The Atrium

Another part of getting ready for Samuel to come home is learning to take care of him. Again, typical first time parent stuff... but the equipment takes a bit more training. Our big test will come the weekend before he comes home, when DB and I will spend an entire 48 hours - 2 days and 2 nights - taking care of him. It's a really great system called Rooming In. We will still stay with Samuel in the hospital, with nurses, docs, RT's, etc. right there if we have any questions, but we will be taking care of him on our own!

The goal is to know how to take care of him prior to Rooming In, so that even though you can ask questions, hopefully you don't have too many :) We are there daily for visits, but due to travel time, work schedules, and of course having two 1-year olds at home, we are generally only able to be there for an hour or two before Samuel goes to bed. We usually spend a lot of our visit doing normal parent/baby stuff... cuddling, playing, singing, and unfortunately can't be there during the day when he is getting treatments, therapies, etc. So, in preparation for Rooming In, we will each spend one or two 8-hour days learning to take care of Samuel - including meds, feeding tube, and of course respiratory. This means learning how to dot our i's and cross our t's, but also how to read him and if he's getting into trouble. Whew - no pressure :)

(Just to clarify, it will still be at least a few more weeks before we think about bringing him home... we just want to be ready when he is.)

On Friday I got to spend my first 8-hour day with Samuel. It was great! He was nice enough to have a few small de-sats just to test me, but nothing too serious :) I absolutely loved spending the day with my guy! When he was awake, I learned a lot of the hands-on, day-t0-day, care... and when he took his nap, we started to go over a checklist which included things like how to recognize respiratory distress and what to do in an emergency. We have talked about all of these things before, let's be honest - I'm big on the questions, but it was much harder to answer some of the q&a when under the pressure of possibly bringing him home soon.

Towards the end of the day, we were ready for another field trip. Samuel has been able to go on a few since the first one a few weeks ago... wow, can't believe it's been a few weeks since then! But this had to be one of the coolest (sorry Puffy)! We went to the Atrium!

The Atrium is run by Child Life, and it's a place where the kids who are in the hospital can go to play. It is amazing! You have to be healthy enough for the trip and not contagious, and Samuel is both, yea!

There were lots of great things about this past Friday, but the Atrium certainly was a highlight :)

Morning! I'm ready for a great day!

Sweet - I love road trips! Where are we going?

Oh.... my.... gosh! I don't know what it is, but I LOVE it!

Samuel could not take his eyes off of the giant kites hanging from the ceiling in the Atrium. His eyes lit up - and did not stop!

A room just for kids is awesome!

Taking Samuel on road trips definitely gets more comfortable every time we go, but we still have to lug around a few things :)

Samuel's mastery of Chopsticks after just a few minutes on the piano was incredible :)

And of course the drum solo was just as impressive :)

A little more floor time - and another chance to stare at the kites! Samuel was "running" like there was no tomorrow!

Look mom, another cute baby in the Atrium :)

Back at home, Olivia and Belle enjoyed the squirrels in our new back yard :)

Thank you for the ribbons Aunt Nancy! George, my fine motor boy, was having a blast.