Some New Pictures

Elijah is doing mostly great. His recovery the last two days has been better than expected, but definitely hard at times. Feeding with the new bottles started out easy in the hospital but then once we got home, he stopped eating as well. We could only get an ounce or two in him at a time Thurs afternoon. We are thankful that he is mostly sleeping well, but then that meant less opportunity to try and feed him which makes me nervous. He actually slept through the night Thursday and then Friday took a longer than normal morning nap which we woke him up from. Then he never went back to sleep (minus a 10 min nap) until after 8. Poor guy was so tired he didn't even want to be held. So at this point I don't know what to expect. When I think he is returning to normal, he throws us for a loop and won't sleep or eat. When I think it's going to be rough, he will sleep well and eat better than before. All in all though I think he is doing well for what he has been through. 

We went for a quick walk yesterday to get out if the house and enjoy the weather. 

Grandpa and Grandma have been a lot of help. Sadly Grandpa Marty left early this morning to go back to SC, but he left Grandma Ina here for another week plus a few days!!

He actually ate a little over four oz at 3:30 this morning. I put this picture here because you can kind of see the new shape he can make with his lips. It's adorable. New mouth shape has led to fun new sounds of "oo" and "who". He actually talked through most of that bottle. 

We have gotten a few small smiles out of him though we are kind of trying not to make him smile too much. We don't want him to stretch his lip too much, but it is SO incredibly hard not to try to make him smile all the time. It's just how we always played with him before and now that he is more alert and returning to himself, it's getting harder to restrain ourselves. I don't have a great picture of his new smile, but here are some new pictures of his mouth from this morning. 

The right side of his face has been more swollen than the left, but that should go down. 

Love that nose!

We have had to clean the stitches a few times a day. I make Nate do it because I am too scared to touch the area. Keeping it clean and getting rid of blood clots will reduce scarring among other things we will have to do later. We are slowly reducing the pain medication and he still doesn't seem to be in too much pain. 

Please keep praying for us:

-that he would eat well

-that the wound would be protected and heal well

-that he would get used to his new mouth and nose (and hence breathing technique)

-that he would not be constipated from the pain meds

-that we would give God all the glory for the great work he has done