Hi Friends,

It is with hearts filled with joy and feeling very blessed that we celebrated Lorena's 1st Birthday yesterday, January 16th 2009. Lorena loved the colorful Dutch streamers we traditionally hang up for every birthday we celebrate and she kept looking at them. The other kids were off to school before Lorena got up, as usual, and so we saved the gift opening for after school when we had her party. It was nice to have some of our friends come and celebrate this blessed event with us. Below are some birthday pictures.

I will also add a little update of the past 2 weeks. In my last update I had mentioned how well Lorena's eating was going, well it seems that Lorena always puts in some twist and just after the last update I send out Lorena quit drinking her bottles all together again. She does not take any of her bottles anymore in fact she starts to gag at the sight of milk. We think that because she has had to drink it fortified for almost a year that she just has developed a dislike to it. The fortified milk had such a strong taste that even I was disgusted with it when I tried it once. So even though it has helped her to grow as she did not take a lot of volume it may have caused a dislike to any milk.  In the last 2 weeks we have tried different brands of milk but she will take none of it. We have however been able to feed her less bottles but bigger portions now. She now gets 4 bottles of 160 ml in a day plus 2 solid feeds. She is still doing well on her solid feeds. We have started to add margarine to her vegetables in order to increase the calories to try to keep her growing. She seems to like the extra flavoring this adds to her food. Lorena is now also drinking more and more juice from a sippy cup and even drinks quite well from a glass. We tried putting milk in the cup but it makes her gag and she totally does not want it.  Right now Lorena is not eating enough solids yet to grow on so she still needs her bottles and so Lorena has started her 2nd year with the NG tube. We have learned to move out goals every time with Lorena and so we continue not knowing when we can finally get her off this NG tube.

Next week we have 3 appointments with Lorena again. We are hoping for some new ideas again on how to get her off of the NG tube when we go in for an other feeding assessment with the occupational therapist and dietician. We know it can be a long haul as they speak to us of children whom they still see at age 3 who still depend on the NG tube for nourishment. Yet we are hopeful that Lorena may be able to learn to eat and drink enough to get rid of the NG tube this coming year.

Still we have so much to rejoice about. Especially as on her birthday we for the 1st time watched our home movie of Lorena's 1st weeks. It brought back the memories of the emotions we felt back then and in the light of that all we could do is be very thankful for how far Lorena has come. Still we continue to pray for healing for her heart and her eating difficulties. Sometimes the worry for a possible heart operation can just overwhelm me and again and again I learn to put it in the Lords hands and trust that He will take care of all of us.

Lorena is quick in all other areas and started to take her first few steps balancing on her own last week. She is lots of fun and a very joyful little girl.

I have decided to start sending out updates about every 3 months now and so the next update I will send shortly after April 1st....really....no joke, no April fools!

We hope that even though it does not seem urgent to you that you would continue to keep praying for healing for Lorena's heart and her eating problems.

Greetings from all of us!

Lodewyk, Rena, Janita, Jeremy & Lorena