A little piece of heaven

I am so sorry! For some reason the blog never posted many comments so I never saw them or replied. Typically when a comment is posted I get an email and then I go and replied but for some strange reason I was not alerted on many comments. I love and appreciate your comments and I am sorry that they never got posted!

To the commenters who never saw their comments on the blog – I will reply back by email to everyone as some of the comments are a few weeks old and scattered throughout many blog posts.

Also, thank you so much to everyone who comments on this blog – we love hearing from you! I read the comments to Nathan and it is one of those really pleasurable parts of our day as we connect with all the wonderful people we’ve met in our journey. In the past I responded to comments by email – and I will do so with all the ones that didn’t get published – but from now on I will reply to the comments on the blog itself so if you post a comment, look for a response on the same page!

Thank you for joining us in our journey, we love you guys!

Another night, another sleepless night. It seems the pattern of my days in Santiago revolves around sleepless nights and oblivious mornings. Currently it feels like Santiago has it in for me – infections, cold, allergies, sleeplessness. But I am a mother warrior. I refuse to give up. I will fight for Nathan, I will fight Santiago’s evil tentacles to give Nathan a chance for mobility. With the help of our lovely new friends we will make it.

Tonight Owen was putting Nathan to bed, ritual which includes pijamas, tooth brushing, lots of laughter, and drinking water, when I hear Owen scream in panic “Oh my God Marcela com here”. My heart stopped and in that instant I thought, he stopped breathing, he’s having a seizure, he vomited everywhere … In 1/2 second I was in the room to find Owen holding a broken water glass. Apparently my son Jaws chomped on the glass and broke off a piece of it. Fortunately it fell right off and didn’t splinter and all was well. Ah, a life in Nathan Dorje’s life – never boring.

So in my sleeplessness I’ve been thinking about how to make this blog more fun, more appearling, more informative. I was inspired by Amber over at PrayforBrandon.org. She recently reorganized her blog and created daily columns, so she has a predetermined theme for the day. I think that’s a fantastic idea. Here’s what I came up with:

Alt Health Monday
Adaptive Tuesday
WayBack & Wordless Wednesday
Eye on Therapy Thursday
Chit Chat Friday

What do you guys think? Any other ideas/suggestions? Of course if there are things happening that I want to talk about specific to the moment, I will tack that on or write a separate post. But maybe these are just the ramblings of an insomniac?

Today, Max is 3 months pre-old (since he’s not yet born). I am ecstatic that we’ve made it this far! Max and I have had some exciting times together – from being told that he wasn’t alive, to making it through several infections and a ton of morning sickness! I can tell we’re gonna have some fun times when he’s finally born. And no, I don’t know for sure if Max is a boy, but – for the moment’s sake – we’ll call him Max. I have an appointment next week for a Level 2 ultrasound – and I’m told they’ll be able to tell us then if we’re having a boy or a girl! So watch for the announcement a week from today. During the last checkup about a week ago, the doctor said Max looks fantastic so far – everything measures just right. I’m just grateful we’ve made it this far!

On other news…we went to see a broncho-pulmonary specialist today who told us Nathan initially got a cold which led to ashtma and bronchitis and which has been irritated by allergies. He gave us allergy meds since we already have his inhaler and he thinks that should make him well in a few days!

He finally went back to Medek this morning. He did well! It’s his first time back in a week and I was nervous, but Ramon said he did fantastic. We had to stay outside because he was whiney when we were there, but worked harder when we weren’t in the room – thus no pics or videos. But in general he was quite happy with his response today. For the first time I felt Nathan’s strength come back and for most of the afternoon he was holding his head and trunk up well! At the mall afterwards he saw some kids playing and he stood up completely straight, supporting himself fully, and it was like he was dying to run after them. I told him he would one day if he kept working hard in this therapy, and he smiled at me and kept on screeching at them and wanting to play. I am hopeful!

We had a funny incident last night. I was a bit homesick so we went to the mall across the street to the taco bell. We went late and I was starving and finally I got my crunchwrap supreme. Just as I was eating a few bites, Owen accidentally bumped Nathan, who got hysterical, and barfed all over me and my crunchwrap! We ran back home so I went to bed with an empty belly and still dying for a crunchwrap. You can imagine my face running through the mall with a half naked Nathan and barf all over me. It was ne of those moments.

So here we are. Into the 2nd trimester. Back in therapy. But Owen is leaving tomorrow so it’s our dark cloud. Nathan is going to be devastated – he’s been attached at the hip to his dad for the last 2 weeks. We don’t know when we’ll be home (it all depends on how Nathan does in therapy), but we have some good times to look forward to – and hopefully a lot of progress for the monkey.

I picked up Nathan’s cold and am slightly miserable but promise to not disappear completely in the next few days 🙂