Busy, and on the go

We are loving summer here at the Gorny house, hope all of you are too! It's been nice to be off of house arrest with Evan, we're still careful of course, but walks in the sun, and freedom to even go run errands with the little guy is truly a nice change of pace.

Stephan was given a boat by our good friends father. It wasn't easy to convince us to take it, but this boat has sat idle for years as the owner is loosing his physical health and vision. He is unable to care for or launch the boat, and hasn't been fishing in years. Stephan has been working on cleaning up and fixing the boat, and it's looking much nicer. It also has a trolling motor (thank you Ed), and a....I'm going to call it a regular motor (thank you Dave). Roland and Stephan took the boat out fishing this past weekend, and lets just say he was pretty excited to finally be out in his boat again. Tim and Stephan took it out a couple of weekends ago as well.

The never ending chores of the house are of course keeping us occupied, as I'm sure they do everyone. Most recently we've been trying to restain our deck, and fence which are in bad need of it. Stephan went to pick up the stain, and as he's color blind he said on his way out "I'll just get something in the cedar tones, I like cedar tones, sound good to you", sounded like a good plan to me. However, natural cedar tone from Behr is quite orange in case any of you out there might be wondering. The deck needed two coats anyway so we just picked up something with a bit more red so it will match the house today. Will post a picture when it's done.

Happy due date Evan! One year old gestationally the end of this month, how time flies! Since our last post Evan has definately gotten more mobile. He's all over the house, and he's FAST. The maintenance room with the dogs bowls, and pads, and all sorts of other things he's not supposed to get into is ever so enticing. Don't look away too long, or he'll open the door and let himself in. Cords and bags also seem to be a favorite item, especially when the bags have things to pull out of them. Gone are all of his tricks like patty cake, so big, and the "yodleing", he just decided not to do them anymore about 3 weeks ago. It's almost like he's thinking "that's so last month mom, come up with something new would ya". He has learned some new tricks, he scribbles, he puts the square and circle pieces in his cookie jar consistently, I've seen him do the star, and stephan has seen him do the triangle so that just leaves the heart. He's also playing peekaboo, and thinks it's quite funny. He'll pull his blankets up over his head (while we "look" for him), and then pull them down, (laughing when we "find" him). He dances when we ask if he can dance, hands us his toys when we ask for them, OH, and he's feeding us AND the dogs his food, the dogs LOVE this, and Evan laughs like crazy, we however don't think it's quite such a cool trick. He's actually using a spoon, dipping it into a bowl of food, and then occasionally putting it in his mouth, otherwise in ours. Speaking of eating, we're up to bites and tastes again, and occasional swallows of liquid, progress from the nothing in the mouth we were at after going backwards with all the trouble the last few months. We've found a new formula that seems to be making a difference, it's still pretty early, but Evan is puking less and he actually burps! Exciting to see a burp with out a puke! Words....he's saying mom, dad, hi, dog (while chasing maggie usually), baby, num num, na na, pa pa, buh bye. We're working on furniture surfing (see video), and the H sound (also in video).

Just a cute story about Evan....I was invited to play at a soft ball game a couple weeks ago, and there was a labradoodle there named guss. Evan and Stephan went over to say hi, and guss started licking Evan's face and neck. Evan just patted at his fur, and GIGGLED, loud and hard, one of those deep down belly giggles, was SO cute....not afraid of dogs! Could be a problem some day.

Taking bids now for this Evan original Baby artwork. It's got to be worth as much as that Elephant on TV's art right?!

Cruisin

We finally did it!! Evan took the first few organized steps crawling today and I managed to get a horrible video of it. I'm not going to lie about my real motivation for this. Becky is at work right now and I am really hoping to have this movie posted before she goes on break.

I was watching him wobble from side to side for a good 10 minutes tonight and then it just happened. He moved forward. I think I scared the dickens out of the kid cheering him on. I must have told him how cool he was for about 15 minutes. After the first 15 minutes of cheering him on it set in how this changed everything. Now I'm kind of in a state of horror. 20 minutes ago I knew where he would be if I set him down... I could put him down in the living room and quick make up some food in the kitchen without worry as to what was on the floor in between us... Immobility had it's perks... why did we want him to do this anyways? oh yeah, there's that whole I don't need to do everything for him every time he needs to get somewhere, but it's not as if he's going to crawl his way to work on time or anything. At least now he's COMPLETELY caught up on gross motor for his gestational age, and it is beyond exciting to see him get up and start cruising around the living room doing what he'd like to do on his own. I guess I didn't know he would have picked up that toy at that particular point in time. He didn't even try to cry futily to talk me into getting him something to entertain him. I do like the new step in self entertainment.

On another topic we have had a monumental decrease in vomiting over the past week. Yesterday Evan only spit up once. Today we had one vomit and it was kind of a not so unexpected vomit as we had tried to give him a formula again. Hooray for the lack of antibiotics I guess.

Also Evan went for his first boat ride in grandma and grandpa Gorny's boat this opener and he had a general look of concern on his face.

Home Sweet Home

We are SO happy to report we are home again. The hospital was getting a bit old after spending 3 out of 4 weeks in april there. Don't get me wrong....the staff was great, but it's just not home. After Evan was poked, proded, and turned inside out.....we found out....as stephan says "he's perfect". EVERYTHING came back NORMAL! Needless to say Stephan and I were quite frustrated at different times throughout our stay. Watching Evan go backwards wasn't easy. As much as I'd like to be able to switch Evan to formula, when he started doing so much worse on it....all I wanted to do was start his breastmilk again so he'd feel better. The doctors let us make that change. After his J-tube was pulled he felt some better. The doctors wanted to increase Evan's feedings gradually and we weren't getting past the 3tsp/2hours mark. Stephan and I felt like his stomach wasn't getting full enough to recognize there was food there to digest, and he was probably feeling crappy the whole time because he was hungry. We suggested increasing to 2oz every 2 hours to see how he did. The doctors were nervous about this because it's backwards from what they usually do, but they were out of ideas. It worked, and we kept increasing by 1/2 oz every 3 feedings until he's on the same routine he was before we went into the hospital. Sleeping through full feedings in the middle of the night even. Is all of his puking stopped, no, Evan is a puky baby, and hopefully he will out grow that sooner rather than later, but for now that's just how it is. However the pukes that were happening that we couldn't explain, and were causing us to be concerned that something else was wrong are gone. As far as Stephan and I are concerned, they were caused by the furdantin (antibiotic he was on for his kidneys) that we started feb 4th. The timing matches, we didn't notice a change in his vomiting when we started it, we think it was a gradual change. We also don't think switching him to a formula cold turkey is a good idea, his stomach is just too touchy. Once things really settle out we're planning on switching him more gradually. Those two things combined with catching some virus that gave him some extra vomiting/diarrhea, and a fever are what we feel were the cause of all the trouble these past months. So Good news is all of the test came back normal, bad news is Evan really didn't need all of those tests. Hind sight is always 20/20, but I wish I'd thought of the antibiotic being a possible cause of the increased trouble we were having, maybe we could have avoided this whole mess.

While Evan was admitted Stephan and I snuck out for a few hours to visit a good friend we hadn't seen since Evan was in the NICU. It was really nice to see him, and to get out of the hospital, and away from the stress for a bit, and into the sunlight....HELLO SPRING! when we came back we found Evan being pulled around by a volunteer in a wagon, waving Hi to people, and showing them his toys. I really don't think he missed us at all.

Evan also got to meet his great grandma K during his first admission last month, and his great grandma and grandpa H during his second admission. I'm posting a picture of him giving G-Grandma K a forehead kiss, and of him, and stephan with G-grandma and grandpa H with the awesome balloon they brought him that he just LOVED.

So we came home yesterday, started settling back in, today we did some more of that. Stephan is now sick with what we believe is the same bug Evan had.....spening a fair amount of time close to the rest room, hopefully he'll be feeling better soon. We all spent some time outside today. Visiting with neighbors, evan loves our neighbor Becky's new puppy Darby, a golden retriever....who's great with children it seems. We played in the grass, and I got up on our roof and cleaned out the gutters. Had to have the neighbors come over with a bigger ladder to help me get down though....was too scared to come off the roof with our smaller less strudy ladder.....it really wasn't that bad getting up I swear! did some picking up and raking.....got a long ways to go though.