The Norman Nest

 The MRI results came back clear!  NO TUMOR!  We're thankful and thrilled.  Obviously, there will be ongoing discussions/potential with Nathan's eyesight because of the unique structure of the bones in his skull and mid face - but those will be on going and are for another day... This means that next week we're heading back to Dallas for the second finger/toe surgery.  On October 9th Nathan will have ALL 10 fingers and toes released!!   9 days from now we'll be sitting, standing, pacing - waiting.  6-7 long hours of waiting for the doctor to walk through the door and take us back to see our son.  The "plan" is that this should look very much like our last surgery in Dallas - casts for 4 weeks afterwards, etc.   Knowing what to expect is somewhat of a double sided coin...  I find myself rubbing his little arms and legs incessantly as I think about how much I missed touching his sweet skin during 4 weeks of casts.  He's so close to crawling - it&#

Y'all. It has officially been 8 weeks since Nathan was in the hospital!  8 weeks in a row of no hospitalizations is more than double the longest stretch we've had in almost a year.  It's been an unbelievable gift to introduce Nathan to some family and friends that we anticipated his meeting long before now as well as just beginning to find some new rhythms as a family. How does it feel?  Kind of like this... The blue casts stayed on for 4 weeks and then (because they were "soft" casts) we took them off at home.  I'm not gonna lie - that was an intense moment, the removal of those casts .  There's nothing like peeling back layers of bandages that were filled with dried blood...  my sons' blood.  Blood from that time they used saws to separate bones... and scissors and needles to cut skin from one part of his body to move it to a place where no skin had previously existed...  Like I said, intense.  I started to think about it in the moment