We're Doin' Big Thangs...

I don't know if I've shared this yet but the kids have been...acting up.  For the past two weeks.  Connor is "too much"....as in, consistently too loud, too expressive, too obnoxious, too physical....  Mia pees her pants on average 3 to 4 times a day (she's potty trained.  Or supposedly.)  And Joel, will not let me walk out of the room without crying.  Yep.  That pretty much sums it up.  The worst part is that there's nothing I can do about it.  It's messed up for them.  Our home is gone, and now we're on a perma-vacation with Mimi and Papa?  I can only imagine what they're feeling.  I try to be sympathetic, but I can't let them run us into the ground either.....sitting Mia on the toilet only to have her piss on the carpet five minutes later will get my desired reaction.

But somehow, SOMEHOW, amidst all of this chaos of insurance, switching things over, and registering for school....our son has morphed into a big boy.  In the past three days Joel has become completely mobile.  Now Connor was a pretty typical boy when he was learning to crawl.  He went for it.  But Joel surpasses this by 500%.  When he figured out how to crawl, he immediately figured out how to pull himself up onto everything in his path, walk with support, fall with grace.  He has found the freedom I know he has wanted for so long.  It's an amazing for me that I can't even begin to describe....I can only wonder how happy he must be right now.

Feeds have changed too.  We're all g-feeds now.  Originally an accident, we had hoped to hook him up for a g-feed in the evening, but it didn't happen, and the extension was left on the g-port.  (I'm sorry for those of you who don't understand this)  When we hooked him up for night feeds, we hooked the bag up to the g-ported extension by mistake.  But he tolerated it!  To make a long story short, transitioning to g-feeds has affected his appetite, and it's a big step toward Joel getting his feeding tube out.  He's disconnected from the feeding pump for longer during the day, and he's able to get hungry, which is dramatically helping our daily feeding therapy.  So, in addition to potato salad, we now have puffs, and stage 3 baby food, and pirate booty....AND WATER OUT OF A SIPPY CUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!