Under One Roof

After sixteen days in the hospital, which beat Nicholas's last stay by one day, we are finally home! Nicholas was discharged Friday night and was thrilled to be home! I think for the first hour or so that we were home, he was kind of in shock (and super tired) because he kept looking around saying, "home" like he couldn't quite believe it. I know he was finally relived to be out of the hospital and sleep in his own bed, in his comfy pajamas, listening to his Coldplay lullaby CD.

Today was a wonderful day spent together as a family. Nicholas and Ella just wanted to play with their balloons all day and I jokingly told Jeff that we could have saved ourselves a good chunk of change on Christmas gifts if we had realized how much they both loved helium-filled balloons before we started shopping.

It was nice to do normal things together: eat breakfast, talk and laugh, decorate for Christmas...things I would have taken for granted before our long hospital stay. Now these moments feel like gifts-small treasures that I tuck away in my memory and enjoy immensely while they are happening. To be honest, we really thought that Nicholas may not survive this hospital stay. There were several times that we were on our knees pleading with God to allow us more time with our son. Seeing our child so fragile and so, so sick was extremely heart wrenching and it is nothing we hope to experience again anytime soon. Fortunately, Nicholas is the toughest little kid I have ever met and he continued to surprise and inspire us (and his doctors and nurses) time and time again. Obviously because Nicholas has SMA, his life will most likely be shorter than we would hope, but it puts life in perspective and makes us realize what is important, and for us that is only one thing: to show our love for each other as much as possible and to create as many wonderful memories as we can in the time we have together as a family.

I already got the ONLY thing I wanted this year for Christmas-to be home together as a family and to have our son feeling much more like his happy, joyful, sweet little self. God is good.