Ava's home

her cool shades ;)

she really seems to enjoy t.v. her and dawson were watching it together

first car-ride.. other than the amblance

time to go home.... right before we left the nicu

our first walk

Time to go to speech and work on our feedings... she's loves the car btw

Not sure what kind of smile this is, lol

the sign i woke up to. sorry mom had to put it on here. My mom ordered it, hated it, had it sent back, lol. It wasn't what she asked for. Long story, but it's "ugly" she says. I liked it though. It's the thought that counts :)

Hey everyone, She's home ;) It's so nice to have my baby home with me. I'll be glad when she's off some of this medicine, the methadone actually, and of course when she's off this darn feeding pump. She hates the tube in her nose. She's almost pulled it out a few times., Luckily I've been right there and stopped her, because a couple of times it was in the middle of her eating. She was never a fussy baby at the nicu but once we got home, well she kind of turned into a different baby, lol. She's had a couple of days where she literally cried alllllllllllllllllllllllllll day. I'm not joking, all day!!! It's weird, she likes being held sometims but most of the time she'd rather sit in her bouncy seat, car seat, or swing. Must feel good on her belly. The only other way to calm her down is to walk with her. Today I had to walk and bounce her for literally an hour, just to get her to stop crying. No I mean screaming, she doesn't cry often, she screams. I feel bad because there's nothing I can do. I try everything. You just want to fix it and make it better and it sucks when you can't. The car seat usually does the trick. Must feel good on her belly. Speaking of carseat, she loves it so much, she sleeps in it. When I say sleeps in it I mean she really sleeps in it, from like 9 at night til 9 in the am. NICE, I love it :) What Idon't love so much is this darn pump! Or the tape these home health care people send you. It's awful!!! Her doctor said we can give her 85 m.l.'s every three hours and at night give it a six hour break. That way we're not up every three hours at night. This pump gets you up more than any baby wakes you up though. We set it get her formula going and 50 min later or it beeps. You hit contine, because the milks still in the tube, so about 15 min later or so, right when you're dozing back off, it beeps again. These aren't little light beeps they're LOUD like house is on fire beeps. So I hit continue again, and another ten min or so goes by. I'm back asleep at this point, and BEEEEEEEP. I finally can turn it off because it's all the way threw the tubing now. So at this point I get about two hours where I can sleep then wake back up to do it all over again. The sucky part is after all of this beeping, getting up, laying back down 3 times, I'm wide awake and can't go back to sleep. So really I get like an hour of sleep. I'll be happy when she decides she's ready to take the bottle. She's not making much progress. She does try and suck her thumb quite a bit though, which I believe is a good sign. She gagged herself today though, she almost stuck her whole fist in there, lol. Silly girl.

We had parent teacher confrences yesterday. Dawson got all A's and a couple B's. They use 3's and 4's, but they're equilivent to A's and B's. This means he gets a new guitar :) I think he's going to get it Friday. My moms also buying him guitar lessons. His teacher made him promise to bring it in and play her a song. She's a great teacher. He really loves her. She loves him. She calls him "her guy" She said she's not supposed to pick favorites but he's one of hers. He scored a 80% on their first computer test. Most kids scored around 50% she said. They only want him to read 40 word per min., and he reads 95. All in all he's doing great. I'm so proud of him!!! His teacher had nothing but great things to say about him. She also said whenever they're allowed to work in groups all of the kids want to partner up with him. :) That made me smile.

Well since Ava's asleep I better go get my beauty rest, he heheheehe. Eric did keep an eye on her today so I could get a nap. It was supposed to be a one hour nap but kinda turned into two. Guess I was tired!!! He has 3 am duty tonight :) I'll still wake up because that stupid pump is on my side. Hmmmm maybe we'll switch sides tonight :) I'll post some more pictures in a couple days. I'm going to Christas tomorrow, and we're taking pics of the girls in their matching cat outfits :)

He had a little bit of a cold left, so he had to suit up. He only held her for a min.

Ava's coming home Friday.... and the pumpkin patch

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't wrote in a while. As most of you know we got the best news ever this week. Ava Jae Grace is coming home to be with her mommy, daddy, brother, and sister. I can't even begin to put into words how happy I am. My angel will be with me at last. She still hasn't started taking her bottle, but I think she will soon!!! We learned how to change the NG tube, which is way easier than I thought. The hardest part is knowing it doesn't feel so great and watching her cry. We also have a pump and monitors to monitor at night during her feedings. I'm sooooooooo excited. I am going to miss a couple of the nurses up there but we already decide to have lunch and dinner dates!! We will forever always be grateful to them for what they've done for Ms Ava.... 2 imparticular. I hope they stay in our lives forever. Plus we're going to have the coolest birthday party's with pony rides and all for Ava, :) I wanted to have this big coming home party for her, but everyone's sick!!! Anyway I'm going to post a few pics, most are from the pumpkin patch, which is a funny story. We were going with Christa, Vern, and their kids. Well Christa got Dawson a train ticket and they were sold out by the time we went to get ours so we had to drive there. Anywho when we looked online at the pumpkin patch in Noblesville (I swear it said with the train ride) it was called oh something, I forget. Anyway we drive there, buy like 50 tickets (thinking that will be enough for all the kids) and wait for Christa to call. In the mean time I'm wandering where this train drops them off at and can't seem to find it. Well Christa calls and yay she's here....finally. Well I still don't see a train. She's at the petting zoo which we had just left the petting zoo and we're wandering why we didn't pass her??? Make a already long story short, we were at two diff pumpkin patches. Who knew Nobelsville had two of them? Turns out we got the better deal. Ours had games and rides and real face painting, while there's was literally just a cornfield with pumpkins that had FFA high schoolers doing face paint with markers. Oh well, the kids had fun. Poor Christa was sick, but survived. They loved the train. Dawson actually got to go on a school field trip today and went on the same train ride. If we knew that we could have let Aryssa have his ticket. There's next year I guess. Although I don't really want to go to that one so maybe Christmas. I guess at Christmas time they do a train ride with hot chocolate, read you a story, and go pick up Santa. It's called Polar Ex pres or something like that. Well I'm off to bed to get my last good night sleep for the next 3 years. Night everyone.Oh and p.s. I'm well aware Dawson's hair looks bad, he moved while I was cutting it so I had to cut all of his bangs off. Oh and I had a really good pic of Eric, me, and Rissy but somehow it got erased????

the kids fell asleep like this waiting for me to get done visiting Ava. You can't see it but Eric was asleep on the couch. LOL Apparently they had gotten in trouble and decided to take a nap. Hey whatever gets you out of spankings, right? heheheMy first rose....... finally looks thrilled doesnt she?

Ava's pretty face with no tape

This is one of my faves

I love this smile

me and dawson after church sunday

How was every ones weekend? I did my usual, went to the hospital to see Ms Ava, rode in a go cart ten times to small for me, (its Gavins) went shopping with my mom (which btw she got Ava the cutest outfit at Gymboree), helped Eric a little bit at Papa Murphys... you know the usual! I'm hoping this weekend we can take Dawson and Aryssa to the pumpkin patch!!! I wish we could bring Ava too but.... We'll see though, right now Dawsons sick. He stayed home from school today, Aryssa will probably have it next. Ava cried when I walked away from her for the first time today. I didn't think they did that this early but she did :) So I did it again, but then I picked her up. Heheehehehe. I now probably have a bladder infection or whatever you get from holding your pee for hours!!! She would not let me put her down, but I LOVED it!! She loves(thanks Christa, or should I say Emma) her swing. When I first got there, I picked her up out of her swing and she screamed. Deff. letting us know her likes and dislikes. Right now the only thing really keeping her at the hospital is her eating. After 3 weeks of being on the vent, having things shoved down her throat, she developed an aversion to eating, well to anything going in her mouth at all actually. I've had the most luck out of well me and the nurses. Speech came to work with her yesterday. They don't want to push her into eating and just shove the bottle in her mouth because then she'll really hate it and will prob never eat for us. Right now during feedings I'm just dipping her bink in milk and playing with it on her lips. Shes content while I'm doing it too... which is a good sign. At first she would get mad and scream at me. She's so funny she does this little grunt squeal type thing. Cracks me up every time! Anyway hopefully she'll get there soon and at least take a little bit from the bottle. As soon as she does they'll send her home with a feeding tube. Or who knows maybe she'll just eat the whole bottle and won't need a feeding tube!!! That would be nice :) I think she's just going to need a couple weeks and she'll pick it up! Do I think she'll take all 79 m.l.... no prob not, but I'm sure she'll at least take some. At least she'll be able to come home!!! They will teach us how to change the feeding tube and we can work with her at home on her feedings. The cardiologist is pretty set on her coming home with a feeding tube also. She said if she gets tired like before (because of her heart) then at least she'll have the feeding tube. They for some reason don't think she'll eat. I guess a lot of heart babies have issues. I think she will, she did before the surgery and she enjoyed it she just got tired. Speaking of the whole heart thing... I'm really agro over this. I mean we expected to bring our baby home with her fixed heart and not have any other surgeries. I was actually excited that she was getting her heart surgery only because I thought she'd be home... no problems. And now she MAY have to have another heart surgery. So aggravating!!! Why does a surgery that's supposed to fix something give her a potentially even bigger problem that's harder to fix? Anyway I'm hanging onto "she may grow into it and not need surgery" Today me and Ava got to have another photo shoot. I took in her boppy (again thanks Christa) sat her up in it and shot away. She LOVES sitting up btw. I didn't get any smiles out of her, but its hard when you're the one holding the camera and trying to get her to smile. Her day nurse took the tube out for me so I could get some pictures of her without all that tape on her face. The night nurse did get a good shot of her last night. I took a pic of the scrap book page they made. Well I'm going to post some pictures now. Oh one more thing Dawson went to the dentist Thurs. no cavities :)

Grandmommy giving Ava her breathing treatment Sleeping Beauty snoozin in her swing