weekend hide out

we have officially entered hermit phase here at the albers home. meaning we have spent a majority of our weekend cooped up in our home hide out. the flu and illness is running crazy in west michigan and with ottos g tube surgery less than two weeks away we have to keep him in tip top shape. meaning he cannot get sick. poor buddy has had a mild cold and that is rough enough already. i think that ng tube makes things worse for him. i mean how could it not? for those of you who have asked what an ng tube is it is a nasal feeding tube that goes through his nose, down his throat and into the opening of his stomach. picture trying to wake up with morning throat gravel (ewe) and having a tube in the way. that is why i just can’t wait to get that tape off his face and tube out of his throat and nose. he has had that in since birth. he doesn’t know anything different and it just breaks my heart.

otto has been making such big steps towards eating orally that i’m just confident that in a few months time we won’t need help feeding. before his heart surgery in october he just didn’t have the strength to eat. his enlarged heart was making his reflux worse and between not being able to eat and not being able to keep anything down he started to develop an oral aversion. after surgery, the breathing tube and og (oral feeding tube) he was just over having anything in or near his mouth. but we’ve had therapy three times a week and are finally starting to make some progress.

anyway. this weekend we pretty much stayed in. friday night we made dinner at home and cozied up. saturday morning i went in to the shop for a bit before stopping at a few antique stores on my way home. joe had some work to catch up on so he and otto sat at home. we were going to attempt salt of the earth for dinner but there was a big snow storm and it was cold and well i passed a sushi restaurant on my way home so we had sushi in our bathrobes. as much as i just want to get dressed and go out on a date i look back on nights like that and smile. some day life will not be that slow.

sunday morning we woke up and read, drank coffee and ate breakfast. the snow was really coming down so we decided to stay in again and work around the house.

joe finished painting otto’s wild west play room and i worked on de cluttering, putting things away, vacuuming and cleaning out the vintage toy trunks i found for the room. thank you everyone who recommended Murphy’s oil soap. i bought the spray and it worked like a charm to clean all that vintage wood up. we spent the rest of the day putting the room together, hanging curtains, pictures and putting together toys. by the time we were done with that (and making stupid videos of otto riding his stuffed horse) we made some super bowl food.

we usually go to a friends house for the party but you know. flu. so we stayed home and made some totchos (tater tot nachos) and a few other snacks and just relaxed and fell asleep. the commercials were mostly so boring. what happened to good light hearted funny Superbowl commercials? anyway. we had our own little party and called it a weekend.