I have about an hour. I have been wanting to get an update posted to the blog for weeks and have not taken the time. I am going to take this hour and publish whatever comes at the end of it.

Here goes - ignore spelling and other such errors.

Rich and I left Cincinnati knowing airway surgery would change Nathaniel's life. And ours. We were right. We did not know about all the different ways that would happen. In general, everything about living on the edge of life and death is gone. We no longer mentally ask ourselves the thousand safety checks we used to ask: "Are his hands too close to his trach?" or "Who has eyes on Nathaniel?" or "Did he aspirate when he vomited just now?" Life has been taken down a level in intensity. We change trach ties alone now; Nathaniel's three-year old restlessness with this process and grabby hands at his tube will no longer means a potential oxygen deprivation accident. We drive alone with him. We have left him with his older brothers to run to the doughnut shop on Saturday mornings. He plays free with other children and away from our side on the church playground after services. On Thursday, I was in Houston at the conference, Rich was at work, and Nathaniel was home for eleven hours with a nurse who had worked only one shift prior. Quality of life, getting on with life, enjoying life moments.

Another way that life has changed is that Nathaniel has had more respiratory illnesses in the couple months since surgery than he did in the six months prior. We knew this would happen. The freedom to live life means we are in contact with more people and more viruses. He has jumped from one illness to another; most have stayed very minor, however one lingered long enough that it developed into a secondary tracheitis infection. But he has not been hospitalized. Airway surgery removed aspiration. Without aspiration, less pneumonia. Even with the increased viruses, we are using fewer breathing treatments, and Nathaniel requires less suctioning than prior to airway surgery. 

It was twenty-three years ago this month that Rich and I started watching the cattle report.

I was attending a weekly women's bible study that summer and had shared with the group in July about a mole on Rich's leg. I had nagged and nagged him to go to a doctor to have it removed and checked for cancer. I had made multiple appointments for him. For most of spring he had refused to take the time off work to go and had cancelled the appointments. The women agreed to pray with me that Rich would make an appointment and have the mole looked at. Within a few days of our prayers, Rich made an appointment and had the mole removed. That answer to prayer was a lesson for me on how God can work when I step out of the way.

We were chosen as Nathaniel's adoptive family on June 27, 2013. We spent the month of July learning about his care and preparing to transition him to our home. We teased that we had a one month pregnancy, but in reality it was even shorter because we took a previously scheduled vacation for a week mid July.

We needed EVERYTHING. I remember feeling very overwhelmed when Rich and I walked into Babies R Us early that July. Baby-hood had changed a great deal since we had prepared for our last child fourteen years earlier; even greater changes were noted since we had prepared for our first child twenty-three years earlier. When my other children were little, I had fallen in love with soft baby yellow. I searched for yellow sleepers and yellow receiving blankets. I learned quickly that 21st century baby world is genderized pink and blue.

Two years ago this morning we met Nathaniel.

When these days come up, I realize how new I still am to adoption. Which day is suppose to be the most significant? The day we learned he was our son? The day we met him? The day he came home? The day his adoption was finalized? This one, the first time we met and held him, feels so important.

Three times it happened during Nathaniel's recent hospitalization.

"He's in here with Grandma," said the Emergency Room attending to the resident as they discussed Nathaniel's case outside the partially opened thick sliding glass door.

"Are you hanging out with Grandma, today?" the respiratory therapist asked Nathaniel when she came into his room to administer a treatment.

"Grandma, will you be staying the night instead of Mom?" asked a night nurse new to Nathaniel's case just after shift change.

"I'm Mom," I replied.

Once I added a smack, "A twenty-something Mom or Dad couldn't handle this kid."

Nathaniel and I achieved a milestone recently. I had been out grocery shopping and he was home with our private duty day nurse. As I walked through the front door I called my usual to him, “Nathaniel! Mommy is home!” He ran to me. Arms out stretched. Smiling broad. A first.

Tomorrow is Nathaniel's second birthday. I have looked forward to the milestone since our adoption interview. Everyone at the meeting was hopeful that Nathaniel's trachea abnormality would be surgically corrected by his second birthday. Nathaniel's trachea abnormality dominated the conversation that day. As last year unfolded it became evident that trachea surgery is still a long way off. The hope of "by the second birthday" is now hidden away in our prayers for an unknown day.