Progress is Progress

"Progress is progress" is our motto around here. Some days we can see that Charlie has made loads of progress. Other days it is slow moving - two steps forward, one step back - kind of progress.

The past few days have been funky when it comes to Charlie's eating habits. He refused the bottle a few times, skipped a couple feedings all together, and has been particularly pokey when it comes to eating. Last night (with the permission of the cardiologist) we let Charlie lead the way on his nighttime feedings. He slept one slightly longer stretch of about 4.5 hours. He polished off all his nighttime feedings after that and has consistently eaten every 3 hours all day. Yay! Maybe that one longer stretch helped even things out a little.... Plus we're trying to move him up to a larger size nipple on his bottle so he won't have to work as hard to eat (meaning he'll burn less calories and hopefully put on more weight).

Charlie started his new medicine today. We'll need to wait a few weeks to see how it works in regards to the leakage around his valves. It's good to know that we are on the road to addressing the issue though. Blood work and his echo in three weeks will tell us his progress on that front. Hopefully it works miracles!

Also by way of progress - we managed to get out of the house for a bit today. The older boys had an appointment a few towns over from us so we packed up after school and headed that direction. Afterwards we had lunch at a local farm and took a wagon ride out to the orchards to pick some apples fresh off the trees. Charlie slept through most of it only waking long enough to drink two bottles during the trip. Nonetheless, it was great to get out and about today and healthy for the big boys to see that life will return to normal.

Now, if I could just make progress on the mess that is my house these days or on some of the million thank you notes that need to go out - that would real progress!