One of those weeks...

Before I get to our long week, I loved this picture of Sadie and the turtle Dave and Sadie rescued that was about to cross the street. Ash and I were driving off to go to her music festival, and Dave, Sadie and Nate were getting ready to go on a date to the pet store. Who needs to go the pet store? We seem to attract pets! They brought the turtle in the yard but when they got back it had escaped back into the wild. Definitely Daddy's girl...not sure I would hold or look at a turtle like that. On to my poor Nate-baby. I know this isn't a flattering picture of me, but it says a lot of a sad and worried mama. Can you tell that Nate is in pain? He still looks so sweet to me even when he doesn't feel well. The last few days, this is his favorite position...and while he is in this position, he has a sigh/coo sound that melts your heart. He makes the sound over and over, the whole time he is on your shoulder. Many of you have already heard the story...so I'll keep it brief for those of you who haven't. Nate has always had trouble emptying his system...but so did our girls, so we didn't think much of it. One day, (after 12 days of not going and Nate stopped eating) we called the doctor. Within a couple of hours we were at the pediatric surgeon's office doing all sorts of tests. One x-ray showed high suspician of Hirschsprung's disease (no nerves in the rectum area). If this is the case (we should find out tomorrow) he will need a pull-through surgery to correct it. The five of us spent 7 hours in the hospital going from test to test and doctor to doctor. No fun for anyone. The next day Dave and I spent the day with Nate at the hospital while he was in the OR for 2 hours getting cleaned out and a biopsy taken. This picture above is in the morning before we headed out for the OR adventure...not my favorite day AT ALL! Nate was a trooper, but has had a hard time recovering from everything from the biopsy, a recovering colon (I've heard that can be quite painful as a colon shrinks back down to size), disgusting antibiotics 4x a day, etc. On top of it all, he came down with a cold the next day...no fun!!!
Baths are one thing that Nate loves - even when he is hurting. The night before the OR Nate was up much of the night in pain. At 6 a.m. I was taking the Nate-shift and decided to give him his favorite thing...a bath. This picture is of the poor kid who was just feeling so crummy!

We had Easter dinner at The Fillmore's house and this is Nate at the Easter egg hunt after dinner. It's nice to see Nate smile again. He is still having a hard time, but we are seeing a few more smiles come out.

So much for kids having cute, matching Easter outfits. Not this year. Sadie is wearing Ashlyn's spring dress from last year which is WAY too big but when she asked this morning, I didn't have any energy to care (was up most of the night with Nate last night). I whipped their hair together 5 minutes before church and then in the 2 minutes left got myself ready. At church I noticed Sadie wearing Ash's white tights...again, way too big! I looked a little bit recently for a cute Easter outfit for Nate, but never found anything I really liked. Oh well - he sure didn't care what he looked like today. Nate has taken center stage for a few days...and I figure that any baby that has to go to the OR and is having lots of owies gets to be held and snuggled lots more than usual.