Mama-2-My-3

11-11-11

2011-11-11T09:12:00.000-05:00

Today is 11-11-11 and while that may seem like a really neat day to you, it's a really special to me because it's my 11th wedding anniversary!! Yes 11-11-11 is my 11th anniversary!!! How cool is that??

This is my second installment of my trying to post every Friday!! Hey, two in a row is good for me!! We had a pretty quiet week but got a lot done. We studied about the end of the Ice Age and how the people spread out after the climate changed. We also finished our study on the arctic tundra in science and began studying the cactus desert. We're moving on to studying Egypt, so the desert study will go great with that. We made clay maps of the area where people first settled after the Flood, near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and added water to the lakes and rivers and put ice cubes where the great wall of ice was. It was pretty cool. We finished our book "All of a Kind Family". It was a cute story and really gave you a sense of what life was like for a Jewish family living in New York City in the early 1900's. I wasn't always in agreement with the parenting that occurred in it, but I used that as a opportunity to talk to the kids about how they are supposed to act in different situations. Overall it was a nice school week.

I tried a new recipe this week, Beef and Broccoli over rice. Sort of what you might get at a chinese take out restaurant. It needs some tweaking but it was pretty good. We'll have it again.

We're 29 weeks pregnant today! I got my results from my glucose test and I'm negative for Gestational Diabetes. That's good!! I'm also not anemic. So those were nice to get. We bought our little girl the cutest little sleeper last night. It was from Target. They're carrying a Disney line now and this one is themed Alice in Wonderland. It's very cute. Preparations for her arrival are going pretty well. We got the bunk bed set up in Joshua's room, so Abby can sleep in there if she needs to, if the baby is waking up a lot. She and Abby will be sharing a room (and Abby is SOOOO excited about it!!!). We also got Noah a new desk from Ikea since we had to take his other one out to put up the bunk bed. It's very nice, though my hands were sore from putting in all the screws!!! We'll hopefully get the crib and set it up in the next few weeks, we already bought the bedding set. It matches Abby's owl theme. I'm hoping to get some freezer cooking done in the next few weeks, so we have some meals ready to go when she arrives. I also need to organize all of the kids clothes that I pulled out at the end of summer. You know, the ones that no longer fit them. I save about 75% of their clothes and keep them organized in bins in the basement. I need to get that done again. It's coming in handy, now that we have our "2nd generation" of kids coming along!

Well I"m off to wash the sheets today and do some quick cleaning before we go visit my parents. Have a great week!!

Remember Me?

2011-11-04T08:37:00.000-05:00

Hello, anyone out there???

Well, I just thought I'd get around to posting today as I've wanted to for awhile now. I like having this blog as a record of what we do as a family if nothing else. I'd like to make Friday's a blogging day as our school work load is considerably shorter on Friday's (our main curriculum only goes 4 days a week). So it's Friday and here I am.

We had a nice summer, spent a lot of time with extended family. Always love that. Had some fun with church family as well. Abby was baptised in September, that was a big day for our family. We also had a vacation to Florida. We spent a few days at Vero Beach. Joshua HATED the ocean. He would scream at the top of his lungs if you let the water touch him! He loved the pool though and didn't mind playing in the sand as long as it was a bit back from the water! Noah and Abby loved it all. I love watching them gain their independence in these situations. They could've stayed at the beach for days!!

We also did a stop in Disney World. Everyone had a great time. Joshua and I took it at a slower pace, with rests at the hotel and a few half days. Overall it was a nice family vacation, but I was ready to be home!!!

Now we've settled in to a nice routine with our schooling. Our "core" curriculum is Preparing Hearts for Him by Heart of Dakota. I love it. I have tried so many different curriculums and thought I might have to just make up my own, but I'm so glad I've found this one. I think the Lord sent it to me!! Our schedule looks like this:

AM:
Bible Study/Memorization
Math
Spelling
English
Read Aloud (this doesn't go with our curriculum, I just pick a book I want to read)
Kid's Quiet Reading (a chapter in the book I chose for them)

PM:
Poetry (this year we're doing the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson, we read them, talk about them, etc.)
History Reading (a selection from a "living" book)
Storytime (another selection that expounds on the theme we're currently studying in history, sometimes from the Bible)
History Study (currently we're going through a Draw and Write book where the kids learn to draw something from the history lesson, like wooly mammoths, or they copy in cursive paragraphs from the book, but after this book it's more of independent reading through chapter books. Noah also has another book that he reads as well, as he's older and needs more in depth information)
History Project (every week, we work on a small project that goes along with the theme, so far we've made shields with a coat of arms, painted a rainbow while going over warm and cool colors and made cave drawings of bulls and mammoths)
History Activity (this rotates daily between research (researching something to do with the weekly topic, i.e. coats of arms), vocabulary work, geography (using maps, globes and atlases to learn or review geography) and timeline (adding to a timeline we're making on the back of our pantry door!).
Science (the science lessons are meant to be done more independently so as to prepare them to further work independently as they grow older, so they have a reading selection to do everyday and then they either, do an activity such as a drawing a picture and copying a selection that describes it, or narrate to me what they've read, or answer a few questions in their notebooks, or on Thursdays they do a simple experiment to explain what they've learned. I love how the lessons tie into the history lessons as well. As now we're learning about the Ice Age and times after the Flood, so in science they're learning about the tundra ecosystem. Love that!)

That's pretty much it. The morning schedule takes about 2 hours, the afternoon takes about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. I love how thorough it is and feel like nothing is left out. This schedule is only Monday - Thursday. The curriculum is written as a 4 day. So on Friday's we do spelling tests and finish up anything we haven't done. Like today we're doing an extra Bible study so we'll be more on course to hit a Christmas study in December and we're doing a chapter in our read aloud as we didn't get to it yesterday. But if the kids are at a point in math or english where it's time for a test, we'll go ahead and do that on Friday as well, so we can start Monday fresh. This also leaves time for field trips, family projects (where real life learning happens!!) or errand running (you know for some "socialization"). It's working really well and I love it!

So I think in my side bar, I'll try to keep an updated list of the books we're reading, in case anyone wonders and I'll try every Friday to update with a new post. We'll see!!

I'm on the kitchen computer and I don't have many pictures on it, so here's one of Abby reading to Flint the poodle at Half Price Books and a 28 week belly shot I just took with the computers photo booth!! You can see Abby's cave drawing in the background!

Well I"m off to pay bills and we're working on a project in Noah's room today, so we need to get started on that. Oh and of course, Friday is when we reach another week in our pregnancy so today we're 28 weeks!! That means it's the start of the third trimester!! I can't believe it!! Can't wait to meet our new little girl!!!

Old North Bridge

2011-06-07T22:06:00.000-05:00

One of our favorite stops during our trip in April was at the Old North Bridge over the Concord River in Concord, Massachusetts. We had read so many stories about this scene and what happened here that it was very moving and a bit emotional for all of us to actually be right where the Revolutionary War began. This is a stop in the MinuteMan National Park which is a phenomenal place to visit. The visitor's center has a fabulous film/enactment that really helps explain the events that happened in April 1775. I can't say enough good things about it.

Noah wrote their initials in the sand on the bank of river. I loved it!

A really cool tree on the property in front of the home.

The monument you can see behind the kids in the first three pictures was dedicated on the 4th of July 1837 and it was said that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his famous "Concord Hymn" for this occasion. A famous stanza from that poem goes:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world

It was just really cool to visit here. I would definitely recommend it. They have a home at the site of the bridge that was there in 1775 (it's hard to imagine having a home so close to the "action" going on there) and they have displays and artifacts and really kind and helpful park rangers inside!! And if you come with kids ask to do the Jr. Ranger program. It's free and it's fun!

How We Roll!

2011-05-30T22:09:00.000-05:00

Before it got so stinkin' hot out, we spent several mornings outside, swinging and reading our book. The kids loved being read to this way. It was actually easier for me because everyone was attentive and not wanting to be doing anything else. Loving that "school" for us insn't confined to a classroom, but rather we try to learn wherever we are! And that's how we roll!

The post in which I explain how I survived!

2011-05-29T13:13:00.000-05:00

Hi, I'm Jamie and I survived the climb up this!! It's the Bunker Hill (actually called Breed's Hill) monument in Boston. It was 294 steps of out of breathness, leg achiness and children pushiness. But I did it!! I went with just Noah and Abby. Daddy (that lucky nut) was sitting with a sleeping Joshua in the car. The kids were nothing if not mean about my slow ascent. I mean come on, it's a lot of steps. Once we hit 100, I made them stop every 25 for a quick breather!! Abby told me going down I wasn't allowed to stop. But I did. It's hard going down too!! We did get a great view of the city from up there (even if it was rainy and foggy) although there was a huge drain in the center of the floor up at the top that scared me to death and I would not let the kids go near it!! (It dropped allllll the way down!!). I had wiggly jello legs afterwards but I was glad we did it. My legs however were furious!! So much so that for the next few days if I wanted to even step up on a curb, I paid for it!! So here's some pics of the view and the kids at the top.

Just to give more appreciation for how tall it is, I took this picture as we drove past on the highway. It's tall!!

Boston Common

2011-05-13T22:19:00.001-05:00

We have so many pictures from our trip to Boston and Philadelphia, that I'm not sure where to start, but here's some from our visit to Boston Common. We actually went twice, which is why you'll notice that the kids change clothes! I loved Noah and Abby in their tri corner hats!! Of course we talked about how the British had set up camps here in the years right before the Revolutionary War and that cows had grazed there at one point as well. And that all the people we'd learned about from that time had walked these actual grounds like Samuel Adams, John and Abigail Adams, George Washington, Paul Revere, John Hancock. Super cool!!

I have pictures of Noah wearing this exact same coat, running in this exact same park, after the exact same (type) of animal-squirrels!! My boys!! So cute! Of course, Noah's pics aren't digital, so I can't put them on here unless I take them out of the scrapbook, scan them in and load them. I'm not doing that tonight. Maybe another day!!

"Whas Zat?" Joshua asks. It's a squirrel Joshy!!

The duck statues were something we really wanted to see as well. We saw them on our first trip to Boston back in 2001 when Noah was Joshy's age. We've even had a book on our bookshelves for many years now called "I'm Going to Boston to Visit the Ducks!". I couldn't wait to give Abby and Joshua their turn on the ducks and of course to see Noah on them again!!

He seems a bit apprehensive!!

Just a finger!!

Awww, so cute!!!

Ps, if you're at all interested, I did a "week in review" style post right below this one. Just keep scrolling!

Week in Review May 9-13 2011

2011-05-13T22:15:00.000-05:00

I've been wanting to do sort of "week in review" posts lately, mainly because I'm soooo behind in my scrapbooking that I fear if I don't write down what happens in our lives, I may forget it!! So, while I may not get to it every week, I'm going to start now!

In schooling this week, the kids finished week 29 in spelling (3 weeks to go until book is finished). Both kids had math tests and both got A's. Abby does however need some help understanding fractions. I need to get some hands on materials to work on that with her. She can answer the questions correctly, but she doesn't understand the why part of it. Noah is doing a unit on fractions as well, working to reduce them to their lowest common factor, adding and subtracting them, deciding if they're equivalent, etc.. He seems to be understanding pretty well. We finished unit 2 in science about heavenly bodies (stars, asteroids, comets and meteors) did a meteor experiment, created comet artworks and took a quiz. I was pretty happy with the level of comprehension there. We finished our first unit in our new history books. We did creation through the flood. The kids made their own game called Creation Memory and the pretended to be Adam naming all the animals which really showed their creativity!! We also made fossils of the kids feet and handprints. We read "Adam and His Kin". What a fascinating book. We also finished reading "Emily's Runaway Imagination" by Beverly Cleary. A cute, fun book and taught us a little about life in Oregon in the early 1900's. We are doing our first writing unit in our new English books. Noah is writing a compare/contrast essay and Abby is writing instructions for a game. That is going very well. I'm really liking our choice for that so far. We also finished our first unit in our new Bible study, where we memorized Psalm 109: 6-10 and learned the hymn I Sing the Mighty Power of God along with our other studies. It was a good week.

Other business: We went to a new park (new to us) on Wednesday. It's called the Patricia Allyn park. It's between Lebanon and Centerville. It's fabulous (pictures to come at a later date). I loved it there and I think it may be one we frequent! Abby had piano on Tuesday. Her teacher was so impressed that last week Abby wrote out the check for our May payment. She thought it was so cute to be in her handwriting! We had a great evening Monday as we grilled out hot dogs, ate outside, planted two new trees and just played for awhile. Noah had KidzMin on Wednesday and we had small group on Thursday (B), a great talk about trusting God in our marriages. Friday night Abby and I went to Grammy's church (Steve's Mom) for a mother and daughter tea. We arrived late due to a traffic tie up, but it was a nice evening anyway.

Oh and I had a fabulous Mother's Day last Sunday! I received homemade cards that were worth at least $5 each!! I also got a new canister set for the kitchen, something I've wanted for awhile. I was pampered, loved on and doted on. My husband even gave me a really long back rub. It was a great day!

I think that's the highlights for this week!

Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania

2011-05-07T21:18:00.000-05:00

When we drove to Boston last month, we decided it would be fun, and only an hour or so out of the way, to drive through Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania! In that part of Pennsylvania, there are many radio stations that play polka music. It was awesome!! It reminded us so much of the Groundhog Day movie, so we played the music, and made the trip into town. We found that they are very much proud of their groundhog legacy, and show their adoration for that little brown guy all over the town.!

When we first arrived, we stopped at the huge welcome sign!

I loved the groundhog car wash! So cute!

They have statue groundhogs all over the town like this guy. Sort of like how Cincinnati has flying pigs. This was actually a Phil statue right outside his burrow where he lives the other 364 days of the year.

He's in there hiding!

Do you see him, he's in the bottom?

In the park where his burrow is, there are some cannons. Noah was being silly and I wanted to show you more of the statues in the background.

And a wooden groundhog.

We only stayed a little while. Saw Phil, drove around town, Joshua napped. But it was one of those spontaneous moments that I just love. It was a lot of fun. I'm glad we did it.

Homeschool Swap

2011-03-25T08:49:00.000-05:00

I decided to do a swap with another homeschooling mama via The Homeschool Post. We prayed for each other, and sent each other a package full of fun gifts. I swapped with Dawn at Guiding Light Homeschool. She sent me a box full of things I just love. I got a beautiful frame for two pictures of our family, a box of nice pencils (I never seem to have pencils that sharpen properly and these are fantastic), a package of yummy vanilla scented candles, two boxes of candy (the gummies were eaten with 24 hours of being in my house!), and several things with inspirational verses from the Bible which were so appreciated. Just her prayers alone we were worth it all, and the gifts were a huge bonus!! This was a lot of fun and I know I'll do it again sometime soon!

Thank you Dawn!!

Upward 2010-2011

2011-02-27T19:43:00.003-05:00

We completed another year of Upward basketball and cheerleading a few weeks ago. We can't say enough about this program, it's always a good experience. Here's a few photos from this year.

And this is Joshua being a good spectator watching his brother and sister (and wearing Daddy's hat!).

My Patriots

2011-02-18T14:03:00.005-05:00

I think I've mentioned (probably more than anyone cares to know!) that we're studying the American Revolution and have been since September. Well, while we were in Disney last November, we couldn't pass us the chance to purchase tri-cornered hats and muskets in the American Pavilion at EPCOT. (It was just an accident that Abby had a braid with a bow in her hair. It really added to the accuracy!!) It was perfect timing too, because when we stepped back outside we were able to watch the Spirit of America Fife and Drum Corps march in front of us! I loved watching Noah and Abby standing there in their hats watching! So cute!

Back home, Joshua wanted to wear the hat and looked mighty cute in it too!! I'm pretty sure when we go to Disney again in March we'll be purchasing him one!!

I love this shot!! My two courageous boys, ready to fight!!

And of course my girl is no wimp either!! She's ready in a "minute". She's our little "Molly Pitcher". Ready to jump in when needed!!

We'll be taking the hats with us when we take our trip to Boston and Philadelphia in April. I can't wait to watch my kids run across the Old North Bridge with their hats and guns, re-enacting the scene from the first day of battle. It's these things that I know they'll never forget and just cements in their memories the history that made this country. I just love it.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

2011-02-01T10:16:00.002-05:00

This is a recipe that's been requested a few times, so I thought I'd post it here. I originally got this from my dad who I think got it from someone he works with. Everytime it's been made for a crowd, they love it! I like to call it a "living" recipe, because it's very forgiving and if you're missing something, you can easily substitute and it'll be just as delicious. I'll give you first the original recipe and then the recipe I just used this past week, they're a tad different, but honestly the taste is almost exactly the same!

Ingredients:

4 C shredded chicken (freshly cooked or canned)

1 qt chicken broth

2 cans of black beans (drained and rinsed)

8 oz green chili's

2 medium onions diced

4 cloves of garlic minced

1 bag frozen corn (or 1 can, drained)

4 tsp chili powder

2 tsp oregano

2 tblsp olive oil

2 28oz cans of crushed tomatoes

monterey jack or pepper jack cheese and tortilla chips to top the soup

The ingredients I used:

about 4 C of shredded chicken (appx 2 breasts)

1 qt (box) of chicken stock

1 can of black beans (drained and rinsed)

1 sm. can of green chili's (not sure how many ounces are in the small can)

about 2 tblsp of minced garlic (I buy the pre-minced jar and save it)

1 medium onion chopped in food processor (I lump chop and then freeze them in portions)

1 bag of frozen corn

4 tsp chili powder

2 tsp oregano

about 2 tblsp olive oil (I don't measure!)

3 14.5 oz cans of diced tomatoes (I mash them a bit with a potato masher first, but you don't have to!) with juice

pepper jack cheese and tortilla chips

Basic directions:

Cook the chicken! I usually put about 4 chicken breasts in the crockpot with a bit of water and then let them go for about 5-6 hours and then shred them when cooked. I usually get enough chicken for two dinners that way and I just save the second portion for a different dinner later in the week. I just use 2 forks to shred the chicken but you can use whatever works for you! You can also use the canned chicken breast.

Once chicken is cooked set it aside. In a large pot (or small sauce pan if you're going to cook soup in the crockpot), saute the onions in the olive oil until translucent then add the garlic. Let that cook for just a couple of minutes then add the chili powder and oregano. This will make a thick paste like consistency.

At this point you basically just add all remaining ingredients to pot (or transfer paste to crockpot and then add ingredients) except for cheese and chips. On stove let ingredients simmer for an hour or two on low. In crockpot leave on low for about 6 hours or high for maybe 3 hours. I like to make chicken the day before in crockpot and then make the soup in the morning the next day in the crockpot and it's ready at dinner time and super simple!

When serving just add some shredded cheese and tortilla chips on top and it's soooo delicious!! Even my kids love it!

One of the ingredients that is always different for me is the tomatoes. I just use what I have on hand. Maybe it's 2 cans of diced tomatoes and 1 can of tomato sauce, or 1 can of crushed tomatoes and 2 cans of diced tomatoes, or whatever! (Tomatoes are in the mega sale at Kroger this week, hint hint!!). Whatever tomatoes I add to it, it's always delicious. If I'm using the diced tomatoes, I do like to crush them a tad with a potato masher when I add them to the pot. But you certainly don't have to do that. Oh and another tip, you can substitute one of the cans of tomatoes and the chili's for a can of rotel! If it's the original rotel, it may be a bit spicier than the mild version! But we like spicy in this house, so that's fine for us!

This is a very forgiving and super delicious soup (and pretty healthy if you don't "mound" the cheese and chips on top!!). Let me know if you try and if you have any questions!! Sorry no pic, I didn't get one the other day!

Happy 11th Birthday Noah!!

2011-01-18T21:33:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday to my first born, the one who made me a mama, the one who fills my heart with joy, the one who amazes me daily with his strength and determination, the one who works hard to do his very best, the one who proves daily his devotion to his Creator. I thank that same Creator for my boy. So grateful to have you in my life. I love you so much. Happy Birthday Noah Lucas, I adore you and pray all the blessings the Lord can bestow on you. Can't wait to celebrate many, many more birthdays!

He's 11 people!! Wow!!!

Fall for the Zoo

2010-12-31T09:27:00.004-05:00

We visited the zoo this fall. It's nice to visit during the cooler months. It can be really hot there in the summer!! The kids have been studying animals of the 6th day of creation, so we go often so they can see some of the animals up close.

Here's Joshua's awesome big brother showing him the flamingos! I am so blessed with my kids.

My uncle is working on the remodel of the cat house and he told us that these white tigers are super gentle and loving!! He said you can pet them and play with them. How cool would that be!!

Joshua was fascinated by all the neat bugs in the insect house. I love that he's starting to take interest in these things.

And we saw this condor (I think) stretching his wings and boy were those some awesome wings! The wingspan was over 6 feet!! God's creation is incredible!!!

It's Bouncy, Bouncy Fun!!

2010-12-29T21:10:00.006-05:00

Our little girl loves to bounce!!

So for her 8th Birthday, her grandparents granted her wish and surprised her with a trampoline!

Until the snow moved in she was out there every day

bouncing and bouncing

and bouncing and bouncing!!!

She flies up and and plops down and then up again she goes!!

Hair flying, legs up arms flailing!!

She giggles and smiles and comes up with new "moves".

She loves her new trampoline.

Her face says it all!!!

On Being a Spontaneous Mom (Reds Rally)

2010-10-05T10:41:00.010-05:00

I've always tried to be a spontaneous mom. I want my kids to see that even if it means sacrifices on my part, I'm willing to pick up and go at a moments notice all in the name of fun and memories. Yesterday was one of those times. I decided at the last minute, to pack up the three kids and head downtown to the Reds Rally at Fountain Square. I so wanted this to be something Noah tells his children when he's grown "I remember when the Reds won the division, my mom took us downtown to the rally at the square and we got to see all the players before they left for Philadelphia" or something like that. I won't know for some time if he'll remember it like that, or at all, but I have a feeling he will!

So we waited for Joshua to get his morning nap in and then we head out with a packed lunch, a stuffed backpack, a camera and our baby carrier. We made it there a little after 1. The festivities were scheduled to begin around 2 with the players not arriving until 3:30. When we first got there, there were a few people walking around, eating and buying merchandise and then there were some who had already gotten spots near the stage to get a good few of the players. I decided it would be best for us to join those at the barrier around the stage to be sure we'd get a good view, I mean that's what we were there for! Everything was fine for awhile. The Reds Rally Pack came out and starting tossing out Reds themed items to the crowd (plastic kids batting helmets, stickers, soft cloth balls, dog toys, bobbleheads, etc..) and the crowd went nuts!! If it wasn't for the help of the sweet lady standing next to us, our kids would've been squished up against the fence by a couple of grown men trying to get freebies (one of them also pushed me aside and I nearly fell with Joshua in the carrier). I thank God so much for her. She allowed the kids to get even closer up, helped me load all of our goodies (yes we got our fair share of the freebies!) into my backpack and helped me keep the crowd off my kids!

So we ended up waiting there for about 2 hours (a bit difficult with a 25 pound baby strapped to my front and a 8 pound backpack strapped to my back!!) but it was so worth it. When we heard the sirens coming up the street and got to hear Marty announcing the team it was just so cool. We had a really great time and I'm so glad I did it. With the pictures, memorabilia and memories, I know I'll never forget it and hopefully neither will the kids!

Ready and waiting. Face painted. Reds shirt on. Ready to go!!

Ready and waiting. Face painted. Reds hat on. Reds shirt on. Ready to go!!

I got Abby and I matching Reds (and Bengals!) scrunchies at the Applefest in Lebanon a week or so ago. They were perfect for this day!

We were so close to the fountain that when the wind blew, we would get wet from the sprays!

My boys!

This is Joe Zerhusen, the announcer at the games. It was neat to put a face to the voice I'm so familiar with!

This is Jim Scott from 700 WLW. It was kind of surreal to see him in person because I used to listen to him every morning as I drove to the hospital to be with Joshua. That was the only time I listened to him, so to hear his voice again brought back many memories.

Noah and his balloon, ready to go!! (That's the lady that helped us with striped shirt on).

The hall of famer: Marty Brennaman!!!!

This was the big screen above fountain square and that's Noah's balloon showing up in it!

The team arrived and here you can see manager Dusty Baker, Bronson Arroyo, Joey Votto, Drew Stubbs, Laynce Nix, Homer Bailey, Scott Rolen, Travis Wood, Paul Janish and many others.

Here's another shot. You can see hall of famer Joe Morgan in the front as well as Jonny Gomes, Ryan Hannigan, Brandon Phillips, Coco Cordero and others.

Here Dusty is addressing the crowd and you can see Jay Bruce behind him.

And after all the speeches, there were fireworks to send our Reds off to Philly to to win the first two games and bring the win home!! Very exciting, can't wait for tomorrow's game!

GO REDS!!!!!!

Happy 8th Birthday Abby!!!

2010-09-24T12:16:00.000-05:00

Today is my sweet, sweet Abigail Corde's 8th Birthday!! I couldn't imagine my life for a split second without my baby girl. She is the sparkle in our days and the laughter in our home. She is truly one of a kind!! She is my little partner, shopping buddy, cooking apprentice, "girl talk" accomplice, toe nail painting amiga, one and only daughter. My freckled little girl has filled me with joy from the day she was born. She is just amazing. She loves all animals, but especially dogs and horses. She has an understanding of The Word, far beyond her years and we've been told by two different adults on separate occasions, that she has amazed them with this understanding and wisdom. She also loves books and reads on her own (unassigned) for hours a day. She loves riding her bike and scooter, drawing with chalk on the driveway, shooting baskets with Noah and Daddy. She has loved swinging for as long as I can remember and takes great pride in the fact that she can swing herself very high now!! She desperately wants a sister to share her room with. She loves the color pink (yellow is second!) and is learning to mix colors and patterns to make cute outfits! She's not a big fan of getting her hair brushed and done for the day, but willingly obliges Mommy! She loves to eat Macaroni and Cheese, bacon pizza from Larosas and plain M&M's. She loves her some chocolate milk too! She has an incredible bounty of vocabulary and has always amazed me with how well she can speak and get her point across. She is also quite feisty and takes nothing from nobody! In one minute she can be wrestling or lightsaber dueling with Noah and then turn around and carry around her baby doll in a backpack carrier while loving on Jasmine. I love how "well rounded" she is! I just love this blue eyed beauty and am so incredibly thankful that God gave me a daughter and especially that He gave me this one! And just as I did for Joshua two weeks ago, here's Abby's 7th year in pictures!

September 2009 (her birthday party)

October 2009

November 2009

December 2009

January 2010

February 2010

March 2010

April 2010

May 2010

June 2010

July 2010

August 2010

September 2010

Happy Birthday my sweet Beeder. I love you so, so much. I pray you'll have a healthy, safe and fantastic 8th year and can't wait to see what blessings God has in store for you.

Goings on

2010-09-14T08:03:00.004-05:00

The kids on a recent visit downtown for cupcakes. Yes we go downtown for cupcakes every now and then. I think if you had them, you would too. They are yummy!!

All's well here at our home. We're getting into a busier time of the year. The kids have two more soccer nights. I really love the league we're in. It's just for instruction and fun. Of course the kids add in their own bit of competition, but there's no official score keeping or anything like that, it's just for fun.

We're getting settled into our new church. It's a much, much smaller church than our previous one. It's nice though that people actually notice if you're not there. They do a monthly brunch after church and it rotates houses. I love this. It's a great way to get to know everyone better. There are a lot of homeschoolers in this church. That was something we were kind of looking for. We really wanted to have some encouragement from other believers/homeschoolers. They also believe in family worship which was the biggest thing we were looking for. Everyone from infant on up, stays in the service during the prayer time and worship singing, then 3rd grade and younger can (if they want to, there's no pressure) go to either the nursery (infant thru K) or to the one and only Sunday school class (1st - 3rd). After third grade they are expected to stay in the service with their parents and here the sermon. I love it. We were doing this already at our other church, but there we were looked at as oddballs when we brought all of our kids into the service. We just believe it's so important for kids to learn how to worship, learn how to sit respectfully, learn how to hear God's Word in the church setting. Did I mention , I love it? Anyway, so starting this week we are also in a small group that meets in homes twice a month and we're studying a biblical parenting book. We went to our first meeting last night. It looks like it's going to be a nice time of learning and fellowshipping. I'm excited about that too. And, Noah will be starting their version of a "youth group" tomorrow. I say it like that, because they make it very clear that their group looks nothing like the silly, entertainment driven youth groups of most churches. They are very serious about it. They planned extra times throughout the year to do fun things like on Saturday afternoons and such (like a scavenger hunt and an amazing race), but Wednesday nights are for serious learning about God's Word.

I thought I would use the time that Noah was away at his group to mentor my little girl. So I'm making up a little schedule and every Wednesday we will learn to either cook or bake something and then learn a specific chore or domestic responsibility in depth. My plan is to over the year, get to each thing at least 3 or 4 times with the hope that at the end she would be able to do some things on her own, like bake a banana bread or fill the dishwasher, etc... I've also ordered us a sewing ebook, as I'm just a beginner like her!! So that's something else we can work on in that time. She is VERY excited about all of it. This morning she said "tomorrow we get to do our girl time!!". I'm so blessed to have this girl.

So we have soccer, church, church brunch, small group, youth group and girl night. We also have Upward starting in November. Noah in basketball and Abby in cheerleading and I called yesterday about seeing about piano lessons for Abby. She is very interested in the piano, especially after getting a keyboard from a cousin last year. During MAD camp (music, art and drama) this summer she and Noah learned a few easy songs like twinkle, twinkle and old macdonald and she has been playing them over and over. Hopefully I'll be able to work that out for her too. So with all of that going on, we'll be pretty busy, but I always limit the kids to 2 outside the home activities at a time, so it doesn't get too crazy.

In Joshua news: He is eating like a pro, still taking bottles, but slowly transitioning to a cup. He still hasn't taken those first steps, but seems closer every day. His 8th tooth is popping through and he officially has at least one word in his vocabulary and it's "bite". When he wants another bite he says "bi". He definitely says mama and dada, but I'm not convinced he knows what those mean yet and I'm fairly certain he says some form of "doggie" when he sees Jasmine or another dog. It's a two syllable sound with and "ie" ending. I've been working on that one with him. He amazes with how easily how learns things. Show him how to work a toy once and he's got it. He's super smart! We went to the a reunion picnic at the hospital. We got to see some of our nurses and they were all amazed at how big he was and how much hair he had. The picnic was one the one year anniversary of his first surgery. I can't tell you how strange it was to sit in the cafeteria with him, feeding him, laughing with him and remember that day exactly a year ago, when I sat in the same cafeteria full of worry as he was in surgery. On the way out I looked up at the windows where the surgery waiting room is and just thanked God I was not sitting there and was instead taking my baby in the car home with me. I guess it was kind of a closure thing. That part is over, no looking back.

In school we're about to start a study on the Revolutionary War. I'm very excited about it because we're going to read close to 50 books during it, plus act things out, cook period meals, wear period costumes (made by us!), do crafts and activities and lots of hands on learning during it, all leading up to a trip in the early spring to visit a lot of the war sites in Boston and Philadelphia. I can't wait to learn right along with them! I'm also making up a study of Ohio's canal history and have some field trips in mind for that. I thought it would be fun to make a scrapbook of that study since we'll be visiting so many sites. We're working along in math, spelling, english, and writing. Abby has made huge leaps in her handwriting this year. I'm so relieved!! I think I was just like her, even remembering that I got C's in handwriting in first grade. And then all of a sudden, I just wanted it to look nice, so I made it neater. I think that's what's happening here too. We tried all kinds of different curriculum too and now we're using Handwriting without Tears and it really seems to work with her. So she's zooming through the printing book, just to polish up her writing and then we'll start the cursive book. The kids have already read through Phillippians and Genesis in their Bibles and we're about to start Acts. Noah is working on copying Proverbs this year in a notebook and he's on chapter 4. He does 5 verses a day. We're about to finish a cute book called the 21 Balloons. We read two books recently that were really good, one was the Matchlock Gun and the other was the Courage of Sarah Noble. Both are relatively short, but very good. The Matchlock Gun is very suspenseful and well written.

Abby's going to be 8 in less than 2 weeks. We're planning her a party. She wants a horse theme (mare and foal). I'd love to find someone to bring over a horse for the kids to see, but I don't know yet.

Well that's most of what's going on around here. Thanks for reading!!

Joshua's First Year in Pics

2010-09-10T15:08:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd commemorate Joshua's first year with pics from every month. This post is scheduled to appear at exactly the minute Joshua was born one year ago: September 10th, 3:08pm.

Right after making his grand entrance on 9/10/09

September 2009

October 2009

November 2009

December 2009 (finally home!)

January 2010

February 2010

March 2010 (at Walt Disney World)

April 2010

May 2010

June 2010

July 2010

August 2010

September 2010 (riding in his birthday present)

Wow, how much he's grown over this past year!!

Joshua, you're such a strong, courageous, loving, sweet and smart boy. We are so blessed to have you in our lives. We can't wait to watch you grow each and every year. We pray God's will and blessing in your life and may you always strive to follow His Word and live by His Will. Thank you for being you and for being an answer to our prayers. We'll always thank God for you and love you forever. Happy 1st Birthday!!

Thoughts on his first birthday

2010-09-08T14:36:00.013-05:00

I can't believe we're here...celebrating this boy...this joy....

Giving him his favorite meal to munch while...
Those who helped us get through his rough start play in our yard and chat in our home...

The kids who made sure our days were always filled with laughter....play, hop and race....

Smiles and happiness are now the norm, as we finally wave goodbye to uncertainties and worry....

Jumping for joy? Maybe, but probably just jumping for fun...

Celebrating and playing, that's what it's all about....

Soooo awfully thankful for this beautiful little guy....and giving him time to swing, something he loves...

His own special cake, made by Mommy, that he doesn't have to share.....

The other cakes for our loved ones, a small thank you for all they've done this past year...

Couldn't for the life of me, believe we'd make it to this point...the days were so long and hard...yet now here we are...blowing out the candles on the cake....a dream

He begins daintily, just taking bits of icing off the top....

Then the shoveling begins....

Sure to get every bit in his mouth....

Savoring every bite....

I watch as he continues to eat and eat and eat...trying myself to savor this moment, not just for the yumminess of the cake, but the yumminess of the day and of the celebration and of this special boy....

We did it!!!

If anyone was ever deserving of a few sweet gifts....

It's my sweet, courageous boy....

I hope he enjoys them all and someday realizes how much of a gift he is to us....to me...to Daddy...to Noah...to Abby...to all of his loving and supportive family...Praising God for this gift and of the gift of all my children, I am so undeserving, yet He has blessed me three times over with these sweet, sweet babies....Thank you God, Thank you family, Thank you Joshua....

We made it baby!! The days we missed (September 10th - December 23rd) are about to begin again...I'll finally get to show you the beauty of fall and pumpkins, and apples, and Thanksgiving...things I so desperately wanted to show you last year. Now's my chance...so get ready..I. know I am!!

Happy First Birthday Joshua!! We love you so much!!

Arboretum Hopping

2010-08-30T16:46:00.005-05:00

Well we're getting really close to a certain someones first birthday and the house is all abuzz with activity preparing for that. For some reason I decided to go crazy and do a major "fall cleaning" and have cleaned out and organized every nook and cranny in this house. Now I just have a bit more putting away to do and then some basic cleaning and we'll be all ready for the party. It's not too much left really. We've donated about 8 large moving size boxes of stuff and 6 kitchen size garbage of clothes and thrown away about 12 large lawn size garbage bags of things. And yet we still have tons of stuff!! Oh well, it's good to pare down! I wonder if it's possible that I'm somehow unconsciously doing the nesting that I missed out on last year due to resting with the high blood pressure and then Joshua's early birth. Hmmm, I wonder.

Well anyway, I just thought I'd share some photos from our recent field trips to two different arboretums. We were doing a short study on Johnny Appleseed and I thought it would be fun to visit some arboretums and try to remember what it was like when walking through the forests was the mode of transportation!! So here's some photos!

PS I forgot the "real" camera, so these were taken via Iphone. My regrets.

Joshua hung out in the Ergo carrier at the first stop.

At our second stop, there was an awesome (and free!!) butterfly house. There were so many butterflies in there, it was crazy!

They also had several different ponds, full of turtles! So cool. We loved the second one so much that we brought Daddy back about a week later and spent a Saturday morning there! We'll definitely be visiting there a lot!

Joshua Loves Spaghetti

2010-08-23T21:15:00.004-05:00

A boy after his mother's heart, a lover of spaghetti!! He seems to not be able to get it in fast enough!! He even loves it, as we found out tonight, topped with Skyline and cheddar cheese! He's learning to feed his self and making messes in the meantime. But I wouldn't have it any other way! I love saucy, sloppy smooches!!!

Our Family Tree

2010-08-19T20:33:00.002-05:00

This is a little project of mine that I had wanted to do for some time now. I had been thinking for quite some time, about what I could put above our front door to fill in the space, as there is a lot of space there to fill. So I knew I wanted to make a family tree with our names on it, but I wasn't sure how I was going to do it. Paint it? Cut it out of paper? I could never decide. And then one day we were in Kohl's and I found two different vinyl sticker sets that I combined to create this. The tree and birds (three birds for three kids) was one and the saying was the other. I then printed all of our names (first and middle) onto vellum and cut them out in a leaf pattern and attached them to the tree. I am very pleased with it. It's exactly what I wanted, but didn't exactly know how to accomplish it! And below is a picture to give you an idea of where exactly it's located.

Diaper Derby

2010-08-16T21:17:00.003-05:00

Joshua participated in a diaper derby at a grocery store in the Dayton area. When we got there, we realized this was a bit bigger than we expected. We got our number 18 sticker on and waited. Baby after baby was arriving. I thought there'd be maybe 10 babies, no it turned out to be 21!! So they divided the babies up into groups of 3 or 4 and had each set race. Then the winners of the races would race again to determine 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners. Steve had to stay home and take Jasmine to the vet for an eye emergency, so I needed the help of Noah and Abby to make this work. Noah placed him at the starting line and also ran the video camera for me and Abby took all of the pictures while I had to coax him down at the finish line. The first race started out slowly. It was soooo loud in there and he couldn't here me calling him or clapping or anything. I thought it was over!!

The other parents were very distracting to him. He didn't even know I was waiting for him!

Finally, he turned around and saw me and starting coming towards me. He got about half way and then stopped again. I showed him my Iphone (he loves that thing!) and he came towards me again. This time he zoomed right up and crossed the finish line first!! I couldn't believe it!! So we waited for the other races to finish and then the 7 first place finishers all raced at the same time.

Again, he was distracted, but this time he noticed me quicker. It was so funny because he would go a little bit and then stop and look around, then go a little more and stop again!! It seemed like forever before he finally made it to the finish line and he just barely crossed before the girl next to him!! He actually crossed the finish line in 3rd place!! I was so excited!!

So out of 21 babies, we got 3rd place!! Yay, go Joshua!! And his winnings were a package of diapers and a pack of wipes. All the babies got gift bags with a bottle of water, a banana, a box of sesame street cookies and a travel wipes container. It was a lot of fun and so cute! I'm so thankful for my two big kids who just stepped right in and helped out without even a thought. So blessed.

A New School Year and Johnny Appleseed

2010-08-08T20:20:00.008-05:00

We've started our new "school" year already and so I thought I'd share some photos of that. This first picture is of the very first day, the kids are all bright eyed and bushy tailed!! Check back in a few months and the smiles won't be quite so big!! :) I decided to do a few studies on things that have affected Ohio's history this year and the first one we tackled was a quick little study on Johnny Appleseed. We read a few stories about him, did a blind apple taste test, planted some apple seeds, did apple print art, and made homemade applesauce. We're planning to plant an apple tree as well in the yard, but we're waiting for it to get a little cooler. It was nice to learn that Johnny was a Christian man who planted these apple trees to not only make a living for himself by selling them, but also to give the settlers moving west, a crop to enjoy when they arrived. We learned that there is a tree in northern Ohio that they believe to be one planted by Johnny and we'd love to take a trip to go see it, maybe in the fall. It was a fun study. We're going to also do studies on the canal systems in Ohio, the underground railroad in Ohio and a study on Ohio government with a trip to visit the capitol. I think these studies will help cement some of these ideas in their minds (and mine as well!!). It does amaze me how much I learn right along side of the kids. Well anyway, here's some pictures!!

Our apples for the taste test: a red delicious, golden delicious, granny smith and fuji.

After both blind and uncovered taste tests, the kids decided that they both liked fuji apples best and Abby also enjoyed the golden delicious!

With our results we made line graphs.

Apple print art. I was amazed at how many things they came up with using that one shape. They made angels, hearts, mountains, shoes, butterflies and an eye. I love their creativity.

And the kids peeled, chopped, stirred and seasoned the apples to make our applesauce. I told them to put in a bit more cinnamon than we actually should've, so it was a bit cinnamony, but it was good anyway!!

Crawling in the Grass

2010-08-07T14:20:00.005-05:00

Today we stopped at a playground and splash pad. Joshua, Daddy and I hung out in the shade of tree and enjoyed the incredibly nice weather. Not too hot, nice breeze, just perfect. Joshua got down and crawled around in the grass and I snapped some photos. I thought I'd share!

Such a big boy standing!! Soon, he'll be done with crawling and onto walking!!

Kings Island

2010-08-06T20:18:00.007-05:00

Wow, it's been a long time since a post!! Well I'll never find the time to write one big post of all the things we've done lately, so as I have time, I'll post about each thing separately. These are pictures from our trip to Kings Island. I actually won two tickets in a contest, so we only needed to purchase two more and we went on a Monday and had a great time. While there we:

Ate blue ice cream...

Let Joshua ride the rides for the first time (and he loved them!)....

Cooled off at Boomerang Bay and Noah and Abby rode tons of the big slides (more than I would ride!!) while Joshua relaxed with a bottle!...

Whipped around on one of our kids favorite rides!!...

Had a blast driving around in cars!...

And met the new Peanuts characters. It was a great visit and we should be going again in a month or so with all of my family. It was a nice day with lots of smiles and lots of fun!

Hello!

2010-07-06T11:56:00.005-05:00

Hello! Yes, we're alive. I've seen most of you readers in the past week or so, so hello again!! We've been very busy lately and I'm planning a huge post about it all in the next week or so. We're taking two weeks off of schoolwork right now. So far we've only had the fun of sharing a cold amongst us. We're hoping to clear that up and do a few more things. We've been to Kings Island, the Reds game, Coney Island and the kids had 2 different camps so far this summer. I'm hoping to do the big blog post, finish up our end of year/beginning of year homeschool paper work that I have to send in, plan the lessons for the next few months, plan a trip to visit some of the Revolutionary War sites that we'll be studying about, have someone out to fix the duct work in Noah's room, order a few new homeschool supplies, take Joshua to see his surgeon (just a follow up visit, thankfully!), take the kids to half price books (twice) to continue their summer reading program, send in some rebates, order pictures for Joshua's baby book and our Disney scrapbooks, pay the bills, clean the playroom and set up Noah's "new" room and take the kids to a few fun places (a new park we found with a splash pad, Caesar's Creek, etc.) All in just two short weeks! Well I'm off, the baby is done eating his peas (he eats some real food now!!) and he also crawls and claps now!! Now it's bathtime and then naptime for me and the 3 kids (trying to clear up those colds!).

Nine Months and a Birth Story!!

2010-06-10T07:00:00.002-05:00

Joshua is nine months old today!! I can't believe he's already so old. In honor of his reaching this milestone, I thought I'd do his birth story, since I haven't told that yet.

On Thursday September 9th, 2009, Steve and I woke up early to make our dining reservations for our trip to Disney that was scheduled for December. We got up around 6am and went down the basement so we wouldn't wake the kids. We had trouble using the online system (it wasn't working for anyone) and ended up having to call and anyway, it took forever. About 7:30, I went upstairs to the family room and laid on the couch and soon fell asleep. I woke around 9ish and went upstairs to get ready for a doctors appointment that I had scheduled for 10. See, two days prior to this, they had decided we would move up my scheduled c-section to that following Monday, because they just didn't want to take any chances with the baby's condition. So, Wednesday, I went down to the hospital for a steroid shot, to make sure the baby's lungs would be developed enough (I was right at the 37 week point), and had a doctors appointment, ultrasound and second shot scheduled for this day. So anyway, I went upstairs and stood in the closet looking for something to wear and I suddenly felt a little pop and then some liquid running down my leg. I was in complete shock and disbelief. This was how my labor with Noah had started and I've read so many times how unlikely it is for your labor to begin with the water breaking, but here it was again. I knew that's what it was, but I still couldn't believe it. So I grabbed my cell phone and called Steve who was two floors down in the basement and told him what happened. He said to call the doctor and see what they wanted me to do. I did and they told me to come in anyway.

So I panicked.

I thought I had all weekend to get everything ready as far as bags packed and everything, and I had nothing ready. I needed to have my bag packed, Steve's bag packed (we knew he would be staying at Children's with the baby), Noah and Abby's bag packed (they were going to stay with grandparents) and I had to get it all done in like 5 minutes!! So we all scrambled and I just kept shouting:

"Get two shirts"

"Get your toothbrush"

"Get pajamas"

"Get the cameras" (the battery on our camera was dead of course, but luckily my mom had her camera and we were able to get pictures of the birth!)

We finally got everything in the car, including the baby's car seat, which we just tossed into the back of the van (it's funny because it stayed there until the day we brought him home and we actually installed at the hospital). We drove to the doctors office in Mason while I sat on a stack of towels! I was so embarrassed when we walked in, because I was leaking A LOT and leaving a trail! They were so kind to me though and made me feel comfortable! The doctor took one look at me and told me to go on to the hospital. I was so disappointed because my doctor wouldn't be able to deliver me that day, he wasn't scheduled to be at the hospital.

We drove down to Christ hospital and I had not actually been there before (all the hospital tour classes were full when I called), so I ran up to the help desk and they pointed me in the right direction. Steve and the kids went to park the car while I went up. I walked up to the desk in the labor and delivery floor and the lady actually made me stand there (still leaking) and had me fill out paper work!!! Oh well, it's her floor to clean!!

Well I got to a room, they checked me and I was actually contracting though I didn't feel it. Lots of family made it before the delivery and about two hours after we arrived, I walked into the operating room.

My anesthesiologist was Bill. He was the best!! He was so sweet and comforting. It would've been so much more traumatic to me, had he not been there. I got my epidural and immediately began to shake. I shook so bad I couldn't keep my arms on the table. The doctor came in and I thought he was preparing to cut, but he was actually already cutting. I guess you get numb fast!! Before I knew it, baby Joshua was out and they showed him to me real quick over the curtain. He didn't cry right away, which scared me to death. But when he finally did, I was so overwhelmed with joy.

We didn't know exactly what to expect as far as his appearance went with the cyst growing in his abdomen. At the time, his belly didn't seem to be that big to us, but looking back at the pictures later, we can now see just how swollen it was. He was totally healthy other than the cyst, was breathing on his own, was pink and got 8 and 9 apgar scores. I only saw him for a minute in that room before they whisked him off to the nursery. They had to insert a tube into his mouth to keep anything from going down into his stomach and they wanted to run some tests on him before he left.

After my surgery was finished, they took me to the recovery room. While I was there, Noah and Abby and our mothers were able to come see me. Steve was with the baby the whole time. The transport team from Children's had arrived and was ready to take him over there. They brought the baby into the recovery room so I could see him before he left and so that Noah and Abby could see him. It was hard to see him in that incubator all packed with monitors and tanks and all kinds of scary things. I got to reach in and touch him and so did the kids. I wouldn't see him again for two days.

Steve and Joshua left (Steve had to follow, they wouldn't let him ride in the ambulance) for Children's. Joshua's the only one in our family to ride in an ambulance! I got moved to my regular room. I spent Thursday evening, all of Friday and Saturday morning at my hospital waiting with much anticipation about what was happening with the baby. I had horribly high blood pressure (so much so that they medicated me for it) and very low potassium levels requiring me to remain on the iv for the entire stay. I had lots of visitors from family and friends, but there were times when no one was there and it was lonely. On Friday, I had two nursing students assigned to me. They were really sweet, but I felt bad that they didn't get to have the experience with a newborn.

My regular doctor stopped in Saturday morning. I had previously been told by the doctor who delivered me (who I did not like one bit, and was very unhappy with: he didn't even know Joshua was breech until he delivered him), that I wouldn't be able to leave until Sunday. Well when Dr. W came in Saturday, he sat down with me and told me that as long as I promised to keep checking my blood pressure, he'd let me go. He had been with us through all of the ultrasounds and tests and was a real partner in Joshua's prenatal care. So I promised and got ready to go!!! I remember that I wanted to get a quick shower before I left, but I was waiting for Steve to call so I could tell him to send someone to get me, so I stood in the doorway of the shower (it had a long shower hose thingy) and tried to clean quickly while leaving the bathroom door open enough to hear the phone!! It was crazy!! Steve's mom came to pick me up and I made it to Children's one hour before Joshua's surgery and was finally able to hold him before he went down. During the surgery, we went down to the ER of the hospital and had them check the blood pressure, it was VERY high, so we called the doctor and he told me to just try and relax. He believed it was just due to my situation and not a real medical reason. He turned out to be right. It went down a few days later and hasn't been a problem since. But because it was so high, I had a horrible headache the entire 5 hours we waited for Joshua's surgery to take place.

Sometime soon, I'll go into more of what happened with his surgery and hospital stay, but that's it for today!! I wanted to be sure to write out this much before I forget any details!! The pictures are from when he was at Children's. The pictures of his birth are on my mom's camera and I haven't gotten them yet. I need to!!! The one of he and I is the first time I got to hold him, right before his surgery.

Having a scheduled c-section really bummed me out. I wanted our baby to come when he was ready and when it was his time. I was so relieved when that actually happened. I got to call my husband with the "honey, I think it's time" call and that felt good too. God does take care of the desires of our hearts. I didn't get everything I had hoped for, but the ones that I did were so sweet and so perfect. Joshua was born exactly when he was supposed to be and he survived his health condition because of that. It was a very surreal experience. To be so happy for the birth of your child and so worried about his condition at the same time was a very emotional time for me. I'm glad that scary part is behind us and we're all about the happy times now!!

All You Challenge

2010-06-09T10:48:00.002-05:00

I've decided to join the All You Grocery Challenge and I decided to use my other blog, Thrifty in the Cincy, to showcase my efforts. You can see the first post here. Check there for more posts soon and the contests begin June 20th.

Our Memorial Day Weekend

2010-06-02T15:10:00.020-05:00

Friday:

On Friday we went to a farm to pick strawberries. It was incredibly humid, but we had a good time. A lot of the strawberries had already been picked, but we were able to find some good ones further back in the field. Grammy came and picked with us, which was very nice. The kids love spending time with their Grammy!! This farm doesn't spray their berries, which makes me happy!! We're trying hard to get rid of as many chemicals from our diet as we can. When we got home, Noah had accidentally squished a lot of his berries, so we just made them into a quick jam! Delicious!!

Everyone was so hot and sweaty and the kids' hair was crazy!! But I love this picture anyway!!

Our berries at home.

Our jam!!

Saturday:

Saturday morning we took Noah and Abby to Lowe's for the Build and Grow. They've probably done 20 of those now. They love doing them and they're free!! After that we had appointments for Abby and Joshua to have haircuts. So we drove to the kiddie haircutting place. This was Joshua's first haircut and I was a little apprehensive because I was afraid he'd look older and that he might lose his signature look!! But afterwards, I was very happy because he still had his curls and he looked even better!! But we were a bit early, so before we went in, I took a few "before" shots of him while we waited in the car.

And then he got his hair cut. He did awesome!! I was so afraid he'd be difficult, but he really didn't pay any attention to the lady cutting his hair and just looked around!! Such a good boy!

He got to ride in the green car during the cut. I think that helped keep him happy!!

Abby got a nice trim and bang cut as well! She was watching the Little Mermaid during her cut!!In the evening we decided on doing a cookout. We grilled hamburgers and hotdogs, made corn on the cob, and had watermelon and chips. Our deck was shaded and it made it not so hot, so it was very nice. A nice quiet dinner was just what we needed.

Sunday:

Sunday we went to church and then after that we went down to the Taste of Cincinnati. This was our second year going and we really enjoy it. We sort of treat it like just having a really big lunch!! We don't stay more than an hour and a half, but we get all the yummy food we want and have a great time!!

Our first taste of a deep fried Twinkie. I just thought it was ok. Apparently when you fry the Twinkie the cream absorbs or something into the cake, because we couldn't find it. I think I prefer plain Twinkies!! But it was fun anyway!!

Daddy talked Noah into trying BBQ ribs for the first time and he loved them!! Daddy was so thrilled because now he has a rib eating partner (I don't do meat on the bone!!). It was cute watching him!!

After our lunch, we went to the cemetery to put a dozen yellow roses on my grandmothers grave. I miss her. I hope she loved her flowers. They were very pretty!

Monday:

On Monday we drove up to the Young's Jersey Dairy up near Xenia. We had heard a lot about this place from Steve's family but we had never been before. It was a really neat place. They make their own ice cream and cheese. We sampled all of that and brought some home!! They have a big sit down restaurant with country style food and a smaller diner type restaurant with hotdogs and burgers. We went to the sit down place and it was delicious!! The sweet potato bread is to die for!! But before we ate, we fed the goats and pet the calves, the kids played a round of mini golf and slid down the big sack slide a few times. It's a very fun, family friendly place.

Even Joshua fed a goat!!

Joshua loved sampling my vanilla milk shake!!! Who can blame him? It was delicious!!!

It was a really great weekend. Lots of memories were made and we had some nice family time together. This is what I couldn't wait to get back to during Joshua's hospital stay. I just wanted to do normal family things again so badly and it just killed me that we were separated so much. It feels so good to be a family of 5 now. I'm very happy!!

Just a Swingin'

2010-05-30T20:43:00.008-05:00

We've been doing a lot of swinging in our yard the last week..

Noah's been showing his mass skills on the "surfboard"

Joshua is loving his turn in the baby swing that was Noah's 1st Birthday gift

Abby loves swinging, it's her favorite past time

Everyone took turns giving Joshua pushes, we couldn't resist his giggles to keep going!

While this pic is a bit blurry, I thought it showed her pure joy!

Noah doesn't really swing very much, but when he does, he really hams it up!

More smiles and laughs from the baby!

And more smiles and laughs from the girl!

And a shot of my handsome boy!

Craziness from "the beader"

Noah's just enjoying watching his brother have fun!

Joshua's hiding out under his hat!

We've had a great time swinging this past week. We're very thankful for the warmer weather (although it's a bit on the too hot side lately!!), so that we can go out and enjoy our big backyard!!

Joshua's new "do"

2010-05-29T21:21:00.001-05:00

Joshua had his first haircut today. I was a bit hesitant, as I love his curls, but decided he did need to at least get it cleaned up. I was so thrilled when it was done to see that he still had some curl on top!! Such a cutie!!

How I saved $100!!

2010-05-22T15:25:00.003-05:00

I just wanted to do a quick deal brag. I haven't done one of these in awhile!! Kroger is running a deal right now where if you buy $15 worth of Huggies products, you automatically get $3 off the total. Plus there have been some very high value printable coupons out lately for Huggies products (think $3 off each pack!!). And, they have the products on sale to begin with. So combined, you can really save a lot!! Here's what I got:

15 packages of Huggies diapers

8 tubs of Huggies wipes

1 package of Huggies swim diapers

Regular price for all: $176.76
Price after sale prices: $157.76
Price after Kroger $3 deal: $130.76 (I did the deal in 9 transactions)
Price after all deals and coupons (what I actually paid): $76.26!! I saved over $100!!!!

Incredible!!! Let's just say the diapers are re-stocked up!! Some of the coupons are at coupons.com if you're interested!

Our Anniversary Disney Trip

2010-05-19T20:46:00.008-05:00

Well Steve and I had an awesome time on our trip to Disney. We were gone for 3 nights (4 days) and we were able to fit in all of our favorite things and then some!! We flew in on Sunday morning and went to our hotel to check in and then went to the Magic Kingdom. We stayed there for a few hours then went back to check out our room (it wasn't ready yet when we first arrived). We got an awesome room on the top floor with a view of the marina. It is so beautiful there. The hotel is just beautiful, the room was very spacious and gorgeous inside and the landscaping outside was just breathtaking. When you came out of our building you could see the castle. It was just so cool!! After we saw the room, we went back to the Magic Kingdom and stayed until 11:30pm. We rode everything twice!

The next morning we went to EPCOT and rode all of our favorites there. We had lunch at our favorite restaurant Le Cellier. Because this year is our 10th year of marriage, we were kind of celebrating that while on the trip and they brought us our creme brulee all decorated with happy anniversary on it. That was so nice!! After lunch we took the boat from EPCOT to the Disney Studios. That was a really fun ride. It stops at the Yacht and Beach Club and the Boardwalk hotels first and it was neat to get to see them and then it goes to the studios. We'll definitely take advantage of that boat ride in the future. We rode rides for a few hours and then went back to the hotel. We swam and walked along the beach at the hotel. It was a nice quiet evening!

Tuesday was our tour day. We had booked a backstage tour at the Magic Kingdom. We chose to have the 8:30 tour which was 30 minutes before the park opened, so we got to come in and see the park empty. It was so cool to see it empty. We took tons of pictures!! The tour was just awesome too. We walked through all of the lands except two. We went backstage in two different areas, one behind Splash Mountain and the other behind Main Street. We also got to go down and see the Utillidoors which are the network of hallways and rooms that run underneath the Magic Kingdom. All of it was just so much fun. I would definitely recommend that tour, but not with little kids, it might ruin some of the "magic" for them!!

After our tour, we went back to our hotel and took a little mouseboat out for a tour around the Seven Seas Lagoon and Bay Lake. We were out for 90 minutes and just zipped around looking at all the different hotels, the Magic Kingdom and dodged the big ferries! It was really reasonably priced and it was something we had never done before and now we want to do with the kids!!

That evening was our last evening and we spent it traipsing around the world showcase at EPCOT. We ate food from several different countries, watched shows, rode rides and just had a really nice night.

Wednesday morning we went to Animal Kingdom and were able to do all of our favorites before having to leave. We did the Kilimanjaro Safari, Expedition Everest (twice, the line was only 5 minutes!!), Kali River Rapids and the Primeval Whirl. We got back to the hotel with a little time left for eating lunch and then we rode to the airport.

It really was a wonderful trip and we had a lot of fun, but we kept saying to each other how much the kids would've loved this and that. We missed them!! It'll probably be at least another 10 years before we do something like that again, but it was great. So here's a few photos from the trip:

The view right outside our building at the Grand Floridian. The castle is there, but kind of hard to see in this picture.

This was in our room on the second night. A bottle of Champagne and a card from "the gang" to celebrate our anniversary!!

Our desert at Le Cellier. It was delicious AND beautiful!!

We saw Lotso from Toy Story 3. I have a great picture of us with him, but my husband does not want his picture posted, so you get this one!! He was very soft and cuddly!!

Our building at the hotel. We had one of the rooms at the top with a triangular roof. It was a beautiful room.

Our hotel and it's beach at sunset!

This was taken on tour day. It's so cool to see the park empty!

Me and an empty park!!

Roy, Minnie and I before the park opened!

Riding on the mouseboat!!

Our hotel from the mouseboat. This is the marina that is seen from our balcony.

My hand in the Seven Seas Lagoon during our mouseboat ride!!

We ended our evening on Tuesday by watching our favorite show, Lost!!

Enjoying Spring!

2010-05-05T20:16:00.016-05:00

Well, on a lighter note...an update post. Steve and I are leaving for a trip soon, that's just the two of us. It took a lot of convincing for me to really be on board with this idea. I am just one of those moms that is not comfortable leaving for more than a few hours at a time. But I realized that we really need a few days to be alone and decompress. We've had a very hard year. I lost my grandma almost exactly a year ago. Then we got news of Joshua's condition in the womb and then of course the 105 day hospital stay with surgeries and ventilators and lots of not fun things (I'm planning a huge "Joshua's story" post soon), then another month or so of home healthcare. It's been a very trying year to say the least, and we got through it, and I know we're stronger for it. But I think it will make us better parents to take a few days to focus on our marriage. I'm a firm believer in the fact that the very best gift you kids is a healthy marriage with their parents. It's also the best parenting move you can make. So I'm taking the plunge. We will be gone 4 days. We're going to Disney World!! We've never been by ourselves and we're very excited about it. We're staying in the very fancy Grand Floridian which we would never do with the kids and we're flying, which we haven't done in several years. We planned a backstage tour which we're very excited about. I think it's going to be fun. Joshua and Noah are staying with my mom and dad and Abby is staying home with Jasmine and Grammy!! I really put a lot of thought into how to divide up the kids. I didn't want anyone to have all three. It's a lot of work!! Noah is a huge help with Joshua, so I thought they'd be good together and I thought Abby would love some one on one time, plus she is the main caretaker for Jasmine these days, so I wanted her here with the dog. I think it'll work out. I hope so!! Joshua still doesn't sleep through the night, so I'm feeling bad for my mom!! At least it's only 4 nights! We'll see!!

Speaking of Joshua, he's getting so big already!! He'll be 8 months old on the 10th. He has just the two front bottom teeth, yet. He's very good at rolling all over and is now making diaper changes quit the challenge!! He has gotten very good at sitting up all by himself!! He loves to play with toys, and if he has thrown all his toys down from his chair during a meal, he will resort to just slapping the table. He loves that noise!! He's very vocal and his blabbering is starting to sound more like real sounds. He can do a great bababa sound and an mmmm sound. Everytime you feed him something other than his bottle, he makes this funny face for the first couple of bites and then he's all into it!! Everytime he makes that face!! He definitely loves his mama!! He prefers me to anyone else, although he does occasionally reach for daddy too. When he wants you to pick him up, he puts both arms out straight ahead and then turns his wrists over and over. It's so cute. I love that little one!!

Abby is becoming such a big girl too. She is and always has been such a sweet girl. She amazes me everyday with how well she speaks. The words she uses are so grown up and "smart" sounding!! I remember when she was still a toddler, people used to be amazed with the words she would use. I guess that's one of her many talents!! She is definitely our family daredevil. She LOVES being outside riding her bike or scooter, or playing on the swingset, drawing with sidewalk chalk or playing with Jasmine. But everyday she comes in with a new injury. Every single day!! I'm just praying it's always minor injuries!! She loves to write and draw pictures and uses those talents to make cards for us all the time. It's so cute. She gets frustrated sometimes with math or detailed writing assignments, but if you just take one on one time with her and encourage her, she does really well. She also loves cooking with me and never complains when I ask her to help me with something. I love that girl!!

Noah is quickly becoming a man before my very eyes. Why is it, when they hit double digits, suddenly they start maturing exponentially??? I only have about a head left of height over him. He is a very strong boy in spirit. Just like his dad. I can already tell he's not going to be one of those "video game" boys who live at home in their 20's with no job in perpetual childhood. He already talks about being a man with a job and providing for his family. He even has picked a name for his first daughter (I love that it's a daughter and not a son, he's going to have such a sweet father/daughter relationship!!), but I won't share in case he doesn't want anyone to know. He's one of those no nonsense, play by the book kind of kids. It infuriates him if you don't play a game exactly by the rules. I'm one who says, oh well, let's just do this and makes him crazy!! He also hates it if I "let" him or Abby win a game. He wants to either win or lose by his own merits. I can respect that, but as a mommy, it's hard for me to not let them win!! That no nonsense attitude is already doing wonders in his commitment to the Lord. He already amazes me with his apologetics. I love hearing him talk about it. He too, loves to cook with me and has even expressed an interest in pursuing that as a career. Both kids really want us to open either a full restaurant or a donut shop!! Maybe someday!! Yesterday he made us a crock pot roast with carrots and potatoes. He did all the work, I just told him what to do and because it's pretty easy, I think he can do it again on his own. While I desperately want him to stay little forever, I'm excited to see him grow to be a man. I still have several years to share with him and I can't wait to see how they turn out!! I love that boy!!

Well over the past few weeks, we finally got back into the swing of things and made it out to a few "field trips". We got our passes for the zoo renewed and made it out while the tulips were still in bloom. I took more pictures of the tulips than the animals!! Here's the kids buckled up and ready to go, I love that they can sit together in the same row.

My favorite were the purple ones. I love purple. I love the kids too!

A couple of brother shots. Noah absolutely adores that baby. I can already tell that he is going to be a much better father when he grows up just by having that baby around. Both kids love Joshua, but Noah is just over the moon with him!! Joshua loves his Noah and Abby too. Whenever either of them tries to entertain him, he just laughs and laughs. They're all blessed to have each other!

My baby boy!! You can really see his two little teeth in that picture. He's such a sweetie!!

And my beautiful baby girl. My only daughter and my partner in the house!! She will stop playing to go grocery shopping with me. She loves "girl time" and when we get in the car to go someone without the boys, she says ok let's have "girl talk"!! She is such a sweetie!!

And my handsome big boy!! I love that little face!!

Joshua fell asleep just before we left the zoo. Abby had found this tulip on the ground and we posed it with him. I thought it was cute!

This was from our visit today at the Creation Museum. We also got passes for there. We are just crazy about the ministry they are doing there. We really wanted to support them, so we decided to get 5 year passes. We're going to grow so much in our walk by visiting there regularly. Here the kids found a few familiar men.

Abby was giving crazy eyes to a dinosaur!!

Noah and Abby worked together so beautifully on that puzzle. No one shouted about it being "my turn", no, they just cooperatively did that puzzle together until it was finished. It warmed my heart to watch them!!

Two Noahs!!

We went outside to the petting zoo and found these guys. I thought they were so cute!! They were all business though. If you weren't feeding them, they didn't want anything to do with you!!

Noah has always loved animal interactions since he was tiny. He just smiles and giggles.

Abby was not a fan of the camel!! He would wrap his lips all the way around her hand and she would scream and jump when he did it! It was so funny!

Joshua just wanted to grab the noses of the sheep! I wonder if he thought they were more Jasmines!!

This feller has his head poked out through the fence just begging for a treat. He's so cute!

I carried Joshua over to the see the camel before we left. He got really close looking for some lunch, but we didn't have any!!

The grounds outside are just so beautiful. There's bridges, waterfalls, creeks, ponds and tons of flowers and trees. It's so peaceful and calm.

Well that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed this crazy long post. I'll really work on posting more often!! Please pray for our safe travel!!

Why I believe mothers can do it!!

2010-05-03T06:30:00.003-05:00

This was originally going to be my comment to Sonya from the previous post but it got to be so long I decided to make it a post of it's own because I have heard so many mothers tell me they just couldn't do it because "I'm not patient enough" or "I'm not organized enough" or many other lies that they've allowed themselves to believe. It doesn't take an expert to teach our children. It doesn't take someone with superhuman qualities to do it either. It's just takes a mother's love. Period. And this is why I believe that.

When our children were born they were empty sort of speak, having only the instincts that God gave them for survival. Everything we did from that moment on grew them both physically and mentally. And we as mothers were able to take these babies and successfully teach two of the hardest things for human beings to learn: to walk and to talk.

Walking
We do it all the time and mostly without thinking about it, so is it really so hard? Well I know that if an adult has to re-learn it after some kind of tragedy, yeah I'd say they'd call it pretty hard. Yet we as mothers were able to, relatively easily, teach our babies to do this task. Did we do it by sitting our babies down and saying "ok little one, now it's time to do our walking curriculum. So take out your walking book and let's spend 30 minutes working on this now." No of course not. We taught them to walk by modeling (showing them how it was done), encouraging them, cheering them on and doing it regardless of whether or not it was scheduled for that time. We let them be the lead. When they were ready to work on it, we worked on it. We didn't force them, and we didn't have to. They were born with a desire to learn, a curiosity, a drive. So no, we didn't need to push them in to it, they were already pushing themselves. And it made a huge difference that it was you who were there to kiss away the boo-boos that inevitably happened as a result. No one loves your baby more than you do, and your baby knows that. There is no one else on earth they would rather have cheering them on. And in this case, you did it. And you were successful. They are A+ walkers now.

Talking

Another really difficult thing for human beings to learn - an entire language with it's accent and usage. And by about 5 or so, you're little one can speak perfect English (or whatever language you speak) and some kids can even speak two languages if the parents are bilingual. Sure they may need to learn a few more slang terms or expressions and probably need to brush up on some grammar rules, but for the most part, they've got it and they speak it completely fluently. As adults, we can only dream of being able to add another language to our repertoire with such fluency. We can never do it so perfectly as when we first did it. And who was there to teach it to us, our mothers. And again we taught them when we simply talked to them, over and over. We didn't have to search the curriculum hall for the perfect fit for our family. No we just did it. We just instinctually knew how to do it and they had that perfect combination of curiosity and drive which led to success.

I just firmly believe we are equipped as mothers to give our children all the education they need and it doesn't have to be so hard. I believe in teaching them the fairly easy subjects of reading, writing and math and then working hard on building their character. With those things in their back pocket, there is nothing they can't learn. Whatever it is they need to learn or just desire to learn, they will learn. And I haven't met a kid yet that doesn't ask a million questions and love exploring. If we could just stop filling their days with useless (quickly forgotten) nonsense that will have no affect on them whatsoever as adults and calling that education, we might actually be able to maintain that love of learning in them.

I think the mainstay of any "education" should be reading aloud. If you can squeeze that in to your day (and really who can't find some time to read to their kids) your kids will be getting the best education there is to offer. I've heard several moms tell me that during hard times in their lives (bed rest due to pregnancy, death in the family, etc.) that all they could do was read to their kids and when it was all said and done, after that season, they scored higher on tests than they previously had. Just by reading. That's not so hard. And if you start early, they'll love it. They'll never grow tired of hearing you read to them.

So anyway, that is what I firmly believe to be true. We as mothers are given by God all the talents and abilities we need to educate our children. We don't need "experts" or "professionals" to do it for us. In fact the education they give is usually far inferior to the one you could give them. The last post was just an article I wanted every parent to read, so they could have all the information before them when making the choice. If in the end, they choose to send their kids to school, that's cool, no skin off my back. I just want parents to make informed choices. No more sending your kids off to school without a thought just because that's what you did or everyone else in your neighborhood is doing. Oh and please, no more thinking school is "neutral" ground as far as religion goes. NOT TRUE!!! They themselves (the leaders in the schools, not the teachers necessarily) tell you that. But that's for another post. I'm not trying to force anyone into homeschooling. Do I wish more people did, of course. But I love the (quickly dwindling) freedom to choose homeschooling for my family and would never deny another family their choice. I just so want people to know the facts. That's all. There are so many factors that go into a decision like this and I don't think people think about it all, so sometimes I just feel a real need to post something about it. And the lies that we as mothers love to believe, that we're not good enough or qualified to actually finish what we started (raising our own children), is something I'm hoping to dispel in this post. I'm not looking for a debate. Everyone is entitled to believe what they want, it doesn't make it right :), but they can believe it. I can't do a big discussion in the comments, as I just don't have time right now. I'm getting ready for a garage sale, weekend getaway for my husband and I, Mother's Day lunch for our mothers, on top of raising an infant, 10 year old and 7 year old which are full time jobs in and of themselves!

Reasons to Homeschool

2010-04-29T09:49:00.004-05:00

I found this article today and just thought I'd share it. It riles up in me, emotions I can't even put down on paper. To think that this was how I was "brought up". I will not let that happen to my children. Will not.

It's a long article and sure to ruffle a few feathers, but I implore you to read it all. I highlighted some of the points that really got to me. Perhaps you'll have different ones. If you're interested in more about John Taylor Gatto (award winning teacher for 26 years in the New York City public school system) go to his website here or if you're interested in reading his book "Underground History of American Education", let me know. I have it and you can borrow it. Also, a blog I read called Raising Olives has an awesome post up today about how her family homeschools their children. It speaks a lot about the directions I want to be sure I'm going in, in the parenting of my own children. She's been doing this for awhile now,so I learn a lot from her experiences. Anyway, you can read her post here. It's also where I found the link to the Gatto article.

But alas, without further ado...

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.

Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:

The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.

In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.

The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.

The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.

The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.

Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or exhilarated by things outside my ken. Rights in such things cannot exist for schoolteachers; only privileges, which can be withdrawn, exist.

The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study. (Rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me). This power lets me separate good kids from bad kids instantly. Good kids do the tasks I appoint with a minimum of conflict and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to learn, I decide what few we have time for. The choices are mine. Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

Bad kids fight against this, of course, trying openly or covertly to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist.

This is another way I teach the lesson of dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. This is the most important lesson of all, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. It is no exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what would fall apart if kids weren't trained in the dependency lesson: The social-service businesses could hardly survive, including the fast-growing counseling industry; commercial entertainment of all sorts, along with television, would wither if people remembered how to make their own fun; the food services, restaurants and prepared-food warehouses would shrink if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too -- the clothing business as well -- unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people poured out of our schools each year. We've built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don't know any other way. For God's sake, let's not rock that boat!

In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers.

Self-evaluation -- the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet -- is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched. I keep each student under constant surveillance and so do my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children; there is no private time. Class change lasts 300 seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other, even to tattle on their parents. Of course I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness, too.

I assign "homework" so that this surveillance extends into the household, where students might otherwise use the time to learn something unauthorized, perhaps from a father or mother, or by apprenticing to some wiser person in the neighborhood.

The lesson of constant surveillance is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient urgency among certain influential thinkers; it was a central prescription set down by Calvin in the Institutes, by Plato in the Republic, by Hobbes, by Comte, by Francis Bacon. All these childless men discovered the same thing: Children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under central control.

It is the great triumph of schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best parents, there is only a small number who can imagine a different way to do things. Yet only a very few lifetimes ago things were different in the United States: originality and variety were common currency; our freedom from regimentation made us the miracle of the world; social class boundaries were relatively easy to cross; our citizenry was marvelously confident, inventive, and able to do many things independently, to think for themselves. We were something, all by ourselves, as individuals.

It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you.

We've had a society increasingly under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War: the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast are the products of this central control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the U.S., products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual and family importance that central control imposes.

Without a fully active role in community life you cannot develop into a complete human being. Aristotle taught that. Surely he was right; look around you or look in the mirror: that is the demonstration.

"School" is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends. "School" is an artifice which makes such a pyramidal social order seem inevitable (although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution). In colonial days and through the period of the early Republic we had no schools to speak of. And yet the promise of democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient dream of Egypt: compulsory training in subordination for everybody. Compulsory schooling was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in the Republic when he laid down the plans for total state control of human life.

The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony; we already have one, locked up in the six lessons I've told you about and a few more I've spared you. This curriculum produces moral and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its bad effects. What is under discussion is a great irrelevancy.

None of this is inevitable, you know. None of it is impregnable to change. We do have a choice in how we bring up young people; there is no right way. There is no "international competition" that compels our existence, difficult as it is to even think about in the face of a constant media barrage of myth to the contrary. In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient. If we gained a non-material philosophy that found meaning where it is genuinely located -- in families, friends, the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy -- then we would be truly self-sufficient.

How did these awful places, these "schools", come about? As we know them, they are a product of the two "Red Scares" of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our industrial poor, and partly they are the result of the revulsion with which old-line families regarded the waves of Celtic, Slavic, and Latin immigration -- and the Catholic religion -- after 1845. And certainly a third contributing cause can be found in the revulsion with which these same families regarded the free movement of Africans through the society after the Civil War.

Look again at the six lessons of school. This is training for permanent underclasses, people who are to be deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And it is training shaken loose from its original logic: to regulate the poor. Since the 1920s the growth of the well-articulated school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, have enlarged schooling's original grasp to seize the sons and daughters of the middle class.

Is it any wonder Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, pre-empting the teaching function that belongs to all in a healthy community; belongs, indeed, most clearly to yourself, since nobody else cares as much about your destiny. Professional teaching tends to another serious error. It makes things that are inherently easy to learn, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, difficult -- by insisting they be taught by pedagogical procedures.

With lessons like the ones I teach day after day, is it any wonder we have the national crisis we face today? Young people indifferent to the adult world and to the future; indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence? Rich or poor, schoolchildren cannot concentrate on anything for very long. They have a poor sense of time past and to come; they are mistrustful of intimacy (like the children of divorce they really are); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction.

All the peripheral tendencies of childhood are magnified to a grotesque extent by schooling, whose hidden curriculum prevents effective personality development. Indeed, without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children our schools could not survive at all, nor could I as a certified schoolteacher.

"Critical thinking" is a term we hear frequently these days as a form of training which will herald a new day in mass schooling. It certainly will, if it ever happens. No common school that actually dared teach the use of dialectic, heuristic, and other tools of free minds could last a year without being torn to pieces.

Institutional schoolteachers are destructive to children's development. Nobody survives the Six-Lesson Curriculum unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking that schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that it is not likely to happen. First and foremost, the business I am in is a jobs project and a contract-letting agency. We cannot afford to save money, not even to help children.

At the pass we've come to historically, and after 26 years of teaching, I must conclude that one of the only alternatives on the horizon for most families is to teach their own children at home. Small, de- institutionalized schools are another. Some form of free-market system for public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers. But the near impossibility of these things for the shattered families of the poor, and for too many on the fringes of the economic middle class, foretell that the disaster of Six-Lesson Schools is likely to continue.

After an adult lifetime spent in teaching school I believe the method of schooling is the only real content it has. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curricula or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and their families, to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love -- and, of course, lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life.

Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time left after school. But television has eaten most of that time, and a combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in.

A future is rushing down upon our culture which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material experience; this future will demand, as the price of survival, that we follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.

Winning Isn't Everything

2010-04-06T21:43:00.006-05:00

Well the Reds didn't win their home opener, but we had fun anyway!! We played outside with Jasmine for awhile. Joshua rode around in his new Ergo baby carrier for most of the time. I love that thing!! We had a special "ballpark" lunch of hotdogs, peanuts (still in their shells, just like at the game!), red strawberries and we had hot fudge sundaes in the Reds hats like they do at the games. We have lots of those hats, having saved them when we got to the games. We watched the game and cheered, but alas, it wasn't meant to be a win this time. Oh well, maybe next time!!

And here's a couple of pics of the kids from Easter, so you can see how cute they looked!! Well, these pictures were taken at the end of the day after church, lunch, visiting Steve's family and playing with their cousins there and visiting my family and running around the backyard with their cousin there!! But I think they still looked cute!! I found matching shirts for Noah and Joshua. It's hard to find shirts that are exact matches for their very different sizes (thank you Gymboree!!). I loved Abby's dress too. I got it last year at Target when they marked the dresses down 75% off. I only paid $5 for it!! I actually bought two, so she got to chose which one she wanted to wear. I think she made a good choice.

Easter, Europe and Bicycles

2010-04-04T11:58:00.006-05:00

Noah's Eiffel Tower. (Abby's is in the background).

Easter morning.

European Food Day - Lunch

Hanging out outside.

Riding her bike!

Today is Easter. It's such a beautiful day. We're having a short lull in the action here at home, Daddy is napping with the baby upstairs, Noah and Abby are playing Wii downstairs, Jasmine and I are watching a little tv and I thought I'd update the blog. I put Abby's hair in curlers last night. I do that about once every 2 years!! It's cute though! We got the kids small little baskets with a few things. We didn't do baskets at all last year. I don't know, it just doesn't seem like baskets and bunnies have anything to do with Jesus. But we decided to give them just a couple of little gifts so it makes the day seem like a celebration as it should be. After that, we went to church and it was packed!! They had to bring in extra chairs to set up in the sanctuary. People just kept streaming in. It's kind of cool to be packed in like that celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. We're going to Steve's family soon, and then to my family's later. It should be a great time.

Yesterday we had "European Food Day". At least that's what I call it! We've been doing a world geography intensive study this past year or so and right now we're doing Europe. Ask the kids to point out The Bahamas, Cuba, Bolivia, Guyana, Argentina, France, Hungary, Ireland or Ukraine and I bet they can do it!! Our curriculum includes this special Geography Game and basically it's just blank maps that have numbers on each country and you take turns calling out a country and whomever's turn it is gets to try to guess where the country is. It really works!! After about 4 or 5 times of doing the game, they've had nearly each continent memorized. They also know the 50 states. We thought it was important to get a really good geography study done before we start a big world history study so we all know exactly what part of the world we're talking about.

Sooo, anyway, to help learn about the different areas, we do things like crafts and games that are native to the area and we love to cook food from the countries. I just decided to do one big day to celebrate most of Europe all together. We did have an Irish dinner on St. Patrick's Day. So, we had a mix of French, Swiss, Norwegian, German and Italian this time. We went to Jungle Jim's last week to stock up on authentic foods (that was a fun field trip!!). For lunch we had a sampling of imported cheeses, french bread with french butter, pepperoni, lots of fresh fruit and Norwegian rice porridge. For dinner we had sausages and sauerkraut, pretzels, spaetzle, and two German desserts - chocolate and butter cookies. The lunch was kind of fancy so I lit candles and we all drank apple juice out of wine glasses. I played Mozart music while we ate it too. That was a nice touch! The dinner was mostly German, so we drank out of "beer steins" (plastic Disney mugs!!), and played Polka music!! We even stopped what we were doing to do the chicken dance!! Everyone had to try all that was served and most of it was liked. It was lots of fun.

A few quick updates: Joshua has two teeth now and is getting really close to sitting on his own!! Abby can ride a two wheel bicycle now (finally!!). Noah is doing so well in spelling that we're going to skip a level this next year. The homeschool convention starts this Thursday. My favorite speaker is doing an extra talk on Wednesday night at a church. It's free and I've already signed up!! I can't wait!! So I'll get Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday and Saturday all in convention mode. I love it so much.

Well that's it for now. Enjoy this blessed day that the Lord made just for each of us!

Photos Much Over Due

2010-03-29T22:29:00.013-05:00

These are my favorite photos from our photo shoot with Sonya. I was extremely pleased with how well they turned out. I can't wait to do another shoot, hopefully outdoors next time. The first one is my absolute favorite of all. Thanks Sonya, I'm sorry it took me so long to post them.

"Normal" Stuff

2010-03-19T21:19:00.007-05:00

Joshua had an appointment today with the pediatrician. He did great! He weighed 18 pounds 3 ounces which was up 2 pounds from his 4 month appointment. He also gained two inches and is now 28 inches long. He got a couple of shots, cried for just a minute and then went back to chattering happily. His doctor said it was fine to start giving him whatever food we really wanted to give him. He said to stay away from nuts, eggs and honey until at least one year, but we're free to give him any soft table foods that he will eat and we want to give him. Things like mashed potatoes, smashed fruits and veggies, yogurt, ice cream, etc.. Plus he said it's fine to start giving him Cheerios and that kind of thing. I need to head out and get him a box of those!! I love his doctor. He's not the kind of doctor who just reads the "doctor manual" and spits out what it says, he actually uses the years of experience he has to tell you what works and what's really best for your child. I love that. We've been really blessed with the medical team that has surrounded us lately. We've had this same pediatrician for awhile and I've always loved his style. But we've had surgeons and doctors dealing with Joshua's care that I have just loved also. His main surgeon is incredible. I just sent him a little email the other day with a picture of Joshua in Mickey ears and he was so kind in his response. He really is a good guy.

Tonight we had a nice family night out. We went to Pizza Tower for dinner and then went to the park to play. I am really enjoying the weather lately. I'm ready for spring! Joshua went down a slide (with his siblings help) and swung in the baby swing for the first time. The park was empty for most of the time we were there, so we just ran around like we owned it!!

The homeschool convention is coming up in about 3 weeks. I am so excited. One of the speakers that I loved two years ago will be here again this year and I can not wait to see him again. He was really the beginning point of the transformation in my way of thinking about what schooling means to me and my family. I can't wait to see what else he has to say. I get so energized at the convention. Homeschooling parents are such a minority and it's so nice to be surrounded by like minded families, even if it's just for a few days. It's nice to know you're not the only one.

The last two nights, we've watched the International Space Station fly by. It's really kind of cool. It looks like a star that moves across the sky in a minute or two. It doesn't flash or blink, so it's easy to tell it's not an airplane. When it gets to a certain point in the sky, it loses it's sunlight reflection and seems to "go out". I think that's the coolest part. It's supposed to do it one more time tomorrow night between 8:11 and 8:17pm, but I think it's going to be cloudy tomorrow, so we probably won't be able to see it.

We've also been watching Molly the barn owl as she eagerly awaits the birth of her owlets. You can see the live cam here. Isn't she cute?? Oh and I heard a man fishing found a nest of bald eagles a couple of miles from our house here. It's pretty rare to have a nest here. That's pretty cool.

I've finally gotten back into couponing. I'm doing it a little differently though. I just don't have the time to clip coupons right now, so instead of buying newspapers every week, I go to couponclippers.com and order the coupons I want. I end up spending right about the same amount I'd spend on newspapers every week, and I only get the coupons I want, in the amount I want and the best part is that they're already clipped for me!! I went to Kroger yesterday (they're having one of the mega sale things) and my order was 57 before sale and coupons and I walked out paying only $11! My coupon box has shrunk a lot, but it works for me right now. I'm happy to be back on the wagon saving money at the grocery again. When things were so crazy around here, I was lucky to actually make it to the grocery store, let alone worry about couponing. Now I'm back to where I want to be!

Our house is sooo beautiful!! Well, it was beautiful when we first got home from vacation anyway. We got the whole downstairs interior painted and I love it so much. It was a Christmas present from my parents and we ended up splitting the costs to make sure we could the trim, ceilings and everything done. I am so thrilled. We've lived in this house almost 6 years now and it feels so good to have the downstairs finally "done". I'm working to get everything put back away, but I had forgotten how hard it is to get things done with a baby in the house!! Especially this baby, because he sure does love his Mama!! I cut him some slack though, because we both missed out on a lot of mommy/baby snuggle time when he was in the hospital for 105 days. The housework will get done eventually, maybe when he's 10!! I am hoping to get a lot done this weekend. I should be rested up because tonight is my night off from overnight baby care. Daddy does Friday night to give me a break. I actually don't mind getting up with him. I love cuddling him at night, but it is nice to get a full night's sleep.

I guess you could say life is just normal now. I could not be more happy with normal. Oh, and here's a tip. If you haven't already, you need to go out and buy some Wal-Mart brand (Great Value) peach sherbet. It's about 2.83 or something like that, but it's so good, I'd pay 5 bucks for it!! Trust me you won't be disappointed!! (Thanks Dad!!). Also, if you have a cell phone that doesn't include a camera, may I implore you to reconsider that. I was one of those people who for so long said I have a camera to take pictures and all I need a phone for is to make calls. Then one day my husband convinced me I needed to get an Iphone. He couldn't have been more right!! Without that camera, I would've missed pictures of: Joshua's first smile, Abby and Noah at Meijer's "pumpkin patch", Abby and Noah on Big Thunder Mountain in Disney, Joshua's first ride in a shopping cart and first visit to the park. Maybe I would've gotten over not having those pictures, but I'm so glad I was able to get them. All of the pictures in this post were taken with my phone. Just something to think about.

A Synopsis of Our Disney Trip - March 2010

2010-03-18T13:02:00.011-05:00

When we arrived in Disney, it was chilly.
Joshua's first ever ride was the parking tram!!
I was overcome with joy, and even shed a few tears when I first saw the castle!

Ok, so Joshua's first REAL ride was Peter Pan.

He eventually rode all he was big enough for!

The weather was pretty nice, not too hot or cold.

The kids swam in the pool a lot!!

The pool was heated, so even on the chilly nights we could swim, that was nice.

The pool was themed about an ancient city and had a huge Mayan pyramid and a jaguar slide - very cool!

I carried the baby in the sling as much as I could. We both enjoy that.

Abby got to meet her favorite character - Jessie!

Joshua met Mickey and Minnie together in Mickey's house.

Joshua was wearing a Mickey outfit that Minnie loved.

We found out that Joshua loves to touch the characters noses!!

We had lots of great meals.
At many of our meals, we also got to spend time with characters.

We had an awesome early morning safari.

We saw elephants, cheetahs, lions, flamingos, crocodiles and a pregnant giraffe to name a few.
The safari is my favorite ride in all of Disney.

We had lots of fun interaction with the characters.

Joshua slept through a lot of it, but we got pictures!!

Abby has become the family daredevil.

She rode Everest with me, the Tower of Terror with Daddy and many others.
She rode the Rock n Roller Coaster for the first time (Noah rode that too).

Both kids rode the "mountains" of the Magic Kingdom.

Daddy and I love riding the big rides with the kids, it's so much fun.

Joshua wore a lime green Dumbo shirt while riding a lime green Dumbo.

That matching stuff makes me happy!!

We saw Remi from Ratatouille at the french restaurant in EPCOT.

It was really cute and funny as he reacted to us at our table.
Even Joshua was interested (can't you tell?).

The Flower and Garden Show began at EPCOT began while we were there.
We loved strolling around and looking at the beautiful topiaries.
Someone gave us their pink Mickey balloon because they couldn't take it on rides!

We stayed at the Coronado Springs Resort.

The grounds at our hotel were just stunning.

Our room was on the top floor facing the water, the view was gorgeous.
We could see EPCOT and Disney Studio's nighttime shows from our window.

Noah is always ready for some audience participation.

This time he had a turn driving our Jungle Cruise.

He is never shy about that stuff, I love that about him!

Abby always looks for nuts or acorns to give Chip & Dale.

They are always gracious receivers!!

We got to meet the characters from Up for the first time!

Our last day was at EPCOT.

I loved this picture with Joshua and the "big ball"!!

Our little viking family!!

We can't leave without our yearly viking photo in the Norway pavilion.

Well, that's about it. It was a long trip but lots of fun. On both ways we stopped in Atlanta (we drove). On the way in, we spent the night with Steve's family. It was so nice to see them. On the way home we stopped to eat lunch at the Varsity which is a drive-in we've seen on many Food Network and Travel Channel shows. We're not sure when we're going to go again. Only time will tell I guess!

Quick update

2010-02-24T23:42:00.003-05:00

We leave for Disney on Friday. I'm so excited and the kids are too!! I've worked really hard to get our entire downstairs emptied and ready to be painted while we're gone. That is going to be so nice to come home to.

We're driving down this time and we're stopping in Atlanta to visit family. I'm also excited to see them, we don't get to near enough. We're spending a total of 11 days in Disney and then with the drive time both ways, we'll be gone about 2 weeks. We're staying at the Coronado Springs resort on Disney property. We haven't been there before. They recently remodeled and they are the only moderate resort with queen size beds instead of just the doubles. That will be nice. I just can't wait to get away from everything and relax with my family and have lots of fun too!!

We got our new van and it's so nice. It has so many different things going on that I'll probably never learn them all. We got the 2011 Toyota Sienna XLE if you're interested. They asked us to do a small bit in their next commercial. It is airing now for the next few days. Our part is very small. You blink and you'll miss us!! It's also on their website (Kings Toyota). I hate that you can't even see Joshua's face, but oh well, that's the footage they used.

I need to get baby boy ready for bed now, so I'm off. I know a lot of you want to see the pictures Sonya took, but you'll have to wait until we get back because I packed the cd away with all of our other stuff from the downstairs. Sorry, but I'll post them soon. They're really good!!

A European Vacation of Sorts

2010-02-19T10:39:00.003-05:00

When we first arrived in the NICU (it's actually called the RCNIC at our children's hospital, it stands for Regional Center for Newborn Intensive Care), we were given a little "welcome" packet. In it was this short story that really hit home with me. When I read it, I really felt like someone understood how I felt. When you're in this kind of situation, you kind of feel very alone. You can be surrounded by friends and family and still feel that way. You know that no one you know can even begin to understand how this situation is. It hurts to feel that way. It's hard. It's these times that if you're not a believer, I don't know how you'll ever get through it. But alas, we're through it and the sky is clear now and Joshua is healed and Daddy and I are working on healing our emotional scars. In fact we're planning a 4 day getaway in a few months to do just that. So anyway, I just wanted to share this short story that I felt really helped me know that some people do know how this feels and I'm not alone:

Welcome to Holland

By Carol Turkington

When you're going to have a baby it's like you're planning a trip to Italy. You're excited. You get a bunch of guidebooks, you learn a few phrases in Italian so you can get around, and then it comes time to pack your bags and head for the airport in Italy.

Only, when you land, the stewardess says, "Welcome to Holland." You look at one another in disbelief and shock, saying, "Holland?? What are you talking about? I signed up for Italy! But I don't know anything about Holland! I don't want to stay" you say.

But you do stay, you go out and buy some new guidebooks, you learn some new phrases, and you meet people you never knew existed. The important thing is that you are not in some filthy, plague-infested slum full of pestilence or famine. You are simply in a different place than you had planned. It's slower paced than Italy, but after you've been there a little while and have had a chance to catch your breath, you begin to discover that Holland has windmills, Holland has Rembrandts.

But everyone else you know is busy coming and going from Italy. They're all bragging about what a great time they had there, and for the rest of you life, you will say, "yes, that what I had planned."

The pain of that will never, ever go away.

You have to accept that pain, because the loss of that dream, the loss of that plan is a very, very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you will never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland!

Of Scars and Band-Aids

2010-02-10T21:40:00.005-05:00

Today Joshua is 5 months old!! And he is done with medical care!! He had his central line removed on Monday and that was the final step. He is now living solely on his bottle feeds and not longer has IV feeds. He has gone from this:

to this:

All that he has left is a scar (actually 3 scars, there are 2 small ones from the ostomies right below the diaper line) and a band-aid that covers the healing spot where the central line was. The redness is from the bandage he had on there previously. He has very sensitive skin and it turns red very easily. So he has the big scar across the belly that should get lighter and lighter over time. They used the same spot for both surgeries so he'll only have the one scar.

I can't believe we've gotten here finally. It is such a relief and a joy. We are just so blessed that our baby is healed. It's almost too good to be true!! He is growing so much and learning new things all the time. He laughs and smiles at us so much, it just melts my heart. He's a big talker too. He loves to just babble and babble. He's really into playing with toys now too. He likes to feel and look at rattles and rings. And of course he loves to put them in his mouth. He also loves to suck on his fingers. He's working on sitting up and can sit for just a few seconds right now. He still hasn't gotten rolling over down, but we've been keeping him from laying on his tummy too much because he had the iv line on there that would be uncomfortable to lay on. So we're working on rolling now that it's gone. He weighs almost 17 pounds now. He is drinking 150 ml (5 ounce) bottles now about every 3-4 hours (even at night, ugh!!).

I am still pumping breastmilk for him, but we've had a bit of drama with that over the past few weeks. We realized after he had several adverse reactions to certain bottles (pulling away from the bottle, gagging, letting it dribble out of his mouth), that something was wrong with my frozen breastmilk. After doing some research we realized that it had all soured. It wasn't a matter of storage because the milk I pumped at the hospital and they stored there was soured as well as the milk I stored here at home. So I can't use any of it. I read that some women have a high level of an enzyme that breaks down the fat in the milk too quickly or something like that. So I'm guessing that is what my problem is, but I'm not sure. I just know that I have to throw all of those gallons of milk out and it breaks my heart to do it. When we found that out, I spent several days pumping every 2 hours (about every 4 through the night) trying to increase my supply, but it just didn't work. So after talking with his doctors we are now mixing the breastmilk I pump fresh with Similac. Part of me is so bummed that he's now getting formula, but I can't beat myself up about it. I've been pumping daily for 5 months and it's very difficult. He's healthy and growing and that's the important part. I think I'll probably pump a few more weeks and then we'll see from there. I don't know if I'll pump over our vacation or not. Maybe just in the mornings and evenings. I don't know though.

So our vacation is in 15 days. We will be gone for a total of 14 days. We are staying at Coronado Springs this time. We haven't stayed there before and wanted to try it. It's the only moderate resort with queen size beds!! I'm really excited about it. I started our packing list today and that always gets me excited. We were planning to not do the dining plan this time, but in the end decided to go ahead and do it. We've really just gotten so used to having the nice meals, that we can't go without it. Having been through what we have over the past 5 months, walking down Main Street USA and seeing that castle welcoming us again, will be such a relief and a true signal to the "rest of our life". We can finally breathe again and get on with our lives. I've had so many dreams about how purely happy I'll be when we get there with my 3 children. It's so close now, I'm so excited.

Our other exciting news is that we're getting a new van. We're picking it up tomorrow. It's a 2011 Toyota Sienna. The 2011 models just arrived earlier this month. It's red with tan interior and has lots of cool accessories. It'll be fun to drive down to Disney in our new van. I spent the night tonight cleaning out our old van and I got emotional. We're trading it in, and I'm a little bummed about that. Am I the only one who gets sentimental about these things? We've had this van for 5 years and there's been lots of memories associated with it. We drove home from Texas in it, used it to move from our apartment to our new home, used it to keep us and the kids warm when we were building our new house in the winter, drove to Disney, Gatlinburg, Chicago, slept in at the hospital parking garage, brought Joshua home in it and on and on. I'll be sad to see it go, but I'm happy we're getting a new van with every safety feature available. That makes it worth it!

Well that's it for now. I'm ready to go pump and go to bed. Thanks for all the prayers, it worked!! He's healed and we're moving on with our life. I couldn't be more blessed, thrilled and in awe of God's goodness. Just look at these three blessings. What beautiful babes they are.

Life

2010-01-31T19:37:00.003-05:00

*Disclaimer. I'm typing this in my phone while at Abby's cheerleading practice so there's not going to be any pictures for this post. Sorry. I'll put more up soon.

First off a Joshua update. He is doing so well it is truly a testament to how good God is. As of right now ( Sunday night) he is drinking 95ml bottles every 3 hours. He is only hooked up to the iv feed for 8 hours a day, which we do during the night. So he is free during the entire day!!! It's so incredible!!! We are continuing to up the feeds to about 120ml which is our max. We are supposed to reach that by Thursday (by upping 5ml twice a day). If everything goes as well as it has he will be off the iv feeds for good after Thursday!!! Then we should be taking him in for an outpatient surgery next week to remove the central line. Then that would be it. After 5 months it will finally be over. It seems too good to be true!! The only area he's having trouble with right now is actually breastfeeding. We've tried a few times over the past few days and he is not only not interested, but he gets mad. It's really kind of heartbreaking for me. In still pumping after all these weeks (20) and have always hoped I'd be able to actually nurse him at the end of this. Of course there's still hope, but I'm kind of bumming about it right now. I just don't see how I could possibly keep this pumping up for 7 more months. It is so hard to work the 20 minutes it takes several times a day on top if actually feeding him by bottle. Plus our vacation in 4 weeks is going to be really tricky if he's not nursing. I don't pump at his max right now so I supplement with what's already stored and I won't be able to keep milk frozen for the 14 total days that we will be gone. Please, please pray for us in this matter. It is so important that I keep feeding him the breastmilk for his first year, not only for the benefits every nursed baby receives, but also because it's the best for healing his intestinal tract. Thank you!!

Noah and Abby are really getting used to having the baby around now. They are such big helpers and are always asking to hold him. They are so cute with him.

They are moving right along in their lessons. We are trying a new "block" schedule where we only do certain subjects each day. For instance we only do math on mon, wed and fri. But we do 5 days of work in that time. I find we waste so much time in changing subjects that the less subjects we do a day the leas time we waste. We do have 4 things we do daily which is Bible, calculadder ( math drill) , spelling and poetry memorization ( the kids love this!!). Then we divide up math, English, writing, geography, Ohio history, science and handwriting. So far I love it!!! The homeschool convention is in April. I CAN NOT WAIT!!! I love it so much.

Well I need to go now cheerleading is over. More to come soon.

It's So Nice

2010-01-23T19:41:00.005-05:00

Today was Noah's birthday party. We had all the family and some friends out to Larosas for pizza, cake and fun! It really worked out well and Noah had a great time. We were all in the party room at the back of the restaurant, so it was nice and private. We had 10 kids and 23 adults! I was so excited that so many could make it out (especially since I was late to let everyone know about the party!). Noah chose to have Bengals decor, so we brought special plates and napkins for the cake, balloons and the cake. We also had goodie bags with a small Lego set, an inflatable football and some candy for everyone. This was the first big family party that I got to bring Joshua to. It was so nice. I''m so glad I get to share him with everyone now.

So, Friday we had our appointment with the surgeon. Of course when we arrived, we had a bit of drama! His IV line got caught in the stroller and as we pushed it, it immediately snapped at one of the filters on the line. Joshua wasn't hurt at all, it never pulled on him or anything, but we needed to get some help to fix the problem. The nurse that's assigned to us in the GI clinic was paged and she came to help us. It ended up not being a problem and we didn't even need to hook him back up for the day, they just let him be off. So after that excitement we finally got to see out doctor.

He told us how the x-ray we took last week looked "normal"!! He was just amazed at how well Joshua is doing. Our GI nurse ended up staying with us during the visit, so she could organize his IV feeds with the bottle feeds. The plan now is to increase his bottle feeds 5ml everyday for the next week and then 5ml twice a day for the week after that and then he will be at max feeds!! After this first week, he should be getting enough food to taper off the IV feeds for good!! Oh I can't wait!! He said if he tolerates this week with increasing 5ml everyday and gets to 75ml bottles, we'll be doing the victory dance!! We increased to 45 this morning and so far so good!! I just can't believe after having such a dismal outlook a few weeks ago, we are now looking so optimistic. Whatever was causing him trouble must've fixed itself and now he's open and doing well. The Lord really is amazing. I knew He could do it, it just didn't seem like it was His plan. Thank goodness it seems like it is now!!

So back after Joshua's first surgery and we were told he wouldn't be coming home until Christmas time, we rescheduled our Disney trip that was for early December to the end of February. Well payment in now due for that trip, so we asked the surgeon, what he thought about whether or not we'd be able to go and he said without even thinking about it, "oh yeah, that would be fine"!! So we have just 34 days until we leave!!

I have a lot to do to get ready for that (of course!!) especially because while we're gone our entire downstairs will be painted!! Walls, trim, doors - all of it!! It's the Christmas present from my parents. So I have to clear off all the walls, put away curtains, move furniture, empty shelves, etc.. to get that ready. But I can't wait to come home to a completely repainted home!!

So I need to get all that ready, do 5 more weeks of lessons with Abby and Noah and now I get to pack for a family of 5!! I can't believe how great things are looking now. It's so nice!! Well here's a couple of pics from the last snow that we had. I put a hat on the baby and took him out on the porch for just a minute, so he could "experience" his first snow, while Noah and Abby played in it. The next day I took them sledding, but I left Joshua with me in the car, it was really cold!!

Some updates!!

2010-01-19T11:34:00.005-05:00

Quick update:

Noah: Doing very well. Is playing Upward basketball still and loves it. Is going to be signing up for baseball again this spring (after taking a year off - his choice). He is doing very well in his lessons and says that Spelling is his favorite subject. At his well check this morning he was 83 pounds and 4' 8.5". Wow, he only has 10 and a half inches to reach my height!!! He had a wonderful birthday yesterday and is looking forward to his party Saturday. Noah has become a real sports fan just like his Dad!! During the football season he has perfected shouting at the tv and disagreeing with the refs!! He knows all the penalties and even makes judgements on the play calls of the coaches. Aaahh, the apple really doesn't fall far does it?? It's really cute though to see them sit together and watch a game!! He even chose Bengals tableware for his party.

Abby: Doing great as well. She is still doing her cheerleading. She has decided to undertake perfecting the cartwheel all on her own and this past week at her game, when they announced her name she ran out and did an absolutely perfect cartwheel with pom-poms in hand!! I teared up with love for that girl, I just couldn't help it. She has practiced and practiced the cartwheel and it paid off. Her lessons are going well too. She is learning cursive and multiplication. She delights in "decorating" me with the makeup and nail polish she got for Christmas!! I actually really love the color of nail polish she put on me!! At her well check she was 75 pounds and 4' 2.5". Her eyes and ears checked out perfectly and she's a healthy girl!

Joshua: Could not be doing any better!! He had his clinic visit last Thursday and had an x-ray done. Both the GI doctor and the surgeon agreed that this last x-ray looks much improved and we are now increasing his bottle (breastmilk) feeds more rapidly!! Now instead of moving up 5ml a week, he's moving up 15ml a week. We will meet with the surgeon this Friday, and I'm pretty sure he's going to say "no surgery!!!". Otherwise I know he wouldn't have asked us to increase the feeds so much. I can't wait to hear what he has to say. At his well check today he was 16 pounds 3 ounces and 25 inches long. He got his 4 month immunizations and looks super healthy. In fact the doctor said he couldn't find enough adjectives to describe how well he thought Joshua was doing. We have started getting him to sleep at night in his crib. We've been previously sleeping with him downstairs. He either slept in the pack'n'play or the swing and sometimes just in my arms!! He seems to be doing well in the crib. He still wakes up a lot to eat, but he goes right back to sleep after that. He is right where he's supposed to be developmentally which is such a blessing after how long he was in the hospital. He is getting less IV feeds since he's getting more and more breastmilk. He now has a 6 hour window when he's completely off the line and that is such a blessing. It's from 4pm to 10pm. We can spend that time doing normal family things and not have to worry about the pumps and lines. It is so nice!! The more he feeds by bottle, the longer the window will get until he's eventually completely off it!! I've been accused recently of spoiling him as he now has a definite preference for me. After all we've been through, I couldn't be more thrilled with him showing me "some love!!" Even if the house is a total disaster, I'll happily hold and love on my baby whenever he wants it!!

Daddy and I are doing great. We're figuring out routines and how things are going to work now that we have 3 kids! I'm trying to work out the kids school routines, Joshua's care, meals, pumping milk and cleaning. It's a lot and I'm always busy, but it's a good busy!!

Ken Ham from Answers in Genesis (the ones who run the Creation Museum) came to our church last week for a little convention. They did 5 different talks and all 5 of us attended them all. What a blessing that was. I just can't say enough about this man and his ministry. His unashamed passion for the Word of God is so inspiring. I've been reading a couple of his books since then and we got the kids some of his books and a homeschool curriculum. I just love that they are not about telling Bible "stories" but about talking about the true history that is written in the Bible and how Science continually proves the authenticity of the Word of God. We saw one talk on the the many miracles that occur in the woman's body as a baby is created. Things happen during this time that normally are opposite of what normally occurs in the body. It's just incredible. And we also saw a talk on astronomy. What they do there at Answers in Genesis is so wonderful.

Well I guess that's it for now. We're all together, we're doing well, and we're happy!! Praise God!!!

Happy Birthday Noah!!!

2010-01-18T12:02:00.002-05:00

Today my boy turns 10!! Wow, double digits!! Where has the time gone? I just can not believe I've spent an entire decade with this boy as his mom!! He is such a joy in our lives. He is such a deep thinker, super loving, ever creative, and always full of questions. His mind works in ways mine will never. He always keeps God's Word close to his heart and strives to obey both it and his parents. Always helpful, without complaint. Takes the label "big brother" to heart and is always good at it! We love this boy without ceasing and will be eternally grateful for the blessing of having him as ours.

Happy Birthday Noah Lucas, we love you so much!!

4 Months!!!

2010-01-10T14:49:00.002-05:00

Happy 4 Month Birthday Joshua!!! We can't believe you've already been with us 4 whole months!! We are so blessed to have you in our lives. You bring such a sweetness to our family and we'll always be grateful for you. We love you so much.

Love,

Daddy, Mommy, Big Brother Noah and Big Sister Abby!

Two weeks home!

2010-01-06T19:13:00.004-05:00

Isn't he cute?? We all laughed when he reached up to grab hold of his little bottle!! As of tomorrow (1/7) he will be up to eating 20ml every 3 hours. That means in 24 hours he will have a total of 160ml which is about 5 ounces. A little more than half of a can of Coke. Not much, and boy does he let us know that he's not happy about how little it is!! But, we're going slow to make sure we don't have any more problems. We saw our surgeon and also our new GI doctor last Thursday and the plan is to go up by 5ml every Thursday for the few weeks. We'll see the GI doctor again next week and then our surgeon the week after that. At that appointment, we should be getting the final word on whether he's better or we're having surgery. I can not even imagine going back to the hospital now. While we've only been out for two weeks, it seems like forever ago.

We have also seen our regular pediatrician as well. He has taken over the responsibilities that the neonatologists were doing in the hospital. We'll have to go see him again next week as Joshua will be due for his 4 month immunizations. Wow, 4 months!!! But he's doing really well and hopefully will continue to do so and we'll be just waiting this out and moving on with our lives! Oh, how I hope!

I'm hoping to get him on a more regular sleep schedule in the next few weeks. He's not getting enough milk in his bottles allow him to sleep for too long during the night. About 4 hours is the longest. He wakes up about 3 times during the night, gets a diaper change, has a bottle and then goes back to sleep. Sometimes he's restless though and we have to try different sleeping arrangements such as the swing or being held by us in the recliner!! Whatever works! But I'd really like to get him sleeping in his bed the whole night!! Maybe someday!!

Well here's a few more pics. This is Noah and Abby at the Globetrotters game last week. It was fun although I think Abby was a bit bored with the actual "basketball" portion! She liked all the tricks and stunts though! And of course Noah really enjoyed it. He loves basketball. This is Scooter with them. He was Noah's favorite!!

We had to get Joshua a new swing because the other one just wouldn't swing! I don't know if hew as too big for it or what, but he only weighs 14 pounds, so it should've worked. Oh well, the new one is very similar to the one he had in the hospital and he likes it. So it all worked out!

I got the kids gingerbread house kits for 75% off after Christmas. Who says you can't make a gingerbread house after Christmas? And for only 2.50 each, not bad!!!

Jasmine loves her new puppy!! Joshua started screaming like 2 seconds after this picture! At least I got it!!

This was taken today. He scratched himself on the face, but still looks so cute!! Look at those cheeks! He looks so healthy and happy!!

Daddy and I are doing well. It's been a rough 2 weeks as far as getting anything done around here! I pretty much just take care of the baby, help the kids with school work, do the dishes, pump breastmilk (yes I'm still pumping, it'll be 17 weeks tomorrow!) and make meals. No time for anything else!! I really need to do some laundry tomorrow!! I did get some help from the kids. Today Noah cleaned a bathroom and Abby swept the floor. They are such good kids, I'm so blessed!! They are both very enamored with their new brother too. They are asking to hold him all the time and even when they're not holding him, they're playing with him and talking to him. It's so cute!!

Well that's it for now. Have a great day!!

Day...Who Cares, We're Home!!!

2009-12-28T11:03:00.013-05:00

Hello!! Sorry it's been so long since I posted, who knew having a baby at home would take so much time?!?!?! I'm working on this post all day!! I uploaded the pics this morning, am typing now in the afternoon and will no doubtedly finish this post sometime tonight!! (Edited to add: I started this post several days ago and am just now finishing it!!)

Well after 105 days in the hospital, Joshua is now home!! He arrived home around 6pm Thursday evening (Christmas Eve). It is such a joy and blessing to have him here with us. I just can't believe it has happened. We're adjusting to our new life as a family of 5 and dealing with the celebrations around Christmas and Joshua's medical care. It's been a lot to juggle and we're not yet completely settled in. The first three nights a nurse came to help us set up his IV feeds and make sure we knew what we were doing, now they feel very confident in our abilities and only will be coming once a week to check on him, draw blood, weigh him and things like that. So we're officially on our own now. We are responsible for preparing his bags of food, running the lines and hooking it all up to his central line. We also have to flush the line when we hook him and when he take him off of it. He is hooked up 21 hours a day with a 3 hour "window" in the evening where he's not hooked to anything. We also have to keep track of his input and output. We write down whenever he has a bottle (10ml a time), how much IV food he has and we weigh his diapers to keep track of the output. It takes about 90 minutes a day to do all of it. It's not too bad and we're learning how to work everything in. It's all worth it to have him home!

He's doing really well at home. He's having regular poops, lots of gas and no spit ups. If he continues to do so well and is able to regularly up his feed amounts he may not have to ever go back to the hospital for a stay and surgery!!! I really believe that he is getting better. I just know it!!! He's gaining weight (up to 14 pounds now!), and has never had a better week as far as spit ups and things go, so I really feel good about saying I believe he is doing better!!! We email his surgeon daily and he's very pleased with how well he's doing. Praises to God!!!

Bundled up and ready to go...and not real happy about it!! He calmed down and fell asleep on the drive home though.

Being carried through the doors of the NICU by one of our favorite nurses. He's free!!!

His first elevator ride! My three babes together at last!!

So the next morning, was Christmas morning. Joshua and I spent the night downstairs. He slept half the night in the bassinet insert of his pack n play and the other half in my arms in the rocking chair. He and I were up around 6, but we waited to wake the family up until 7! Noah and Abby were very excited and came running!!

Joshua ended up falling back asleep during the present opening, so he didn't notice all the cool Wubba Nubs and other things we got him!!

Noah of course got lots of Legos. He loves Legos!!

Abby loves stuffed animals more than anything and was so thrilled with her stuffed rock house full of dinos!!

Stocking time!! They got a few small gifts and build a bear gift cards. We also got tickets for the Harlem Globetrotters in Noah's stocking and tickets to the Mary Poppins broadway show when it comes in April in Abby's stocking. I think they were pleased.

Even Jasmine had a few things in her stocking!! She is finally getting used to the crying baby and his noisy pumps!! She was afraid of the pumps the first few days, but now she just ignores them. She's done plenty of sniffing Joshua and seems to have accepted him into the pack!!

I so love them in their matching pajamas!! They are so cute!!

All three kids got new 'wheels' for Christmas so we took them all out for a ride. Noah got an electric scooter from my parents, Abby got a scooter from us and Joshua got his stroller!! It was chilly but sunny and nice out. I was able to push both the stroller and the iv pole. I never thought I'd be doing that, but I'm just so thankful to have him home!!

Because Joshua has a central line in his chest, we're still doing sponge type baths here with him at home. These are pictures from his first bath at home. I wash his body with those Huggies bath wipes and then give him a full shampoo because he has so much hair!! He's a pretty good sport about it but sometimes gets mad about it!!

This was from Joshua's first family outing. We went to church and lunch on Sunday. He slept through church and had a bottle at lunch, so he was happy!! I thought Noah and Abby looked so cute and so grown up!! I mean Noah's going to be 10 in a month, aaaahhhh!!

And finally just a cute photo of the baby!! I couldn't wait to get him home and dressed in all the clothes I got for him. In the hospital he could only wear button up sleepers because of all the wires and tubes. But at home he just has the one set of tubes, so he can wear just about anything.

So that's it for now. I'll really try to update more often. Now that the holidays are over and things are settling down, it should be a little easier!!

Day 98 - A Break!

2009-12-17T18:09:00.002-05:00

Today is day 98 of Joshua's life and hospital stay. We have just 7 days until Christmas! And Joshua may actually be home for it!!! He now weighs 12 pounds 11 ounces. He has his nose tube out again today and is doing well. He's had one stool and lots of gas!! I truly believe that he may be healing himself (well with God's help of course!!) and that he may not need another surgery. Boy that would be so wonderful!! But we won't know for a few more weeks, so we'll be patient and keep praying!

So the exciting news is that they've decided to send us home for a break!! We will get to have our baby home for a few weeks and then we'll go back for the surgery if it's necessary. He will be coming home with a central line in his chest for his intravenous foods and medicines. Steve and I will be responsible for the care of that, except for the dressing change on the line. We will be hanging the feeds everyday, flushing the line and adding all vitamins and medicines to the bag of fluids. I began training today. Everything has to sterile because the line goes straight to his heart. So it's a little scary, but I think we'll be extra careful and everything should be fine. They told us they felt very confident that he would be fine under our care. They felt that because we have always been so active in his care and always at the hospital with him, that we would be able to notice any problems and that we would be able to handle all the procedures. Apparently, they don't always feel that way about the parents they have to deal with, so I'm just glad that they feel this way about us.

So everyday, we will have to add the ingredients to his bag of food (using real syringes with needles...aaahh!!), then using sterile procedures we'll flush the line with normal saline and then hook up the new food. Then we'll have to know how to program the pumps to run it. Luckily his pumps will be portable and we'll be able to pack everything up into a backpack so we can go outside if we want or just walk around our house. I'm so excited to show him the outside world. They told me even if it's cold, I can bundle him up and take him out. They're also going to try to work out a 2 hour window during the day when he's off the line, so he can be completely untied from any cords and we can use that time to bathe him or whatever we want. I didn't realize he would be so portable. I had imagined that he would be confined to the area around his bed like he is at the hospital! I'm so glad to know we'll be able to take him around the house and outside!!

We will be under the care of home nurses but they won't be there everyday. They said the first 3 days at home, they will be there to watch me hook everything up to make sure I'm comfortable with it. Then they will come at least once a week to draw blood for labs, change the dressing and assess him. Then we will also be going into the hospital once a week for a "clinic" visit where we will meet with our doctors and nurses to go over how the previous week was and to make plans for the next week. Plus we're never more than a phone call away from his surgeon and the home care people. His surgeon is the one who really got this going. I'm so glad he's all for this. We trust him, so we know this has been really thought out and he is certain that Joshua will be fine.

So hopefully, if all goes well, he'll be home right before Christmas. If not, then at least within a day or two of it, and we'll wait to have our celebration for when he is home. I have matching jammies from Disney for them to wear overnight and for the Christmas morning and then matching sweaters to wear during the day!! I'm so excited!!

These pictures show Joshua with his mohawk!! I washed his hair last night before he went to bed and brushed it up and it stayed last night and today!! I thought it was so cute!!

I have my next lesson tomorrow and then I'll keep practicing next week. Hopefully we'll be out of here in time for Christmas!!! I can't wait to get my baby home!!

Day 96 - A Setback

2009-12-15T19:45:00.006-05:00

Today is day 96 of Joshua's life and hospital stay. It's just 9 days until Christmas. Unfortunately it looks like Joshua will not be home for Christmas. In fact, we don't know when he'll be home at all. But I'll get more into that later in this post. I wanted to share these 6 photos because they were taken during about a 2 minute period and show him falling asleep. I thought it was just too sweet!! I love that baby!

I also love how he cuddles his Wubba Nub pal!! He has a frog, dog, duck and horse. They're so cute!!

So Joshua weighs around 12 pounds 8 ounces right now. He has started to gain weight again. That's good. He's still only being fed through his PICC line, so it's only liquid nutrition. Nothing in the belly. He is completely off pain meds and is doing really well overall. He is still not moving anything through his intestines, so last Friday we started a study to find out why. We started with a lower GI on Friday. He had a barium enema sent up through the intestines to see if we could get up to the anastamosis (re-connection site) so we could see if there was a problem there. Maybe swelling or a blockage. During that test we were not able to reach the anastamosis but all of the intestines we did get through seemed fine. So we had to wait over the weekend for the barium to pass out of his system to do an upper GI yesterday. So we went down for that (we have to go down to the radiology department for these tests) and his surgeon was there and stayed for the whole test. So they put the barium in through the tube in his nose and we watched it travel down. It takes awhile for the barium to go all through, so we were sent up to the room and they had someone come up with a portable x-ray to take pictures every few hours. At one point, they were concerned that it seemed as if nothing was moving past one point, so they brought him back down to radiology to get more and better pictures. They found that the barium was actually getting through, but really slowly. So this morning they took a few more x-rays and found that the barium did actually make it through to the colon, but it was moving very, very slowly. So, at this point, the surgeons and neonatologists believe that he either has a stricture (a point that narrows and causes things to back up as it can't all pass through) which would need to be removed, or an adhesion which is where the intestine has adhered to some part of the body inside is causing a narrowing. The adhesion removal would not involve any cutting of the intestines, just removing the connection. But either of these are major surgeries and we won't be able to know which it is until they go in and investigate. We can't tell from the outside. Now, there is a chance that whatever it is going on in there, could fix itself. If it's a stricture, it could just grow open with time and if it's an adhesion, it could release itself. There's not a whole lot of chance of those happening, but it is possible.

His surgeon feels so terrible about all of this. He has told us that Joshua is always on his mind and he just keeps going over and over the surgery in his head and he just can't think of anything he could've done differently to have a better outcome. He tries so hard to keep our spirits up. He loves to remind me that Joshua will eventually be a normal little boy, we just have to get this one part working again. He has told us that he's seen babies with enormous problems that they will have to live with forever and that Joshua will only have a scar left after all this. I know he's right, but right now that seems like forever away.

Tonight, Steve talked with him again and he spoke with the other surgeons and they believe it best to wait until 6 weeks after the last surgery which is 4 weeks away from now to do another surgery. So we'll be waiting until then, when they'll do another study to make sure the results are the same and then decide if he's fixed himself or if he'll need surgery. So that's somewhere around January 11th.

I'm not going to lie, our hearts are just broken. We already felt like we were at the end of our ropes as it is, having already been there 13 weeks and 5 days and now to wait another 4 weeks for surgery and at least another 3 weeks after that for recovery is just so awful. I know we will get through it, but it's so, so hard. We're trying to figure out the best way to do Christmas now. I'm hoping they'll at least ok another visit for Noah and Abby on Christmas Day so we can share at least a few hours together. There's also the slimmest of chances that they would let him go home with home nurse care. But when I say slim, I mean really slim. But oh that would be such a relief. Something to pray for!!

So we're trying to keep faith in God, that he will work all this out for good as Romans 8:28 says. It's easy to be faithful when things are good, but this has shown me how much harder it is to be faithful when things are bad. It's so much easier to just be sulking and down than it is to find joy and peace right now. But if I'm going to be a believer when things are easy, I better be a believer when things are hard. I know He will get us through this and that it will all be good. He never did say life would be all happy and fun. Everyone has tough times. Everyone suffers at some time and is sad at other times. That doesn't mean He isn't with us. He is. And so even though my heart is broken, I will chose to be faithful and chose to believe Him. And try really hard not to question His decisions!!

Here are pictures of Noah and Abby from their first Upward games. For some reasons my pictures all turned kind of bad. Abby's picture is ok, but Noah's isn't so great and it's the best one I had! Hopefully I'll get better ones this weekend!

So keep praying for us and I'll try to update more often as we learn more info. Thank you all.

Day 91 - 3 Months

2009-12-10T16:24:00.002-05:00

Today is day 91 of Joshua's life and hospital stay. We have just 15 days left until Christmas and his homecoming, I hope. Joshua is three months old now!! I can't believe he's already that old. Wow.

He is doing much better as far as surgery recovery goes. He is no longer on any pain medication and is as happy as can be. In fact he rarely even whines. His incision is healing beautifully and the sites where the stomas were have scabbed over and are also healing well. He weighs around 12 pounds 8 ounces right now. He gained some weight last week and has lost a little over the past few days.

Feeding is still on hold. We tried to feed him on Monday, but after two 10ml bottles, he started vomiting. He ended up vomiting several times that day and they decided to put the NG tube back in to help him empty his stomach. He still has the tube in and he's still having a large amount of stuff coming out.

Tomorrow we're doing a test to help determine why he's having such troubles getting things to go down. We're basically trying to determine if he's got a spot in the intestines that's not open, or if we just have a motility problem where things are just not moving. So they'll be doing a barium enema and watching via x-ray to see if the liquid can make it's way all the way up the stomach. If for some reason, they can't get it to the stomach just because of how big he is, then we'll have to wait until Monday and do they test from the mouth done. It would really stink to have to have that test because those are more days we'll just be waiting. I'm so tired of waiting.

I really don't know what we'll do other than wait (and I'm tired of waiting) if it's diagnosed as a closed spot. I think the theory at this time is that if it's closed, we just have to wait for it to open. But if it's just motility, there are drugs we can use to try and get things moving. Oh, how I hope it's that. His Dr. believes it's motility. I hope he's right. So after we get a diagnosis, we'll know more of what's going to happen. It's looking bleak for a Christmas homecoming, but I'll have hope until 11:59pm December 24th. God has done much bigger things than this, so I know He can do it, if it's His will. Plus, even if we do miss Christmas, I know my son will get out of the hospital and come home sometime soon. I know it. And that gets me through these tough times. I remind myself of what I used to say during my very short stint in the Army (if you didn't know I had a short stint in the Army, ask me about it the next time you see me!!), whenever we were being made to do all these horribly physical "punishments" I would recite to myself "this too shall pass" over and over and that's what I'm telling myself now.

The rest of us are doing ok. Abby is loving cheerleading!! She is doing cheers and cartwheels all the time! It's driving poor Noah crazy! He is having a great time in basketball. They are both so ready for Christmas. I wrapped most of their presents the other night and when they woke up in the morning they were amazed! Our tree is bursting!! I'm trying to get the playroom organized and cleaned up. I want to re-do my scrapbook room/closet to allow for some toy storage in there as well. I'm also working on some ornaments for Joshua's nurses and therapists to give to them when we're about to go home. We're having meals delivered from our church the next few weeks. That's really a great help. We also got a package of cookies delivered to our door from the church. They were yummy!! We've enjoyed lots of Christmas cartoons and movies. Charlie Brown and Elf are my favorites! The kids really enjoyed the new Prep and Landing, I slept through it!!

Well I'm off, it's Survivor time!! Please pray for the test tomorrow. Pray for a diagnosis from that one test and that we can finally get things moving and get that baby eating. And please pray for peace and calmness for Steve and I as we are really feeling pushed to our limits right now. It's just been sooooo long. And please pray for Noah and Abby who have been such troopers through all this and may end up with a delayed Christmas. They really have taken everything so well and I hate asking them to postpone it if necessary, but they happily agreed. They're such good kids. I'm so blessed.

Day 86 - Feeling Better

2009-12-05T14:17:00.002-05:00

Today is day 86 of Joshua's life and hospital stay. We have just 20 days left until Christmas and his homecoming!! That's less than 3 weeks!! We're hoping he'll actually get out in about 17-19 days. This picture was before surgery. I just thought it was cute! He looks so chubby!!

Joshua hasn't been weighed since before surgery, so I have no update there. He's doing much better today. His pain is finally under control and probably just improving from being 5 days since surgery. They changed his drug from morphine to fentanyl yesterday. He seems to be doing well with that. He decided late Thursday night that he was tired of the ventilator and when his nurse went to get his medicine, he took it out himself!! His heartrate immediately dropped as he was not yet breathing on his own, so the code alarm was called and they all rushed in and were able to calm him and get him breathing on his own. They put a nasal cannula with 30% oxygen on him and he's being weaned from that today.

Yesterday he did a little better. We were able to hold him for the first time because the vent was out. That was so nice! I actually did kangaroo care with him. That means that he was naked except for the diaper and I was shirtless except for undergarments and we sat there skin to skin. That's supposed to be very soothing for babies. So we sat like that for about 2 1/2 hours. He was still in a good amount of pain both from the surgery and from the gas he was having. I know it's kind of not cool to write about gas, but we were so happy it was happening!! It means things are working down there!! So whenever he would have a big bout of pain, he would bear down and hold his breath. Sometimes he'd need to have the oxygen mask placed in front of him and other times he would just recover on his own, but that boy can hold his breath for forever!! Today he is doing much better with it and hasn't done the holding breath thing. I think the new medicine is helping too.

The secretions that the naso-gastric tube are sucking from his stomach and getting more and more clear and that means that the belly is now allowing that stuff to pass on down through the intestines. This is another great sign. He's also had lots of gas like I mentioned, and even two poops!! So they decided this morning to no longer suction the stomach, but they left the tube in just in case the stomach backs up, it can help empty it. But it's no longer actually sucking anything out. That's so great!! That means in the next day or two, they'll begin feeding him. And then we just have to get him up to his max feeds and tolerating it, then we'll go home!! Hopefully that'll go quick because of how much he's already been eating before surgery.

So overall things are looking up and I'm so relieved. It's been a very long and draining week for us all, but especially Joshua. I'll be so glad when this is all over and we just have the the scar to remind us of it. This has been the longest 12 weeks of my life. I can not wait until it's all over.

Noah and Abby spent the week with family. I think they did well and had a good time. I'm so glad we have family near that can fill in like that. It definitely makes things easier. They both started their Upwards seasons today. Noah had his first basketball game and Abby had her first ever cheerleading game. They were both so cute. I took them to the games while Daddy was at the hospital. Next week we'll probably switch so Daddy can see the games. Luckily there will be plenty of games after Christmas where we all five can go together.

Well that's about it for now. I'll update again soon. Thanks!!

Day 83 - Post Op Post

2009-12-02T10:53:00.002-05:00

Today is day 83 of Joshua's life and hospital stay. That leaves just 23 days until Christmas and his homecoming.

Joshua has had a rough few days.
Monday:
Steve and I arrived at the hospital around 6am. He had slept through most of the night, getting a final bottle of Pedialyte right before midnight. He was awake and cranky when we got here and I was able to rock him back to sleep while we waited for them to come get him for surgery. The anesthesia team came to get him around 7:15am. He loved the walk through the hallway. It was almost heartbreaking to see him so mesmerized by just being outside that room. So they took him in and started anesthesia and an epidural for the incision site. They also put in the ventilator. He was fine during surgery. They were able to reconnect the intestines as planned and there wasn't an overabundance of scar tissue to deal with, but there was some. The surgery itself lasted about 4 hours. They took his entire line of intestines out and measured and checked them over thoroughly to avoid missing anything. The surgeon was very confident that everything had been done properly. The was one surprise in that he has far less intestine overall than they previously thought. We were initially told he had 40cm of the top portion and 120cm of the bottom portion for a total of 160cm. He actually has 55cm of the top portion and another 55cm of the bottom portion for a total of 110cm. We're not sure why the huge discrepancy, but it is believed to be because the original measurements were just assumptions and not actual measurements. Anyway, it shouldn't be a problem that he has a smaller amount because we've been successfully feeding him for awhile now and if was going to be a problem, it would have already been. The surgeon said every body is different in how much length it needs to be able to successfully absorb the nutrients and grow the baby. He said if he wasn't confident in how well he would do, he wouldn't have reconnected him. I suppose time will tell there, but I'm pretty confident he will be fine.

So he came out of surgery with the ventilator in, a replogle (a naso-gastric tube that suctions out the stomach secretions to give the intestines a time to heal), a foley catheter, an epidural in his spine to continually numb just the area surrounding the incision, a PICC line that was running his pain meds and fluids and an IV in his foot for more fluids. He did well Monday, mainly resting. He slept 99% of the time, only waking very briefly a few times.

Tuesday:
The day started normal with our goal of getting him off the ventilator. He was continually breathing over the vent, meaning the vent was set at 30, he was breathing at least 40-50, plus he was more awake and agitated with the tube being in his mouth. We started him on the IV fluid feeds also. They took down his morphine and versed by half to try and wake him more so he would do better once they took the vent out. He was becoming more and more agitated. At one point, he cried (silently with the vent in) hysterically and the vent machine started alarming, his heart rate dropped and his O2 saturation went down. He started turning blue in the face and lips and we panicked. A nurse came immediately and started bagging him (using the bag to force air into him). He was able to stabilize with the bagging. By that time several respiratory team members and nurses were in trying to figure out what to do, they decided it was best to just pull the vent then as they assumed his problems were just because of his agitation with it. So they pulled the tube out and he just went lifeless and wouldn't breathe at all. The continued bagging him, and also put on a nasal cannula, but he would not breathe on his own. No one has yet been able to explain why that happened, but it was the scariest moment of my life. When they would take the air off to see what he would do and he just laid there, it was so awful. I just stood in the corner in a daze and Daddy was pacing by the door. It was just horrible. They eventually decided they needed to put a tube back in and then proceeded to do that. Once it was back in, he stabilized again and was fine. They had him up to 100% oxygen for awhile and he really perked up with that. He got color back into his skin and he rested. They think it may be that he was still just too sedated. Hopefully when we try again, it will have a much better result.

He was mostly fine the rest of the day. The tube causes him to have lots of secretions that need to be suctioned out (very normal) and sometimes it can cause him to "desat" meaning his O2 level goes down quickly, but after suctioning him it goes right back up. That's all a product of the tube being in there and not that there's something actually wrong with him.

Before we left for the night, he woke up for about 15 minutes and just stared into our eyes and I just sat there and talked to him and once he even tried to do a little smile. It was so nice to be able to connect to him like that again. I just love him so much and can't wait until I can hold him again and love on him. He's my little sweet baby.

So today: Wednesday:
We got here early as usual and heard that he had a pretty good night, but this morning was showing signs of being in more pain. They had discontinued the versed, so he was just on a small amount of morphine and the epidural. He was pretty agitated when his nurse and I examined his belly and we felt he should get a PRN (as needed) dose of morphine to calm him and it did. His hematacrit levels have been slowly declining over the last day or so, so they've ordered him another small blood transfusion. We should be getting that done soon. They had to put in a new iv for it because the one in his foot came out overnight. He was doing that horrible silent cry again (it just tears me up to see him do that, his face is just in a hysterical cry, but he doesn't make a noise. Oh it's awful) so we decided that since he wasn't due for another PRN dose of morphine, we'd give him a PRN dose of versed instead. We did that and he finally after a couple of hours of agitation, went to sleep and rested. He's resting now and we're still awaiting the bloods arrival. We're not going to try to take the vent out today. Maybe tomorrow or the next day. We really feel like maybe things happened to fastly and he became way to uncomfortable, so our goal for today is just pain control. Hopefully that'll be done and he can heal enough in the next day or so to come down from the meds. The meds also slow down the intestines, so ideally we'd like to wean him from them so we can get those intestines going, but right now he's just in too much pain and rightly so, he had a major surgery. So Daddy and I both agree that we just want to leave him alone for awhile and rest and heal.

Abby and Noah are doing well. They spent two nights with cousins and had a blast!! Now they're with my Mom and tomorrow and Friday they'll be with Steve's Mom. They've gotten to do lots of fun things and I'm so grateful to have the family around to not only take care of them, but to also "show them a goodtime"!

Daddy and I are doing ok. We've had a few rough and long days, but we're right where we want to be and that's with our little baby. We make a good team for Joshua, I'm the comforting one and he's the advocate (talking with the docs and making plans). We do well together.

So that's pretty much it for now. I'll update again when I can. Thanks so much for all the prayers and support. We have needed it.

Twitter

2009-11-29T10:42:00.002-05:00

I started a Twitter account (actually about a month ago) so you can go there for updates of the next few days. The address is www.Twitter.com/mama2my3

I should be able to update that as much as possible. Love you all!!

Day 79 - Last Pre-Surgical Post

2009-11-28T22:30:00.007-05:00

Today is day 79 of Joshua's life and hospital stay, which leaves just 27 days until Christmas and his homecoming. We have just one more day until surgery!!

Joshua is still doing well. He got a blood transfusion today. They wanted him to be nice and full for the loss he's sure to have during surgery. It'll help him get through the surgery easier and heal faster. He got a total of 120ml of blood today. So with all the extra blood he gained a few ounces of weight! He weighed about 12 pounds 6 ounces tonight. He got his PICC line put in yesterday. They gave him some medicine to make him sleepy and it worked! He slept through most of that procedure. I was so glad to hear that. I let Daddy be there for that procedure, I just didn't want to witness another procedure that upset him. So I think he's all ready to go now. He'll go NPO tomorrow night (nothing by mouth) which may make him a bit cranky, but hopefully he'll just sleep through it.

This will probably be my last post until after the surgery. Tomorrow is pretty busy for me. I'll be at the hospital in the morning and then I have to finish packing the kids for their stays with family next week, and then take Abby to cheerleading. But I just wanted to give a quick update before the big day. I'll take my computer to the hospital Monday so I can update it as much as I can. I can't believe it's finally here!! My baby's belly will be back to normal. Oh I can't wait to see it.

Here's a couple of pictures from Thanksgiving. Abby and Noah had dinner twice. Once with me at my Mom and Dad's and then later with Daddy at his Mom's house. It was weired being split up like that, but it was nice to see all of my family. Seeing them sort of gives me a little emotional boost and I needed it. Joshua was wearing his little "My First Thanksgiving" outfit. It was very cute on him of course!! He had 3 turkeys on it, just like I have 3 turkeys!!

Well please pray for our little baby and his team of doctors and nurses. And for us. And for Noah and Abby. This is what we've been waiting for, for soooooooo long. And I'm just praying that everything goes well and as planned. Thank you all so much.

Oh and I just wanted to add, if anyone wonders why there's never any pictures of Steve on here, it's because he asked me to not put pictures of him on here way back when I first started the blog and so I try to respect that. He's very private and hates being shown like that, I guess. So that's why he's never pictured on here. Thanks again to all of you, we love you all!!

Day 77 - Thankful

2009-11-26T08:52:00.006-05:00

Today is day 77 of Joshua's life and hospital stay. He's 11 weeks old now!! We have just 29 days until Christmas and Joshua's homecoming. We have only 3 more days until surgery (when I count down, I don't count the day I'm in now and the day of the event, in case you were wondering!!).

Today I'm thankful and probably most people are, so I thought I'd just share a few of the things I'm thankful for today.

I'm thankful that....

I've been blessed with an awesome husband and three terrific kids!

Joshua now weighs over 12 pounds!

Noah and Abby got to visit Joshua for a few hours yesterday!

The child life people at the hospital do such nice things for us like making a welcome sign for Noah and Abby!

Joshua's final cystic fibrosis test came back negative!

Tomorrow we begin getting ready for surgery by putting in a new PICC line (a central IV)!

Noah and Abby have remained healthy and happy during this difficult time in their lives!

I have a wonderful husband who has truly been my partner in this!

I have somewhere to go for Thanksgiving where I'll be spending time with lots of my family!

My baby is healthy in spite of his condition!

Our van is still going strong!

We have a wonderful home and soft bed to come back to every night!

So many people have offered us such encouraging words during our struggle!

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now! It's almost over!

I'm still able to pump breastmilk with hopes of being able to nurse my baby when he comes home!

Noah and Abby were just enamored with their little brother!

Joshua smiled at his brother and sister!

The dishes are done and laundry is relatively caught up!

Gymboree is having a big sale!

I have sooo much more to be thankful for, but I'll leave it at that for now. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and I'll update more again soon!

Day 72 - Lots of pictures!

2009-11-21T13:17:00.012-05:00

Today is day 72 of Joshua's life and hospital stay. That leaves just 34 days until Christmas (it's getting close, do you have your shopping done yet?), and his hopeful homecoming. And we have just 8 days to go until surgery. We've learned who our nurses will be before and after surgery. We're happy with them! This week will go by fast too since we have just two regular days the whole week! Monday and Tuesday will be normal, Wednesday, Noah and Abby are coming for their visit, Thursday is Thanksgiving and Friday Steve doesn't work, so we'll have a different schedule. Then it's the weekend which is always quick and then it's surgery day!! I just want it all over. I'm so tired of the tubes going in his belly and things coming out of his belly. His nurse Dawn was singing "All I Want for Christmas is My New Bell-Ly" to him yesterday. It was so cute!! That's what I want too!!

Joshua weighs around 11 pounds 11 ounces. He is still growing, but a bit slowly. He's really growing lengthwise though. Every few days I have to "retire" another sleeper because he's too long for it!! I'm glad he's growing! A couple of days ago, our nurse let me change his ostomy bag. Now this is honestly a pretty nasty job, but I loved doing it. I got to actually feel like his "caregiver" instead of just a hand holder. I am allowed to change his diapers and feed him, which of course are important jobs, but I want to do it all!! I wish they'd let me do it all while I'm there. I'd love it. But they can't. I will be glad though when we don't have ostomy bags anymore!! Just 8 more days!!

These pictures are from last night. I took the kids outside in the sunset and took lots of picture with that beautiful natural lighting. Enjoy!

This one was when they were racing and poor Jasmine could only watch. As soon as we get a fence (hopefully Spring) we'll be able to let her run with them. She wants to so badly!
This one Noah took of me. I thought he did a good job! It's actually pretty flattering (probably because it's not a body shot!!)

These next pics are from our cousin Zach's 7th Birthday party. We went bowling. It was lots of fun. I played with Noah, Abby, Zach and Riley. I was the only adult and I didn't win!! Abby won!! She beat us all pretty bad!!

Well that's it for now. More to come!

Day 68 - Emotional Rollercoaster

2009-11-17T20:12:00.004-05:00

Today is day 68 of Joshua's life and hospital stay, which leaves us just 38 days until Christmas and his hopeful homecoming. We have just 12 days until surgery! Joshua had a weight gain finally and weighs now 11 pounds 8 ounces! He's really growing!! Just an update on his feeds for the record: he is now taking 6 bottles by mouth of 45ml each containing breastmilk and a small amount of formula to up the calories. He also has a multivitamin with iron mixed in for one of the bottles and also prevacid mixed for two of them. He is taking 29ml per hour of a mix of elacare formula, ostomy output (what has been partially digested from the bottles) and pectin (additional fiber to help him absorb more water and have less runny stools) continuously via tube in his mucous fistula.

He is just doing really well and I'm very grateful for that. He is continuing to grow and become more "baby" like rather than just newborn. He's awake more and communicates with us with face expressions and body movements. We just a gym mat for the floor, so we can sit on the floor with him and play. I'm very excited about that. It gives us another place to interact with him other than just the rocking chair! They've given us lots of toys to use to play with him as well. He's just starting to notice toys. He just stares at them so far. But right now, staring means he likes it!

I'm feeling much better today. We've had some issues lately with the doctors sort of not really listening to our concerns, but today I got to speak with the resident for quite awhile and I was really impressed with how well he listened, how much he had researched our issues before coming in and how much he really seemed to care. My issues stemmed from a comment yesterday morning, when I asked why we were giving him the multivitamin plus iron and one of our doctors said "Because we give it to all the babies". I was just like, really, just because you give it to all the babies. So you don't test to see if a baby really needs it, or anything. Our main reason for questioning it was because the iron seemed to be upsetting his stomach and causing him to be very upset after taking it. So we just wanted to know how necessary it really was. We are just not the kind of people who do what everyone else is doing, just because everyone else is doing it. We do and everyone should question why is everyone doing it? Is there really a good reason or are we just following. I wish more people would question things, so that when we do we don't look so crazy to the medical professionals!!

But anyway, after my discussion today, I feel much better about it and realize that he needs to supplement for the fact that he's had surgery and will have another one and therefore has lost and will lose some blood which contains his newborn storage of iron. I just wish he could've been the one that answered my questions yesterday. It might've saved me some frustration! I am just so glad that whenever we do have problems, there is always someone to remedy it for us. They really do care. I really needed this today. We had one of our favorite nurses too, so it was a good day! We have a handful of nurses that are our "primaries" that we get anytime they're working. We have two for daytime and two for nighttime. We don't always have them because of schedules and things, but it's so nice when we do. They know Joshua, they know what is going on with him and what care he needs, they know Steve and I and what we do with him. I don't have to explain to them for the 100th time how his care is usually done, when we feed him, the schedule Steve and I do, anything. It's just so nice. Plus we've gotten to know them enough that we can just have normal conversations with them about families and travel or whatever and it's nice to have that. So we love our Dawn, Ashley, Jane and Elizabeth!!! There's a couple of others that we've had periodically that we really enjoy too especially Amy and Beth. But we don't get them very often.

So I'm feeling pretty good right now. I know that tomorrow, or the next day I might be down again, but I guess that's the nature of the beast, or so to speak. Ups and downs come with the territory. And every early morning or late night, is one step closer to getting him home and we're really getting close now.

So in other news, we're doing pretty good. We have some of our Christmas shopping done. We're trying to get it all done by the surgery since we don't know how crazy our schedule will be after it. It's been so fun buying for three kids this year!! Tomorrow night is another basketball practice for Noah and Abby has cheerleading Sunday nights. She had her little meet and greet last weekend and loved it! I'm glad she's having fun with it. I can't wait to see her in her little uniform!! We're also planning our Disney trip. We can't decide if we want to go earlier in February or wait until the beginning of March. I CAN NOT WAIT!!! The kids found a caterpillar today and put it in our butterfly tent. They named it Pilly and gave it lots of leaves and grass to eat and they can't wait to see what happens with it.

Well here's a couple of pics of Noah and Abby. Abby's picture is from a week or so ago when we had been watching "Say Yes to the Dress" and she asked me about my wedding dress. I got it out to show her and then suggested she try it on!! She loved it all!! She's even wearing my veil. She's so beautiful! I showed the picture to Daddy and he said yes she is beautiful, but she's never getting married!!! He doesn't want her to leave!! And Noah's picture was Sunday. I just thought he looked so cute in his outfit for the day and snapped a few shots of him!! They both look so grown up!! Oh where did the time go??

Oh, and I almost forgot, Noah and Abby will get to visit Joshua!! I think we're scheduling it for next Wednesday! We had to get it approved from the "higher ups", but they finally agreed and I can't wait to see my three babies together again. It's going to be awesome!! Well that's it for now. I'll update again soon and I have pictures of bowling to share!!

Day 66 - The "Are We There Yet?" Edition

2009-11-15T11:01:00.001-05:00

Today is day 66 of Joshua's life and hospital stay and we have just 40 days left until Christmas! His surgery is 14 days away! Joshua is still weighing right around 11 pounds 4 ounces. The doctors and nutritionists and playing around with adding things to feedings and upping the feedings to try and get him gaining more weight. At least he's not losing weight. But the more weight he gains, the healthier he is and the better his recovery will be after the surgery. So we're hoping we can get him up at least another pound in the next two weeks.

Other than the feedings, he's pretty much not doing anything else new. We're just hanging out until surgery. This weeks been a bit rough. I know we're getting so close now, I know that. But it's been so long that we've been doing this and it's just really starting to wear on me, Steve, Noah and Abby and Joshua too. I'm so tired of all that's involved in being at the hospital everyday and no matter where I'm at, one or two of my kids are not with me. I'm so tired of the 45 minute each way drive. I'm tired of pumping breastmilk. I'm tired of being watched all day long as I just try to care for my son. I'm tired of the Doctors always thinking they know what's best for him and I don't. I'm tired of who are nurse is for the day, being a determining factor of how my day is going to be. I'm tired of annoying nurses (not all are). I'm tired of not seeing my husband except for about 45 minutes at night. I'm tired of getting up so early (I'm not a morning person!). I'm tired of not having "family time". I'm tired of never being able to move my baby beyond the 6 foot by 6 foot square around his crib that the cords and tubes will reach (I'm sure he's tired of that as well. I know he'd love to get out and see more). I'm tired of coming home from the hospital exhausted and still having so much to do. I'm just tired. I've tried so hard to be a "trooper" and keep my mind in a positive attitude, but after awhile it just really wears on you. I know all 5 of us are "tired" of so much. I told our nurse yesterday (one that's really good and we love) that after we get home, I just want all of us (including the dog!) to lay in our bed for like 4 days. It might be crowded, but I just need that constant together time and relaxation right now. I can't wait to tell that hospital goodbye.

Sorry, I needed to keep it real!! It's not all "we can do this" "only 14 more days" "we're almost there". It's rough, I'm not going to lie. But alas, the end is in sight and I know that no matter how hard it is, we are all in God's hands and he is taking care of us. That is the only thing that gets us through this and in one piece. He's using this situation to build us up. We'll be closer and stronger than ever after this. I already feel some of that happening. We've never been a better "team". We're all doing our parts and it's working. And it's bringing us all so much closer to Him. I'm talking/praying to Him all day long. I really want His glory to be seen in our situation and I'm just hoping that is the case.

Well anyway, today Abby and I added our Joshua sticker to the back of the van. It's very rare that I have the car while at home, so since we did today (we have to go to a Birthday party) we added him. I can't wait until those stickers are seen driving through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida on our way to Walt Disney World!! Early spring, that's the goal!!

Day 61 - 2 months!!!

2009-11-10T20:08:00.005-05:00

Happy 2nd Month Birthday, Baby!! We all love you!!

Today is day 61 of Joshua's life and hospital stay. We have 45 days left until Christmas and Joshua's hopeful homecoming. We also have just 19 days until surgery!!!!! Today is Joshua's 2nd month Birthday! Wow I can't believe he's already 2 months old! That's 1/6 of a year!! Already, I can't imagine our lives without him. He is such a sweet and wonderful baby. I can't wait to share him with his siblings, our family and friends and the whole world!! He is such a joy and I am so blessed to be his Mommy. I don't know how I deserve 3 awesome kids, but somehow God decided to bless me with them. I'm so grateful.

Joshua is now about 11 pounds 4 ounces. And as you can tell from the pictures he got his tube out of his nose!!!! That happened on Saturday. They had lowered his continuous feedings so low, that his surgeon said it was just silly to leave that tube in, so they took it out. He now has 6 feedings a day of 45 ml each. He is allowed to breastfeed for one of those times, if the schedule allows. We've been able to nurse everyday but today, since Friday. Today was just a little crazy, so we didn't get to, but he's doing awesome with it. He latches on like he's always done it. I can't believe how well he does at it. We did a pre and post weight Friday to see if he was actually getting anything and he was! He drank 22ml in 6 minutes!! The nurses and therapists are astounded at how well he is doing.

He is still getting the continuous feeds into the bottom portion. That's a mix of the ostomy bag output and elacare formula. He's probably going to stay at where he is until surgery. His surgeon doesn't want to "rock the boat", so we're just going to stay where we are for the next 19 days. Wow, 19 doesn't seem so long at all!!

He had his 2 month immunizations today. He was already upset from his nurse assessment, so the shots didn't seem to bother him a ton. Daddy was with him during them. I was glad, I knew that if I was there, I'd be a crying mess. I've always cried at the shots. I hate seeing that look in their face when it happens.

I watched the Bengals game with him this week. We both had jersey's on!! One of the surgeon fellows that has been with him since his surgery, always calls Joshua the Bengals good luck charm. It's so cute!! So here's a couple of pics of us watching the game.. Who-Dey!!!

Is he getting annoyed with the camera already? He needs to get used to it, just ask Noah and Abby!!!

Just a few more pics of my sweet little one. He's so much cuter without the tube on his face! I know he's pretty happy about it being gone as well, especially since he can now have his hands free of mittens!! He is a real happy baby now!!

We have a VERY busy weekend coming up. We have two cousin birthday parties. Both cousins are turning 7! We also have Lowe's Build and Grow, which is the one the kids have wanted to do the most (Jimmie Johnson's garage), a cheerleading meet and greet for Abby and a meeting for Social Security (all babies are eligible for Social Security and Medicaid after they've been hospitalized for more than 30 days) where I have to fill out all the paperwork and have an interview to get that process going. So we'll all be running to this and that and making sure the baby has a parent with him as well. Hopefully it'll all work out. I know it will make those two days go by fast!! Plus it's Steelers week again!! Go Bengals!!

So that's it for now. We're just hanging out until surgery day. I'm sure I'll have lots of fun pictures to share from our crazy weekend!!