In the meantime...

It's been a long week.  Charlie had his two big medical tests this week, and oh my, are we exhausted.  The first test ended up being quite early on Tuesday.  7:30am to be exact, which means we had to arrive at the hospital at 5:30am, which means I had to stop feeding Charlie at 3:30am so he could be ready for the anesthesia.  At 4am, Charlie decided that if he wasn't going to be fed, then he wasn't going to sleep.  Luckily he was very sweet and coo-ey instead of mad, but whew baby, it was early.  He did get very angry about a half hour before the test when I wouldn't feed him.  Anyway, he did great with the anesthesia.  The test was a "direct larynscopy bronchoscopy," which I will translate for you as "camera down your throat."  The doctor said he has some floppy vocal cords, which might account for Charlie's frequent squeaking noises, and is usually something they outgrow.  The hardest part of that day was spending four hours in the recovery area listening to all  of the other kids wake up from anesthesia.  Apparently most kids do not wake up well from anesthesia (big surprise when you think about it), and it really broke my heart to hear so many kids cry that desperately.  I was very very thankful when Charlie kicked his leg a couple times, opened his eyes and smiled.   

His next test was on Thursday-- a CT angiogram.  I am stilled a little amazed when I think of this day.  The nurses decided to give it a go without anesthesia.  Apparently they can swaddle them really well, and if the baby is not crying too hard or struggling or something, they can get the imaging they need.    The only problem was that Charlie is so very very chunky that the nurses could not get an IV in him.  They tried three times and were about to just put him under anesthesia when someone had the great idea to call up a doctor they know who is apparently the queen of finding a vein.  And she proved the title.  Still, I was apprehensive that Charlie would calm down enough after having been poked four times, and not being fed for the last four hours.  I think a ridiculous amount of people must have been praying for us because sure enough, he just sat in that little papoose and sucked furiously on his pacifier.  The got the imaging and off we went with no anesthesia.  YAY.  We are still waiting on hearing the results of this one. The offices are closed for Veteran's Day, so hopefully early next week we will know.  Thank you thank you for all of your prayers for us.  I am relieved to have these out of the way.  Unfortunately, Charlie now thinks it's okay to wake up at 4am every day and not go back to sleep so I still feel like I'm recovering from the craziness of it all.

Yet, in the midst of all of this stress, we've had some very happy times recently.  Last weekend our friends Mike and Carly came to spend some time with us (well, mostly Charlie, who is their godson, but they let us tag along).  It was quite the day.  We went to mass.  We ate waffles.  We went to the nearby nature park.

There are a lot of really interesting trees here.  

Lucy has a love for leaves and cannot bring herself to pass them by without making a bouquet of as many as her little hand can hold.  Carly and Mike were very indulgent.

When we got home, we started on a 3-hour homemade pasta making adventure.  Carly brought over her pasta maker and we all pitched in and made some very delicious pasta.  Perhaps this picture is too small, but in the pan sitting on James' lap you can see all of the pasta that we had already rolled out.  His job was to catch it out of the pasta maker.  

 After dinner, we read autumn themed poetry together, and then sang songs together, accompanied by James or Carly on piano and Mike on guitar.  We sang everything from Beatles to Sufjan Stevens to bluegrass.  Oh, and Lucy put in a request for "Hot Cross Buns."  It was quite a fun day.

This is Charlie the night before his first test.  He just looked so sweet all wrapped up in this towel after a bath.

Today I tried to make a special effort to play with Lucy a lot.  She's been here and there this week while Charlie and I have been at the hospital.  She had a great time with everyone she spent time with, but it seemed like she was a little peeved at me for leaving her and for not playing with her more in the evening when I was so tired.  We were playing kitchen and she decided this would be fun.  What would you do if THAT popped out of your sink?  It was fit for a scene from Ghostbusters.

 Then she wanted to hang out in there for a while and eat some grapes. 

 Then we made a refrigerator tree.  The tree itself is taped on the fridge, and all of the leaves are magnets that I cut out with magnetic strip and cardstock.

Then she wanted to take a picture of mommy, Lucy and Charlie.