Nate's Surgery

Last Friday, June 19th, Nate had surgery to correct a communicating hydrocele. The procedure is the same that is used to correct a hernia. Dr. Johnson noticed that there might be something going on at Nate's 18 month check-up. There wasn't an obvious problem and she was even on the fence about whether or not we needed to see a surgeon. We did finally decide to see a surgeon and get his opinion. The tricky thing about a communicating hydrocele is that one day things may look fine and another day they may not. We saw the surgeon three times and each time we saw him things looked great. That's how it always works out, right? But we had noticed some differences at home that made the doctor think that Nate probably did need surgery. He still wasn't 100% sure that surgery was necessary, but the only way to know for sure was to make an incision in Nate's belly button and insert a camera and see if things needed to be repaired. This was very hard for me - Darren, too; but more for me since I tend to worry obsessively about things. It was hard because we didn't even know if surgery was necessary and it is not a condition that causes any pain or discomfort. But if not repaired it is very likely that Nate would have a hernia later in life that could be really painful and require a more invasive surgery. So, Nate was going to have to undergo anesthesia and we didn't even know if it was necessary...and I had almost 6 long weeks to dread it. During this 6 week period I would think is this really necessary? Should I just call and cancel this surgery and not put Nate at risk if it's not 100% necessary? Almost every time I had those thoughts it would be pretty obvious that surgery was necessary. I know that these were not coincidences. God was allowing me to see a difference to give me peace about going ahead with the procedure and confirming that surgery was what was best for Nate. During this wait time we also had lots of friends and family praying for me and Darren, Nate and the surgeon. God was also speaking to me a lot about fear through Beth Moore's Esther study. (If you have the opportunity to participate in this study, do it!). I knew that I needed to take the courage that God offers all of us and trust his sovereignty.

Finally, the day arrived and everything went so well. God granted me and Darren peace before and during the procedure. Nate did great. He didn't even cry when we passed him off to the guy that took him into the operating room. They took him back about 9:00 and Dr. Harmon came in about 10:15 to tell us how things went. There was indeed a hole that needed to be repaired just as we had suspected. We were so thankful that we had gone ahead with the surgery and had everything taken care of while Nate is young and will more than likely not remember any of it. We were home by 2:00 and Nate was back to 100% the next day. If he was sore, it didn't slow him down any. I mentioned in our beach post that Nate likes to rub his belly button when he's sleepy and we were really concerned that this would be an issue. Nate has done great. We explained to him that he has a boo boo on his belly button and he can't rub it right now. I was expecting lots of extra rocking and comforting to help him get to sleep, but that hasn't even been necessary.

I would obviously not want to go through this again, but this has been such a great opportunity to see how faithful God truly is. And if we have to deal with an issue like this in the future we know that we will see God's faithfulness again. Thanks again to everyone for all of your prayers!


Checking everything out



Rubbing his belly button one last time.



Trying to ride the food tray table



Our sweet preschool minister came to visit us and took this picture. You can see how tired Nate is and he hasn't even had surgery yet.



After the surgery

Cowboy Nate

Last weekend we went to a birthday party celebrating Nate's cousins' birthdays. It was a great party. Unfortunately it rained on and off during the party, but it didn't slow the kids down any. I think they enjoyed the sprinkles. The party was cowboy themed. There was a cute western town, cowboy hats and vests for the kids to wear and a horse for all of the kids to ride.

Happy Birthday Dax and Kepler!

Nate loved wearing his cowboy hat!

As soon as we got out of the car, he headed straight for the horse and couldn't wait to ride. His eyes got really big when Darren sat him on the horse. I'm sure he was a little freaked out about how high off of the ground he was, but he did great and even rode a second time.

Nate and Pops (my dad).

After the party we went to my parents. My mom got out my niece's red cowboy boots she had when she was little. Nate had the best time wearing those boots.

These pictures were taken the next day. Nate still wanted to wear his hat.

Nate has been making this face where he crinkles his nose. I finally got a picture of him doing it and, of course his eyes are closed. It's still pretty cute.

Picking Fruit

I love this time of year for many reasons, but one reason is home grown fruits and vegetables. We have a small fruit orchard and Nate LOVES fruit so I am so thankful we have fresh fruit right here at home. One of our peach trees was loaded with ripe peaches and Nate "helped" me pick peaches Monday afternoon. He actually did more eating than picking.

Disclaimer: We got a new camera a couple of years ago and have had several problems with the battery. We've finally found a battery that will hold a charge in the camera for more than 10 minutes (I'm not joking about the 10 minutes) so I'm trying to get comfortable using it. I decided to take these pictures of Nate at the last minute to try to practice with the camera. His hair is always a little on the wild side, but it's extra wild in these pics because I didn't comb it after his nap.

He started with blackberries - I cannot believe how much he likes blackberries. They are a little (sometimes a lot) on the sour side and they are full of little seeds, but that doesn't slow him down any.


Then he went for the nectarines (that is a peach tree, but he's eating a nectarine).


Nate wasn't too crazy about the peach fuzz. I think he'll stick with peeled peaches.


We had so many that I had to get the wagon to get them back to the house.

This is very bad photography, but I love that you can see the hydrangeas in the background. I love blue hydrangeas!

Church Picnic

This afternoon we attended our church's annual picnic. We had a great time hanging out with friends and eating hamburgers and hot dogs (and lots of other goodies). Darren and I love any opportunity we have to spend time with our church family. God has blessed us with a wonderful church family that are not only fun to hang out with, but also spur us on as we grow in our faith. Nate loves any activity that's outside, but he was super excited about the juice boxes. He just had his first juice box a couple of weeks ago. He thought it was the best thing EVER! I still water down his juice, so it's really a treat when he gets the real thing. He actually drank two full boxes this afternoon.

After our time of fellowship we headed to the lake for a baptism service. Nate liked watching everyone in the water...for about 5 seconds and then he wanted in the water.

This is one of our friends getting ready to baptize his daughter. Notice the boys standing by in their goggles. I guess they wanted to get a really close look at the baptism.

When Nate realized that he wasn't allowed to get in the water, he wasn't very happy and didn't get happy until we got in the car to head home.

My two favorite guys :)

Memorial Day Adventure

Yesterday Darren and I went kayaking with some friends on the Coosa River. We had a great time. It's been a while since we did anything like this so I did kind of freak out when we turned over. I didn't mind getting in the water, my freak out was more about the rocks that I could feel around my legs and the waves crashing around my head. I did manage to get myself together pretty quickly to remember the cardinal rule about keeping your feet up so they don't get caught in the rocks. I made it to the kayak several minutes before Darren and I kept yelling at him to swim faster. When he got to me he told me that it was kind of hard to swim fast holding on to both of our paddles. Uh-oh. The very eloquent and experienced (sarcasm) teenager that gave us our two minute training session told us to make sure we grab our paddles when we turn over. Let me tell ya, grabbing my paddle was the last thing on my mind when we turned over. I'm so thankful that Darren was on the ball and didn't just take care of himself, but me also. Hmm, that scenario sounds very familiar. :) We really did have a great time and it was good to do something adventurous. Darren said we need to do stuff like this more often so we don't become old "fuddy duds." If you live in the area and are interested you can find out more info at http://coosariveradventures.com/. It's a lot of fun and surprisingly inexpensive.

Beach Trip

We went to the beach a couple of weeks ago and this is the first chance I've had to write about it. I don't know about you, but I have the hardest time recovering from vacation. No matter how hard I try to leave our home nice and neat, it never happens...and then I have to come home and do what seems like a ton of laundry on top of the mess we left. Now that I have that out of the way, I can talk about the wonderful trip we had. I must admit that it didn't start off great. We left in flash flood rain and later learned that some areas that we traveled through did actually flood and one person was even killed when his car was swept off the road. Thankfully, we just encountered lots of heavy rain and only for about the first hour of the trip. We arrived at Santa Rosa just in time for Nate to eat lunch and have a nice long nap...yeah, right. He wasn't real excited about napping and that was understandable since he wasn't in his normal environment, but he usually settles down pretty quickly. 99% of the time I just walk away and literally within one minute he is quiet. But today he decided that he wanted out and was trying his best to climb of the pack-n-play, so I didn't want to leave him. After several attempts to get him to settle down I finally decided that it was a lost cause and we should just go to the beach. Why is this a big deal? This was the first day of his entire life that he didn't have a nap...and he survived without a major meltdown...and so did I. Thankfully this was just a one time occurrence and he slept great the rest of the trip. When we got to the beach we were a little worried because the flag was out for dangerous marine life. There were lots of these weird jellyfish and crabs in the water. Thankfully the jellyfish did not sting and the crabs would gladly get out of your way.





This was the biggest crab we caught. It's usually fun to catch them, but there were so many of them that it wasn't even challenging.

It was actually kind of fun to chase them and watch them scurry away...

and bury themselves in the sand.

Other than the "dangerous marine life" the beach was beautiful and the weather was great the entire trip. Nate loved the beach. He loved sitting on the edge of the water and sticking his fingers in all of the holes in the sand. Most days we went to the beach twice and when we would ask Nate if he was ready to go the beach he would say "wa wa" (water) and walk over to his bike trailer to let us know that he was ready to go.

Nate rubs his bellybutton when he's sleepy and you can tell that it's almost nap time in the picture below. If he can't get to it, you better be ready for a melt down. I had all of these cute winter one piece PJs that he only wore a couple of times since he couldn't get to his bellybutton. I liked the cute PJs, but I like sleep a lot more. He's going to have some minor surgery mid June (I'll post about that later) and they are going to do an incision in his bellybutton. I don't know how we are going to keep his hands off of his bellybutton.

Speaking of naps, check out this bed head.

Here are a couple of sweet pictures I took late one afternoon.

Baby Cows

Almost every afternoon we ride out in the pasture to check on our "baby cows." Nate loves the baby cows. We have seven, but we had five for quite a while so when we ask Nate how many baby cows we have he says "Five!" Before Nate was born, most of the calves were solid black because our bull was solid black (boring!). Now our bull has a white face so most of the calves have some white on their faces. Now we can name them and get attached to them... before sending them off to slaughter.

Brownie


A la mode


Pinkie


Diddy

Thing 1

Thing 2

Patches