Ultimately it was the right choice and I'm glad we did it. I couldn't honestly say that it was a relaxing time, but we had a lot of fun with Nona and Opa and the kids got to experience a lot of new things. We did a lot of swimming in the pool at the hotel, went to a museum and saw some dinosaurs, and went to an aquarium to see some fish. Lime was particularly impressed with all the tall buildings, which is a good reminder that he is really a country mouse, Milwaukee being the biggest city he can ever remember seeing.
The kids were both still pretty sick on Thursday, but by Friday they were starting to turn things around, and today both of them seem nearly recovered. I have to say the one thing I am the most grateful for this year is that I finally feel like we have some degree of control over Lemon's respiratory health. Don't get me wrong, this fall has been pretty much a non-stop series of respiratory viruses of varying intensity that have affected both kids (and their adult companions to varying degrees). But, Lemon has been able to throw off all but one with just increased airway clearance and no antibiotics. It still sucks that he is sick so much, but this is nothing like the bad old days when every time he got a runny nose, Papa Bear and I knew that within 6-8 weeks we would be talking about IV antibiotics. I can't tell you how good it feels to go into a winter and not feel completely and utterly defenseless. It's only November, of course, and there is still a lot of winter to go, but we have fought hard and won a number of rounds already, and any number of wins is more wins than we ever had before.
I wish that I were feeling more bullish on nutrition, our other constant battle ground. Eating is still not really a thing for Lemon. He enjoys food school and will do a lot of things in the room with his therapist, but we haven't seen much translation of those lessons into increased food consumption at home. And, right now we have no room at all to back down on the tube feedings. With all these illnesses and all the puking, we are still at 0 weight gain since June, and that's with us pumping as much formula as we can in through the tube whenever he's well enough to keep it down. I'm starting to feel like maybe the win here is just not losing any further ground until spring, which is kind of a depressing thought but it's good to be realistic I suppose.
In more uplifting news, Lemon is "person of the week" at his school this week so if you'll excuse me, I have to go research science demonstrations that are appropriate for the 4K set and take 15 min to execute...
