The other night Madeline had her first bottle. She took a tiny amount (11ml), which was really good for her stage. She worked hard to drink her milk and slept soundly after that. 

They tried taking her off oxygen this week, but her lungs hadn’t matured enough for that yet. She is still on a little bit of oxygen. We are praying she can get off the oxygen and stay off. 

Thank you for your prayers. We praise the Lord for how well Madeline is doing in the NICU and the great care she receives. She is 35 weeks now so still needs development before she can go home – which we are all looking forward to!

“Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:20-21).

From the blog post about my mom (whom we call Gigi at her request to keep grandmas from being too confusing for little children) and her 89th birthday, we had this suggestion:

I was wondering if you could share the ways Gigi is investing in your family still? As a child my grandparents didn’t invest my life so I have no examples. I want to invest in my grandchildren’s lives but I lack the know-how. So if I could know some of the ways she is investing in her grand children and great grand children that would give me some ideas.

Since her grandchildren are all grown now, these are ways that Gigi invests in her great grandchildren:

For a couple of years Gigi had puzzle time with Abigail and Bethany (Nathan’s oldest girls). The past two years, that moved into doing Abeka history with them .

She listens to Joshua, Ruthanne, and Lydia (Christopher’s children) read out loud.

She does the Bible Bee study with Abigail, Bethany, and Christina in the summer. This is the third year for that.

She meets up weekday mornings with Melanie and her children for flag time when they put the flag out, say the Pledge of Allegiance, and fellowship for a few minutes.

She has a daily weekday morning walk, weather permitting, with 9-year-old Christina.

What about you? How are you investing in your grandchildren or great grandchildren?

The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. (Proverbs 16:31)

Here is a post we did about Gigi and her family activities a few years ago:

Thank you all for your prayers for baby Madeline. She has been doing quite well and has been off oxygen for almost two weeks now. However, she’s having enough “brady’s” (a slowing of the heart rate, usually to less than 80 beats per minute for a premature baby) that they are considering putting her back on oxygen.

This week Madeline was promoted to a crib so that means John or Chelsy (only parents allowed in the NICU) can hold her anytime they want to. Before, there were two, 3-hour windows daily when they could hold her.

Her next big hurdle is to learn to suck, but she isn’t quite ready developmentally for that yet.

John and Chelsy are doing well dealing with this new, temporary lifestyle, and have a solid trust in God through it all.

“The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:24)

We took John and Chelsy’s boys, Axton (2) and Elliot (1) for the morning to give John and Chelsy some time without childcare duties and to have some good time with our grandsons. John and Chelsy have a short-term apartment near the hospital, and only one parent can be with Madeline at a time. So that does leave one parent free to be back with the boys. However, with us taking the boys for a few hours, John was able to get more quality work done and the boys had something different to occupy them for a while.

We went to the Deana Rose Farmstead. It is a nice little place with farm animals in various displays and a few playground type areas. It seemed busy and popular.

At the end, we decided the boys might have been just a little too young to really appreciate what they saw, but they were happy and good. The report from home was that they talked a great deal about the animals they saw, so maybe more was going on with them than we observed.

Madeline is off of all supplemental oxygen now and doing very well. Praise the Lord!

“I have longed for thy salvation, O LORD; and thy law is my delight.” Psalms 119:174