Things pretty much have stayed the same.  Drew’s foot is still discolored, but it seems as if the time period of agonizing pain after adjustments just started slowly decreasing each day. And, he’s finally going longer than four hours without pain meds, sometimes greater that six hours. Drew is mostly cooperating during physical therapy and his  therapist is very impressed with his range of motion.  Drew even shocked us both by standing with minimal support for a couple of minutes this morning.  I guess when I put it this way, things are starting to change for the better (in fact, I didn’t realize this until now after looking at Drew’s medicine schedule we keep and I had to come back and edit this post!)

We had our Christmas on Saturday since Nathan is scheduled to fly home tomorrow.  We knew Drew wouldn’t be able to wait until mid-January to open his presents and we certainly didn’t want to be sans Daddy.  unfortunately, we didn’t capture that many pictures. WTF?!?  We did Skype with Yaya and Grandad and we got to open all of our presents together.  Drew got a lot of neat toys: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the bus and a motorcycle; some Playmobile sets; an electronic drum set; some PS2 video games; a lap-sized air hockey table; and a large Imaginext castle complete with a dragon from Santa.  It was a fun day.

Also, this week we found out that we are having another little boy.  Drew was hoping for a little sister so when we revealed it was not a girl, Drew responded with a defeated sigh and a low grumble.  I’m sure he’ll love his little brother just as much.   I am curious to know what his reaction will be to seeing a baby with full length arms and no wheelchair or external fixators.  At times, things he says leads me to believe that he thinks that all kids go through having shortened arms and wheelchairs and eventually grow out of them to become like the rest of us.  He’ll say, “When I get big, I won’t need a wheelchair anymore?”  We often try to encourage and motivate him by justifying the pain and suffering by bragging about the benefits of this experience so I’m not sure if he interprets this statement as meaning this is the normal “growing up” process or that this is unique to him.

He’s four so I’m pretty confident that he understands he’s different though he hasn’t really elaborated on it or questioned it.  But, is it because, like I said, he thinks every kid goes through this at this age or has he never really compared himself to another?  It could be that he knows he’s different and accepts it.  I guess we’ll find out one day if he questions why this new baby looks different from him.  I don’t know what I’ll say if that day ever happens.

Anyway, here is a picture of Drew’s leg progress for this week: