Getting Ready to Go to Arkansas

We are getting ready to go down to Arkansas tomorrow. We are going to fly down there and drive home with baby Jack!! Julianna is coming and my friend Martha was kind enough to offer to come too.

Jack has been doing really great and now weighs 7 pounds 15 ounces, a true chunky monkey. He is going to have to come home with a heart monitor. The NICU is trying to make a lot of appointments for him but I have a feeling I am going to have to cancel them all and make my own. They really have no idea about this area or who is on my plan. One of the nurses called to say she found an opthamologist near me, only 35 miles away. It turns out it was in Manhattan. I tried to explain to her that New York City is about an hour train ride from here or three hours by car. In Arkansas things are pretty different so they really don't get that. I need to find doctors who take my insurance and are close to me.

I finally have everything set up to fix the house damage from hurricane Sandy. The contractor is going to start the job while I am gone. He is going to rip the rest of the roof off and build an attic. It will be seven feet high in the middle. I can't wait since this house has a huge storage problem and I am sick of emptying all the buckets every time it rains. I was lucky to finally get someone who could do it since the damage in this area was so bad from the storm. Most of the houses south of me are still not fixed and uninhabited. There are still plenty of people on my block with no heat or electric. It will be years before this area gets back to normal, if it ever happens.

I am so happy that we are finally going to bring Jack home! I am hoping we will be home sometime Friday. We will get to Arkansas in the late afternoon Tuesday. When we get there we have to go to the store to get the car seat. We will bring the car seat to the hospital and Jack has to go through the car seat test to make sure his breathing is ok in that position. If all goes well with that (keep your fingers crossed) we will start the drive Wednesday morning. The whole trip is a little over 1300 miles. I am hoping we can do 500 the first day, then 400 and then 300. We are going to see how it goes.

Thanks everyone for all the good wishes!!!