fingers crossed

gavin is almost 17 months old. i can hardly believe it! he is turning into such a little boy. he is making so many noises these days and is doing many new things recently. he claps when you ask him to, he can grab your nose when you say, "where's my nose?", he raises his arms when you say, "arms up", and he is starting to identify your mouth when you ask him, "where's my mouth?". i love this stage. i love watching him learn something new every day. here is a picture of him with a group of therapists at a occupational therapy clinic i took him to:

some other news, gavin got his glasses. he wears them all day long and actually doesn't seem to mind them all that much. he doesn't really pull at them or seem to be bothered by them. this poor kid always has something on his face that i am guessing he is getting pretty used to it. he will continue to wear the glasses until we see his eye doctor on september 8th to schedule surgery. i will keep you posted on that appointment. i really do love this kid-such a trooper in these glasses. they are so cute and i think they make him look quite studious.

another big milestone for us is that gavin has been off oxygen COMPLETELY for 6 days!! prior to this, he was still needing the oxygen at night while he was sleeping, but his sats have been so good all night that he doesn't need it. i think he knew he was done with oxygen before we did because he started pulling it off his face within a couple hours of falling asleep for the past week and a half. like i said, he's feisty. i imagine that gavin will remain off oxygen unless he comes down with a sickness of any kind that impacts his respiratory system. please join jeramy and me as we pray against that. love you all!

flathead lake

we had the privilege of taking a vacation to montana. some great friends of ours own some property right on flathead lake. it is gorgeous there! we flew for the first time with gavin, who does not travel lightly. we had to order a portable concentrator, take his pulse oximeter to see how his oxygen levels were on the plane, we had a carry-on full of various medical supplies and medicines, a diaper bag and oh yeah, a baby! despite the overwhelming amount of items to take with us, gavin did excellent! he played the whole way there - even after a 4 hour flight delay. he didn't take a nap until 4:45 that afternoon. you would think that would make for a cranky baby, but he was a gem! we definitely knew that the Lord's hand was on us during that flight.

our first complete day there was very eventful. we woke up and jeramy and me decided to take the jet ski out. once we had our fun, jeramy began bringing the jet ski back to our dock. there are poles with rope that hang off the dock for you to lasso the jet ski so that you don't have to dock it completely. you wrap the rope around it and a metal piece comes down to tighten it right around the steering column. the mistake was taht we left the jet ski in idle while trying to bring it in. as jeramy was wrapping the rope around the column, it tightened down on the throttle. jeramy reached down to quickly take it off but before we knew it, the rope tightened around the throttle and jeramy's finger and took off. it broke jeramy's finger completely.

we drove straight to the hospital where he had xrays and various pain meds. they told us the break required surgery. they took him into surgery about 3 hours later to place a plate and 4 screws in his hand. the surgery took about an hour and a half. jeramy was such a trooper! i felt so bad for him since the majority of our vacation centered around lake activities. he also had plans to play golf with a friend of his, which obviously didn't happen. here is a post-surgery xray of the plate and screws:

the remainder of the trip went pretty smoothly. i got stung by a bee our second day there and i got a black eye the last day of our vacation after swimming down to retrieve a golf ball from the bottom of the lake-only to hit my face on some rebar that was in the water surrounding a pipe. with jeramy's busted hand and my black eye, we looked like a poster for domestic violence. ha ha!

gavin did the best out of everyone! he was such a social little boy and even ate some baby food while we were there. hopefully next year, our trip to flathead lake will be more uneventful.

thanks for lifting us up in prayer!