Enoch is home from the Hospital!

N.B. Enoch came home at the end of April, but it took me awhile to get this post written and published. It has been wonderful having him home!

Enoch came home from the hospital last week and is much improved. He is a lot like his old self again and has even picked back up drawing again after not drawing or writing at all since last October when he entered his many month's long flare up with FND.

Enoch loves Star Wars and in the last week and a half has filled up a whole notebook with drawings like this. This is especially huge because he didn't write or draw at all for the last seven months. 

Enoch has even been working on walking  He is at a few steps a day right now, and I hope he will start walking even longer very soon. He doesn't like having his picture taken, so even though I have pictures of him, the only way I get them is by swearing I will never share them with anyone, so sadly I can't share pictorial proof, but it is very exciting. He even climbed a structure at the park yesterday! 

This whole post was written a couple of weeks ago but it took me awhile to get photos uploaded. Since writing he is now exclusively walking at home and only uses the wheelchair for longer excursions. He doesn't like using it at all, but still gets tired very easily. He isn't a 100% better, but is doing so well and working hard to get better every day.

Rowena is also completely off of her g-tube, including drinking all of her own liquids. If she doesn't relapse at all over the next three months we will be able to take out her g-tube completely, which is extraordinarily exciting. 

Rowena loved to play with her feeding tube at the end (top picture of her), and sometimes even drank out of it directly before switching over to getting get through her g-tube.  She looked like a hookah smoking caterpillar. Now that she doesn't get g-tube fed for nap time or at night she also moved from our room to room with her sister, and we have finally gotten our evenings back! Rowena took forever to get to sleep, but now we just dump them in together and most of the time they go down happily. It has been amazing. 

Here are some current pictures of her and Artemis just because they are so cute. Artemis and her sometimes run around the house holding hands and it kills me with cuteness. A

It is nice to see ones child start to walk or eat in normal sequence, but seeing a 12 year old take his first steps after being completely wheelchair bound for months, or seeing your 2 year old guzzle down milk like it is nothing is on a completely other level. Both Avram and I have actually cried watching Rowena eat. 

Second birthday. 

Having a special needs child is no joke - and having two has been one of the hardest trials we have ever been in. It is so uncertain and emotionally draining, not to mention financially draining and time consuming (so!many!appointments!) and it becomes what the rest of the family has to work around in life, which is hard for the other kids. I do think (fervently hope?) it teaches them empathy as well as a deepened respect for human worth and dignity in addition to the extra work.