Progress

Well it's pretty clear we've been negligent on this, as the following post was actually written back in August, I think, but I never got around to posting it. I'll try to writes something a little more current in the near future. For now, here is the update from a couple of months ago:

Before getting into Natey's treatment, etc. I can't help but give some of the details of what's going on with Blake and Hailey. I remember talking to a friend a couple of years ago who had a sibling who had some major health issues when they were kids. While she didn't resent her parents for it, she was aware of, and still remembers as an adult the fact that she and her brother were essentially left out of the picture for years while her sick sister needed special attention from her parents. I think we have made a conscious effort to continue to devote time to each of our kids, but even with three healthy kids, giving each of them sufficient attention would be a real challenge, and that has become even more challenging under the circumstances.

Hailey is an angel. There's no way around it, she is as sweet a child as any parent could ask for. I may be eating these words when she's a teenager, but right now we're just savoring the moment. She hangs with her brother, and helps with the baby. She started preschool this week, and last night asked me to help her with her homework. Her teacher hadn't assigned her any, but she wanted some homework, so we had to come up with something to take advantage of her ambitiousness.

Blake is a gem as well. He is daddy's shadow right now, in fact last night, he wanted to help mow the lawn, so he held my hand while I did the whole thing one handed. By the end, just from the walking back and forth over our very large back yard, he was exhausted, but he kept reminding me that he was really tough, and he can help daddy. He is all about superheroes, he loves watching the old X-Men cartoons (thanks Uncle Jeff) and only wants to wear his superman shirt, his batman shirt, or his spiderman costume. If all 3 of his favorites are dirty at the same time, he prefers to go naked than to wear something else. He also loves to have us tell him stories. He would rather that we told him the stories of Peter Pan or Aladdin then watch the movie. He has an incredible imagination, so I can only imagine that the version in his head is better than the movie anyway.

While we're not interested in boring everyone with the inane details of Nathan's growth (after all he's still not quite 3 months old), it seems important to chronicle everything that's happened and happening, for our own sake if for no other reason. It's amazing all of the little progress that we took for granted, even when we were first-time parents. I remember with Hailey and Blake noticing when they started to roll over, or sit up, or crawl, but there are a lot of little things in between that seemed such insignificant milestones at the time, that now seem monumental. A few weeks ago, Nathan received his first pamidronate treatment. Pamidronate or "pam" is a drug more commonly used in treating osteoporosis, and is also often used as part of chemotherapy. As us laypeople understand it, it basically assists in getting extra calcium into Nathan's bones. He was infused with 3 doses, over the course of 3 days. Each dose only took about 4 hours to infuse, but since it was his first treatment, we stayed overnight so they could monitor how he responded to the medicine. Thankfully, he didn't have any major adverse reactions. The most common would have been flu-like symptoms,and fever. While he was a little fussy the day or two afterward, he seemed to be mostly pretty comfortable. About 3 or 4 days after his last dose we noticed him starting to do things he really hadn't done before. While laying on his back he would put both feet up in the air above his body. He was moving both arms and legs, and turning his head with much more frequency than he had the week before. While he never seemed to be in pain before, it made us wonder how much discomfort he had been experiencing, since he was now so much more willing to move around.

He hasn't had a fracture since he was about 10 days old, and he is growing so much. He is happy, and getting longer and putting on weight very well. There are likely some hard times ahead, including surgeries on at least his legs or hips, which still don't look great, but for the next few months all we have to worry about is taking him in every 8 weeks to get his pam treatments, and keeping track of all of the tiny milestones.