Lay off the broccoli...

...but how about the dog snacks? John's been dealing with a lot of gas issues lately, his pediatrician assured us that adult diets create adult issues and that little guys with no stomach muscles can't handle gassy food, his advice, tell the kid to lay off the broccoli! Well okay, but what about the dog snacks? Tonight he gave Maggie her piece of jerky treat and then took a big old bite out of the next piece and handed the remainder to Lucy. He sat there and smiled while he chewed the dog jerky, Mark laughed and told me it's a boy thing, okay, but if the kid has barking problems he gets to explain it to the pediatrician this time :)

Growing Up

This afternoon we got yet another sign, a postitive one, that John is growing up!

John has been fighting an intestinal virus all week, we've been giving him ceralyte (like pedialyte) through his g-tube like crazy trying to keep him hydrated but was worried that we were losing the battle, as we most normally do in these circumstances. This afternoon we were pretty sure that he was going straight down hill, he was great at the first of speech therapy but by the last of it you could just see that he didn't feel good, he was offered and refused french fries for lunch and then go very upset and cried but no tears. All warning signs that the time for IV fluids had come. Upon consulting his GI nurse practitioner we took him to the ER just to have them check him over and make sure that he was okay, of course we figured this meant that at least 2 of us were spending the night in Columbia.

Well in the ER John started to perk back up and by the time the actual doc came in he was sitting on the bed playing, looking awesome, better than he's looked in a couple days. They went ahead and drew labs anyway because with John you can never tell. All was fine! We have no idea exactly what has transpired in our little guys gut, kidney function, metabolism, or whatever, just that it seems he is growing ever stronger and more resiliant and for tonight is fighting off an intestinal virus in his very own bed!

Nearly Naked

John's day on Friday was pretty darn good. He did well at speech therapy, even paid attention for the first 3/4 of the hour, silly boy, the last 15 minutes he was so totally on his own agenda. He was able to do well with the new verbs that he is learning though and also got into his gait trainer unassisted again, this is always impressive to see.

Swimming pool time was hilarious. John figured out how to squeeze the little water toy and squirt water at himself and Mr. Paul, he also figured out how to hold the toy in the water and fill it back up - smart cookie this one. John has now decided that he wants to be on his own, floating on his back, and also that he likes to go under so about half way through his session we took off his little padded swimsuit/floatie device. He wasn't so sure about getting back it the water in just his swim diaper, and was definitely out of his comfort zone for a little while, but once he was strapped in a little floaty thingy he was happy to be on his own again and was even good with going under at the very end. So no more suit/floaty for John and he gets to graduate to little swim trunks.

Today has been okay, we increased his formula concentration last night again, this puts him at 80% of the new formula, and so he's had kind of a not so great day but he's doing well enough that he's sleeping in his own bed and not riding to the hospital. He did play with his books this evening and made one heck of a mess in the living room, we didn't know he could reach so many things. He also figured out how to pull things off the end table and as you can well imagine the dogs were sure to stay clear of those little hands!

Good Check-Up Report!

We went to St. Louis last Thursday as John had a GI appt on Friday and he just gets too exhausted and sick if we make him go there and back again in one day. So we spent the night at a wild Day's Inn that the inside looked more like a theme park than a motel, but it was reasonably priced, thank you Cheaptickets, and it had a heated swimming pool! Of course the air was so frigid that you had to stay in the water but John loved the pool and also that it was bordered by trees decorated with lights, so he got to use his 'Christmas Tree' sign a whole ton of times too!

Friday's appt went great! John is now 21 pounds 9 ounces, that's still smaller than when we started the winter but a great improvement over his last discharge weight, so finally he's really starting to bounce back. He got the official a-okay on Coco Puffs. I was kinda nervous to tell the GI nurse that the child was hooked on coco puffs, after all he's not supposed to be eating junk food, but she says that they've reformulated many of the children's cereals, coco puffs being one of the reformulated ones, and that they are now pretty good for kids! Of course we aren't telling John this because at that point I'm pretty sure that he will quit eating them.

This weekend has been fun, our friend, Becky, from Springfield came up to stay and John thoroughly enjoyed showing her all his new tricks.




This is John's latest modeling picture.

When he was all done taking pics he was ready for a book break and amazingly he's getting strong enough to stand at the book shelf and pick out his own!



You can see dad's foot at the bottom right of the pic, he wasn't going very far, but John was able to stand at the shelf for a few minutes, flinging books on the floor and giving us commentary. Of course we have no idea what he was talking about but we're pretty sure it was important due to the volume at which it was said :)