We have been unbelievably fortunate these last few weeks to have an out of town visitor, namely Uncle Jared, who went absolutely above and beyond to come here safely to visit during these insane times. He flew to WI from New York, quarantined for a week, took a COVID test, which was negative, visited with all of us for a couple of weeks, and then left again on Sunday morning to go home and quarantine for a further two weeks before reuniting with Auntie Lauren and the rest of his regularly scheduled life there. The kids were absolutely thrilled to see him, and had a blast playing with him and showing him all of their new skills. We feel so fortunate that he was able to come, and so sad to think how long it will be before we can see him again.
Pandemic life continues to rumble along. We are getting a little taste of what winter will be like, with the days getting colder and darker, and our first dusting of snow. The kids are getting a little less willing to go play outdoors, and the feeling of impending cabin fever is real. At least our learning pod still seems to be working well, the kids do seem to be acquiring new knowledge, and at least they have their two school friends to interact with so it isn't just the two of them.
Other than that, we have switched Lemon over to the 3 cartons a night of formula. That seems to be going fine, I should have him get on the scale at some point just to check an see, but he still looks plenty hefty to my eye. The only strange thing about it is that after years of conditioning I am so programmed to wake up at 2:30 a.m. to turn off the pump that when it goes off at its new time of 12:30 it wakes me from a dead sleep, and I still wake up at 2:30 expecting to hear it. I'm sure my brain will retrain itself eventually. We also switched Lemon to his new dose of ursodiol, and now I'm figuring that as long as we haven't had the labs drawn yet anyhow, I am going to let him go for a few weeks at the new dose and then bring him in for the blood draw, so we can see if the new dose is sufficient to keep the liver enzymes where they need to be.
Meanwhile I am trying to rekindle some of my indoor hobbies so that I have a chance of staying sane over the winter. I started doing origami again, and I baked my first-ever traditional fruitcake, which I am now "feeding" with brandy twice a week. Kind of like a very tasty-smelling houseplant. I hope you all are well and are likewise finding ways to fend of the impending doldrums of winter. Hang in there!
