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We had an appointment with Dr. Chan the intestine guy this week, and Jonathan passed examination quite well. Dr. Chan doesn't want to do the rest of the surgery on him yet because of all the respirator trouble. He definitely wants to do the follow-up before six months, but he says he wants to wait another six weeks before talking about the rest of the surgery.

This is good. It gives us at least six weeks to get Jonathan nursing properly and six weeks for him to get much bigger and stronger. He's already quite a bit bigger than he was at the time of the surgery, and some of the things Dr. Chan was mildly concerned about have cleared up. "And if he keeps eating like a maniac," (Jonathan was guzzling at the time because he'd been upset about being examined, so it's no wonder it looked like he was eating like a maniac), the doctor said, "he'll be even bigger in a few weeks and I'll feel better about surgery then."

There's an appointment with the heart doctor tomorrow, and that could be a big test as to whether Jonathan can handle more surgery. The thickened inner wall of his heart should have begun to thin by now; if it hasn't, it means there may be more of a problem there in the future. The VSD also should either begin shrinking or getting bigger about now, as his body is getting bigger and making more demands on his heart. So we'll see what happens tomorrow, but if anybody gets a chance, please pray that everything looks to be growing well and eliminating potential problems. If his heart gets worse, it might make surgery a bit sticky, and if he doesn't have the surgery his body may eventually not go back to normal when they reconnect his intestines.

In the meantime, he's still getting bigger and fatter like any other six-week-old baby. He's beginning to look at faces now, although his real fascination is with light fixtures. Any light fixture. He will stare at those far more quickly than at faces - it's almost like he hasn't really connected voices with faces yet. The only face he looks at consistantly is Mom's: he always watches her while he's eating. Doesn't even blink, just watches her.

Right now, if we pick him up he wants to be walked. If we don't walk him he wriggles and fusses a bit. But if we put him down in his carseat and put him in the kitchen where there's lots of action going on, he's content to lay there for a very long time and just watch what's going on without fussing at all. He likes the carseat better than the bouncy chair, and I think it's because he's still a bit too floppy to be able to sit comfortably in the bouncy chair. His head lolls into weird places in the bouncy chair and then he's unhappy. The carseat reclines a bit more, so the head thing isn't as much of a problem.

We gave him his first "real" bath on Thursday. His look of shock when we put him naked in warm water was something I wish we could have gotten a picture of, but we don't like to take "bath" pictures. Babies will be men someday and their dignity is something to be respected (no, I'm not talking psychobabble: just talking about respecting men and women in baby's bodies as much as possible).

At any rate, he got one very surprised look on his face and then went very still and very quiet and just laid there. This is not how he acts when he doesn't like something - when he doesn't like something, he kicks very fast and cries loudly. But he liked that bath. He laid still the whole time while Mom washed him all over...and then when she picked him up and the cold air hit his skin he let out one very loud yell. It wasn't a cry, it was a yell at the top of his lungs: it was so loud Dad said from downstairs, "What was THAT?!"

It was funny because it was like a yelp, and it was just the one. He didn't make any other sound because Mom bundled him all up in the towel and cuddled him. Then she had to change his bag. Usually he fusses and squirms, but he laid there like a limp noodle and just stared at his mobile like he was too relaxed to move. We subsequently are quite sure he approves of baths.

His eyes are still getting all crusty from blocked tear ducts, so every morning they need to be washed off so he can open them. It's sort of like having pinkeye, except it's not contagious. Michael had the same problem, although not quite as severely as Jonathan does. At any rate, earlier in the week when I carried him into the bathroom to get a warm washcloth to wash them off, I'd run his hand first in the cold water (he would crinkle his face up and jerk his hand away) and then when the water got warm I'd put his hand back in (he'd start to jerk away, then relax and open his fist to let the water run over his palm). One of the most amazing and interesting things about having babies is watching them "find out" about things. It's probably because a baby is born with his soul and intelligence and personality already there: all he lacks is experience. And it's a precious thing to watch him gain many experiences like how cold the water feels and then how good warm water feels. I do not know why this is so special, it just is.

We're still waiting to see if we're clear of the flu threat. We'd thought Elizabeth had already been sick, but she got sick in earnest on Michael's birthday, which was Friday. Then yesterday Dad started feeling weak and shaky and like he was going to be sick, and that went on all yesterday and today. I think that he's probably sick, but he's had so many different flus that his body is fighting it off more efficiently then everyone else.

I still haven't gotten sick. If you want to know one of my most-dreaded-scenarios, it's having a stomach flu go through our family a few people at a time and leaving me until LAST. Because then I spend THREE WEEKS waiting to get sick!

I know. It's silly. But I would rather just throw up at the beginning and get it over with.

You see, some people have problems with blood, others with spiders. I have a problem with throwing up, whcih partially arises from the fact that once I start, it's very hard to stop again. Which is not to say I haven't cleaned up a fair amount of it and taken care of kids who are sick and so on without going hysterical and being unable to function. That's even sillier than being afraid of it in the first place. But still...I would rather have pneumonia (which I've had) than throw up. Even though it only takes a few days to recover from that kind of flu and weeks to recover from pneumonia!

Ah well. Now you can all laugh.

The situation with the office has resolved itself back into what I was doing before: working from home and going in to check up with people at the office periodically so they know what's going on. I didn't have anything to do with the discussion - those in charge resolved it among themselves. So Aaron and Elizabeth are now back on the hook with me *grin*. I'm a slavedriver, I know.

Michael's birthday went very nicely in spite of Elizabeth being sick. It's been a long time since we were the only people to share cake and ice cream on one of the kid's birthdays: usually Nana and Papa and Grandma and sometimes some aunts and uncles come over. But we called everyone up and said, "Don't come over - you don't want to be throwing up on Christmas!"

I remember reading a story that Corrie TenBoom told in her book "The Hiding Place", about being in a concentration camp and combined to the barracks that had more fleas per square inch than any building in the whole wretched place. Corrie and her sister Betsy were there together, and they had a little bottle of vitamin syrum that someone had smuggled them and a copy of the New Testament. Every evening they would put little drops of the vitamin fluid on everybody in the bunk section's bread and then they would read aloud from the New Testament. It was the highlight of everybody's day, like a little bright spot. The problem was that if they were caught, the punishment would've been pretty severe.

At that point, Corrie was complaining about the flea problem and Betsy chided her and read the verse that's one of my memory verses, "Be joful always, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Betsy told Corrie it was important that they give thanks in ALL circumstances and coaxed Corrie to thank God for the fleas. Reluctantly, Corrie did.

Several days later, Betsy pulled Corrie aside and told her something that had been passed on to her from a friend who was put on the forced-labor group indoors doing some sort of seamstress work. The reason that guards had been leaving them alone in the evenings, allowing them to dole out vitamins and read aloud to each other, was that the flea infestation in that cabin was so terrible even the guards didn't want to have anything to do with that building. The fleas were essentially protecting them from being caught and punished for their reading.

It's as hard for me to be thankful about having the flu go through our house as it was for Corrie to be thankful for the fleas (even though the flu is certainly a milder problem!). But I should be thankful for it. Give thanks for everything. And what is it that the flu might be protecting us from, I wonder?