Episode 2

On November 17th we went to a birthday party for one of Jake’s best buddies at school, Rowan.  JJ calls him Rovin.  I’m not sure if it’s because his teacher with an Indian accent calls him Rovin, or if it’s because it then rhymes with his cousin Covin.  In any case, we were putting our shoes on after the party and Nate decides he is going to walk down their stairs, holding the hand rail.  It’s hard to remember exactly, but I watched in slow motion as he did a somersault down their carpeted stairs and then skidded down to the bottom on his stomach like a seal.  Of course I was traumatized.  After the initial crying, he seemed fine.

Then five days later, on Thanksgiving morning, Nate woke-up and his eyes were crossed.  It was the worst Thanksgiving ever.  He was falling over and missing things we handed to him and all the doctors said his eyes were fine and it wasn’t related to falling down stairs.  To someone who didn’t know him, apparently his eyes looked fine.  But they were definitely not fine.  Thank goodness he woke-up the next day and was back to normal and has been normal ever since— even despite me staring at his eyes incessantly and making him perform hand-eye coordination tests.  The ophthalmologist checked him out for good measure and he passed with flying colors.

There’s a story about when my brother-in-law was little and he woke-up one morning and couldn’t walk for two days.  It was attributed to a “virus.”  Hopefully we’ll look back on Thanksgiving 2012 and chalk-up Nate’s day of being cross-eyed to a virus.

We are infinitely thankful for Nathaniel’s smiling eyes.