Two tired parents, a silly child, and a sick puppy

Poor Daisy! She hasn't been feeling very well lately and has visited 3 different veterinarians in the past week. But we think we found out one of her problems. The other issue still needs to be followed. To sum it up, she was lethargic, trembling, had diarrhea, yelped a few times when being picked up, would not jump onto the couch, stopped walking half way through her morning walk, etc. This all started on Sunday. After the emergency vet could not find anything on Monday, one of the other doctors at her regular vet hospital could not find anything in his exam on Tuesday (he did find a elevated liver enzyme, though), we went back to our preferred regular vet and he did an ultrasound and x-rays Friday. Well, she has a compression in the disc space between L3/L4 in her spine. He saw it on the x-ray and did another orthopedic exam (her third this week). Sure enough, she was in severe pain when he pressed on the space between L3/L4. Poor puppy! So now she is supposed to be on a strict resting regime (yeah, tell Daisy that she cannot run up or down the stairs...she's not listening!), is on steroids, and basically can't jump, play frisbee, or catch balls for 4-6 weeks. She'll probably have some sort of back issues the rest of her life. Dr. Felrice said it was either due to wear and tear on the disc or it could be from an injury. So now we are trying to catch her before she bolts up and down the stairs (gosh, and we live in a townhome with 3 levels!) and will probably get a ramp or stairs for her to get on and off our bed. If the Prednisone doesn't help, she might have to have a CT or MRI and possibly have surgery. Pray that it doesn't get that bad! Her liver enzyme still needs to be futher followed. I need to get some old lab tests from Atlanta, but it looks like it's a newer occurrance, as 6 years ago her liver enzymes were normal. Hopefully everything with that turns out fine. The vet isn't too worried about it, as her back is the primary issue right now. She's feeling much better today, so that's definitely good.Our other child, Evan, has been as goofy as ever. He got this table with stackable blocks for his 1-year birthday and it's in the kitchen. Well, Thursday, he decided to flip the table over and push it around the first level of our house.This child loves to laugh!

It makes a good step stool to look outside!

Evan is saying more and more words. Earlier this week he said alligator (really!). He loves to point to different body parts on him or Mommy or Daddy. He'll gouge out your eyes if you ask where those are. He knows the nose, mouth, eyes, ears, toes, head. It's adorable!

Here's a quick look at our backyard now that the trees have grown in. Sometimes we can still see deer under all the tree cover. There's one in this picture on the right side, but it's hard to make out. It's nice and peaceful to not have a bunch of houses in our backyard. The nature is awesome (deer, squirrels, foxes, birds (lots of cardinals), bunnies, snakes (yes...big, black, and long - yuck!), and chipmunks). Seeing all those animals is a good learning experience for Evan and they drive Daisy bananas!