Today was a good day for us.
Parker slept well and ate some carrot puree along with his bottle and is keeping everything down. They are not monitoring his intake as much and are trying to get him close to his pre-hospitalisation eating pattern.
He was more active and attentive today than he had been since the surgery; he grabs his toes and reaches for things.
He complains when we move his head and we have not been working his neck the past two days but we are back to holding him fairly constantly.
They changed his head bandage late in the afternoon. As it is a sterile procedure we had to leave the room. When we came back the bandage-helmet was gone and he has two large bandages on the right side of his head. The nurses said the stitches look clean with no sign of infection.
With his restrictive head bandage gone he was moving his head back and forth more vigorously. He seems to be able to hold his neck- although with pain-- he cries louder now.
Last night Abby came to sleep with us as she had a nightmare that we gave all the girls away to different families and just kept Parker. Abby has always been very close to Parker, after his birth she basically split the family with herself and Parker allocated to dad's team with Hannah and Penelope to mom's team-- Axelle is a bit of a free agent. We gave Abby the option of going to church today or staying home. She said at church everyone asked her about Parker and she was too sad because she didn't know what to say to people. She dressed up in her Sunday clothes and spent the morning taking care of Penelope. She has been very strong through this and is growing as well.
Today was an atypical Sunday for our church services. Every six months or so, the 8 congregations of our church on the western part of Paris and suburbs meet together in Versailles for a conference. Over the years, when the weather was good, we have had a tradition that after the Sunday morning meeting we would have a picnic by the canals behind the Chateau with our friends and fellow church-goers. Today was the perfect day for that picnic.
We were reminded how much we love Spring in Paris. It is not a consistent string of warm and sunny days; rather it is several chilly, rainy days interrupted by a day or two of a stunning baby blue sky. Everyone still wears coats, sometimes heavy ones, but these are often left open and sometimes they wear lighter jackets. The trees are still bare but you know inherently that they are alive. Once in a while you catch the hint of blossoms in the air. While anyone can appreciate that beauty, those of us who have lived through the dark Parisian winters have perhaps a heightened sense of the renewal waiting for us.
We had wanted very much to attend the conference in Versailles, be inspired by the messages in our heightened state of spiritual awareness, thank people who had prayed and fasted with us, lay lazily on the grass and joke with friends while the kids wandered a little too close to the swans on the canals, show everyone our perfectly healed son.
That didn't happen today but we are filled with renewed hope that for the conference in the Autumn, the time of harvest and our other favorite season in France, we will be there and it will all be more meaningful.
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