Happy Sweetest Day

For those in Ohio, you know it is Sweetest Day.  For most of the rest of the world...this is basically a made-up holiday because we have American Greetings and Hallmark based in Ohio and they created this holiday for couples to celebrate (much like Valentine's Day).  Anyway...my wonderful husband got me chocolate covered strawberries, a beautiful bookmark, and D'linQ bracelet with all my children's names on it.  Of course, my step-daughter (the best in the world) Destiny helped him pick everything out!  She is great and knows exactly what I wanted.

I didn't get a chance to post yesterday because I was at the hospital late and didn't get home until really late and wanted to spend time with my boys and Destiny before everyone went to bed.  Not too much happened yesterday anyway.  Hope got her first diaper rash and you would think it was like asking for a million dollars rather than some diaper rash cream from the nurses.  I guess it is something that has to be ordered by a doctor and that didn't seem to happen until today.  I decided to bring my own Aveeno diaper rash cream rather than waiting.  I know she feels better today!

Hope ate really good for me today.  She has been averaging at least 20 mls at each feeding for me.  She doesn't do that well for the nurses, but I think it also has to do with the times that I am feeding her.  She is really awake when I am there...not like 3am when they try to feed her.  Today I think she ate too much too fast because when I was burping her, she threw a lot of it up.  I felt really bad for her and had to change her clothes, her blanket, and her little monitors, and give her a little bath too.

Please be sure to keep baby Kylan in your prayers.  He is the little guy that has hypoplastic left heart and had his surgery last Wednesday.  He had a few seizures and has some bleeding going on in his head.  I will be praying that they are able to stop the bleeding and he will be able to get off the vent and move to step-down next week.  He is a strong little guy and Erica and Paul are wonderful parents.

Destiny came up with Jerry today and spent a while with Hope.  She held her for a long time and I know Hope loved it.  She was awake and alert and looking right up at Destiny almost the whole time.  I wish the boys could come up to visit Hope, but the restrictions are preventing it.  They will have to wait for her to come home.

A couple other happy items to report.  They finally took the IV out of her head.  I didn't even realize it until I was messing with her hair and noticed I didn't have to watch out for the IV.  She looks so much better without it!  Her incision looks really good.  They don't even keep it bandaged much anymore.  There is one small area that they keep bandaged because the stitch got a little icky, but that's it.  It doesn't look nearly as bad as I was expecting.

Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers.  Please continue to keep our family and our 'heart families' in your thoughts and prayers.  They are working and we feel the hands of God every day!