Day One

January 22, 2010, was similar to every other Friday. I dropped Davianna off at school then I headed to work. Mirjan dropped Ryan off at school and then started her busy day of schoolwork and a thousand other activities with Emma by her side.

When the kids got home, they played outside with their friends on the trampoline and then on their bikes and scooters.

I look forward to coming home from work every day. I have been blessed with a beautiful wife and three, wonderful children. I could not have dreamed of such blessings, and I love every minute with them. When I open the door, Ryan always comes running and jumps on me. He has to give me a "really tight hug," which is in between a normal hug and a WWE strangle hold. Emma is usually in her high chair and immediately starts smiling and offers me her food. Davianna is either on the computer, doing a workbook, or playing. I usually get "Hi, Daddy" and the look that tells me she is growing up too fast. When I sit down on the couch, she usually sits next to me and puts her head on my shoulder....perfect!

After dinner, I was cleaning up the garage with a little help from the kids. Ryan always wants to help and will follow me around asking what can he do to help me. Painting, fixing, putting things together, cleaning the garage, etc....he wants to learn and has no problem doing the grunt work. Anyway, it was getting close to bed time, which meant bath time.

Each night I give the kids a bath, read some books, read their devotional, listen to their prayers, and then put Ryan and Davianna to bed. Mirjan still puts Emma to sleep because she has chronic mamitis (attached to her mother...especially at bedtime). However, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Emma and I have been overcoming that since Mirjan has gone back to school for her teaching certification.

Well, tonight I was trying to finish up with the garage, so I asked Mirjan to skip the bath time and just put the kids to sleep. I told her that I would be up to say good night. She started to put them to bed, but then decided that they needed a bath because they were playing outside most of the day.

Before long, Mirjan was calling me to come look at Ryan. His scrotum was extremely large, and she didn't think that looked right. Immediately we knew something was wrong. We were positive it didn't look like this several days ago. I looked at the WebMD app on the iPhone and everything associated with these symptons was not good. However, all of them said if there was no pain or redness, that it was not an emergency. Mirjan scheduled an appointment with Ryan's doctor for the next day.

I pushed all the bad stuff to the back of my mind, and started praying that night. Mirjan and I talked about it, and I told her not to get on the internet and research what we didn't know because that will drive her crazy. We just needed to pray, which we did.

After the kids were in bed, I finally got Mirjan to watch a movie with me....and stay awake. Usually, I'll start a movie, and in less than 20 minutes, Mirjan would be leaning on me sound asleep. Tonight, however, we watched "The Proposal," and she laughed so hard, it made me laugh. Ryan was in our minds all night, but believed everything would be just fine as has always been the case.

When he was 2 weeks old, he was in Children's Hospital for a week. I'm now reminded of the most helpless feeling as his vein broke and the next 45 minutes doctors tried to find vein for his IV...he was screaming the whole time. They couldn't find one, so they said they would wait another day for the tests to come back before going into surgery. All we could do then is let God take control, He did, and Ryan went home with us two days later.