So far, I am feeling much better than other stories I’ve heard from expecting moms. Just some nausea, headaches, tiredness and other little things. I am about to bust into stretchy pants, so hiding it won’t be able to happen much longer! Nathan has been fantastic with everything, and I am so blessed to have him as my husband and father of my child.

I kept wanting to blog about various things, but knew there was no way I could talk about change without mentioning this, so here you go! It’s an exclusive for my readers! Haha! I’m sure there will be more to come soon, but for now, you have the basics! We’re praying for a healthy child and are very excited!

Barkley at six weeks

Growing up in the country, we had outside dogs. They were fun to play with every now and then, but weren’t a staple in my everyday activities because I spent more time inside than out. I also had a roommate in college with a dog that wasn’t mine and I often found that having to deal with it inside the house was definitely not always the most convenient. It is also worth noting that I am allergic to most pet dander. Needless to say, I wasn’t chomping at the bit to live with a dog.

At nine weeks with his toy lion

But Nathan had always had dogs around and even had two of his own when we met. Though he gave them to a good home when he moved into an apartment that wasn’t pet friendly, I knew that eventually he would have more. And as it goes with marriage, if he was going to have them, that meant I would, too. When we bought the house, I knew it was only a matter of time before a four-legged friend took advantage of our fenced-in yard. My plan was to wait until after we had kids old enough to help, thinking that I bought myself at least a decade. But as goes the premise of this blog, that was something that would change.

At seven months, after his first “big boy” haircut

When Nathan had surgery in January, I had a weak moment while in the hospital and told him he could get a puppy when he recovered. We came home and watched a bunch of Animal Planet Dogs 101 shows and researched a lot of hypoallergenic, non-shedding, small dogs. Most of them were fluffy, girly-looking dogs. When we ran across the miniature schnauzer, Nathan quickly added it to his favorites. After all, it’s hard to look too feminine with a beard!

With her cousin Ellie (Amanda and Matt's mini schnauzer)

But the moral of this post is that having a dog who is always excited to see you is not so bad. And he’s so cute that you can all gush over him with me.

Breaks are a little different with a puppy, though. Barkley normally gets up with us around 6:40 a.m. on workdays…and Nathan does all the feeding and other work. I wanted to sleep in, so it took some coaxing on my part to get the dog to go back to sleep after Nathan took him out this morning. I let him cry and whine for a bit and even stuck my fingers in his kennel/bed, but he did go back to sleep! We did get up around 9 a.m. where I fed him and took him out several times. Despite my best efforts to have him only use the bathroom outside, Barkley left me a little wet surprise on the tile, which I proceeded to step in, making my slipper gross.

I prepared slow-cooker ribs which Nathan and I will eat later, did a little laundry, took a shower, watched tv, talked to a friend on the phone and did Internet research for a possible summer vacation for Nathan and I–all with Barkley at my heels or by my side. I’m sure he was much happier than he would have been alone in his crate all day!

So I want to thank the Presidents for the day off. It’s nice to have one of those every now and then. Barkley says thanks, too!

I also want to give a special semi-public thank you to Josh and Lyndsey Calico for bringing us dinner tonight. It was a really nice treat to not have to worry about fixing food on top of everything else. We are blessed with great friends and family!

Now that I’ve updated the blogosphere, it’s time for Nathan and I to watch at little more Man v. Food on the Travel Channel and to relax and sleep in our own comfy bed.

• One of the things that Nathan has been asked to do is get up and move around. It is a little annoying to do because he’s in the drafty hospital gown and was connected to several tubes and the IV. So when he rolls out of bed, he’ll ask me to make sure his “skirt” is down. Then he would put the local pain pump bag on his shoulder like a purse. To finish off, he would accessorize with the end of the capped off NG tube coming out of his nose draped over his ear. Then me and my semi-cross dressing husband take his IV pole and walk the hallway of floor five–his own personal runway! Haha!
• Our roommate for the past two days is a guy who jumped off of his deck and got a compound fracture in his foot. He had his second surgery on Thursday and will be in here until at least next Friday when he has his third one. We were moved in here in the middle of the night and didn’t have much interaction with him to start. When we watched a little E! tv on Saturday morning, the guy called for a nurse and told them he’d been thinking about it and he should get his own private room. The main reason he gave? That he had to share a tv with someone. I think that my love of The Soup must have pushed him over the edge. Needless to say, neither of us have a private room.
• Other than those shows Saturday morning, the only other things that have been on the television are sports. I know the poor guy across the room is bored to death because he can’t get out of bed at all due to the large cast on his leg that is suspended from poles over the bed, but it also means that he doesn’t feel as tired as, say, someone who just had their colon removed and hadn’t eaten anything. So this guy talks to the television all the time, or maybe to Nathan; I’m not sure. Either way, he has lots of comments about football. I’ve become much more open to Nathan’s two tv idea in the living room since I’ve now seen all of the weekend’s playoff games.
• I did hear the roommate and his girlfriend get in a fight over the guy’s mom coming to visit. I thought the mom was a nice lady and I chatted with her quite a bit. According to the girlfriend, she is mean and the gf is not going to stay if the mom is going to keep visiting. This came up about three hours after the mom left and after the gf had sat in virtual silence and then got up to leave with no notice. I’m not sure that it is the best long-term strategy to have run away from your boyfriend with a broken leg…
• One of the nursing tech guys has a ponytail. He is sort of obnoxious and popped into our room today and said he might need to take my extra chair. I was aggravated by this because I have seen extra chairs sitting in the hallway, unused. And because this guy isn’t even our tech today. Nathan said that he’s just mad because his ponytail isn’t a mullet. So we’ve closed our door and hope that guy forgets about us. If I have to get in a fight over a chair with a guy with mullet dreams, it won’t be pretty.
• And right after I hit the “publish” button on this entry, Nathan and the roommate got in a discussion about their urinals (the handheld ones guys use as a bed pan). Nathan has been getting up and dragging his tubes and poles into the bathroom and the tech asked him if he just wanted to use the urinal at the bed. Nathan wanted to know why people are encouraging him to pee in the bed, and if it’s so great, why don’t people just do that all the time. The guy laughed and agreed, since he doesn’t have a lot of choice. The girlfriend popped around the curtain and said, “Now that’s the most interesting argument in America.” I expect the Today Show to do a live remote on this topic tomorrow…

The best entertainment of all is that my husband now has all the tubes removed except his IV and is eating Jell-O and other clear foods. He has a great attitude and is feeling good. I can’t wait to get him home!

In ironic timing, the roommate’s mom just walked in. Silence has resumed from the girlfriend…

They want him to work in solid foods and be off the pain pump before we can go home. They think that could be as early as tomorrow evening. With the speed everything moves around here, I would anticipate it will actually be Tuesday. Hopefully, I’m wrong.

I’ll put up more later, but the message for now is that things are progressing in a way the doctors like.

• Nathan is up and moving around a little. His first trip out of the bed and to the chair wore him out completely, but they need him moving around, so it was a good step. He has walked to the bathroom a couple of times, which is also good. This means the catheter is out, and that gets him another step closer to normal!
• Nathan also slept for several hours last night. They gave him Benadryl and that finally let him relax enough to sleep. I’m sure he would have slept a lot more if there weren’t people poking and prodding on him throughout the night, but I guess that’s why we’re in a hospital…
• I also slept more last night. The first roommate got to leave last night (even though it took about 12 hours from when they told him they would discharge him until it actually happened). So I took the extra uncomfortable chair they had, put it facing my current chair, stacked like six pillows on top of our duffel bag in between them, and essentially slept on a pillow balance beam. But I got to stretch out a little and got lots more sleep than my one chair set up the night before. Let’s just hope no one tries to take away the extra chair or all the pillows I have stashed away.
• The doctors are taking everything slow with him. When we were in the hospital a little over a year ago with the emergency ileostomy, we had NG tube nightmares and all kinds of adverse reactions to things. So they left that tube in his nose to drain his stomach so that they wouldn’t have to put it in while he’s awake again and are leaving it in until probably tomorrow. This means he isn’t eating or drinking anything yet and they are making sure his whole digestive system will work properly before they let it all work on its own. He’s okay with this. They want to see air in his bag to know that things are going like they should. The moving around and talking will help with this.
• Evidently, they just move you around whenever they feel like it. We were switched to the room across the hall (576) at around 4:30 in the morning because our roommate had left and they wanted to turn it into a female room. So we had to join up with another guy. We have already accumulated a lot of stuff to carry. Plus we have all the pillows and chair I am hoarding for my sleep purposes. All of that had to move in the middle of the night. It’s like the circus moving, making me the tightrope walker who has to be a little nervous about the set up of the rope from place to place. I did fall off the pillows the first attempt after the move, but eventually made it back to sleep again. Nathan, in this analogy, would have been like one of the caged animals who has no choice in the circus move, but also doesn’t have to do anything but go along for the ride. So it didn’t disturb his sleep too much, which is good.
• We’re watching the Louisville game now and will get to watch the UK one later. Our new roommates are also a house divided, so they are fine with sharing the tv for that. However, I’m not as sure they were as excited about watching Fashion Police and The Soup this morning.
• The cafeteria here is actually not bad. This means I don’t have to have people bring me food from the outside, but I do thank all of you who have offered.
• I am certain that I would make it on What Not to Wear if I were being videoed right now. I have resorted to sweats, don’t have a stitch of make-up and my hair partially dried as I was sleeping last night and you can tell it. I realize I’m in the hospital and no one looks their best, but the wife of our roommate looks great. And this is a list of random facts.
• Speaking of random facts, Clark County beat Montgomery County last night. Go Cards! I know this because one of our nurses from yesterday called to tell me this morning. She had asked us where we were from yesterday and it appears she actually listened and thought of us when she saw it on the news. That’s nice.
• Ultimately, I feel that Nathan is recovering really well. I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to say that and jinx it, but I wanted to make sure that all of you out there praying for us knew that they are working and to keep them up!

The good news is that we aren’t dealing with a reconnected digestive system that wouldn’t function properly. His diseased colon was also at high risk for cancer, and with that removed, so is that risk. And by leaving in his rectum, we haven’t burned any bridges for conversations about different options like a J-pouch in the future. Plus, all this was done laparoscopically meaning that his recovery time and stay in the hospital should be shorter than usual. (On a personal, selfish note, I’m really happy about this because we didn’t get a private room and I slept in a regular chair with wooden arms last night…not the ideal situation, but doable.)

I just wanted to keep those of you who were checking updated. I’ll tell more when I can or there is news. Thanks for all the prayers! Nathan is going to get up and walk around today, and we should get to talk to the surgeon again this afternoon.