I was straining with Ian to get his coat on while listening to the events of the day spouted by Jillian, the day care-giver who is usually there in the evenings… she said
“Charlie came up to Ian with a toy saw and grazed Ian’s forehead and Ian said ‘He cut my head off.'” I looked at Ian and he nodded his head in verification.
Me – “And what did you say to him about that?”
Ian – “I said ‘No thank you.'”

When we got Ian’s hair cut the other day, he seemed excited and said “We’re going to get my hair cut! We’re going to the hair cut store!”

Just a night or two ago “the boys” went out to pick up pizza for the family, and Ian tried to steer me elsewhere as we walked back to the car. “We’ve got to go to the bench so you can sit next to me.” I didn’t understand where he meant until we got in the car. He said to turn where I was planning to anyway… “Right there! In there!” Turns out he wanted to sit next to me in another full-size chair in our local mexican restaurant, where we had been a week prior to that. It was not easy to explain why we couldn’t bring our italian food into the mexican restaurant.

Nina’s been getting a little more quiet and giving great big smiles lately. You can tell she’s growing into her body a tiny step at a time. It’s great to see those big smiles.

Ian’s fits are still ridiculous at times, but he does seem to be maturing in some way, like Nina. He’s still testing his boundaries but once in a while now I catch him looking like he’s realized that he might not need to test that particular boundary again. And I’m learning to be more patient, which is also helping.

Seth still appears to be doing ok. I still have the feeling we’ll be back at the vet shortly.

I pre-orderd an Apple iPad. Time will tell how useful that purchase is.

I know, yesterday’s pics were the best! Or WERE they? Check out today’s! These were all taken on March 6th.

I’m just going to start out with the winner. You need to look at this one bigger to really appreciate it. See this image larger.

*hi* See this image larger.

*plbplbplbplbplbplbplb* See this image larger.

*Now I’m just cracking myself up.* See this image larger.

*Have you met my brother, Ian?* See this image larger.

*He can smile too, see?* See this image larger.

*But only if you ask him real nice.* See this image larger.

*This is my mommy. She’s beautiful and can make milk out of regular food. Magic, I know, right?* See this image larger.

*This is my daddy pretending to be a super model with his patented Sexy Look®.* See this image larger.

*Ian, Daddy said that look was patented.* See this image larger.

Still more pictures from this day tomorrow… I have some that don’t quite fit into this entry. 😀

Wanted to let you know the update on everything in general.

Nina is doing well and boy oh boy you should see her smile when she wants to. Today marks the first time I ever saw her smile go all the way up to her eyes, and it was quite a sight to see. Melissa has probably seen this before, but I have not. The smiles were the simple result of Mommy saying hi and smiling down at her.

I let Ian watch a kid’s show last night that involved showing cartoon germs. A character dropped a sandwich on the ground and then another character showed him how it was now dirty. I thought this would actually be a good thing for him to know, and this show is made for kids of all ages, but its effect on Ian was frankly horrifying. He freaked out: he cried, was scared, and asked to go to bed early, saying periodically that he did not like the “wiggly worms.” I feel like the worst parent on earth.

Seth has stopped eating food laced with the medication he is supposed to be taking, to the point that I’ve just started giving him his normal food and had to stop giving him the medication. I know this sounds like some form of abuse, but if you were ever around during the attempts to medicate him, you’d know better. It ain’t pretty. If it is a pill, it ends up on the floor. If it is a liquid it ends up on you. And as I said, if it is in his food, he apparently is fine going on a hunger strike until the situation improves.

We’ve had about three sets of people through the house, and no offers.

This was one crazy chunk of time, so much so that it is hard to put into words for me. It was also crazy busy because I was doing a lot of work and things around the house while Melissa stayed at the hospital. She also found the energy to keep a “Care Page” updated throughout her stay with Nina at the Devos Children’s Hospital. Which is awesome, I’m very thankful she did this.

Here are some pictures of Nina’s 12 (I think it was 12….) day hospital stay…

February 14th, 2010 – Can you hear that? That’s the sound of hearts breaking… See this image larger.

…and a whole bunch of people praying. Thank you all for being with us.See this image larger.

Does she look like a fighter? Well, she is. See this image larger.

While I’ll say that a lot of people end up a little disappointed on Valentine’s Day, I can pretty much guarantee you that yours should get better from here on out, little one. See this image larger.

Feburary 19th 2010 — Grandma Marcia and Grampa Dave swoop in to save our sanity yet again. As you can see, by this time Nina was also on oxygen. See this image larger.

Pretty much every night, Ian, Melissa and I ate together in the hospital cafeteria. It was one of those times when you realize that this is simply the best you can do to keep the family together. It was also one of those times when you say “Hey why don’t we eat here more often?” They had a killer salad bar. Two bucks and change for an apple juice seemed a little expensive, but whatever… the important part was it worked. We had our family moment every night. See this image larger.

With a mask on, Ian could visit Nina. Our daycare was brilliant about letting us send Ian in extra days, which was very helpful — but he was also being exposed to new germs… so the mask was a necessity. See this image larger.

Speaking of daycare, I saw this in the hallway and thought it was a great shot. This was above Ian’s boots so everybody would know whose were whose. See this image larger.

Grampa Dave enjoys holding Nina, and we weren’t shy about letting him, although probably as not as much as he’d wanted to… I kept him busy helping me move stuff from our house to a storage facility. What, you don’t think we have time to sell our house on top of all this other stuff going on? Sure, why not? (All kidding aside, if I had had time to focus on anything I was going to break down… I ended up overloading myself on purpose so that I couldn’t focus on any one thing. It worked great, but so much happened that I’ve forgotten a lot of things. So if you helped us during this time of need and I forgot to say thank you, I blame it on this. And thank you. 🙂 ) See this image larger.

February 21st 2010 – I love my beautiful, beautiful family — including the little girl in the bed back there. See this image larger.

Of all the pictures we have of her, this one hurts me the most, and I’m not sure why. Part of it is the framing, and the cold hospital surroundings… and she looks small, and hooked up to far too many things. I think it might also just be that it is a daughter in her father’s arms, as normal a photo as can be — but the situation is so far away from normal. See this image larger.

What follows is everything Melissa wrote on the Care Page that I moved over here to the blog. If you kept up with her Care Page, it is going to be the exact same stuff over again. If you didn’t well, here’s all of it in one handy page. (If you’re wondering why I would do such a thing, this text is kept in a database and can be searched. It’ll be nice to be able to reference later in a search-able way.) Just click on the link below to open it up.

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