Day 781 - James' 1st Time at Busch Gardens! 🎢🐘🦜🦨🦔

Sunday, February 19th, 2023

We started feeding James formula again through his G-tube. We are starting slow and doing it over a longer time period, meaning 15ml/hr over 1½ hours for 4 days. Instead of increasing by 1ml everyday, we decided to increase to 1ml for 4 days. Hopefully that will give his stomach enough time to learn to tolerate. He has been doing great with capping. Even time he gets really agitated or sleepy we will switch out for the HME.

In the morning Dad gave James eggs and sweet potatoes to try. He didn't eat it as much as played with it.

Today we went to Busch Gardens. It was probably the busiest day of the year to go. There was absolutely no parking, not even handicap. So Dad had to park the car about a mile away. James saw the Sesame Street show and this was the first time that he did not get upset or cry when hearing people cheering and clapping. He wasn't really super excited or dancing just staring because he could not believe that Elmo and Cookie Monster were right in front of him. The place where the sesame street performance took place has a sign that says no strollers. We however have a bunch of equipment with us and technically it is our medical stroller. When the Busch Gardens employee thanked everyone for leaving the strollers in the back, the guy in the black shirt in the front row turned around and just gave us the dirtiest look like "you guys didn't listen". Yeah and his kid was the one standing up in the front row the entire time. Not to mention we were several rows behind this guy. It is amazing the amount of ignorance some people have.

Overall there wasn't a whole lot of things to do with James Busch Gardens. Half of the rides and games were closed and the shows in the theater had changed. It seems like with COVID a lot of the talented employees ended up leaving, so when they opened back up they became short-staffed. The second show that we saw was indoors and used to be a amazing magic show with all the animals performing together but instead they just brought animals out like they would do on The Late Show. At this point James had not had a nap and it was late in the afternoon. So when we got to the theater early James fell asleep in his stroller but then the announcements came on and he woke up and was very upset. He had only slept about 10 minutes. So when the show started James wanted nothing to do with it. It was hard to tell when he would go to sleep so we kept switching between the HME and the cap. He wasn't really on the cap as much as he could have been, but we never knew when he was going to go to sleep.

When we got home James played with bananas. We are just trying to get him used to new textures. 🍌

Breakfast with Dad 🍳🍠

Ridiculous amount of people at the park

P.S. You can email James your love and support as often as you’d like. Mom and Dad read these email to James as they come in. We all love them! JamesWestonAbramowitz@gmail.com