Time for an Evaluation!

For those of you who don't live in the Netherlands, it's customary every quater to evaluate your work relationship. It's a semi-formal meeting where employer and employee discuss what is going well and what could be done differently.
When I first moved here I found these evaluation meetings so akward and difficult, but over the years I've gotten used to them and I even find they are a good tool as long as you're open and honest, after all with this type of conversation you may hear the bad as well as the good things about yourself!
With an evaluation you have the opportunity to sort things out before they become a problem, take a moment to see if you're going in the right direction and take stock of what you've done so far. This week it was time for an evaluation with Kinderthuiszorg, the nursing agency. We made the appointment a few weeks ago and I have been thinking about things ever since. I've looked through the old blog entries, wow! what a journey.

The thing is, it's easy to get bogged down with stuff, especially when you get so tired. Recently I've remembered something that was said repeatedly (and to my great annoyance!!) to me as a child, "count your blessings" and annoyingly enough, Granny was right - you do feel better when you realise how many good things are in your life.
Yes it has been a struggle, yes it is hard work, but it is REALLY worth it; Noah is such a joy. We've got fantastic people supporting us. We've been so lucky with the people that come to the house to help Noah with his development and care. Everyone loves him and enjoys being with him. As a parent, we're obviously biased and think "of course they love him, how could they not", but apparently not all kids are so sunny natured and relaxed - who knew??!!

We've been really busy these last few weeks with hospital visits and getting organised for our holiday.
Noah's routine check up, heart echo, and surgeon appointment (regarding undecended testicles) all went well. His heart is strong and the defects are very minor now so they don't need to see us for another year and his medicines have been reduced. They are going to wait and see regarding his testicles as one is easy to decend and the other more complicated, so at the moment it's not a great problem so it's better to wait and maybe combine his treatment with another surgery so that it's all less traumatic for Noah. The routine check up was quite frustrating in that it takes up a lot of time, Noah is quite stressed from all the noise and comotion of the hospital and ultimately it's just a way to keep in touch rather than a useful visit. We have a revalidation doctor who is very helpful and useful though, so life keeps it's balance. Noah, despite his stomach flu, now weighs a decent 11.6 kg and is now 79cm in length. He's got 8 teeth and is working on his four molars, yes - all at the same time! Sigh!! No rest for the wicked!! :)
Noah has been doing great work getting off his machine. He's now breathing for himself on average 7 hours a day. When he's on his machine he no longer needs any oxygen. Huge step forward. We're trying to see how he does without his corset on, it's been so warm, and Noah cannot easily get rid of his heat (one of the genetic complications is that he has less sweat glands than normal). So far he's doing really well, we're keeping our fingers crossed on this one.
Noah is improving at a startling rate and we're so pleased with this. We're closely monitoring how much energy this is costing him as we don't want to tire him out too much, he still has a lot of muscle repairs and lung development to do - and that all takes a lot of his energy. We can't help but feel hopeful though and this all helps lighten some of the load on our shoulders.

My new thing I have learned is that it was much easier to plan network repairs and outages than it is to take one small child on holiday!! Still, we are really looking forward to it. It's now 01:30am on Friday morning, and we're finally packed - at least as far as we're able to, (he's still using some of the equipment), but we hope to be on the road by 10am this morning. Hahahahhaha! I some how doubt this but we have high hopes.

So it's a short-ish post today and sorry no pictures, but we're looking forward to seeing many of you at Chris and Lex's anniversary on Sunday. Once we're settled and back from holiday we will have lots and lots of new photos to share.

Take care everyone, hope you're all enjoying this lovely heat wave and not having to work too hard.

xx The Drostens

p.s. In the previous post Noah is playing with dried peas and NOT kitty litter!! ;)