Just busy, busy

I do wish I took the time to at least post snippets over the past couple of weeks. The past week I have been privledged to have a bit of an energy boost. Not sure why, I wish I did so that I could reproduce it when necessary. I was just talking to my sister about it yesterday. I have my house almost done (decluttering) and I have a 'fear' that sickness will soon strike. It never, NEVER fails....once I get things organized we are hit with some sickness that undoes all my hard work. I actually thought about not finishing up the work I have left to do in hopes of keeping sickness at bay.

Most days I usually look forward to the baby going to bed so I can get stuff done. However I never have any energy to do anything by the time I get him to bed. ( I just realized that the first sentence in this paragraph sounds pretty bad! I love the little guy to pieces, he just happens to be a little tornado and all my efforts -in the past- have failed to get caught up. So I would try to do damage control until he went to bed, and then hope to actually get ahead, which had not been possible till this last week.) For some reason though this week from the moment I woke up until midnight I was able to go, go, go! So a lot has gotten done around here!

But I have been making sure to get as much done as I can, not knowing how long this energy burst may last, and therefore have not been spending much time on the computer. Hopefully when I am finished I will be able to have a nice long post to catch up on everything that has been going on around here.

"see you all soon"!

goings on

I need to get some pictures off my camera, but alas as usual, the cord is on one computer and I am on the other :-) I was able to get my hair cut and it came out really nice. I'm surprised that the ends tend to curl in the way they should without work on my part. I was on a real role decluttering. A friend of mine put together a yard sale and we took a bunch of stuff over to sell. We got rid of a lot of stuff from the house! A lot of it was from the attic though. Nonetheless I have been decluttering in an attempt to make our lives run a bit smoother. I have some before and after pictures. I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to post the before pictures! Ha!

In other news I am excited about a trial we are facing. Granted it isn't much of a trial, more of an inconvenience. It's our van. The transmission is going out. One gear has already bit the dust. So we will be saving any van rides just to church or emergencies. Transmissions cost a lot. So it will really have to be a God 'thing' to pull this off. It may mean having only one vehicle for a while. But seriously I felt actually excited about this. This is so NOT like me! And that made me even more excited! When the feeling comes from the Lord, you know it will all work out. I may feel at the end of my rope, or get a bad case of cabin fever, or.....insert a million other options, but for now I want to be happy that I feel the way I do. Plus when that feeling goes away I can come back here and get my perspective straight. We had a few things planned, like a visit to friends and a camping trip that will not be. We are really bumming about that. But somehow I feel that the Lord has something else for us.

The baby caught whatever bug Moira has. We were thinking that maybe Moira had just some allergies.....nope. The baby was up throughout the night with a stuffed up nose. And being under the weather meant that he stuck to me like Velcro :-) And for the record, NO we have not started our garlic.... we just got it in, after Moira started her cold....just in case any favorite sisters were wondering :-)

In Jed news...I was able to weigh him today. Something we haven't done in over a month as I loaned out our scale. It wasn't good. I think he had just tipped the 25 pound mark and mid day, with a diaper on he was 24 lbs 14.5 oz. Ugh! Now granted he had diarrhea for a long time due to different reasons. And he has made big improvements in other areas, just not in weight. I hope to make a better effort to change that. Although there is only so much I can do. I will try to add in avocado, or something with fat. Jed's problem is that his body can't break down the fat. It is very frustrating to know what his body needs, and have the ability to get it into him, only for his body to not process it! I'm not stressed about it,for once! It's just a fact of life right now. I think I have been so pleased with his other growth that the weight issue really doesn't bother me.

We with nowhere to go this week (actually we had a busy week planned, but don't have the ability to go anywhere), I am hoping to finish up my fall cleaning/ decluttering /organization stuff.

growing up

Saoirse just keeps on growing up. Today she lost her first tooth. Earlier in the day she was a bit worried as she was wriggling it around and she asked me if it was going to hurt for her tooth to come out. I told her that I hope it wouldn't but we wouldn't know until it came out. So imagine my surprise at lunch when she was holding something up in the air, talking in a very excited voice about something (I couldn't understand her), and then I saw blood coming from her mouth. Phew! It happened painlessly! I was very happy for her. Goodness knows we've had our share of drama over lost teeth and it is so nice to have one go out quietly :-)

Jedidiah is really getting into pretend play. He has been a bit obsessed with dressing up as a cowboy. I took a bunch of pictures with him in his gear, but they are on our back computer. I'll have to post them later. Jed had speech therapy today and he did very well!!! Yeah! It is so neat to see him making strides. He did very well making the sounds that we have been working on. His therapist said we can start adding a few other consonants now to work on. Jed also said two new words yesterday. One was 'table' and I forgot the other. I have to say it is so refreshing to see the cognitive growth that he has been having.

We have a pretty open week this week. We are planning on having a family over for dinner on Wednesday. And we may have plans for Friday as well. Right now we have had a lot of stuff on our plate. Emotionally it has been taxing. So a lot has gone undone over here. But for the last day or so I've been trying to get back on track. I took all the kids out for a walk this morning. And I am hoping to make that a part of our routine. We are in serious need of some direction over here. I am taking things slow, and am hoping that I can take it step by step to get some order back. Sometimes it seems so easy in my mind, but making it happen is another story! Right now I am trying to just keep the basics with homeschooling, making decent meals (although I really want to get back to eating more veggie than we have been), and keeping the dishes and laundry done. That's it. My standard bar is not very high right now. Ha!

Well off to sleep. My pillow is calling my name :-)

a new montage

Things have been crazy over here. Some day I may be able to tell you all about it, but for now just suffice it to say it's been one crazy month. Never mind that things may get even CrAzIeR over the next few weeks. But I really wanted to share our pictures with you all. I put them in a montage since there were so many. There are pictures of the kiddos building their message boards at Home Depot. We have Isabella and Moira's joint birthday party. You will see them playing pin the tail on the doggie, trying ever so hard to break the pinata and them with their cake. Plus there are some cute pictures of the boys at the end, mostly of Jonah. Today I have to get ourselves back on track with just some normal everyday tasks. I hope you enjoy the montage. I usually take the time to work out the 'effects', but I don't have time today, so I left it as is.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

How our GI appt. went

Well Jed had his six month check up with GI. We were there for two hours, but the time we spent with the doctor was four minutes. And no, I am not exaggerating! He looked at his tube, showed me how Jed is following his growth curve, said that the nutritionist was still fine with our homemade formula and then asked if I had any questions. I told him about Jed's apraxia (as it is a brain thing and that maybe it had something to do with his feeding issues) and he told me that it had nothing to do with his feeding issues. Ahhh, OK then.....Then he told me that since Jedidiah is so stable that we can wait to come back in a year! yahoo!

In non Jed news Saoirse has her first loose tooth! Whoa! Wait, that can't be! But apparently it is true :-( She is growing up just too fast. The poor thing was really freaked out over it. She came up to me whimpering that her tooth was loose. I felt it and verified that it was and then she broke down crying that she didn't want to have a loose tooth. Weeeelllllll, sorry honey but there's no getting out of it! She was not pleased. Thankfully today she seems better about it. I am really hoping that her experience will be better than Flannery's first few loose teeth. Oh my oh my, you'd have to go back and read about those drama filled days of Flannery loosing a tooth.

I would put up pictures, except that I can't find my camera right now. I asked the girls about it and they said they didn't know where it was either, but that they did know the batteries were dead. Hmmmmm that's a bit suspicious! Well sooner or later it will turn up. We have a busy week here, I hope to update you all on Jed's kinesiology appointment goes. I really enjoy going to visit with the kinesiologist. She is so encouraging and so knowledgeable.

Kefir smoothies

First I want to just say a very big thank you to all the wonderful comments I received on my 'challenge post'. I am very glad that I am not alone :-) I am very excited to see how the Lord works all of this out.....an adventure in the making! I will continue to share my thoughts and the results that come out of all of this. I am sure right now they will stay thoughts, like Bethany mentioned, I don't want to swing to the opposite side of the pendulum :-)



I have been making kefir smoothies now for the past few weeks. There are two that we rely on. I am looking forward to trying to come up with new concoctions. Here is our new favorite:



Orange creamsicle

2 cups kefir
2 cups milk
2 frozen bananas
1/2 can of frozen orange juice concentrate
1 dropper of liquid stevia (maybe 20 drops worth?)
1 TBS vanilla extract

Put all into a blender and enjoy. This came out with a wonderful frothy texture. Yum!


Our next standby:

Chocolate smoothie

2 cups kefir
3 spoonfuls of unsweetened cocoa powder
3 spoonfuls of peanut butter
1 dropper of liquid stevia
1 TBS vanilla extract

The next two ingredients I just put in until I think is the right amount I am looking for (I like this to be thick like a milkshake).

maybe 3-4 cups of milk
maybe 4 or more frozen bananas

Mix this all in the blender. Be nice and share :-)



In other news I got another wonderful comment this morning (most of this post was written last night and I am finishing this morning), and it happens to be someone who "randomly" found me from another blog, who happens to be a missionary in Uganda and knows of Katie the missionary's blog I spoke of in my last post. Coincidence? I think not. Boy, you really have to be careful what you pray for :-) I am hoping to get to know this family and see what life looks like in Africa.

Have a great day!

A challenge

ANY READERS UNDER THE CARE OF THEIR PARENTS (UNDER 18) PLEASE DO NOT READ! PLEASE HAVE YOUR PARENTS READ THIS FIRST BEFORE CONTINUING!!


No, I don't have BAD things to say or share, but I do have a lot of my crazy thoughts to share and I am not comfortable with sharing them with a younger crowd if their parents are not OK with what I am about to share :-) So if you are a young one and you are still reading....then GET OFF :-) You can come back another day and enjoy our crazy life in pictures when I finally get them off my camera!












OK, if you ever thought that my posts were unorganized and a bit scattered well you haven't seen anything yet :-) I just feel this big ball of thoughts/emotions/and what not building and I want to get them all out. After all this is a journal, and one mainly for my family. But I know, only from my favorite sister in the whole world who tells me how things are truthfully, that I seem to come across as if I have my life together. I have to tell you I really thought I would laugh out loud (oh wait, I did) after hearing that. And so this post is to show you that I do NOT have my life all together. And I would like to record my crazy thoughts for posterity's sake (ha, ha, ha). This will be a crazy ride as I don't even know where to start as these thoughts have been building for some time.

A few things happened the past couple of days that kind of popped a bubble. They were small, and to anyone else may seem quite odd to have had such an effect. I guess I will start with these things and work my way back. My sister put up a post about deodorant. Ok, it was more than that, but she used that to make a point. You see, anti-perspirant has aluminum in it. Your skin, being your largest organ, absorbs the aluminum. And said aluminum can/will effect your kidneys. I am not sure if there are hard and fast studies done on this but there are writings out there that talk on the dangers of this aluminum from antiperspirants. Your kidneys will function just fine until they have been destroyed to only 10% working capacity. What this means is that you will have no clue that you have a kidney problem until it is too late. However your body will show signs, in seemingly non related ways, but it WILL be affected. Now what does this have to do with me? Well you see I read all that some 17 YEARS AGO! Yes, you heard right, I've known this for 17 years. Now, let me say this first, if you are family and you had anything to do with what I am about to say, let it be known I don't hold anything against you :-) Ok, so lets take a little time trip back 17 years and see what this looked like when I said the same thing.........[imagine a swirl of colors, clouds, a sense of falling through space....we are in NY now] I have read the info on this health concern and decide to take action. I went and bought what was known and maybe still known as a deodorant rock (or crystal). I was reading a lot about health stuff and saw that things were not as rose colored as the advertisers want you to believe it is. However I was alone at the time in this journey, and what I was met with is what I will call "the stare". The one where I am sure once the person turned their back to me were rolling their eyes. Come on, admit it....you rolled your eyes at me. Like I said, I don't hold it against anyone, after all it does seem odd. But if you think it is still out there and that the FDA has only our good in mind then please stand up and go to your antiperspirant bottle and read the back. About half way down you will see something that reads like this: Consult with your physician before using this product if you have kidney problems. I kid you not....go read it yourself. You may still be asking, OK Kerri this is a nice little story but what is the point? The point is after a lot of "grief" about my strange ways I started putting them by the wayside. A little here and a little there and I now find myself wondering where did *I* go. Yeah, all from some deodorant, who would have thought? Ok, obviously there is sooooooooo much more to it than that, but still it is a part of it all. But this ties in with soooooo many other areas in my life and I will try to share some of it with you. As the years went along I have found myself trying to follow a lot of rules. Now, hear me now, rules are good for us, ones in particular....the ones God made. However I was trying to make my life safe with those rules. I was always a bit......well I guess I would describe myself as always being "one beat off". For those of you who knew me some 17-18 years ago you know exactly what I am talking about. I enjoyed following the beat to a different drummer. I liked looking at things in a different light than the masses. Now granted there were still a lot of people like me, but I didn't follow the crowd. I was ok being different. But at some point I didn't. I felt like I needed to change for the sake of being more normal (whatever that might be!). Add a couple of children and I felt like I needed to do things right. And being a bit odd, well that just didn't seem like the 'right' thing to do. And so I continued to fill my life with rules. Lots of them. And the result of that is: A very joyless home and life. No, really, you can step into my home and just feel it. Or I should say the lack of it. And here is where another thing that came my way hit home. I was sent a link to a blog that had another link on it that I visited. And I can give a big thank you to my good friend, M, for that....although I am not sure if she is on my side or my hubbies :-) She knows what I am talking about :-) Anyways this is what I saw.....a young girl (21 or 22) she dresses in jeans and a tank top (rule number 24 being broken right there....the sad thing is and this is VERY VERY sad to me,my children will look at her and say, she must not be a Christian because she is wearing jeans....and no I am not joking, and no that is NOT what I wanted them to learn!! but again, I am sharing with you how my life is NOT put together right), not only that she is an unwed mother (rule number 41 being broken), she doesn't homeschool (rule number 5 broken), and she is not living at home (rule number something or other being broken) BUT, BUT, BUT you want to know what she has that is totally , COMPLETELY right?....the LOVE of CHRIST. This young lady is mom to 14, yes 14 orphans that she adopted, she lives in Uganda as a missionary and feeds the hungry and schools children who can't afford an education (education in Uganda is not run by the government and so all schools are private and you need to pay). She takes orphans home to clean them up, as some have NEVER had a bath in their 5, 6, 7 years of living on the earth. She holds them, cares for them and prays for them. Now, just to say a little to some people who are discontent with the way things are in the US, this young woman wouldn't be able to school or feed the hungry or be in Uganda if it wasn't for the financial support of people in the US. The Lord does have us work in different ways, as not all of us can be the hand or all of us be the foot...we each have different works to do. And even though there are a gazzilion things wrong with the US the Lord is still using some of us to accomplish His work :-) Ok back to my main thought (if there is a main thought). I have tried to build this fence to make my life work 'right'. But instead, since it indeed was by my own hands, I have made things go terribly wrong. I have children who are judgmental, who hate ( I do mean hate) work of any kind---school or housework, who even at times hate each other, who do things only if it will benefit them and so on. Now I am not pointing out my childrens' sins/weaknesses to point the finger at them....but to point it to ME. We do a lot of 'right' things around here. Please note that the word, right, is in quotes. We dress modestly, we homeschool, we go to church and I am sure the list goes on, but we don't have the love of Christ. I may not be a Bible scholar but I am pretty darn sure that that is what Jesus intended when he walked the earth and died for us. I mean how many times does he point to the Pharisees and condemn their ways? I'm a really, really great Pharisee. I am sure I could walk with the best of them. They did a lot of 'right' things, but they lacked in the most important THING.....love.

I am sure you are wondering how deodorant and a blog about the life of a missionay in Uganda have anything in common. In my crazy world they do :-) And this brings us to the reason I titled my post, "A challenge". As I was pondering my loss of 'one beat off-ness' I came across a site for some dresses and aprons. I know you are really wondering how that ties into things :-) But oh, they were so lovely, so neat, so different, but not different in a big way. Go here to see what I mean. Check out the Verity Hope dress and this apron, I love them, they are *me*. However if anyone knows me in the real world I am sure your eyes are a little wide right now with wondering, "what?" that is not Kerri. It is me in my mind and heart. But many things, including my rules and things like financials make me present in a different light. When I think of a garden I do not think of a few boxes of dirt with veggies in them. Or rows of veggies. I think of different shaped boxes put into a lovely pattern with little trinkets hung up to ring in the breeze, color here and there to liven up the place, a little fence and a colorful chair.....I know I've had pictures of my garden up here and you know mine looks like the former! But alas, how does one reckon these things in light of other pressing desires? I long to make a cozy wonderful nest right here. But there are things that the Lord has put on my hubby's and my hearts that don't exactly fit this mold. For the time being our hearts are set on helping a certain people, but just not in the same way :-) And so I have started to pray that either his or my heart would change so that we would be on the same page. I have mentioned before of my desire to adopt. I may have also mentioned that Jeremiah has a desire to be a missionary in Africa. We want to help the same people, but I want to do so by adopting, and he wants to do so by moving there and starting an orphanage and teach. I assure you this brings a great divide in our house over this :-) Jeremiah says we can move there and do both. Um, that brings us to a very big and real problem.....or I should say problemssssss. The Lord would have to move in a big way for me to get over the bug thing. Then there is the very real danger of disease. People would automatically say...vaccinations....but that is a problem all of its own. Now I do think it is rather an odd coincidence (NOT) that I prayed about this for the first time this week and the day after my friend sends me the link to the African blogs. (she does know my dilemma on the whole African thing, so this wasn't totally unexpected that she would send me something like that...but still). So I am reading with my heart yearning mostly to have a heart filled with love like this young woman does. Right now I would settle for having that same heart for my own children. Don't get me wrong I LOVE my children, but unless you have read her blog I am not sure if I could adequately explain. I pray that my heart changes in such a way, first towards my own family and then that it would overflow outwards to others. But here in lies the challenge...how do I reconcile my desire to make things beautiful and orderly herein the US when there is a young missionary woman with 14 adopted children who are cutting back (yeah, imagine 'cutting' back in Africa!) so that they will have more money to feed the hungry children. So I am leaving it to the Lord to work out, where it should have been all along....even 17 years ago ;-)

So where does this leave me? Will you be seeing me in jeans and a tank top? Will I pierce my nose next? You can laugh, but that was a desire of mine for many years! You can all breath a sigh of relief....the answer is no :-) But I do want my heart to be totally abandoned to the Lord, I want a love for my husband and children like I never have. I want a desire for the lost and abandoned of the world. I want to know that I can do great things for the Lord, right here and right now. I want to know that those little desires I have, like living healthy, are not kooky. Of course there are a lot of people now, who because their bodies are experiencing breakdown from a life of packaged non food, are now seeing that changes need to be made. I just happened to be trying to make them years ago. I need to stay the course, even if I am walking the path alone. But that does get hard to do after awhile. I can be thankful I am not alone now :-) I need to realize that although rules are good, and serve a purpose, I need to live by the most important rule of all.....love. And that will not happen without the Lords help! So there you go....a long, drawn out post about my crazy thought life! See, I am not put together! If only I had pictures of my house to prove it! Trust me, it's not pretty :-)

And if anyone is interested in reading this young missionary's blog you can visit her here. Go and be inspired. We all can't go to Africa, but we can all do great works, through the Lord, when we pursue Him.

And I apologize if you are a grammar nut and have hair on the back of your neck standing on end due to my lack of grammar and organization :-)

And one more thing....this is only half of my thoughts, hey I didn't want you all to keel over on me! Maybe I'll write more later. I'll be back to share some pictures of our "normal" life ;-)

Finally the cake

So we were well enough, temporarily, to indulge in some birthday cake. I wanted to make a checkerboard cake for Jonah's birthday. We didn't get pictures of the inside of the cake, which is where the checkered pattern is. Oh well, it came out, but not very well. I needed to make three layers and so decided on making the batter from scratch. I was not very impressed with the cake. It was dense and so the layers were very short. It tasted really yummy, but it was missing that light, fluffy texture that I was looking for. Oh well, we live and learn :-) Jonah dived into the cake with his little fist and shoved it in his mouth.....a proper response I would say!

We are trying to get back on our feet from this tummy bug. We are now on a three day modified juice fast. It won't be all juice, some yogurt, kombusha, kefir (notice the theme of fermented liquids?) and some homemade chicken broth with brown rice. I am hoping to get our bodies back on track. A lot of things have gone undone over hear and we have our work cut out for us. I am stalling.....can you tell? Actually I have done quite a bit today, but it is in the area of food prep than cleaning. So off to clean and school :-) Have a great day!

Birthday bash (that wasn't) round 3, DING!

Well it was Jonah's big first birthday today. The poor guy got a bit short changed on the celebration part of it due to us still being sick. So we put off the cake till later in the week. We did give him his birthday present as we had hoped it would help keep him (and Jed) occupied while we tried to rest on the couches. It was a pitiful site I tell ya. But it seems we have turned a bit of a corner and I am hoping that we will all have a good nights sleep. We have been trying to get more in the habit of not going to the store on the Sabbath. However, with us being so sick someone had to go get some gatorade and popcicles. So I ran out and bought a bunch of, well, junk :-) There is just no way that I will be able to cook the next couple of days, and seeing as how my oldest two daughters are ill as well that leave no one to cook (Jeremiah is sick too!). So I bought some flavored rice, noodles, waffles, bread, crackers, juice and popcicles. That should hold us over for the next couple of days. We got some recommendations on some natural remedies to try and we started on those as well.

I just have to tell you all about an amazing blessing that we received recently. There are a lot of projects that need doing here on the homestead. Jeremiah and Joe (my b-i-l) were making up a list. One of the big items was to get the back yard cleared. Jeremiah had already cut down a bunch of trees, but the stumps were left and we had a bunch of really small thin trees/shrubs around. Well the other day as Jeremiah was driving home he came upon a date book with papers swirling all over the road. He got out and picked it up, trying to catch as much as he could. When he got home he had to go through it to see who it belonged to. He said that it looked like it belonged to someone who did tree removals. So he gave a call and the man was overjoyed that he had found his planner and told Jeremiah that as a thank you he would give us free service. Jeremiah told him that just days before he was talking about the need to clear our backyard. He basically said, count it done! He came the very next day and cleared our back yard!! We still have a lot of small brush (that could be mowed down), but oh my goodness, what an amazing blessing! I'll have to find a "before" picture to show the comparison sometime.

On to a couple of pictures :-)


Jedidiah, just looking cute. He got this new digger shirt and carried it around for a while before he would let me put it on him. He is starting to try and get dressed himself and he puts one arm in at the neck hole and then out of the arm hole and comes up to me wondering why it isn't working :-)

We managed to get Jonah's birthday sign made last night. The girls were picture happy! I never got around to hanging it up and just had the girls hold it up for the picture.

The cousins. From left to right we have Georgia (4 next month), Isabella (12 next month), Emma (6), Flannery (7), Saoirse (5), Moira (10) holding Jonah (1!), Remmington (7) and Jedidiah (3). Jonah was obviously not in photo op mode. Poor guy.

Here is Moira with her birthday sign, I had not posted it in her birthday post. I try to get creative with their signs, but this year I've been lacking in creativity. Hey, they at least got a sign :-)

a quick stop in

Tomorrow we have another birthday to celebrate, Jonah's first! I am really, really hoping that we are all well by then. We have caught a tummy bug that a couple of us have, including yours truly. We had a wonderful, wonderful visit with my sister and her family. Unfortunately some of them got sick as well! I hope they are all better by now :-) Anyways it was so great to see them all as it has been too long since we last saw each other. That last time was when Jed had his g-tube put in and they came down to help out. It was a whirlwind and stressful two days and then they were off, not a wonderful way to spend a visit, so I was happy to have had this one where we all had time to enjoy each others company. My sister was able to see the holistic care person that Jed is seeing. I am SO excited for her!!! She finally, FINALLY has answers to her health concerns that she has lived with for so very long. I have written some about our appointment and if you would like to visit my sister blog (link on the side bar) you can read about hers. She told my sister a story that makes my hair stand on end. A lady with cancer had been going the regular chemo/radiation route, but not getting much success. She decided to try an alternative care person and she was healed of her cancer. She went back to her oncologist for testing (I am assuming to get confirmation of it's remission/healing) and her oncologist was amazed that she was better and wanted to know what she did. She told him as she was very excited about the results and thought that the oncologist's inquiry was for that same reason. But not so, the oncologist went on to SUE the alternative care person for LOST WAGES!!! Tell me there's not something totally wrong with that picture! Anyways, that has made us a bit more apprehensive about sharing details as we wouldn't want to see anything happen to the person we are seeing.

I am on our back computer so I don't have access to the pictures that I took of our visit (I only got a few). I will be back, maybe tomorrow or Monday. Hopefully I'll have b-day pictures as well. I just remembered that I need to make a birthday sign for baby boy! I better get to work. I am hoping we will be able to make church tomorrow, but it's looking sketchy. Although I am feeling better at the moment as it seems that food is starting to make me feel better for short bouts of time, but then I feel sick all over again. Let me just say that I do NOT take kindly to stomach bugs! It's been 48 hours, which is 48 hours too long :-)

Birthday bash, round 2

UGH! I am really hating blogger at the moment as I still can not move my text or pictures around. This has been going on for a couple of weeks. Grrrrrr. I prefer to write my post above the pictures and then put my pictures in order. However you'll have to have the pics first (out of order) and then read.


Moira posing with her beloved sisters and birthday gift (back pack, colored pencils, markers, crayons, paints, brushes and pallets.

Moira again, looking so very 10!

Cutting into the yummy cake.

The cake close up. It really was pretty! Here it was a bit melted. But that didn't alter the taste.

We only got a couple of pictures of Jonah at the lake. Too busy watching children to take any other pictures. But what a cutie, walking around!

So Moira turned double digits! The Big Ten! We celebrated the day before her actual birthday as it was going to be too busy on her actual birth day. We had to grocery shop in the morning, not the funnest birthday activity :-) Then we got home, and Moira started making her cake. I started on her birthday dinner, sweet and sour meatballs, and the beloved cranberry sauce. Moira had a great idea for her cake. Unfortunately something happened to it and it was lopsided. She made a white cake. In between the two layers she spread marshmallow fluff. Then we topped the cake with vanilla ice cream. Then she frosted the whole thing and decorated it. When I was growing up ice cream cakes were made entirely of ice cream. But down here ice cream cakes are half cake and half ice cream. Odd I tell ya.

I had told Moira she could pick a park to go to and she asked if we could go to the lake to go swimming. So we ate an early dinner and headed to the lake. It was 6 pm when we got there. It was perfect as it wasn't too hot. We stayed for an hour, as that is all my nerves can handle, trying to keep track of 6 children in a large body of water. Isabella lost an earring while there, and Flannery went underwater for the first time! So some good, some bad. Jonah LOVED the water. He was getting to be a little dare devil, so Jeremiah took him up to the towels and let him play in the sand. Then Jed became daring, so I figured it was time to take off to home for some cake. After the yummy cake Moira opened her gift. She had asked for this boxed art set, but after reading some reviews of the product we figured we needed to take another route. So we bought a bunch of art supplies and put them into a nice back pack. She loved it!

tummy buggy

We had been doing so great......health wise that is.....until last night. Jedidiah was acting a bit funky yesterday, nothing that I could put my finger on. He's been eating really great (for Jed) lately and so I did think it was odd that he didn't want any noodles at dinner last night. He sat there, rather quiet, not really involved with our dinner talk. And then it happened....he threw up. It's been quite a while since he's done that. We are sort of out of practice with getting towels and what not. Not that I mind being out of practice, truly this is not something you want to have a lot of practice with :-) I was hoping that maybe he was reacting to the new supplements that we have him on. We were supposed to go swimming at a friends house today and all the girls were eagerly looking forward to it. I didn't hook Jed up last night as I wasn't sure what the cause of the tummy problem was. He woke up and the VERY first thing he did, with in seconds of seeing me was to ask for water. I got him a cup of water and proceeded to watch the poor fellow try to drink it. I say try because the poor boy was shaking so bad that he could hardly get the cup to his mouth :-( He found that if he held his upper arms tight to his body he had better control over the cup (he wouldn't let me hold it for him). I got him hooked up right away so that I could get some calories into him. But he was only 1/3 into the feeding when he threw up again. Ugh! I called my friend to say that we would not be coming. We talked about how it could be the supplements, and she said I should just wait to see what would happen over the next couple of hours. But I knew this was not a reaction to supplements when I saw that he fell asleep on the couch, and he had only been up 2 hours! As I type this at 9 pm Jed is asleep and has been for about an hour and a half! Needless to say the girls were very disappointed. But we do have plans on going over to swim on Monday. Before we swim we will learn how to milk my friend's goats. We will be taking care of them when they go away. And on top of that we will have my sister and her family come visit us this coming week! Yeah! We are REALLY looking forward to their visit. This coming week will be bookended by two birthdays, each on Sunday. So LOTS of things to look forward to this week. I think I am getting the hang of making kefir. I made a chocolate one today that the girls actually enjoyed drinking. I think one of the problems is that I have too many kefir grains! I was recently told that you only need about a tablespoon for the amount I am making, I think I have a half cup. So if anyone out there wants some, let me know and I can send them to you. Just leave me a comment and I'll see what I can do to get them to you. Yes, people send them through the mail :-)

Well off to make a grocery list. I am hoping to get a jump start on our day tomorrow by hitting the store early. Then pick up a library book that I am really looking forward to reading. It's supposed to help with teaching your children sign language. On a side note, the girls and I have been learning to sign one of the songs we sing at church. We learned on a few weeks ago, and now we are learning a new one. I think I will try to video us signing it! Trust me it is apparent that we are not experts ;-) But we have fun with it, and it helps us to learn more signs. Ok, after the library we will do a bit of cleaning, then hopefully have the evening to have fun at the park (as long as Jed is feeling OK). Off to see about making a video.

Our 4th Weekend

Well you will have to see what I wrote below as I can NOT get the pictures to move, nor can I copy and paste my post above the pictures. Something is going on with blogger and it is driving me insane! As I explain below, here are some pictures of me brewing some kombusha....


What you don't see in the picture is the 12 cups of water boiling on the stove. While your water is boiling you can gather your other supplies, shown here. We have a gallon glass jar with 1 cup of sugar in it, 4 black tea bags, and a bottle of RAW or LIVE kombusha tea.

When your water comes to a boil, pour it into the glass jar and stir till the sugar dissolves. Add the tea bags and let brew until the water comes to room temperature. Then when it cooled you open your bottle of kombusha and pour the whole thing in.

And there in the upper part, the white film, is the baby SCOBY. I liked my first baby SCOBY that I had as it was really cute, this one is just a film, not very cute. Oh well as long as it makes my tea transform into kombusha I'll keep it :-)

The girls wanted hair wraps for the 4th. However, only Moira had the patience to get one. Here it is in red, white and blue.

Moira preferred to wear her wrap across her head like a hair band. It was really cute.

Here are our kittens, cute little things....anyone want one?

We spent our 4th of July with a wonderful family from church. The kids played some games, and they got some fun little goody bags. The hit of the night were glow sticks! After dinner of homemade pizza, salad and juice we went out for fireworks. Everyone, except Jed, enjoyed the fireworks. The baby was really tired, but thought the fire works were pretty funny. The girls ran around the field we were in getting to twirl their glow sticks and hold sparklers. Jedidiah on the other hand refused to look at the fire works! He didn't cover his ears with the noise, but he would NOT look in their direction. Poor guy. We went home to gobble up some yummy dessert, which was just some pound cake with berries and whipped topping. Then it was off to bed for a bunch of tired kiddos.

While our company was here I was showing Mrs. H my kombusha. Wouldn't ya know my kombusha mushroom was sprouting mold! How embarrassing. Due to some health issues we will be adding a bunch of fermented foods to our diet on a regular basis, kombusha being one of them. I've been brewing kombusha for a year, but not on a regular basis. I also acquired some kefir grains and we will be having some today.....hoping that the shorter brewing time will make it a lot less sour. So come along with me on a very exciting kombusha tutorial...

First Birthday of the Month

HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY JEDIDIAH!!

It was a busy day here for the birthday boy. We had a few appointments in the morning. Then we had to run to get his birthday dinner as I seemingly forgot to add those items to our grocery list! It was a dinner of hot dogs, tater tots and the beloved cranberry sauce. I am sure most of you will know where the idea for the cranberry sauce came from....the girls! we had a wonderful young lady take care of the children today while we were out and about. She put together the cookie cake ingredients. So all I had to do was pop it in the oven. And let me follow in my sister's footsteps, and give you all a tip of what NOT to do in the kitchen.....When making a large cookie make sure there is room on your cookie tray for expansion. It was not a pretty site, unless you are the sort of person who enjoys seeing flames on the bottom of your oven. After we extinguished the fire we sat down to eat. By then the cookie had cooled off. We set about decorating it....with lots of help :-) Then Jedidiah got to open his presents. The night before we gave him one gift (hoping it would distract him at his appointment the following day). It was a Halo figure. For his actual birth day we gave him two puzzles that make noises when you put the pieces in. One is of animals, the other is for vehicles. We got to listen to it over and over and over and over and over and over.....did I say over? And each time Jedidiah wanted us to say something about it.....like name the object or say the sound. Over and over and over...wait I said that already didn't I? I think you got the idea. The funny thing is that the puzzle works when the little receptor is covered and it has to be exposed to light first, but Jedidiah wouldn't lift the puzzle piece up far enough to make it work. So I told him to hold the piece up to his head. I was amazed that he did it as he has a hard time with positional words. So now you will see him lift each piece to his head, making sure to gently touch it, and then lower it to the puzzle. I am sure that if you didn't know the story behind it you would think it a very odd way to work a puzzle :-) While were were gone at our appointments the girls drew up Jedidiah's birthday sign. It is very colorful! They couldn't find the blue streamers, so Jed just had some white ones.





The beloved birthday sign.

Jed was entranced with the ABC's candles. Saoirse is waiting for Jed to open his gift from her.

I can't get my pictures in order so here is Jed clapping after he blew out his candles.

Jed all excited about his candles. He wasn't interested in the cookie cake, but the candles, candles, candles! Too funny!

The wonderful cookie cake. All decorated by girly girls. They helped pick the sprinkles, thus a little less on the boy side of things :-) Jed didn't seem to notice!

catching up

Here are some things going on around here in list format.



Our cat had three kittens.



Jeremiah got attacked by a St. Bernard! Ouch! He got gouged on his arm pretty badly.



Jonah has taken his first steps officially at 10 months old, he is now 11 months and walking about 6 to 8 steps at a time.



Jedidiah was diagnosed with Apraxia of Speech (officially).



Jonah has four new teeth coming in...that spells, fussiness!



We have fallen off the new diet band wagon.....due to other things popping up and stealing into our grocery budget. Alas, I am trying to find a way to work it out as I have seen us go down hill with our success that we had made. I am trying to look at this as a journey, enjoying the journey and not fussing about not being at our destination.....yet :-)



Jedidiah has been trying ALOT of new foods. That is really amazing!



I made my first batch of kefir with the thawed goats milk. Freezing the milk first and then thawing it really does take the goaty taste out of it. However I kept the grains "brewing" too long and it is very tart! Try, try again.



I am trying my hand at the Above Rubies sour dough bread. I am on day three of making the starter. We shall see what becomes of it.



We started our new school year two weeks ago. Things are going well. We are not doing everything every day, BUT we are getting a lot done and I am happy with the work we are getting done. There will need to be a lot more tweaking, but it takes time to get a routine going.

We will be celebrating a bunch of birthdays this coming month. Birthday season :-)

I am doing more study in homeopathy. I was able to stop a very nasty sinus infection in its tracks with a remedy. And trust me this was a nasty infection. I've had about a gazillion of them in my years....I know a nasty one when I see it. I was going down hill fast, we had company over and I thought how awful if I had to be laid up in bed instead of being hospitable. So I looked my remedy book over, took the one I thought fit the best and kept taking it a varying intervals. And by the next day I was totally fine!

We've had a few chickens go to chicken heaven.... or wherever they go when your very own dogs play too roughly with them! We just put out our guineas, and I am hoping they will not fly off to never be heard of again. That would be gratitude for ya! Our chickens should start laying eggs any day now. I am very excited about that. I know the girls will be tickled.

We've been swimming a couple of times in our friends pond. Everyone had a blast. The girls all wear life preservers and enjoy swimming out to the floating dock. Jed is in love with the water.
And Jonah can't get enough of it either. My little fishies.

I'm sure there is more, but I really need to get back to work. I am very pleased that we are getting all our work done each day. I just really need to work in getting everyone doing it in a timely manner. It would be much better to have set times to do chores instead of how we are handling them now. But its all about baby steps! I still need to get to work on making the girls some split skirts. The best time is in the evenings when Jonah has gone off to bed, but other things keep coming up. For now Jeremiah and I are starting to watch the DVD collection of "Raising Godly Children in an Ungodly World". I assure you it is more important than skirts at the moment ;-)

I will try to write a more normal post soon, with pictures (I just cut Jed's hair and he always looks sooooo different).

What are we to DO?

Wow, it's been a while since I last wrote! Just been keeping busy around here, which is a good thing. There are a few things to report here and there, but I will make a catch up post later. For now I have a question. And seriously if anyone has the answer or has read of an answer, do let me know. There is this Russian journalist that wrote an article on how Marxist the US is and how we are doing nothing about it. It is rather depressing. I've read a lot about this lately and most people say that we are just on the brink of no return. They say there is still a short amount of time for us to do something about it, BUT NONE of them are saying what that "something" IS. I'm all for joining efforts to protect our freedom and to see that our country returns to the Constitution, BUT I need to know WHAT I am supposed to be doing to help with that. I am one of those people who are the last to know everything. No, seriously I am. So here I am without a clue, does anyone want to help me out here?

For anyone who is interested in protecting our parental freedoms do make sure that you check out parentalrights.org for the latest information. Do make those calls. I was very excited to see that they disconnected Rice's line since we tied it up. I was not able to get through to the White House comment lines yesterday, but I plan on trying today. And it looks as if my House Rep is not on their supporters list either, meaning another call. Please don't make light of this, our children's future (and grandbabies) depends on it.

OK, now back to our regularly scheduled program :-) (Coming later on today hopefully)

Pictures from our very busy weekend (last weekend)

Our weekend was very, very busy. On Saturday we had the girls start their year end testing. Then we went to pick some strawberries. After that we went to what we thought was supposed to be an agricultural festival, and it ended up being something else. What ever it was there was a TON of people there! After that, since we were 'in town' we went to the health food store to get Jed's formula stuff. We went home very tired :-)




And off they go!!!! The girls are heading into strawberry land.

Jonah and I hanging out after picking the berries. It was hot out there!

Jed had a lot of fun running up and down the rows. He picked a few berries. I was surprised he didn't eat a bunch as he really loves strawberries.

Saoirse did a great job picking berries, she ended up with a whole bucket full!

Jonah wasn't sure what to make of all this. I would give him a berry and he would look it over. He would slowly put it to his mouth. He would take a few nibbles and then....it would end up on the ground. Silly boy.

Don't like strawberries? That would be very odd as this boy puts everything in his mouth! And he eats (or tries to eat) everything he puts into his mouth.

Jed strolling along. This was when we first started and he was actually trying to pick berries. After this he just ran up and down the rows, over and over again.

Jedidiah saying good-bye to people we don't know. He loves saying hello and good-bye to people.

Here we are at the agriculture festival that wasn't. We were taking a break under a tree. Jonah had been strapped to me or in a seat all day and he was very happy to get down and crawl around.

The girls each got one of these fans. I am guessing they are peacocks here? Silly girls.

Flannery being a bird.

Jed checking out the fans. He was really fascinated by them.



A picture of the whole crew taking a break.

How our appointment with the holistic practitioner went

A note---I started writing this up yesterday so sorry for the time references being off.

I am very excited to tell you all about our appointment that we had yesterday. We were there for two hours so do forgive me if this is not in order, nor if it all makes sense :-) There was a LOT to take in yesterday, things that we will be trying to 'digest' for a while I am sure. I was very pleased with her ideas on health in general. Sometimes I know deep down what I think on a matter, but it's not until I hear or read someone elses thoughts that I can finally have words for it. Her reasoning of why allopathic care does not work is because it is based on evolution. The idea is we climbed out of the primordial soup and developed some lungs, then thousands of years later we developed something else, like a gall bladder. Then thousands of years later we developed kidneys.....we are all very much aware of this THEORY. However that leads physicians to think that no harm will come to you if you are sick and they need to take your gall bladder out, or your kidney, or any other body part. After all, they are separate entities, just housed in one package. But we didn't climb out of soup, we were wonderfully and fearfully created WHOLE by a loving God. You can not start taking pieces of you out without having ill affect. This concept can be found even with pharmaceuticals. You take one med for your heart, but that effects your blood pressure, so you need to take another med, but that one also effects your blood sugar and so on. Anyways I liked what she had to say on the matter. I also liked the fact that she also assessed his emotional health. She was saying that our being is made up not only of physical matter, but also emotional, spiritual and mental. You can not expect a complete healing if you don't address all parts of your being. So on to the actual testing.



The practitioner had these drawers of vials. She used kinesiolgy to test Jedidiah. The most simplistic explanation I can give is that all things in the universe have a measurable frequency. Each type of germ, or matter, or whatever has a frequency. She is able to tell with touch whether Jedidiah was deficient or weak in certain areas based on the contents of the vials. Just to give you some amazing things she found that have been documented or we knew of but she did not.....She was able to tell us that Jed is VERY low on iron. A blood test that his GI doctor did recently already told us this. She also told me that he very recently inhaled a toxic substance. I had just sprayed bug spray the day before in a room that we were all in throughout the day. This bug spray is toxic, it wasn't person friendly :-( And the last is something we could get confirmation on, but I don't think we need to. She asked us if he had been waking up at night. I told her he had been the past few nights. Then she asked if we noticed him messing with his ears. Again, he had been doing this very recently. I thought it was just another Jed "thing" that he started. She then told us that he had an ear infection. She was also able to tell us that it was caused by one of the flu viruses. Well not three weeks ago Jed was VERY sick. We don't have confirmation that it was the flu, but the likely hood is high. So the fact should could tell us these things was pretty amazing.



This is, to the best of my knowledge, what she believes happened with Jedidiah. We ran overtime with our appointment and we were not able to ask all the questions we wanted (she said I could email her with any questions) so there are some holes that need to be filled in. She was running her hand over a bunch of vials and said she already knew what the root cause of all this was. I really hate to tell exactly what as it's pretty gross, so I will just say there are some "buggies" that can interfere with a woman's hormones, which would explain Jedidiah's extremely small placenta. The small and unhealthy placenta is the start of poor nutrition and perhaps lack of oxygen that Jedidiah experienced inutero. She then asked us if Jed's heart had been tested. I didn't remember it being tested, although Jeremiah said they hooked Jed up to an EKG at Duke. I'm not sure how I forgot that, but it is possible. She said that there was something wrong with his heart. She thought that it may just be very weak. That was probably the result of his poor nutrition. However, the body has a safety mechanism. It will not let the body outgrow the strength of the heart. Therefore Jed will not grow until his heart is able to handle the extra burden. If we get his heart healthy then his body can grow as it should. There is definitely stuff wrong with his central nervous system. His speech issue showed up in her testing. But the cns stuff came in at the end and I did not get to ask her specific questions yet on it. It is interesting that the next day Jed's speech therapist came for her visit and told me that she scored his Apraxia evaluation and he does indeed have Apraxia.......hmmmmm, pretty interesting. Jed is also experiencing a LOT of stress. So much so that she wants him on a supplement (ok, a lot of supplements) for his adrenals. The "lots" of supplements are addressing a wide range of issues like his low iron, brain health, and digestive enzymes and good bacteria, etc. She said that his adrenals were really working overtime and that his body will not be able to heal until his stress level comes down. Jed of course gets "freaked out" by lots of things, thus putting him in a constant state of stress. The adrenals release chemicals that will inhibit his body from healing properly. She kept asking me if I had chicken pox while pregnant with Jed. I told her I had a very, very mild case as a child and to my knowledge didn't have a recurrence during his pregnancy. So I really need to ask her why she asked me about that. At the end she assessed his emotional health. She asked about sibling rivalry at home. Jed used to ignore the baby, which always had me wondering. All of our girls had some reactions, but Jed didn't seem to. He may have been holding it in. Recently though Jed has been constantly pushing Jonah. He will run up to him if he is about to grab a toy and take it. Now a lot of this is typical behavior, but he does it CONSTANTLY. So apparently it shows. Jedidiah also has issues with digestion---REALLY?? I'm joking about the 'really??' part :-) Although what we thought all along was reflux is due to his cns, he does have issues with digestion. Again I will have to ask for more details as I am curious at the big picture of his digestive system.

Phew! I know there was a bunch more smaller things that I can't even remember right now. We started giving him his new remedies that she gave us. If any of you thought homeopathy was weird, you would have really freaked when you saw her making up his remedies! Ha, ha. She took ALL the vials that Jed tested "positive" to and put them on this small machine. Then she put a bottle of water on the other side of the machine. She pushed a button and that made all the frequencies transfer over from the vials to the bottle of water. Yeah, I told you it was crazy. Here is the even crazier part. She said to give him four doses a day. She said that people with cns issues tend to be too sensitive to the remedy and they need do decrease it to 3 or 2 times a day. If at 2 times a day he was still too sensitive then we were to put the dose on his foot. That is what we have to do with Jed's homeopathy by the way. Well the very first day was crazy. Jed was all over the place, being very loud, screaming, couldn't sit still to save his life and couldn't focus for more than three seconds. I am not kidding! Even his speech therapist asked me, "What is WRONG with him?!?" It was that bad! Today, which is day two of the new remedies, has proven better. The past day and a half his teeth grinding made a huge return and was about to drive us all mad. But this afternoon he had stopped. So hopefully we will be on the up and up now. She said that we should start seeing results in one week. Baby steps though.....getting a bit better here, and little better there, each week. The good news is that his homeopathy has paved the way for him to be in better health. We added the glyconutrients back into his diet and in two weeks he has gained ONE FULL pound!! That is amazing! He looks so good right now, pale, but good :-) I'll have to get a picture up of him tomorrow. I'm on the back computer and we don't have our pics on this one.

OK, sorry if that was too much, but I wanted to get most of it recorded before I forget. I already have a long list of questions for the holistic practitioner that I want to get out to her by tomorrow. Off to bed. Tomorrow is Saturday and we have a bunch of work to do around here.

Oops I forgot to mention that he indeed did test postitive for mercury! So his homeopathic doctor wasn't off! It may indeed be playing a role in all of this, again how so, I have no clue. Lots and lots of questions running through my head......good night all!

The pieces are coming together...

....to Jedidiah's health problems. At least we seem to have pieced some together. I had written a couple of drafts now about this subject and I let them sit in my box. It is hard to post about a possible answer to Jed's issues, knowing that right now we are only in the "theory" stage, none of our ideas have been tested yet. However we have never at anytime had puzzle pieces fit like they do now. So as this blog is meant to be a journal of our family's journey through life I thought that I would share this information, even if it does end up being nothing. I am partly excited and partly frustrated/hesitant. Obviously if we have the answer it will bring such relief to finally *know* what has been wrong with Jed. And the other part of me doesn't want to dissappointed....again.....about another "lead". I told my sister the other night that I was beginning to think all of this (Jed's issues) have been in my head! Seriously, when most people see Jed he looks like a "normal" kid. Smaller than he should be, and he's got one big noggin, but normal. He is a very, very happy little boy. I think that fools people into thinking that he really doesn't have anything wrong with him. But anyways back on topic. The puzzle pieces started to fit like this:

Jed's homeopathic doctor has recently been saying that he believes Jed's central nervous system (cns) has been affected. Affected by what he didn't know. In homeopathy you treat the symptoms in order to engage your own body's healing systems to correct what ever problem you have. Now obviously homeopathy can not help everything out there that a person might be experiencing. We have continued with it because so far it is the only thing that we have seen results happen in Jed. If the problem is what we think it is I am not sure how far homeopathy will take us.

The next puzzle piece came from a short talk I had with a lady who is a holistic health care person (not sure of her exact title). We will have a visit with her in early June. But just from the short medical history that I gave her (Jed's "reflux", sensitivities, lack of weight gain...) she told me right away that he didn't have reflux but that he had a central nervous system problem! OK, we have two people conferring on the problem being his cns. Her theory is that at some point inutero he lacked oxygen. That is a big possibility as Jed's placenta was VERY small and was starting to break up by delivery.

The third piece of the puzzle is Jed's speech therapy. Jed was evaluated for Apraxia of Speech this past Thursday. His therapist is going on vacation this week, so we'll have to wait two weeks to find out what the results were! BUT here is what did happen during the test. The therapist asked Jed to stick his tongue out in various ways. He was highly motivated to do so as she wouldn't give him the toys he wanted until he did. His back was turned to me during this time so I didn't see what he was doing. She then went on to "play" with him, trying to get him to say certain sounds. Then she asked me if he could say certain things. Everything she asked was something that Jed couldn't/ or doesn't do. EVERYTHING! She ended by saying...."hmmmm, interesting" (those are usually not good words to hear on a test), then proceeded to tell me that Jedidiah was not able to move his tongue in the proper ways when she had asked him to earlier in the test. So basically he failed every single thing. Now, that still doesn't mean he has apraxia, but clearly we have to think that it is possible. It may be that he has something else, but I won't know for a little while. For those of you who may not have read my post about the apraxia, it is a condition in the brain where "for whatever reason" the child knows what he wants to say, but it does not come out of the mouth as they intended, which is a cns problem.....read that again, it is a CNS problem.....hhhhmmmmmmmmm a few too many puzzle pieces lining up.

I asked my sister how his stomach issues could be a cns problem. I don't have the energy to write out in full how it is related but here is my best shot at a briefing on the matter. Pretend you are supposed to have 40 nerve endings in your tummy. Somewhere in Jed's inutero development that process of making nerve endings got cut off, so he only has 20. So when we try to increase his feeding volume because his calorie needs have gone up and I increase it by only two teaspoons (I usually do it less than that), it is too much for those 20 nerve endings to handle, because they are being overloaded. Trust me when I say I explained that all VERY poorly, but I hope you have at least a small picture of the possibility. This would explain why Jed throws up if he laughs or plays after a feeding, or why he throws up if he has an illness unrelated to a tummy bug. It explains ALL of Jedidiah's issues : feeding, sensitivities to sound and touch and his speech. ALL of them.

Whew! I feel out of breath just typing all of that. It has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster these past few days just thinking about this. We will have quite a few different visits to various doctors coming up to check up on this theory. First I will talk to his homeopathic doc on Thursday about it all. Then see the holistic person the following week. Next we will see his regular family doctor to discuss this later in the month at his well child visit. In the mean time I need to make an appointment with a neurologist. It usually takes months to get in so I need to call on Tuesday. If this pans out to be nothing then I can cancel it.

So what will this mean if we are right? Good question! It means we have a lot of work ahead of us. And if we are wrong it still means a lot of work ahead of us :-) Basically we will have to find a way for Jed to grow more nerve endings. I can assure you that is not an easy task. We will see what the alternative docs have to offer us. My brother-in-law came across someone using a natural supplement that is supposed to increase your own stem cell [production, which would help Jed make more nerve cells. However we are in a bit of a catch 22. Jed will need better nutrition for his body to make those cells. I'm sure you see that is a HUGE problem with Jed. So we may have to do other therapies to get his body, even if temporarily, to accept the nutrition so that he can make those cells. This will be a long process. But time right now is ticking. He is still young enough to have enough growth potential to make the cells he will need, but at some point he will be outside that window. So we need to get things in motion right away. If Jed's speech issue is a cns problem we will have a lot of work to do in that area as well. We really need to get him learning the flip chart talking board and sign language. Both of these skill not only will help him to communicate in the way that he should be, but will help his brain to grow proper pathways, or alternative pathways to help with his speech. By the word 'communicate' earlier, he should be speaking verbally, but right now it is important that he learns to tell us how he is feeling, to tell us about things he has done, in any way possible. I have really been paying attention to what Jed understands and he doesn't understand concepts of time like, 'later, earlier, yesterday and so forth. Also, during one of his evaluations I was asked if Jed could follow simple commands. Yes, I said. But now I realize that with a lot of those commands he had to be shown how to do them. And the other day we had a situation that really hit it home. Jed came to me asking for a banana, using sign language. He saw his sister with one. We normally keep our bananas on the counter, but we ran out and had bought some earlier, and those new bananas were on the table in the grocery bags. When I told Jed that he could have a banana he ran to the kitchen counter. He ran back asking for a banana again as he didn't find them. So I told him, "Oh, the bananas are on the table in one of the grocery bags." He ran in the kitchen....back to the counter. He ran back to me again, signing banana. I again told him they were on the kitchen table in a bag. He started running to the kitchen and started running past the table. I told him, "No, the table, go to the table Jed." He went to the table and stared at it. I told him the bananas were in the bag on top of the table. He ran back to me. I told him to go to the table where Mommy eats dinner. Go, to the table where mommy eats dinner (yes, I had to repeat myself). He walked slowly to the table and stood there. I told him the bananas were in the bags, right there! I told him he could see them sticking out of the bag. He walked closer. By this time one of his sisters came by and grabbed him a banana. An almost three year old (in one month) should have easily been able to have followed through the very first time with my instructions. He couldn't do so after, what, ten times?!? So I sat there and really thought through Jed's ability to follow directions, particularly more than one step directions. And I think he really does a lot of things because he has been taught and out of routine. If I ask him to get me his shoes he can do that because he knows where they are....but I had to show him that a few times at first. If he wants juice I will ask him to get out a cup, again he can do that because I had to teach him first. You should not have to teach kids these things. But with Jed we have had to. It takes between three and five repetitions for him to "get it". Sooooooo it's not all in my head. I wish it were, but it's not. Thankfully he is young and we can work on all of this. It will be a lot of work, but if we are right, then the work we do will finally bring us closer to healing Jed. And that would be a very good thing :-)