The end of the day

Getting Ethan ready for bed can be trying on the best nights. He just wants to play! But after he's in bed, you can't help but love him. Once you leave the room, Ethan lays in his bed talking about the day and singing songs to himself. He never gets out of bed to play (even though his room is full of toys), just talks and sings. John and I just sit and listen sometimes. He's just so darn cute!

Something New

I know. It's again been too long. So, rather than try to catch up, here's something new.

I just finished "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. In this book, the US (and possible the world) has been completely destroyed, leaving only remnents of our current civilization. Few people survived the unnamed tragedy, and most have been driven to horrible things in trying to survive. The story is about a father and his young son, who was born after the tragedy. They are on the road, searching for hope and good people. As this father struggles to find food and warmth for his son, you can't help but dwell on what you would be capable of doing for your children. And the comparison between a man who remembers his life before, and a boy who knows nothing different is a striking undertone.

This was, hands down, one of the best books I've read in a long time. The images and simple discussions simply brought me to tears many times. And it is incredible well written. The ending is what you would expect, but it doesn't really matter. It's the journey that's important here.

My Great Provider

John's boss had a baby this last summer. So that meant maternity leave. During her leave, her son had colic. Since she's been back at work, he's had pneumonia and croup and who knows what else. The poor guy has just been struggling. And so has his poor mom. She's been trying to be at work as much as she can, but has used up all her vacation and sick time already. So this time, when her son was sick again, she decided something needed to change. No, she didn't quit. She just said she'd be taking a few weeks to let her son get really healthy. Way to go! I can't imagine how hard it is to split home and work life as a mom. (It makes me feel really lucky that I don't have to.) John said the best thing about it this evening (and this is why I'm posting). He said "She's the kind of person you want to work for. When she sets her priorities, her family is first." And he's the kind of husband I want providing for my family. His family comes first. I love this guy.

No Problems

All of the labs they managed to run came back normal. So rather than redrawing right now for the couple of very unlikely things they didn't get to run, we are going to wait. We have one month to fatten this boy up to prove that he's ok. What we are actually trying to show is that he doesn't have an underlying problem that is keeping his body from using the food he takes in. If he gains, we've proved there's nothing wrong. If not, it'll probably mean lots of tests that are much more unpleasant than a simple blood draw. So we're really pushing all that extra fat and protein! Keep our little guy in your prayers.

A 2yr Visit to the Doctor Means More Bad News

Ethan is 2! I love what John wrote on his birthday. Today, being 2 meant a visit to the doctor for Ethan. He's leaps and bounds ahead in his verbal and cognitive skills. Perfectly normal in his physical ones. The strange (and possible worrisome) thing about our boy is his growth. He spent nearly a year of his life off the charts for height and weight. He's now down to 75th percentile for height and 25th for weight. Not abnormal for an active kid with parents who were scrawny kids. But...

He's actually lost weight in the last six months. He weighs less than a pound more than he did a 12 months. He is getting taller, so we're not worried about a growth hormone problem like I had. But because he is taking in enough calories to be gaining more weight than that, we get to start the high fat diet and lab tests. What a laundry list of tests! A thyroid screen, iron studies, cbc, cmp, lipids, hormone levels, allergy panels, genetic screens, etc. I run these at work all the time, but it makes me sad that Ethan needs to have them done. They tried to draw enough blood for all the tests while we were in the office, but Ethan was too strong for us to hold still that long. He blew out a vein in his arm, so they are starting to test for the most likely issues. If they all come back negative, then we go back for more blood. If anything is wrong, then we go back to talk about what we do next.

The diet is disgustingly high in fat. If any of the rest of us ate like this, our cholesterol levels would skyrocket. They want me to add cream to his whole milk, use olive oil on his vegetables and pasta, push more meat, have him dip veggies in cheese sauce or ranch dressing and fruit in whipped cream, etc. She was particularly strong that I shouldn't feed him too many fruits and veggies. She wants to make sure that he gets the fat and protein he needs for growth. I'm disgusted just thinking about all that fat. But I'm going to make a grocery store run this afternoon. Yuck. Hopefully we only have to do this for a month or so.

Ethan isn't in a very good mood because his arm and leg hurt. (He got his flu shot too.) He didn't like the doctor's office before, but I think today will make it a much feared place. I'm pretty confident that he is just fine. Both John and I come from families that have big babies who often become scrawny little kids. But because it's such a drastic drop in growth, we are going to make sure nothing else is wrong. We wouldn't want to ignore it and later find out that there was a big problem.

I'll keep everyone updated as we know more. We'll have the first round of labs back by the end of the week.