Time Warp

Hi friends!

How can it be possible that I haven't had time to write in almost 2 months?! Oh yes- Joel is basically a wild man and goes non-stop and Bradley has been so busy growing, I can hardly keep up.

::Here's what we've been up to::

Birthday!
The boys had their first birthday party and it was better than I hoped. Being surrounded by the family, friends, doctors and nurses that quite literally brought us through the last 12 months was the best feeling in the whole world. They aren't kidding when they say that you become family, and we could not have picked a better medical team for them. On their actual birthday (9/23/16) we were able to take a ton of donations back to the NICU and other parts of Children's that have been important in their story.

TABLE FOOD!
These little pigs haven't found a food they don't like ('they get it from their mama') and have taken SO well to regular milk, and we love not spending $200+ a month for their preemie formula. Weight gain has been appropriate & we made it through the list of allergy foods without any reactions (can I get an Amen?).


 


















Joel
The mischievous one....exploring and taking everything in around him. He is quite literally a replica of Bryan's personality, and the older he gets funnier and funnier to see how much he is like his dad. He is crawling and crusing all over the place with no plans to slow down anytime soon. He feels things BIG- when hes happy he is really happy and when he's sad, he gets very sad (his tears break my heart!) It is so awesome to watch him explore and discover new things every day. He is cutting his two bottom teeth and his hair is starting to curl!

Bradley
Sweet, sweet Bradley. After his abdominal surgery in August he hit the ground running and was growing, developing and changing everyday. It was the longest stretch of time he had been home, healthy and able to just grow. He, opposite of his brother is a carbon copy of Bryan's face with my **dazzling** personality. 
      He has fallen in love with all things table food and regular milk, his volumes have gone up so much he was discharged from the First Steps nutritionist. The earliest a 24 weeker had very been discharged, thank you very much! All of this from the baby they wanted to have a G-button in April....he sure showed them!
     This past week he had what the doctors are calling a 'spell' that very closely looked like a seizure. Always one for the drama, we rushed him to the ER where they started stroke protocol because only half of his face was moving, he was severely lethargic, and lips were a shade of blue. Luckily it wasn't a stroke and his MRI/Ultrasounds/Xray/EEG all looked great. Which of course is a blessing, but it also doesn't leave us with many answers as to what happened. Hoping to follow up with his Neurologist soon. As usual, he was charming the nurses and doctors and seemed to enjoy his stay at our home away from home.

 

   Last week was probably one of the more stressful and traumatic experiences we've had with Bradley; the unknown of whats going on, the fear of not getting our smiley little man back and above all else wanting to protect him from it. The trip to the ER shook Bryan and I pretty hard, but knowing he was in the best place, with the best people who really care about him (above and beyond him just being a patient) brings a sense of calm that would be hard to have if we were somewhere else. 
      I'm learning that in pediatric neurology things are almost always NOT black and white. So much gray area makes it hard to know what to look for and how to prepare, but we will do the best we can and if it wasn't a one time thing we'll learn as much as possible about seizures and keep on going.

 

I promise to {try} and update more regularly..but let's be real- with the holidays fast approaching that may be a long shot =)

xoxo E