Wednesday, April 30th

Well, we've had a long few weeks, so I haven't had the time I'd like to spend on the blog...

I'll have some more time tomorrow afternoon, so expect something then.

Sorry, folks! See you then!!

Sunday, April 27th

The fun that can be had with a large bag of cat food...

Rhiannon and Eli got to feed the cats last night, and then Rhiannon cleaned up in her own style.

She's going to be a plumber or construction worker that enjoys frilly dresses...

Wednesday, April 23rd

Well, here we are...

We've been able to get out a bit more and the courtyard's a nice place for Eli and Rhiannon to hang out and for Calvin to sniff some flowers and take a walk.

Down at the bottom is Calvin eating some hummus (Gosia made it from some really soft chick peas)... it's quite chunky and he's eating it off of a stick of celery.

He's slowly developing a chewing pattern for some foods. I gave him some bits of an antacid tablet to practice on this morning... he didn't quite care for it, but he chewed it...

We've had a long couple weeks... this is Gosia's last week of working at Yen out in Anping. It's gotten to be a bit too much for her and us.

We're goat herders at heart...

Eli and Rhiannon are doing well. Calvin's doing OK on his new medicine... Not much else to say tonight. We're all worn out...

Just to add, Thanks to everyone who adds their words to the blog. I wish I had time to respond, but I really do put any spare time I have into the blog... Your thoughts, prayers and words and thoroughly appreciated and taken to heart.

See you Sunday!

Sunday, April 20th

So, the weather hes been nice, so Calvin went for a walk with Gosia...

Calvin's kidneys' creatinine level went up, but it's an expected minor increase which will continue.

He had a neurologist appointment on Friday which Gosia missed due to work, and the doctor had already gone home. The nurse called her and she came back to the hospital just for Calvin. He has really good doctors here...

She gave him some new anti-seizure medicine since he's still having about 30 a day...

We'll let you know how he takes the new meds and if they help.

That's all for now. Short post, we've had a long week...

Wednesday, April 16th

Just some pictures of Calvin eating, plus a movie.

We got pancakes from McStyrofoams for Gosia's birthday breakfast, and Calvin was chewing away at them...

I love his expressiveness... He's just pissed off in the last picture, even though he likes the pancakes... lashing out at those who love him...

What would John Calvin say about this?
Or Thomas Hobbes, for that matter... :)

I'm pretty beat... he was up at 5:30 this morning due to teething issues, so we're pretty tired. I'm going to put this up and get some sleep.

Sunday, April 13th

Today's post is just movies...

They're mainly about Calvin, whose birthday it's been this week, and while they're old, I think they're worth putting up. In the first one, we've noticed just how many seizures he was constantly having after he came home from the hospital.

They were never identified as seizures, though, for whatever reasons. They really scared him... We had no idea at the time why he'd start crying out of nowhere, and you can see it at the end of the movie.



The second down is just of him on the bed, with Eli and Rhiannon offering him encouragement.





So, continuing with young Calvin...
more crying...



Next is a movie of all of us at dinnertime, a few months after Calvin came home...

I love Rhiannon's conquest over the hot pot...

One of Calvin's MAJOR early accomplishments was breastfeeding.
He surprised the whole ICU staff when he started doing that
(especially with some of the drugs he was on)...




Well, that's all for now... He has come quite a way...

Calvin's birthday - April 7th - 8th

This is the post I've been working on the past few days. Unfortunately, this stomach virus has made it hard, but it's more or less done.

This is a long list of pictures showing Calvin, for his birthday, April 7 - 8th --

yes, his birth date spans two days, thanks to the International Dateline. It was still the 7th when I called back to the States about him being born, but it was already the 8th here.

Some very minor comments, I'm not going to write much...

They're all in more or less the correct order, but the first picture, is, of course, of Calvin inside the tummy.

Most of the kids here, when you ask them how old they are, you subtract a year from the answer they give you because when they come out, they're considered to be already one year old, so they start counting from one instead of zero.

So, Calvin's about nine months old in that picture...

The rest are pretty straight forward... there is a gap of about 6 months...

That's before and during the NYC period,-- I think I was too emotionally drained, still, from the birth and months after it to take any pictures during that whole time -- we only picked up taking pictures a bit before we left again for Taiwan... Those are down at the bottom, of him in the park...

Besides, I mostly wanted to post some older pictures of him, some or most of which you may not have seen.

Also, you can see that he actually looks pretty "good" while in the hospital. It was when he came home that you can see the effects of those two battles with infection that he went through, the second of which we thought for sure was going to kill him for a few days.

he lost all of his baby fat and has never really gotten it back... he's got muscles now, but he's still quite, quite skinny. he didn't gain weight for I can't remember how long. They were going to re-admit him for a while, but Gosia fought to get food into him, and he did eventually start gaining little by little.

And he screamed constantly, too. We were talking about it earlier today, and Gosia says, he was letting it all out. He was in severe emotional pain back then, plus the seizures and all else...

It's pretty amazing what humans can go through and deal with.

The pictures of Eli and Rhiannon with the I'm the big sister and I'm the big brother T-shirts are from the first time they got to really see him, about three weeks after he came out.

Anyway, that about sums it up. This Sunday, to continue the (belated) birthday celebrations, I'll be posting a series of movies we took back then that I'm assuming most of you haven't seen or may like to see again...

See you then, and thank you all for the notes and e-mails about Calvin, then and now.
They always mean a LOT,
Thank you so much.