Sick little boy - Pic's (long)

Here's Liam at home with Amanda while we finished up the birthday party for Marissa. At the time we had NO idea how sick he was about to become. Sept 12th 2009 Sept 13th

When Liam was moved out of PICU - and moved onto the ped's floor - he was allowed more visitors. He loved when the family visited. Bill bought him some new games and books to keep us busy during the time in the hospital. This is a game of UNO - Moo! an UNO game for smaller children. It's very cute! Liam was finally able to eat something - an all liquid diet - on Monday night after not eating anything since Friday evening. Sariah is helping get a drink of Gatorade. Here is his 'SOUP'. He was so disappointed, there were NO NOODLES in his soup! What kind of SOUP is that?!?! Poor boy! We took Liam's favorite stuffed animal - his Panda Bear - with us to the hospital. The girls brought him some other favorites of theirs. Nuzzle puppy is Sariah's special doggy. The other little puppy doggy was given to Liam by a nice volunteer at Huntsville Hospital. And lets not forget that the girls brought him up his COOKIE Monster slippers (he got them from our neighbor - Caleb (Bob)).

When the girls came to visit they thought it was interesting that Liam has been put in 'his' room. The room number matched his birth date - 4(April) 29th. Here is my sick little boy - his Arm all taped up to the Arm boards to hold it straight so he didn't bend and hurt the I.V's he had in his arm. They left the stickers to hook up the heart monitors even after we got unhooked from them to go to the ped's floor.

Sept 14th 2009 When they came to get us for the CT scan they gave him a wagon ride down to Radiology. It is supposed to make it a bit more fun, however, Liam was unimpressed!

Dad and the boy taking a walk and trying to stretch his legs a little bit - as well as get some activity and a change of scenery. They made it to the nurses station.

He didn't even want to go play in the game room after he walked all that way, he was so worn out.

When Liam had enough energy and as an incentive to get him to let them draw blood, or for him to take med's we'd offer for him to go to the game room with dad. he liked playing the touch screen games. He could do that with his left hand and manage to win, since his right hand was all taped up.

We noticed after the first night he had started retaining fluid a bit. I tried to take a picture of his poor little/big belly, but he wasn't playing my games at that point! He tried to cover his head and turn away from me... ;-( By Tuesday it was so tight and swollen. his belly button was stretched completely flat (almost like a pregnant belly). The Dr's never seemed to terribly concerned about it, bit we were a bit worried, since we have too vivid a memory of our little guy last time when he had all the '3rd space fluid' (when your organs don't function well because they/you are sick, your body pushes a lot of the extra fluid (and he got a LOT of fluid from all the I.V.'s he had been given) out into the tissues of the body. Last time he literally swelled nearly twice his size! from 7 lbs up to 12 lbs in a week). http://www.west-point.org/users/usma1989/46946/hospital_stay.htm

In this picture you can see some of books and games that we brought in (or bought) for Liam. When the girls came to visit, Life didn't necessarily stop just because we were in the hospital for the week. Sariah is working hard on her schoolwork. (with a little help from dad)

Tired and worn out after a long day... (or night).

Tuesday night he was able to have actual food. He decided he didn't want noodles (in soup). I ordered whatever I could think of that was soft. He liked the rice and ate a lot of it, the mac n' cheese was pretty good. The mashed potatoes??? He claimed that they were "Yucky Stuff!"Wednesday morning was pretty much spent just waiting around to get the ultrasound of his belly and to go home. Liam likes Dinosaurs, and The Land Before Time Movies have become his favorite. We had a friend bring us a few movies to borrow, and The first Land Before Time was one of them. He would watch it and watch it, We have the first one at home, but have been able to borrow the others from the Post Library over the past months. Liam LOVES them. I liked borrowing them from the library, because, then I got a break and we were not 'forced' to watch the same movies over and over again... Well, this hospital stay ended up sending Bill to the store and he was able to buy every single one of the episodes (there are 11) for Liam. We watched all of them but one, at least one time if not more (along with a few other different movies, occasionally), but when you are trapped in bed, and can't do much, and you are so miserable... movies help to pass the time! When the nurses come in and wake you up at 2 am, to take your blood, the movies help calm you down and get you to fall back to sleep. They were well worth the price (monetarily, as well as mom's dislike of repeated movie watching...)!

We had several visitors come to see us at the hospital, and we received a few nice meals (non hospital food, yay!) from friends, while the rest of the family at home was being fed by the sweet sisters of our ward. Liam got some nice coloring books and crayons from friends, and a cute Get well soon balloon from his friend Katie - Thanks so much! He likes them now, even though he didn't show it at the time...

We also got this cute teddy bear and balloon bouquet from Bill's Office.

When we finally arrived home on Wednesday afternoon, what did he most want to do??? Play Wii!!! Of course we happily let him! So glad to have him home!!!