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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