I'm still here....

No I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth! Just been busy. There is a lot of things I have been working on, so some of that busy-ness has been doing 'things' and sometimes it is my mind sorting out a ton of things that the Lord is showing me. I have a few pictures to share. They are from the past few weeks. Jedidiah just started pulling himself to standing! We have had a bit of a set back as his tummy can't seem to handle the increase in food volume we were doing. The sad thing is we were only increasing it by 2mls per day (that's less than half a teaspoon!!!). So we moved things back. The good news is that he is gaining weight. I weighed him today and he was 16 pounds and 10.5 ounces. He's just in the slow and steady crowd I suppose :-)

I have been busy cleaning and organizing the house. When I was in the hospital Joe, my sisters dh, put all the kids to work and I came home to a clean house. That was a life and sanity saver! Unfortunately it didn't stay that way. It slowly deteriorated to craziness. But I finally have my wits about me....well most of them anyways :-) That has been the other 'busy-ness' that has been taking my time. I really didn't expect to be drawn into this....hhhmmmm....I'm at a loss for words on how to describe it....I guess I have been drawn into this next phase of our little family revival. There have been many things on my heart lately and I just couldn't figure out what to do about them. So I have earnestly been praying for the Lord's direction. I remember reading about this one mom's situation where she had put all things aside as she was going through this 'season of renewal'. I thought, oh no I could never do that, I have so many other things to do! But you know what....it came down to a strong conviction sent by God to take that time. It was something my sister had said to me regarding my kiddos that stopped me in my tracks. I had already been wrestling with a bunch of stuff in my heart. But this just BLEW me away. I KNEW God was saying that it is time to get with it! So I prayed that He would show me, and he has been faithful to do so. I will have to bring you all along on my journey if I can. It will take me a while to get some of this worked out and there is still stuff that the Lord has not revealed to me, it is a process.

So with all of that I will need to post some pictures and start on putting things into a schedule of sorts to see how all these things will work out.

Here's a picture I tried to get of Jedidiah's mouthful of teeth. You can see 3 of the top 4 new ones. And here he is having fun with his dinner.

This is one of Jedidiah's favorite toys!! His therapy ball. He gets soooo excited when he sees it. Although his new all time favorite is his push toy that he can hang on to and walk along with. Although he doesn't know how to steer it, so someone needs to go along with him to help him out. I will have to get a picture of that soon.

We have our own track in our back yard. Ok, not a running track, but an agility track....for the dogs. Here is Isabella working hard to get it all put together. She also made some jumps and a teeter board.

Here she is trying it out. Maybe she is even giving the dog a lesson. I think our dog has ADD! Ha, ha! That lazy dog is laying in the middle of the track! Actually though Isabella has been training the dogs to jump and do other 'stunts'. It's pretty amazing.

I hope everyone has a great day. I am hoping to participate in the Sew Crafty Friday next week. I've been working on a few things all along, I just haven't gotten around to photographing any of them yet.

Sew Crafty Friday

Here is my almost finished blanket. I just have to weave the string ends in and it will be 100% complete. This was a blanket that I started to make for Jedidiah when he was in the hospital back in February. I had all the squares made. Just this week I sewed the squares together and put a border around it. I really like how it came out.

Then I have a few other projects in the works. I got some knitting books out at the library and fell in love with a whole bunch of designs. I chose to make the dishcloths and a bath mat. The bath mat below is made in the likeness of a log cabin design. It is hard to see here as I am using all one color. But I do plan on making a knitted log cabin blanket with the new Vanna White yarn by Lion Brand.








Here is the dishcloth/wash rag. I love the design, so spunky and refreshing. That's nice over the boring white cheapo Walmart cloths I have right now.

Please make sure to go check out what others are working on by clicking on here: http://w8ng4him.blogspot.com/


In other news Jedidiah had his GI follow up. All went well. He does have a bit more "stuff" coming out of it than there should be, but the doctor said he wasn't concerned. If it doesn't clear up in a week I will have to call back and he'll give me an antibiotic for it. But overall the doctor was very pleased with how everything is going.



Isabella is looking forward to tomorrow. She has been waiting a whole YEAR for this day. You will NEVER guess why. Two years ago about this time of year we just happened to come upon a flyer for the AKC dog companionship day. So we went. And of course it was the highlight of Isabella's life. So she was looking forward to going last year. However with Jedidiah being so small and it too hot out and so on and so forth we couldn't attend. She has literally been looking forward to this all year. It is tomorrow and she is ready to go!



Well I need to go get Jedidiah up to eat. He had a long day of no formal naps. I'm hoping to gather the energy to clean. I'm sure I can find some energy around here somewhere.... :-)

A picture of our Borg Boy

I think it was on Star Trek that they had the Borgs. Half human half machine. It seemed fitting to call Jedidiah, Borg Boy as his tube coming out of his side is so long. I took a picture of it. He was playing with a hat so you can't see his tube free face. Maybe next time.

He was a bit fussy this morning. I hadn't given him any medicine through the night. He slept all night, but he may have been uncomfortable once he was moving around. He is not pleased when I have to clean it. Poor thing. I feel like the big bad evil mommy when I have to do something that hurts him :-( Hopefully it will not hurt too much longer.

I wanted to post some pictures of all the cousins together. But all the pictures are blurry!!! Boo hoo. I guess that means we will just have to get together again so that we can get some good pictures :-)

I broke my fast yesterday, a day early. I needed to or I was going to crash. I was out doing a long day of grocery shopping and my body said, NO MORE. so I listened and ate an apple. But I am proud of myself. My first juice fast accomplished. I was able to do it for 13 days. I wish I had some profound experience to share. I did clear up a few health issues (small ones). The amazing thing was that I was never hungry the entire time!! I am sure that made it very easy for me. I did waiver when I was making some yummy dish, but once I had it done and walked away I was fine. I stayed the course. Now that I am eating a bit more food I feel more perky. It will be a challenge to continue to eat healthy. Not that I eat poorly, but just making the healthiest choices all the time. I seem to slip in to eating less quality foods once I start eating them here and there. Then I want to eat them all the time. It was amazing to see the number on the scale today! I lost 10 pounds during the fast. Most of that will come back quickly as I am able to work out more and the increase in calories. I didn't need to actually lose any weight, but that can't be helped when you're fasting. If we are not expecting in another month I may do another fast. Not sure how long, maybe only a week. We shall see. I would like to put more emphasis on the spiritual side of a fast the next time. I was surprised to "learn" a few things during this fast. Again, nothing profound, but something to put more emphasis on the next time.

Well I need to get going. It is a beautiful day today. Although we can't go anywhere as a family as we are keeping Jedidiah home until he heals.

We are home

We are home from the hospital. Although we almost didn't make it out yesterday! My sister came with me to the hospital. We actually got in on time and they took him back for the procedure 15 min. before they told me it was scheduled for. I had assumed that the time they gave me was for when they would start all the prep work. So I was pleasantly surprised that things went much faster. They said it should only take 25-30 min. They told us that for the endoscopy as well, and that had took over an hour. So once again I was surprised that they called us into the consult room after 25 min. The doctor said things went soooo well that it was scary. He said it was the easiest one he had ever done. Wow, I thought, I hope his recovery goes just as smoothly. But NO it had to be one of the "hardest". Ugh. Jedidiah was really out of it for quite some time. It took them a while to get us a room. We got up there around 4:30 or so. He was running a bit of a fever in the recovery room, which is not odd, but something they needed to keep an eye on. They gave him and IV antibiotic, so it should not be an infection I was told. So all evening he was sleepy. Then the night time fun began. He was a bit fussy and needed meds, then he spiked his fever. It went up to 102.9! The nurses and docs were concerned. They gave him some tyenol but that didn't help it come down, so they were more concerned. So the doctors (residents really) wanted a blood draw. Not a big deal, except for the fact that it was 3 AM in the MORNING! And Jedidiah was SLEEPING. I asked them about how he could have an infection if he was already on antibiotics. I mean, if he has an infection wouldn't they keep giving him the antibiotics anyways? And if it was a viral, there wasn't anything they could do? Um, yeah, I'm just a lay person, I obviously don't know what I am talking about (actually I was right and they were being incredibly silly). And I would have stood my ground, but it was 3 AM. So they tried in his foot, ,but no go. Then they had to do an arterial stick in his wrist, no go....then they tried his other wrist, they got just enough for their "all needed test". Thankfully Jedidiah was still really out of it. He was crying, but not hysterical. Then he was able to go back to sleep. He woke up around 6:30 or so and I decided to jump in the shower. He started crying and crying. And crying....and crying...pretty much all day. It was really more of an on and off thing. Crying for 10-20 minutes and then sleeping for 10-30 minutes and start over. It was from the gas pains. They had to inflate his tummy with gas for the procedure and what goes in has to come out.... He was in more pain from the gas than from the procedure. Due to his fever there was a scare that we might not have been able to go home that next day. That would have been BAD. The girls would have freaked out! But thankfully his fever broke by the afternoon. Then he was able to have his feedings go well, and I learned how to care for the new tube and the guy from our home health equipment company came to give me the pump and other supplies. And then we were able to leave! We had an awesome nurse who was doing what she could to get us out of there.

And I came home to a very clean house! Uncle Joe put all those kiddos to work! My sister and brother in law unfortunately found that we have a mildew problem. We can't smell it at all, but my sister is VERY allergic to it and could smell it on our clothes and towels. It was a bit of a blow to find this all out at this time, but a blessing as well as this may be causing a lot of "issues" that various family members here in the house have. It may even be a reason for Jedidiah's issues! We won't know for a while since it will take a lot to get rid of it. It will be especially hard since we can't even smell it! We won't know if what we are doing is working...until we see some changes in allergies around here I guess.

We are so thankful for my sister and her family for coming. It was soooo great to see her kiddos. All the kids got along great and had so much fun. Their help was so very much appreciated and needed. Jerry was able to work on Thursday and then he and Joe watched the kids on Friday. We got home around 7 or so last night, maybe later. Jedidiah was still doing his crying thing. He looked so pitiful. He was already all puffy from all the IV fluids and his eye's were all purple and puffy. I thought he may never get to sleep. But after a few lullabies from auntie Tracy he was off to la-la land and slept ALL night long! Yeah! And can I just tell you I LOVE the new pump. Right now for the next few days I will have to get up once to just dump some more formula and then I can go back to sleep. But the new bags that will be sent to us will have a pocket for an ice pack, so I just hang the bag and put it on and can sleep ALL night long too!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!

Ok, I better get going. There is some grocery shopping that desperately needs to get done. Thank you to all that have prayed for Jedidiah. Please continue to pray that the site heals well and that he will have no future complications from it. THANK YOU!