Books, Blankets, and Boppys...Oh My!

Andrew's shower in NJ was a huge success this weekend.  My mom and sisters-in-law did an amazing job and it was wonderful to see friends and family for the first time in months.  Andrew's nursery theme is Dr. Seuss, and they carried the theme out for the shower - I loved the colorful decorations and gift bags - and the cake was delicious!!

Andrew got a whole collection of Dr. Seuss books!



SIL Cindy flew in for the day!  It was great to see you!



Mom, SIL Corrie, Me, SIL Michele, niece Julia

Andrew got tons of awesome things - pack-n-play, stroller, jumperoo, blankets, bottles, and books, just to name a few.  And clothes - oh, the cuteness of the clothes!  It's amazing that we fit everything into the car to get it home (although, packing is a super power of mine...I took it as a challenge to make everything fit nicely!)


The back seat was full too!


It was a great weekend.  Thank you everyone for an amazing shower!  We can't wait until you all get to meet Andrew in person.

Sunday morning, we stopped and visited our friends P and J on our way out of town.  We finally got to meet their sweet daughter, Abby, who is one month older than Andrew.  It was fun to see all that she can do (she's getting the rollover thing down!) and got J and I more excited to bring Andrew home.  We know Abby and Andrew are going to be fast friends and we are so happy for P and J, who are amazing parents already!

Of course, we rushed directly to the hospital (do not pass Go, do not collect $200) to visit with Andrew when we got back to VA.  We told him all about the weekend, and all the amazing gifts he received.  



He didn't seem too impressed.

Then, we got the update on how his weekend was.  He is doing great!  Since he's been doing so good with the bottle, they are feeding him a bottle each feed now (every three hours) so he takes about half the amount via bottle, and then gets the other half over the next hour in his feeding tube.  He's doing a fantastic job with his sucking, and doesn't have any breathing issues during his feeds.  Mom and Dad are learning all the tricks to get him to finish the bottle (he gets tired by the end) and are so happy we are at this stage.  Over the coming days/weeks, they will continue to up the amount he takes during bottles and wean down the amount he gets in the feeding tube.  They've also turned down the flow on his oxygen to 1/2 a liter, and he seemed fine with the change.  Everyone seems to think they will be able to get him off oxygen soon.  We can't wait for that day!

I thought I'd end this post with a little comparison of how far he's come.  The first picture is J's hand next to Andrew at 2 days old, when he weighed less than 1.5 pounds.  He's closing in on five pounds in the second picture - 4 pounds, 14 oz.  The difference is amazing!