“When Brian de Vale and Evette Leavy learned that both of their twin sons would need a kidney transplant to combat a rare disease, they were prepared to donate one of their own organs to save their precious sons’ lives…”

If I were the boss of the whole world, I would immediately implement the following:

1. No more than one parent per family is allowed to be sick at any given time. If the second parent feels the illness coming on, they must wait until the first parent has made a complete recovery.
2. The number of sick people in a home shall not exceed the number of toilets in said home.

The morning went by quickly in a haze of daze and medical advice for both Rachel and I, but it ended well, because we each got a smoothie for lunch: hers was chocolate, banana, and yogurt; mine was chocolate, banana, & peanut butter. When we got home, Ellie said that her Deacon & our Jack pretty much took turns sleeping, so the morning went by really smoothly.

The afternoon was so quiet and wonderful! Rachel and I each figured out semi-independently that in order for tonight to go better, we should try changing our approach to Jack during the day. So we woke Jack up every two hours to change him and feed him. In between feedings, Rachel mostly rested and slept, and I mostly puttered around the house taking care of things and working on this new version of our personal website. At one point, though, I wandered into the guest room and took one of the deepest naps I have taken in a very long time for about an hour and a half.

Later…

A more structured schedule for Jack during the day seems to be working: as of this writing, he is sleeping through what for the past few days has been his cranky “witching hour” from 9:30-ish to 10:30-ish, and that is a good thing. The other thing that may be helping is what Ellie showed us about how she swaddles Deacon. She uses something called a Miracle Blanket, which seems to work really well to keep her son calm and feeling secure. I took note of the design and function of the thing, and we improvised our own with the materials we had on hand. This also made a big difference today, I think. Jack’s hands have been making like Houdini out of his wrapping and oppressing his poor little face, but this new wrapping style prevented that and helped all of us to be a little more at ease.

The proof of these new approaches remains to be seen through this coming night. Meanwhile, enjoy a small token of this wonderful afternoon with us:

I’m pretty proud of this picture. To see what it is a picture of, click on the thumbnail, download the picture, and zoom in on the very center of the picture.	Kat watching over Jack.