Santa's Elves

Santa's Elves made a belated visit to our apartment this year, and boy did they out-do themselves! When I was admitted to the hospital to wait until Gavin was born, I thought about how difficult it would be to arrange for everything to be ready for another baby from my hospital bed. At that time, I thought I still had weeks, if not months to make that happen. So when Gavin was born 10 short days later and no arrangements had yet been made, the Mom Squad took over. Troy's mom Carolyn unleashed her Design Star self on our little apartment and both of our families (and some neighbors) busted out a 2-day remodel that would make Ty Pennington jealous. When we came home from the hospital it was like coming home to a brand new house! I don't have any pictures of what our apartment looked like before, but imagine (if you dare!) dingy white walls in every room with blue flower wallpaper in the kitchen and room for only one baby in the closet/Aliyah's room. Big thanks to Carolyn, Laurie, James, Angie, Sarah, Michael, Ryan, & Tiffany (and anyone else I don't know of who lent a helping hand!)

Gavin Update: Things continue to go well with Gavin. His echocardiogram showed that the valve in his heart has closed and is no longer a concern. They removed one of his umbilical lines and put in a Pic (sp?) line in his hand. It's kind of like an IV. They have him on caffiene to help stimulate the part of his brain that reminds you to breathe, but hopefully he will be able to come off that soon. As was to be expected from the beginning, he had to have a transfusion today to replace the blood that they have to draw for testing. His teeny body still isn't up to making more blood so the transfusion should help. Everyone in the NICU keeps telling us how exceptional he is to be doing so well, and there are babies all around that have been there much longer and haven't come as far as Gavin. Even though he is doing so well, it's still hard to see him with the additional wires for the pic line and everything else. I'll post more pictures tomorrow or Monday to give you an idea.