Cute Pictures and an Update

I love these girls.  One of their favorite things to do is to don their aprons and help me make dinner.  Since this one was easy, I pretty much let them do all of it.  Shannon is cooking the chicken and peas and Leah (in her Cinderella dress, of course) is stirring the orzo.

I went to check on them the other night and found them like this.  Keep in mind--they have bunk beds.  I hope they stay friends forever.  They sure do like to play together.

This is Leah with her "Nanny."  I should clarify that it's her grandmother, since when I usually say nanny people think we hire someone to take care of her.  Somewhere in that family line they started saying nanny instead of nana, and it has stuck for several generations.  I would also like to point out that Leah is a very snugly little girl, but only when she is getting "tickled."  See how Nanny is tickling her foot?  It's her favorite thing.

As for the Christopher update, this picture sums it all up.  I took him to the ER on December 30th because he was requiring quite a bit of oxygen when he shouldn't have needed any (well, supplemental, that is).  They admitted him and he ended up staying almost a whole week.  They did some echocardiograms and thought maybe his Sano shunt was narrowing, so they thought of doing a cardiac catheter procedure to balloon it and open it back up.  Well, they gave him some blood first and that perked him right up, so they held off on the more invasive procedure.  Then he started not eating very well.  We tried a few different bottles and nipples and eventually he was doing ok, so we brought him back home.

Unfortunately, he did worse and worse at home until last Wednesday (Matt's birthday, no less) I had to take him in again because he just wasn't eating much at all for me.  I expected to learn how to place an NG tube in the ER and be out of there, but the cardiologist wanted to run some more tests to make sure there were no underlying causes.  He was admitted again and is still there and is still not eating.  In addition to that, he has taken to throwing up every day and it losing weight.  So, they replaced the NG tube and tomorrow he will have a swallow study to see if he is aspirating anything.  They may push the tube back down to his intestines so that he doesn't throw up anymore, or they may consider diet changes (dairy intolerance?).  Basically, they really don't know what's going on and they have told us as much, but we are still hopeful that they will get it figured out.  At least he's in a great hospital and is being well cared for!  He is quite a bit more fussy than normal, but it could just be because he has tubes all over again.  The doctor has asked that I not hold him because I have had a cold, so his dad has been holding him and singing to him.  He still smiles for us, as evidenced in this video.  We sure do love this little man!