We pause this program for a message

We're in the midst of embracing this holiday season around here, and I have so many fun things to share with you, but today all that is on my mind is this little guy.  Let's talk about how happy and friendly he all the time.

 And how adventurous he is.  He can NEVER be out of sight.  This week I told Larry that I needed to make a phone call and left him playing with the boys.  He had to answer a page and the next thing I know, I hear the sound of Larry's electric clippers in the bathroom and catch Ollie's hand just as he begins to shave his own head.

 What  fickle eater he is.  He doesn't have favorites and you never know if he will hate something he loved the day before. He would much rather survive on milk.

 How he still takes his little blanket everywhere he goes and cannot sleep without it.  When you pick him up, he will often pat your shoulder and explain, "Blanket!" reminding you to put in on your shoulder so he can lay on it and nestle his little forehead up against your neck.

 How he is always watching Creed, just like the the photo below, where he's watching Creed while snacking on a half eaten apple he picked up off the ground (Creed's friend Lydia had just dropped it, and I failed to snatch it from Ollie before the damage was already done. Yuck)

 The way he giggles with glee when you put him in a swing and begs to swing the rest of the day away.

 The way he grabs my phone at every chance and has filled it with funny self-portraits. It's pretty amazing how well he can use it.

 The way he adores Mickey Mouse and Elmo, and points to the computer, begging to watch Youtube clips of them, and he's so happy, how can you not loves those annoying squeaky voices?

 The way his seizures exhaust all of us, but most especially him.

The way he didn't wake up today.

Which sent us on yet another excruciating ER journey with him.  It has happened once before, but it was no less terrifying today, in fact, it was worse because it lasted longer.  To see him laying with his eyes open, not responding to anything, not moving, not speaking strikes a terror in me that I cannot begin to explain.  I spent hours wondering what I could have done wrong and feeling like I failed him some way.

The test results came back slowly one by one, each normal result leaving us a little more baffled and feeling a little more helpless until, finally, we got an answer, or at least a symptom; extremely low blood sugar.  Easy to temporarily fix, but very scary as we are now left to consider the possible causes.  The nightmares are cycling in my mind: hormone and pituitary gland problems, maybe.  A tumor secreting extra insulin, possibly.  Something in his brain . . . I try to remind myself, that it could all be nothing, right?

The ER doctor has probably been practicing longer than I have been alive and he has never seen a patient with provoked seizures like Ollie.  He said it makes him a zebra among horses.  This new problem seems to be unrelated so he said it makes him something like a rare subspecies of zebra.  The whole conversation I kept losing focus and thinking about how zebras are Ollie's favorite animal and how we just got him a new Christmas book about Ollie the Zebra.

So now we will head in for more testing and we will play the waiting game, and I stop trying to imagine the what ifs, and focus on how grateful I am to have Ollie the zebra in my life, walking and talking again. And I feel grateful to look around me to see Christmas everywhere, a reminder of another baby who lived at another time and provides much needed hope and peace.