Home Sweet Home

Monday we woke up early so that Chris could take Joaquin over to get labs and I could finish cleaning up our room at the Ronald McDonald House. We went back down late Saturday night so that we could go to the farmer's market in Menlo Park and Mountain View. We did most of our cleaning Sunday so that we could leave Palo Alto as soon as our clinic appointment was over.

After I finished cleaning the room, I went down to the front desk and turned in our key. No need to get sad or sentimental, we'll be back. Families at the house were saying that they'd miss us - but I told them they wouldn't have a chance to because we'd be back for clinic appointments.

I got to the office as soon as I turned in our room key to the front desk at the RMH. Amy, our nurse, had just gotten to the room, so I hadn't missed anything. As our appointment came to an end we were told that we wouldn't need to go back down there for two weeks! I didn't expect that, but I am thankful.

The drive back to Reno was smooth except that there was a winter storm that had come in the night before and made the driving conditions at the summit a little hairy. Luckily our new(ish) Subaru has four wheel drive, so we weren't required to put on chains, which saved a little time. Chris did a good job driving and we were home by six. Some friends of ours, Aaron and Kelly, called to invite us over to dinner and so we went and had yummy, warm, hearty soup.

It is so nice to be home. We are slowly smoothing things out with our prescription insurance, but they're still giving us a hard time with some of our prescriptions. I vaguely remember going through all of this when we came home after Joaquin was born, but it seems to be more of a hassle this time around for some unknown reason.

Joaquin is just amazing us every day with how smart he is getting and how quickly he is mastering walking. Just a few days ago he became confident enough to walk from one place to another and now he's is walking everywhere! It's so funny to see our little baby toddling around the house and getting his nose into everything! But I can't complain, he is obviously feeling good and his kidney is obviously doing him justice. Joaquin's got more words and he is combining consonants and making two word sentences. He says, "apple," "bye-bye," and "banana" (which I guess is actually a three consonant word). Just the other day he said: "Go bye-bye" when we put him in his car seat. He likes to take one of our cell phones, open it and say, "Hi." But he'll do that to pretty much everything he picks up - he thinks everything is a cell phone! His appetite is getting better and better. He really likes my raw brownies that make for him that are made out of dates, walnuts, and cocoa powder (and not cooked). He still likes bread and last night I got him to eat avocado. He likes soups and he likes to chew on raw veggies - his favorites are cucumbers. He also likes beans.

I feel like there's less anxiety of having to be admitted to the hospital now that we're 250 miles away. Our future is looking brighter, like there's something to look forward to - or just that we can actually move forward with our lives. Our lives don't feel like they're on hold anymore now that the transplant has come and went. The other day someone was talking about their summer plans and I was thinking to myself that we have so much more freedom this summer. All of the past year, our future was waiting for transplant time to come - even when I didn't thing we were going to do the transplant. I felt like we were waiting in limbo. But not anymore!