August 16

Good news today! Will took his 2 AM feeding completely by bottle! He gets fed at 2, 5, 8 & 11. His 5 AM feeding was gavage (spelling?) feeding tube, 8 AM half by bottle before he got tired out, 11 tube, 2 PM we got to try nursing without pumping and he actually did pretty well! He's having a bit of trouble latching since he's getting bottles but still not bad, he didn't get a ton of milk though so still got his tube feed too. His usual feeds are 40 CC, he often has a bit extra in the bottle, the 5 PM feeding he had 50 CC and I got to give him the bottle - he took the whole thing and then started rooting and looking for more, what a little hog lol! No weight gain today, but he's making progress on his oxygen - he was on room air most of the day and saturating very high. He needed more during feeding time but other than that is doing much better on the oxygen and hopefully will not need it anymore soon.

He was very awake and expressive during the time in the evening when Justin is there after work, so we got some good pictures of facial expressions. The one where he looks concerned is his paying attention face, the occupational therapist says that's a great thing for him to do - that's when he makes good eye contact and actually can focus for a while which is very hard for him.

I finally talked to a water softener guy, we're on really horrible well water with a lot of iron in it which ruins our clothes, stains the shower badly and irritates skin among other things. Even non-staining things like fat free milk turn into a big greasy looking off-orange stain in the wash with our water. Anyway, we're getting a water softener and iron filter installed next Thursday! Hopefully a few days after that we'll have decent water. He said they recommend treatment for iron greater than 3/10 parts per million (PPM), we have 8/10 PPM.. the softener alone could get it down to 3/10 PPM and add the iron filter it goes down to 1 or 2/10 PPM. Our neighbor spotted the cougar in our pasture this evening and went out after it to shoot it, but we didn't hear a shot so I think it got away this time. It won't be long, he's a good hunter and he's after it. I wasn't about to go out and check how things were going though :)