Happy Mothers Day - LEVI IS HOME

It is an incredible blessing to share with you that after 29 days in the hospital, Levi arrived home this afternoon! We had been hopeful all week that this weekend would be his homecoming, but yesterday seemed to be pointing the wrong direction again with a new doctor being on for the weekend that we had never met with and with unclear communications about what he and the medical staff were hoping for and wanting to see before they would let Levi go home.

After spending some time on the phone with the doctor last night and having relatively positive results from Levi's labs this morning, however, we are thankful to the Lord that he was cleared to come home! We spent our last several hours at the hospital this afternoon feeding Levi and waiting and saying goodbye to Levi's NICU roommate and his parents (they were discharged a couple hours before we were) and talking with several nurses as we were getting discharged. Levi was pretty popular with the nurses in the NICU, so we have several requests to come back and visit (not stay!) in the coming weeks and months.

It was a pleasant and joyful time to bring Levi home and let he and Naomi start to get acquainted and to start our journey of having 2 kids at home. It will take a little time to fully recognize what this means for her and for our family, but it was a great start today. Our friends that were spending the afternoon with Naomi while we were at the hospital have a 3 year old (Andrew Norman) that was effusive in his thanks to us for bringing "the Levi" home so he could play with him! Naomi is interested and (relatively) gentle with Levi and we are so thankful for both of them and for their current and future relationship!

Levi will have a busy schedule over the next several weeks as he has appointments with his pediatrician and several specialists for follow up visits after some of the tests that have been run on him. We feel encouraged by his progress and thankful for being able to bring him home, but we also recognize that he has some further growing and developing to do. One of the nurses today told us that he will really continue to have two "birthdays" (one for the day he was born and one for his actual due date) as he grows up. We are happy to celebrate Levi's 4 week anniversary of being born today as well as his negative 2nd week anniversary of his actual due date. We are also trusting that as he starts to understand these things, no one will spill the beans and tell him that he has two birthdays - and since I'm sure you are all trustworthy, then we won't have anything to worry about in this area.

Thank you for continuing to pray with us and for us! I anticipate that we will continue to share stories and thoughts and pictures on this blog and trust deeply and hopefully that God will continue to be part of every step of our journey - both for Levi and for the rest of us as well. I want to wish my wife a very special "Happy Mothers Day" tomorrow and to thank God for giving her the best gift that we could have imagined or asked for at this point! Celebrate God's goodness with us today!

Psalm 133:1-3 (ESV)

 Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.