This week, I briefly escaped the midwest for a work trip to Denver. You will all be pleased to know (not that I had any doubt) that the boys managed to survive on their own without me for a few days. Papa Bear did an admirable job holding down the fort by himself, including carrying out 3 treatments a day for Lemon, who (along with Lime) has had quite a cough for the past 10 days or so. I, meanwhile, had two of the most amazing nights of sleep that I've had within recent memory, waking up not at all during the night and sleeping until the deluxe hour of 5 a.m. mountain time (aka 6 a.m. central time) every morning. I think some work was done as well, but I mainly remember those nights of sleep. Amazing stuff, I tell you.
We have been going back and forth all week about whether to start Lemon on a round of Cayston. He has had this pretty terrible sounding productive cough for over a week, after all--a fresh cold of some kind after he kicked the first cold of the school year so well. Fortunately, we have Lime to serve as our canary in the coal mine. Our thinking is that if Lime is also still coughing, and if both of them still seem relatively perky, there is no reason to leap to the conclusion that there is something bacterial going on in Lemon's lungs. So far, we haven't seen any of the other signs (puking, fever, very low energy) that we typically see when Lemon needs a round of antibiotics, and we're continuing to wait. It seemed like both kids went through the worst of it a couple of days ago, and have both been getting incrementally better the last 48 hours or so. Fingers crossed. We could really use a break from all these colds to work on some weight gain!
Progress with eating continues to be, shall we say, mixed. Lemon's therapist at food school continues to be very enthusiastic about his progress, which I suppose is her job. I have to say that we are not seeing overwhelming progress. I think we are in a marginally better position than we were at the beginning of the summer. But, we're still not anywhere close to my seemingly conservative goal of getting Lemon to eat say 200 calories a day by mouth. Today, I asked the therapist what she thought of one of our other goals, which is getting Lemon to swallow pills. I caught what I believe is called a "microexpression" that rushed across her face before she composed herself and said something about how that was an interesting idea. I think we're going to try anyway. I had been holding back because I was hoping that Lemon would make real inroads on learning how to eat, but I feel like as long as we're going to sit in a plateau with regard to that skill, maybe he could at least try to learn a different oral skill in the meantime. The nutritionist at our clinic was very supportive of the idea, and I think it would be helpful to Lemon (and to us!) in the long term, because he's started to fight us on taking his enzymes in applesauce, so we really need another approach.
All that aside, we had a fun time celebrating my birthday yesterday. Nona made some delicious cakes, and we went on our annual apple and pumpkin picking adventure. I also got a great birthday gift, a steam mop/vacuum. It probably says something about my advanced age (or the number of people in my house who throw/drop food on the floor every day, either preceded or followed by rolling in the sandbox and then running into the house) that this is one of the greatest birthday gifts ever. Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes from near and far, it was wonderful to hear from all of you!
