On for Monday

The vet called this morning, and told us that Stanley's condition was the same -- so, it's good that it hadn't gotten worse. (I was sort of hoping for improvement, but we'll take what we can get.) He's scheduled for an MRI at 1 PM tomorrow, and assuming they see what they expect (a disc problem), they'll take him straight into surgery from there. The surgery itself takes about 3 hours, so we don't expect to hear anything from them until the evening.

The vet who called is a second-year resident, and he said he'd already done hundreds of these kinds of surgeries. We had no idea it was that common. He said Stanley is an excellent candidate for the surgery because he's otherwise in good health.

If Stanley shows any improvement tomorrow morning, they'll give us the option of whether to go ahead with the surgery or not. It seems like they would recommend still doing it, because if he partially heals but then injures it again, the surgery would be more difficult or maybe have somewhat lower odds of success because of the calcification that would result. But we'll cross that bridge if we come to it; given the extent of his problems, the previous vets we spoke to didn't think it was likely that he'd start recovering on his own. (Poor baby!)

We really miss having him around the house, and we are heavy-hearted about both Stanley having to go through all this and the fact that we will almost certainly miss seeing Mike's family for the holidays.

It's a bit ironic that one of Matthew's new words is "Stanley" -- he pointed to the picture of Stanley in the photobook and said something that sounded like "Shan-shan." (He was definitely trying to say Stanley, but it wasn't one of his clearer words.) I don't think the boys miss Stanley, per se; they love him, but at their age I don't know if they have enough of a sense of time to realize that he's not just in another room or something like that. (We've told them that his legs are hurt and he's at the doctor, but they probably don't understand that.) One of the (many) difficult parts of the recovery will be getting Matthew to understand that he can't hug his doggie for a while.

Mattie's other recent words include broom, bowl, spoon, and knee (although I'm not certain he's clear on the distinction between the knee and the leg). I'm also becoming more sure that the "ish" that he sometimes says before words really means "it's." I didn't think they'd be using pronouns at this age, but he's pretty consistent with it.

They have some fake fruits and vegetables that come in multiple pieces, but stick together with velcro so that you can "cut" them. Mattie was trying to pull one of them apart, and having a tough time with it. Then he said, "knife" and ran off to find his toy knife to cut it with. I was impressed! (I'm less impressed that he sometimes likes to run around with the toy knife in his mouth because he knows he's not allowed to do that! He was not pleased when the knife had to go bye-bye for a while.)

One of the skills the developmental inventories ask about is building towers with blocks. James has been doing towers of two blocks for a while, and he's now moved on to three-block towers! Until now, Mattie has shown no interest in doing anything but knocking blocks over, but yesterday he also managed a two-block tower. Go, little builders!

Mike wants me to note that the chair in the bottom picture was built by James's great-great-grandfather, Joseph Opitz.

Wish us luck for tomorrow -- we're hoping all goes well for our puppy.