Late Morning - Long Day

John had a little trouble sleeping through the night. He needed some additional hydration too. When he finally went into deep sleep He stayed asleep until almost 11 am. This caused some consternation, but after talking with his nurse practitioner Sandy, she said that she doesn't expect him to pick back up and handle his formula and regular food for at least a few more days. When John was awake he did very well with his toys and with his markers especially. Gina was drawing on the same piece of paper that John was making little scratches and dots on, and while she was drawing he took a marker in each hand and started drawing loops with both markers at the same time. What an amazing little boy.

John went with Gina and I to the church in town tonight as preparations were being made for the breakfast smorgasbord and bake sale in the morning. As usual all the ladies there were thrilled to see him and he was just as much a ham as usual. It seems that he is at least feeling better. He went to bed a little later than normal, but not so late considering when he woke up. We are hoping that tomorrow will be a better day for him.

You Can Fork a Kruncher!

If you really try hard enough and are at least as persistent as John you can get a Kruncher chip stuck in the tines of your fork so that you can feed it to whoever is close enough. As you can tell dinner was again an entertaining event at our house. Of course John is still not eating and actually ran a fever again today, but he's sleeping peacefully now.

He woke up early with a fever this morning, but with a little tylenol it came right down and he was ready to ham it up at the church breakfast fundraiser. He did eat a few bites of pancake but mostly he just enjoyed smiling at people and playing with my fork. He did manage to fork a few pieces of pancake and feed them to his dad and also to fork a piece and plunk it down into my OJ glass and then fork it back out of there and put it on the plate. Thank goodness my glass was empty! For a little boy who woke up feeling bad he put on quite the show and even 'talked' to the people who came by to say hi to him. Ever our little social butterfly!

This evening he enjoyed sitting in the breeze of the open window while Mark read him some of his favorite books and then even held his own little hands together for night time prayers, well at least for a little bit of them. He was eager to get into his bed and get some sleep and we are ever hopeful that he will feel better tomorrow and be ready to do even more amazing stuff. He is really getting into pretend play and even though he has long tired of breathing treatments he was really enjoying pretending to put the medicine in the nebulizer this afternoon. He did finally say 'mom mom' clear and certain enough today that even Mark was looking at him like 'where'd that come from', we're hoping that 'dad dad' isn't too far behind and that its a good while before he's ready to repeat anything that he learns from listening to talk radio with us during the day ;-)

Have a blessed Lord's Day and we'll update you on how John is doing tomorrow evening. Our goal is to take him out for a walk in his gait trainer, here's hoping for pleasant weather.

Hard Working Little Boy

While John is still recovering from his virus, he is doing very well and during physical therapy today worked very, very hard. Normally he needs a little break half way through the hour of therapy - mostly an attitude rest. But today he worked for the entire hour. He scooted around the floor pretty well and then in his gait trainer he even stood up several times on his own and was taking individual steps on the carpet instead of just both feet together. Shawna, John's PT and I were both amazed at how tall he stood in the trainer. When we first got it we were talking about how even at the lowest adjustment he was just barely tall enough to use it and today we were talking about how we will need to start raising things up pretty soon.

John's still not eating but his supper time adventures are getting ... well more adventurous. Tonight he wanted the last of the chip bag, so I rolled the top down on it and gave it too him. After all we have the eager eater hanging out on the floor waiting for anything that might get close to her. At first he was happy just playing in the chips, then he flung a few to the dog and then he decided that it was time to fork them. After he squealed and 'talked' and made it clear that he was wanting my fork he then spent the next 5 minutes or so mixing, stabbing and crunching up the chips with the fork. It was way too funny. He finally ended up eating a chip or rather licking the salt off of it, but at least he was demonstrating that he is perfectly capable of getting a hold of a chip and getting it to his mouth - well at least when no one is looking right at him or asking him to do so.

Happy 1st Anniversary!!

Today is the 1st anniversary of the completion of John's adoption. Of course he didn't seem very impressed with this, but we told him anyway and explained to him that it wasn't really his 1st anniversary of being John Allen Hass because God knew that was his name even before he was conceived, and we knew that was his name 9 days before he was born, and everyone else knew when he was born, so this was the 1st anniversary of the government figuring out what God and all the rest of us already knew. He didn't seem very impressed with that either, but it's our story and we're sticking to it.

He's still not feeling the greatest from this viral respiratory infection and he has ever so graciously passed it along to his parents who aren't feeling so well either. But he did eat for us again today, hamburger, not fries, not hamburger bun, just hamburger and now! We're hoping that he feels enough better tomorrow that we don't have to call off his physical therapy on Thursday, but that remains to be seen. For the moment we know that he feels good enough to demand some hamburger and to throw his toys in the floor and even make what I'm sure was disparaging remarks to the dogs. For the moment he is sleeping pretty well and storing up that energy for some silliness tomorrow.

A Monday Off

In the wake of Easter it was a good opportunity to do as little as possible. Because John still hasn't recovered from the respiratory virus we decided to postpone his speech therapy at Moog and move his appointment with his audiologist to next Monday. We all slept in and spent the day relaxing. John is slowly getting better he ate lunch with us today, the first real food he's taken by mouth since this coughing started last week. Gina and I both have caught some form of this from him but we are recovering more readily. John only had one long nap today, but pulled his hearing aids and was put in his crib for a little while that turned into a short nap. John also did something interesting today when Gina was holding him up while he was standing on the floor. He started wiggling/dancing and ended up taking two or three steps in no particular direction. He has been amusing with the things that he has reacted to lately, he finds a lot around him that's funny, and when he gets the giggles it brings smiles to our faces as well. Blessed Easter Season to everyone out there who reads this.

Happy Easter!!!!

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!!!

John slept pretty well through the night, despite a few coughing fits here and there. The decongestants and breathing treatments are doing their job and thankfully he is still at home and even got to go to church this morning to celebrate Easter. After the service the kids went out to hunt Easter eggs and John got to go out with them too. Of course they tried to put an egg in the very top of a nearby bush so that he could easily reach it from where I was holding him, but he found that he mostly liked to hunt eggs out of the other kids baskets. He was pretty thrilled with the whole egg thing, especially after we came back inside the church with the older girls and he figured out that if he threw the egg on the floor it would roll down the hall and Tiffany would go and fetch it for him. Ever the silly man he would look her right in the face, smile nice and big and toss yet another egg down the hall.

John's afternoon went quite well too. He stopped running fevers so we got to discontinue the tylenol but his cough required a few more breathing treatments and decongestants. He played with our friends kids, Steven and Tiffany, and dug around in his Easter basket a bit, but was more thrilled that the eggs would come apart than with the little frogs and lizards inside of them, go figure. After our friends left for home John sat in the living room floor with Mark and I and rolled the ball back and forth with us for a while before he was tired and ready to go to bed. He's quiet now, a few coughing fits after initially going to bed but is now sleeping peacefully, rolled up on his side cuddling his blanket, storing up energy for tomorrow's adventures at school and getting his left hearing aid mold refitted. He's grown enough since he got them that the mold no longer fits well enough to stay in firmly.

Happy Easter to everyone!

Another snotty day!

John's day started out snotty and needing a breathing treatment, but he did pretty good today and only needed two of them. So we have high hopes that he will be well enough to go to school on Monday, and we didn't call off his physical therapy for tomorrow.

He has had a few interesting highlights to his day. Did you know that if you stick your hand through one of the shape holes in a Tupperware shape sorter ball and grab one of the blocks you can't pull your hand back out? Well it's true and after he banged it on his tray for a while and said some rather unsavory toddlerese to it he let me pull his hand back out and dump the blocks out for him. Of course by this time the toy had misbehaved enough that it was dead to him and so he shoved the ball and each and every block off into the floor. I wonder if the ball knows not to do that again? He has also figured out that if he really wants my attention sitting in his chair and saying 'mom', 'mom', 'mom', 'mom' really works, not to mention that it makes mom really happy.

Supper was an adventure, he didn't want to eat but rather enjoyed playing with some noodles and flinging them on the dog. I'm wondering if we've read the OOPS page in the David book too many times. Of course the dog enjoyed this very much and rewarded him by standing up against his chair and licking the noodles off his tray which pushed him across the dining room and into the wall - this is enjoyable and quite delightful fun for the toddler of the house, and the parents really like the smiles that it brings, and thankfully the dog cleans up whatever mess ensues. So all in all even though he ate only a few bites at dinner both John and Maggie were extremely pleased with the fare.

He is putting himself to sleep at the moment, while his 'friends' tumble in the dryer downstairs. John has now gotten to where he can scoot around in his crib well enough that he can pull the stuffed animals from the sides and head of the crib and play with them. Of course this means that his 'friends' now take regular trips through the washer and dryer but they seem no worse for the washing and we think that they must rather enjoy that they are getting played with - or maybe we've read Velveteen Rabbit a few too many times in this household.