Happiest Thanksgiving

Well this thanksgiving we have a lot of thank you's to hand out. I'm thankful for Dr. Permut the surgeon who performed Henry's first surgery as well as all of the nurses and staff and Seattle Children's Hospital. Everyone worked very hard to fix him up and he is "the best hypoplastic left heart syndrome baby he has ever seen". He may have said one of the best.. but either way.. doc says he's doing great. So, we are ALL extremely thankful for that. I'm thankful for everyone who is helping us out by lending their prayers, time and money.  It's been a hard 2 months for us but it is slowly getting back to what I think a normal life would be with twins.

The day after Thanksgiving we charged ahead into Christmas.  Lydia watched the classic 1964 Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  We spent a quiet day at home with our kids without any major problems.  It was pretty close to "relaxing"! Thanks TV!

(FYI you can click the image to make it bigger)

Eating

I am so proud of Henry!! After he pulled his feeding tube out on Sunday night he has made remarkable progress! He is eating enough all by himself. Tomorrow we get him weighed to make sure he is getting enough calories to gain weight. I sure hope so then we can be done with that tube!!

Baby steps on a diverging path

We're all getting a little better at this. My parents Bob and Donna have been here helping out immensly. I've been able to get to work a couple of days to deploy my project that needs finishing. Dr. Hardy says Henry is doing super. That's encouraging since we end up second guessing how things are going. He's gaining weight slow and steady. Liam on the other hand is an eating machine. We don't have an accurate enough scale but we can tell that he is heavier in comparison. Hopefully it won't end up like the movie Twins where Liam is Arnold Schwarzenegger and Henry is Danny DeVito.

We'll be needing lots of help once my folks leave. The problem is we don't have an easy way to let people know what help we need and when. So, I think I'll be setting up a shared google calendar so people coordinate help for us. People can sign up for days to come over and lend a hand, hold a baby, play with Lydia, drop off dinner, or whatever. And we can request help for certain days on there too ( I think ). I'll link that here when it's ready. In the meantime... feel free to drop us a link or email if you're inclined.

And what you've been waiting for... more photos, and a video!

Henry at Home

Wow, what a crazy few days. We got to go home on Thursday the 29th, a month and a day after first getting to Seattle Children's Hospital. The drive home was comical at times. Lets just say everyone made it home in one piece.

Being at home with both our boys is absolutely wonderful. I feel so lucky and happy that we have made it successfully this far. Henry is healing great and has even begun nursing some. He still will need his feeding tube for some time though. We're all a little concerned about heading into this flu season. I really hope we don't have to be hospitalized again.

For now, we are just taking it day by day. We both thought that having 2 healthy twins would be so much easier than this. The daily routine we are finally settling into is kinda tough.

Again, thank you so much to everyone who sent care packages, gifts, notes, and prayers. I am still struck by the outpouring of support in all forms. It has all made it easier to cope. Now if we could just get some good sleep...