Won't you join me...

in praying for this little one and his family?

"just the girls"...

This quote is from Ella Jane. At 1:30AM.





Setting the scene...





Sara wakes for the 2nd time at 12:45am. I go in to console and quickly realize it will do no good. I'll need a distraction. I make my way to the living room so as not to wake the rest of the crew. Baby Newton is playing and who walks in but Ella Jane. I beckon her to come to me and with a sweet smile on my face she falls into my lap. I tell her it's the middle of the night and then she hops over to the couch telling me in a very chipper voice that it's "just the girls, having girl time." Technically, I suppose she's right although I would prefer our girl time to involve a midday treat at Starbucks.

Sara went to bed about 15 minutes ago and so far so good. I picked her up and then bent down to get her blankies and paci and when I did I was leaning forward a little and I felt her grab onto me a little tighter. I knew I wasn't going to drop her, but instinctively she grabbed on.

I immediately thought of God and his grip on me. Sometimes it feels as if I might be dropped but that is never God's intention. And He would never trip up and accidentaly drop me either. What I found amazing and comforting was this scenario play out in my life with Sara. I'm constantly picking her up and putting her down. Most of the time she's just along for the ride; even when I bend down to get something it doesn't seem to faze her, she knows we'll get back up. She knows me and trusts me.

Tonight I feel like it's God beckoning to me, asking me to trust Him, to hang onto Him. Thank you Lord. And thank you Ella Jane. Time well spent...even at 1:30am.

ear and sinus...

infection. Sara has both right now. This is the first time she's been this sick. I should've guessed the sinus infection when the yellow/green snot completely covered her nose and mouth yesterday morning. And as far as the ear infection, well she's surpassed brother and sister in this department. They both had their first one's at 8 months. We hope she starts to feel better soon.

torn....

between the feeling of gratefulness that Matthew is getting better and (praise God from whom all blessings flow) and utter astonishment at how my perfect plan for the day can be twarted in an instant with a little (or a lot) of foolish behavior.

We packed a picnic and met a friend at the park. Sara's world has just expanded and she loved climbing the stairs and sliding down the slides! The glee that comes from within her is contagious.

We came home and while Sara napped I let the kids play with shaving cream at the table. After explaining to them that I was going to get my energy back (go love and logic) by doing some e-mails I let them have at it. Calm, quiet, shaving cream play.

Or was it?


After 10 min. I hear things like "look at me Ella Jane, I'm Santa Claus", "HO, HO, HO".... Do you see where this is going?

Matthew, clueless to the fact that he's about to get into trouble proudly displays his handsome shaving cream covered face, hair, and neck to me while I'm in the middle of an e-mail.

There goes whatever energy I had left.

We will have an early dinner and bed.

*** Matthew was treated for Pneumonia. When they took the x-ray on Friday it was just too early to see anything, so he wasn't treated for it. He did develop a cough on Saturday and by Sunday they had changed his antibiotic. He's looking A LOT better now and will be going back to school tomorrow. He's very excited and we're all looking forward to finding our sense of normal again.

Man, he scared us...

Matthew's temp. soared to 104.4 last night. Talk about stress. Thank goodness for Tylenol. A dose of medicine, cold compresses, a glass of apple juice, and a popscicle later...it finally came down. For some reason we just can't keep it down, hence the antibiotic. We hope he starts turning the corner tomorrow.

In the meantime, while he feels well, and the weather was warm today, we went for an explore to check out the kids' fort. The one they started last fall with Jim. It's still there, just a little muddier than when we left it.

Sara's got the fever now so we are trying to keep her comfortable, the trick with her is getting her to sleep. Mmmm.....sound familiar?

We're still tired. But I'm told that when they grow up and leave the nest, we can sleep again.

Fair enough.

I thought it was broken...

Matthew's been home all week. He's sick with the virus that is apparantly running rampid in these here parts. Every time I have taken his temp. it's read 103.3 give or take. After 5 days of this I actually used it on myself thinking, it's got to be broken. How can he always have a 103 temp.? It's not broken and he's still sick, although I dare say he might be turning the corner. A chest x-ray today revealed no pneumonia so he's just on an antibiotic to get rid of the virus.

Meanwhile Sara started her own fever 2 days ago and is extra snugly and sleepy because of it. We've been housebound except for trips to Ella Jane's preschool where she gets to escape the confines of the house! It's been a welcome break for each of us. Everyone was so excited to go to the doctor today; what does that say?

And it's been awhile since I've taken ALL three out somewhere so we got a lot of "wow, you have your hands full", "what good helpers", "aww, she's so cute", and "are you the big brother?" It's a little like hearding animals sometimes and I realized I'm not sure if it's better for me to be in front or back while we're walking the hallways of a doctors office or the aisles of Target. If I'm behind them, I'm holding doors, and ushering them forward, but then they don't know where to go and we hold up the line even more. If I'm in front of them, then I'm always looking over my shoulder, "come along, children". I like to feel like Mary Poppins so sometimes I say this to EJ on the walk up to get Matthew from school..."come along Jane."

Anyway, here we are at home now where it looks like someone took our house and shook it upside down. How does that happen in less than 24 hrs.??

I think we are on the mend.

home sick...

Matthew is home sick yesterday, today and I suspect tomorrow as well. He hasn't been hit this hard since July of '07. So, we are home enjoying some craft time (he's really into coloring, and making books), movie time (we finally saw H.S.M. 3), and story time.

Sara has been sleeping better at night, only getting up once or maybe twice. Such an improvement! Hooray for sleep.

We've started playing shirades as a family after dinner and let me tell you it is hysterical. The kids love it. I think it boosts their confidence as well as their imagination and we all end up laughing. I think we're getting back to that stage of family life where we enjoy things all together; and the kids are able to understand and participate instead of us doing all of the leading. So fun and healthy for everyone. It somehow makes me forget that Matthew and Ella Jane had been at each other's heels all afternoon!

And then some...

Where do I begin? When you go this long w/o posting there is a lot to catch up on. Let's start with the reason for the long silence. This little family of ours has been tired. Really tired. A lot. We are all healthy, we're not sick or anything; we're just tired from the year long absence of a good nights rest.

We have a friend who refers to some days as "just too hard to put your socks on" kind of days. While those are fine to have once and awhile, when you have a whole string of them it can be hard to pick up the pieces. (pieces...I'll get to that a little later)

Our Internet connection has been on the fritz for a few weeks so to get online at all has proven more frustrating than it's worth. I was on the phone with tech. support for an hour yesterday and still did not get anything resolved. But while I'm on the phone everything else takes a back seat, like, the kids for example. So by the time I get off the phone, it's dinner time (well past actually), they hungry and I'm still burried in a mess of laptops, modems, routers and cords.

At the moment the above painted picutre is of the living room. (that all happened yesterday) There is a Monopoly game strewn about the floor that Ella Jane is in the middle of sorting and putting away, there is a U.S. puzzle that got accidentally dropped and therefor dumped (and who has time to stop and put together a 50+ piece puzzle?), there are various clothes (how did they end up in HERE?), and a few other toys.

That's just from this morning.

When it's too hard to put your socks on it gets to be like it was LAST weekend. And here's where I wish I had the picture to post. LAST weekend in our overwhelmed state we let the kids play "money machine". They invent so many different games and this one I have to admit was pretty clever. It involved pieces of games to be put through a little slot in the bottom of a box. We have about 30 or so games and puzzles. Can you picture this? EVERY dice, little round circle to connect four, cards to Guess Who?, shapes from geometric matching boards, bingo pieces...you get the idea. ALL OVER THE FLOOR. They saw game, I saw stress and craziness. It took 45 min. of very focused sorting and putting away. Great learning activity at the end I suppose but I made it clear they would not be playing the money machine again.

So, we are here, alive and well, just tired and stressed.

Some fun things that have happened are...Ella Jane now has bangs! We had to cut them because her hair is just so thin on the sides and it was getting really difficult to keep out of her face. A hair clip doesn't have much to hang onto for the lack of hair. She looks like a different child. It took me a few hours to get used to it, but now I think she's super cute with them.

Sara is 10 months old and all over the place. She's very active, climbing stairs, crawling and squealing as she goes. She is in a very playful stage right now and just fascinating to be around. Well of course she is, I AM her mama after all.

MJ, EJ and I went to an Owl Prowl at the nature center last night. We learned about different speices of owls and how to call them. About 100 people or so were gathered and taking a hike in the dark while our leader called for owls. Matthew LOVED it, was very in tune to the sounds and waiting to see if the owls would call back. Afterwards we headed back into the ctr. where Matthew gave EJ and I a tour. He has been there before for a class field trip and took on the leadership role of "teacher" very well.

It's been another busy month and at least 2-3 times a week the kids ask if it is spring yet. "Almost" I say, we can't wait to play outside!