With Mike in Argentina this week, Nate has been missing his daddy a lot.  And needless to say, he's been a bit of a terror.  If I had a dollar for how many times Nate has told me since Saturday that I "wasn't his best friend", I'd be able to go on a nice little shopping trip.  As awesome an age as three has been, its been equally frustrating and Mike and I often find ourselves really hoping that its just the age and that he doesn't really have issues.  We continue to be hypersensitive toward Finley's hospitalizations and the impact they could possibly have on Nate.  Although we try to keep things as normal as possible for him during those times, he's definitely started to be more emotional around those times.  I tried to begin the conversation with him last night about how Finley would be going back to the hospital last week and he started to cry - so I thought we'd save that for another time.

Anyway, Nate and I started off with a bang yesterday morning.  He was adamantly refusing to get ready to go to school, was running when I tried to get him dressed (and laughing at me) and subsequent time outs didn't work - he just doesn't care about being punished (and he laughed at me some more).  So I took his DVD player away.  And he took notice.  After he finally got dressed, I agreed to give him a second chance with his "DDD" player (as he calls it) but after school was more of the same - so not got "grounded" from his DDD player and the TV.  All night long, he kept asking me, "Do you want to let me watch my DDD player?  I can tell you sorry." or "Let's watch Madagascar mom".  And then I kept telling him - he made that decision he said, "I can have it in the morning time?".  Needless to say, Nate and I had a nice dinner together and a nice quiet, TV less evening.  And since he had nothing else to do, he wanted to cuddle with his mommy a lot - and we both fell asleep at 8:30 pm!  I think I can get used to being the bad guy (LOL!).

Finley is doing awesome.  Her smiles abound and she seems to be feeling the best she has been in a long time.  Prior to her hospitalization she had this pesky cough and runny nose for weeks and now its completely clear.  When she sleeps, she is so quiet, I have to put my face down really close to her to make sure she is breathing! She has been so actively chatting, kicking her feet and doing her Miss America wave (she does this thing where she holds her paci in one hand and twirls her wrist and when she does it, the other hand simultaneously moves and does the same thing!).  Her progress though as made us think - that certainly the antibiotics and steroids have helped to get her better so maybe that wasn't just a cold she had?  Its something I plan to talk with the ENT about next week.  Perhaps the hardest thing for us right now is wrapping our heads around the fact that in less than a week she will be back in the hospital and while planned, it will likely be the most serious surgical procedure of her life (hopefully).  And to anticipate that we will be missing those smiles, the chatting, those waves, for a couple of weeks while Finley recovers is heartbreaking to say the least.  So for now, we'll just soak them up...

And this about sums up Nate's mood for the past few days...