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I can't believe how quickly last week passed. The weekend came and passed even more quickly than the week, of course, so at this very moment, I am sad that my children have come and already gone. I miss them so very much. It is the absolute hardest thing to stand there with your children crying and telling you that they don't want to leave you. My gosh ... THANK GOD next week is Thanksgiving and they will be here for a longer stay. I absolutely can't wait for that.

My family got here fairly early on Friday night. I was so glad to see their beautiful and handsome faces!!! This whole weekend is a blur because we were so busy. While I was waiting for them to get here, I had a visit from some hometown girls, Robin and Darla! I was sssooooooo glad to see them. They took me out to eat at a nearby Mexican restaurant which was so very good and then we came back to my room to visit for a little while before they had to go get some sleep for their classes that started Saturday morning! It was wonderful to see someone from "home" though and just to sit and visit with them. Robin is a paramedic and Darla is an EMT so they both understood a great deal about what I discussed about Kadin. Also, Darla has a nephew (I think) who was born very prematurely and he is 4 now and doing just fine! It is so encouraging to me to hear all those things like that.

God has sent so many people in our paths that have had dealings with either premature babies in their families, or they have known someone, or they were premature themselves. It is just astounding how that has happened. God knows I need those stories and encouragement that everything is going to be fine. It's as if he is showing himself to me thru others to say "Have faith!" .... It is amazing. Almost every day I meet someone or talk to them on the phone and they have a little bit of faith to spread my way. It is an awesome feeling ....

Friday night, Kadin's blood pressure started dropping again. The Dr. said it was because his kidneys were not putting out enough of a steroid for his body so he was going to start some medication to just jump start things again. They gave the meds at about 5:30 and by 1AM he was off the meds and doing just fine. He continued to do fine throughout the weekend. That baby is just amazing to me. I can't get over how well he is doing. We visited him a couple of times on Saturday but not for very long. Since the kids can't go back there we made our visits short. It was all uneventful really. We spent the majority of the weekend with the kids. We took them to the movies to see TWILIGHT (YAY!!!, no seriously, YAY!!!) and then we took them to ride go carts. We had a great weekend.

When we went for our visit today to see the baby, we walked in and said hello to the nurse. She said we were going to have a BIG day for Kadin today. I was like "Huh? Surgery again????" I just could not imagine what was on the agenda. But she said no, it was that they were going to take him off the ventilator and try him breathing on his own with what is called a "bubble cpap" ... it uses pressure from bubbles in water but it does not do the breathing for him. We called after they did it and they reported he had been breathing on his own for about 30 minutes but tht they had him up higher on the oxygen than they liked to have babies so they were just watching him for a little bit and that the Dr. was right by his side and if he failed at breathing they would put him back on the ventilator. So, I am going over in just a few minutes to see how he has done. Now that my family has gone home and I have sorta kinda pulled myself together, I will go back out in public.

My husand and children will be back on Wednesday since this is Thanksgiving Holiday week. I CAN NOT WAIT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just wanted to get an update since I haven't in a few days. I hope you are all doing well .... drop me a line !!

Love,
Leslie