthy weight and is now at 4.76kg (about 10# 8 oz).  Lastly, he will start physical therapy and speech (actually feeding) therapy this week!  He's doing very well from a therapy standpoint, but we just want to make sure that continues!

We celebrated Max's birthday with our immediate family on Saturday!  It was great having time to dedicate to Max and he especially loved playing with cousin Gavin and both "call papa's".  He's starting to understand that having "call papa" from I-wa (yes, that's an accent) is a special and great thing!  Many of you have thought of Max along this journey and we are so GRATEFUL!

Lastly, while we are continuing to be thankful for this week, I've been trying to find a way to give back.  Austin was at Children's for 39 days and there were days when little pick me ups was crucial to keep going and remain optimistic!  Austin and our family received wonderful care in both the PICU and ICC so we would like to do something for both!  Here's the plan!  I'm going to collect lovey's (see pictures to the right or google "loveys" at target.com) and blankets.  The loveys will go to ICC and the blankets to the PICU.  The units provide care for different age groups.  ICC is all infants (must be under 1 year old) and the PICU cares for ages up to 18 years old.  The blankets can be all different sizes.  Small to medium size works best, with all the equipment, big blankets get tangled easily!  Also, Children's prefers fleece as it's non-allergenic. You can either mail them to me or have them sent directly to me if you would like to order online.  Our address is:

819 Newberry Lane
Chaska, MN 55318

Austin has a cardiology appointment on December 27th and we will be dropping them off while we are there, so please make sure they reach us by December 26th!  Our entire family THANKS you in advance!  We are so excited and blessed to be able to give back!

We hope you have an amazing Thanksgiving weekend!  We are blessed to have you in our lives!
Love and hugs,
Tara and Brian
Max and Austin