Our Main Goal for January

Our main goal for the first month of the new year is to get this guy a patched up heart!

His surgery was moved from the 10th of January to the 14th, and then again bumped to the 21st.  The Omicron variant of COVID-19 was running rampant in San Antonio from December through January.  The big kids had the week before his surgery off for their independent study project, but as that break was approaching I was getting multiple alerts that kids in their sections were COVID-positive.  Right before midterms I pulled them out of school.  I was just about killing myself everyday trying to get enough ounces in this little guy whose heart was failing and could not bear it if his surgery was postponed because one of the kids brought COVID into the house or he himself got COVID. So we got some extra special family time right before his surgery!  The big kids were scheduled to take their make-up midterms the day after his surgery on a Saturday.

LOVE. THIS. PICTURE.

The kids all love when I style his little patch of hair into this cute little Dr. Seuss "Who-like" do, so I use his baby oil on his head to prevent dry patches and just stick it up in the air.  Once it dries, it doesn't move no matter what.  His hair's got a little curl like Bob's did when he was a baby. 

Getting ready for his last ECHO before surgery at his pre-op appointment

He loves those feet!

 Feeding Roman was getting increasingly difficult and there were several times when I was sure we'd be getting a feeding tube, but somehow he scraped by and gained just enough weight to stay tube-free.  He was just over 13 lbs when we checked into the hospital on January 20th.  That's really not too shabby in the end.  They see much smaller babies than that in the Cardiac PICU.