Strawberry popsicles and summertime smiles

I'm not one to jump on a bandwagon unless I'm passionately against something. Passionately. Like give my life for it something. That being said, I'm on the whole food, organic, healthier choices for my kids bandwagon, but I'm not quite ready to wear the t-shirt and shout it from the mountain tops.

Over the course of the last month, I've made my own household cleaners, right down to dishwashing detergent. I've fed my children more whole foods, less crap. We've eliminated high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), limited refined sugars, and limited eating mcdonald's to once a week or less (Don't judge me; my life has been insanely hectic. I'm fully aware McDonald's more than once a year is BAD. We're working on it, back off! ;))

Anyway, two things I've had a horrible time replacing in my kids' diets is popsicles and pop tarts. I'll conquer the pop tarts later; that's a really...really big mountain to climb. I did, however; find a super simple, super (hopefully) yummy popsicle recipe. I love when I can read all the ingredients on a food, and I'm finding the more I make myself, the more I know 110% what goes in something.

There are three (that's right, 3) ingredients to these amazing popsicles: strawberries, milk, and truvia. That's it, folks. The original recipe called for sugar, but we're working toward eliminating refined sugars, too so it was either sugar in the raw or truvia. I picked Truvia. I'm crippled right now and it was closer! ;)

Here's the recipe:

2 cups whole strawberries (topped) pssst...topped means take the green part off! ;)

1 cup milk (we used skim)

Truvia to taste

Blend all ingredients and place in popsicle molds. Freeze for 6+ hours. I blended, poured and shoved in the freezer in less than five minutes. Then I walked away and hubby cleaned up my mess (back off, I'm on crutches...).

I could not WAIT for my kids to get done with lunch today, seriously could. not. wait. I busted out the popsicles and they were a hit. Just a note, though, if you have seed-phobic kiddos, these pops are NOT for you. Try peaches or something that isn't so...seedy. These probably could've used double the truvia I put in, though I'll never admit that to my littles. They loved it, anyway.

Bean enjoying her refrehsing homemade popsicle



Justin sucking the extra strawberry juice...yum!

I can't wait to try other flavors and not so secretly, I feel all homemaker-ish and stuff. It really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! ;) Now that I've killed the popsicles and dragged them home, any ideas on homemade poptarts?!

I'm ALMOST the mommy to a five year old...

My sweet boy turns five in less than 9 hours. His Aunt Na and Uncle Jason threw him a fabulous party over Christmas break, so tomorrow is going to be really low key. We are going to see Nanny and Papaw and have cake, specially made by Mimi, iced by mommy. Here's what you need to know: I rock at bows; I rock at tutus. Neither bows nor tutus require patience or large amounts of attention to detail. This is a good thing, because I have the attention span of a two year old. It's not pretty, folks.

Anyhow, I decided it would be fun to pull out all mom's cake decorating tools to decorate this sad little cake. All the kids went to bed and I went to town. I mixed up the colors, spread out the icing and then saw her handy-dandy icing tips. Oh, yeah. I went there. I busted them out like I knew EXACTLY what I was doing. Using those little tip-thingies takes somethign I don't have- patience. I rocked it anyway, making wavy lines, rather than wavy dot things. So here's what I learned tonight:

1. I'm not good at making cakes. Not even a little bit.

2. God totally knew what he was doing when He gave me talents that didn't require patience or attention to detail

3. Cakes from Wal-Mart? SO worth it. So, SOOOOO worth it.

4. It's a good thing my son knows his mommy loves him. If he based my love on the cake, I'm fairly certain he'd run away from home.

Every one of his birthdays send me into an emotional tissy. He's absolutely, positively my entire world. I love him more than anything and I just adore the little boy he's grown to be. Five is a big deal. He's no longer a toddler, though I'm sure he reached post-toddler way before now. He's really even no longer a preschooler. I'm certain there will be a meltdown his first day of Kindergarten. No two ways about it. He's so big, so independent. I feel like he needs his momma less and less everyday. I want to grab him and say "What about me? What about how I need YOU?? Please don't grow up, little boy!" I can't do that, though, can I? I mean, even if I did, it would probably just freak him out and make him bitter. It won't make time freeze.

If I don't hear it once, I hear it a thousand times that people don't know how we mantain sanity with our kids aged the way they are and sleeping the way they do. Let's just clear something up right fast- there is NOTHING sane about me. I walk around in a state of delirium 99.9% of the time, the other .01%, I sleep. I'm certifiable, folks. But I would not trade one single, solitary moment. I've learned that if I don't take advantage of every bad dream Just has and wants to crawl in bed with me, every midnight rocking Jaleigh wants, every time Jadie is sick of being on the floor and just wants to be held (no matter how much I have to do), it will all be gone. I'll never, ever have these moments again. So I may be delirious, exhausted and certifiable, but I am loved. My children are loved. My house isn't even remotely clean, but there will be time for that when they start school and are gone all day. When all I can do is miss them and wish they were still home with me.

Anyway, five years ago right now, I was in labor. A long, long, long, long labor. I spent 32 hours at the hospital, in labor. Apparently when I got my epidural (asked for it at a 2, got it at a four), it just stopped my contractions. Finally, at 6:45 am on January 8, they broke my water. Just over an hour later, I was holding the most beautiful, perfect, precious, breathtaking little boy you ever saw. He came complete with a head full of hair, two dimples and a swell cleft in his chin. He was absolutely, positively the most beautiful baby boy ever. I was so scared, but I knew- this little boy saved my life.

Many of you know I'm divorced and remarried. My first husband was physically and emotionally abusive. When Jesse and I got married, I lost it. I don't remember much from that time, but I know they diagnosed me with PTSD and severe anxiety. I know I spent most of my days so drugged up, I couldn't function. Beyond that, don't ask me, because I have no details. I know that the first two months of our marriage, my husband NEVER left my side and he loved me with an unconditional love I'd never, ever experienced from a man before. It was (is) real love, a Christ-like love. Anyway, I do know that things were bad. I remember praying every single night that if God would give me a child, I would love him, hold him, care for him and never, ever look back. By the grace of God, I found out I was pregnant. I took a random pregnancy test one day and it was positive. So I took seven more. All positive. So I went in for blood work. Positive. Oh, thank you Jesus! Can I celebrate yet? I did. I celebrated and still just see him as the biggest blessing. Ever. Hands down. He and his daddy were my reason for living for the longest time, until his sisters came along. It's amazing; you wonder how in the world you can possibly split your love between children. The heart has a way of growing and accomodating more love so splitting just isn't necessary. So I got pregnant with Justin two months after we got married and we celebrated our first anniversary with a beauitful one month old baby boy. He stayed with Mimi while we went away for the day. The day. Not the night. NO way, regardless how little sleep was to be had, I'd leave him at night.

Ah, memories. I still just can't wrap my mind around the fact he's five. Where did these five years go? Is all the time going to go that quickly? God, I hope not. I just want time to stand still. Forever. I want to hold and love my babies for the rest of my life and never, ever let them go. Do you think they'll still let me rock them when they're 30?

Oh, yeah. The cake. Here it is.

Happy birthday, sweet Jutter Butter. Mommy loves you all the way to the moon and back! <3

I say hey, what's going on?

A few pictures...
My Jadie Bug

Justin and Jaleigh with Santa

So much has gone on the last few months (shocking, right?), so I figured I'd write about it. You should know, contrary to being the daughter of an English teacher, I'm not really blogger material. I do my best, though, and it's a good release.

We are home in Texas for the time being. The plan is to stay through January while Jesse works insane hours to try to cover some of these medical bills we've been racking up. We stayed here with family most of November as well, for the same reason. We're enjoying time with our families, though I'm fairly certain my brood has worn them all out. :)

Jaleigh has been sick off and on for 17 weeks now. She and I got sick two weeks before Jadie was born (end of August), contracted pneumonia the next week and went on antibiotics. She has stayed well anywhere between 4 and 15 days before she gets sick all over again. After the 4th x-ray showing what they thought was pneumonia, they sent her to a pediatric pulmonologist. The pulmonologist ran several tests, including a CT scan and determined she has a (for lack of better word?) mass in her left lung, swollen lymph nodes in her lung, and swollen, excess tissue. Her blood work showed signs of an infection (which is not good at all, seeing as how she was 10 days off antibiotic...). They've given her a preliminary diagnosis of interstitial pneumonitis, which is basically chronic lung infection. It's a very vague diagnosis, but it's a start. At this point, there are so many unknowns. We know she's getting sick every week or so, taking antibiotics and they are treating the symptoms and the infection, but not the underlying problem that is causing the symptoms and infections. The pulmonologist seems to think it resembles TB, but she's asymptomatic and tests so far are showing negative. He did say if she starts with a chronic cough, to come in immediately and retest. He also told me he wants me to leave with two things: 1, He doesn't want me to think they aren't working hard to figure it out, because they are. Unfortunately, since there's no clear answer, we are just going to have to follow it, and 2. He doesn't want me to think it's NOT serious because at this point, all non-serious diagnoses have been ruled out, and anytime something of this nature is present on an infant, it's serious. She is currently on her fourth antibiotic this month and following up with a preventative antibiotic. He wants to keep the infection away as long as possible, so her little body can have a break. We will go back in February for a second CT to see if it has progressed, regressed, or stayed the same. He'll determine what tests need to be done from there. He did say there's a small chance it's a rare viral infection called adenitis, which lasts 3-6 months. On the off chance that IS what we're dealing with, it should be near running its course. Right now, she's on antibiotics (did I say that already...?) and running low-grade fever off and on.

We aren't sleeping most nights; we do well to get 3-4 hours. She cries a lot, sits in my lap a lot, and throws a lot of fits. Mommy's exhausted, but God totally keeps me going. There is nothing worse for a mother than the fear of the unknown when it comes to her babies. I thank Him daily, hourly, every minute for my dear husband because, without him, I'd never make it through these long, exhausting days and nights. He is my rock, my everything and I'm just so grateful to have him. So blessed, friends. So blessed.

I'm also blessed to have my big little and my tiny little. They have been so cooperative through all the extra attention Jaleigh Bean has been getting. I try very hard to make time for them and most days, I do well enough but thank GOD they're mild-mannered and calm. And Jadie _usually_ only gets up once or twice a night, opposite Jaleigh. Of course. ;)

My Justin doll has another lump. I'm not sure I ever followed up after our appointment with the genetecist. He basically said we have to wait for more symptoms to pop up before they can officially diagnose him with neurofibromatosis. He said while it is rare, it is possible to have a random neurofibroma. He said if Justin were to ever in his lifetime have another neurofibroma, it would be an automatic diagnosis. I was washing Justin's hair the other day and he has a lump on his face, directly by his ear. I'm calling our ENT after the Holidays to make an appointment, so we can get it all checked out. He's getting so big; I can't believe he's almost five. He's not my toddler anymore and it breaks my heart. He saved me, friends. He and his daddy absolutely, positively saved me. It just kills me to see him so big. He is such an amazing big brother. He loves his sisters dearly and does all he can to help with them. He loves when they nap, though, because then he can play video games or color with mommy! It's a win-win. Love on babies till you wear 'em out, then eat up the mommy time!

Jadie is over three months old now. I'm not really sure where the time has gone, but it's gone. She is absolutely perfect, friends. She's calm, quiet, content. She loves to lay on a blanket and talk to her BFF, the ceiling fan. She has only ever gotten up once a night (except for growth spurts), never had colic, and only cries when she's hungry or has the hiccups. Thank the Lord, because her entire life, Jaleigh has been sick. Oh, friends. And she's beautiful. She doesn't have the dimples or the cleft chin her brother and sister have, but she has these crystal blue eyes that light up and a smile that covers her entire face. She's stunning, absolutely perfect. She looks like a baby doll.

So you may be thinking at this point, what do I need from you. Prayers, friends. Pray for my sweet family. Pray for healing for my Jaleigh Bean, understanding for her daddy and me. Pray for love and peace for her sweet brother, and for continued contentedness for Jadie bug. I know no matter what happens, God will be with us. He may choose to heal her, He may choose to hold her (and us) through this storm. Either way, our faith is in Him and the promise he's given us to never leave our sides.

I was talking to a dear, sweet friend the other day and she told me to have faith. I have faith, friends. It may not be much, but I have it. And here's the thing; God never promised us life wouldn't hurt. He never promised us we wouldn't suffer, either. He does promise us, though, that He will carry us. There is a song very dear to my heart right now, Lay down your burdens by Amy Grant. Lay down your burdens, I will carry you. I will carry you, my child. It goes on to talk about all the things God has done, and how if He can do all that, He can surely carry you through your sorrows. What an amazing song, an amazing testimony to his faithfulness. Just remember, friends. If you are ever overwhelmed, lay down your burdens. He'll carry you.

P.S. Remind me of that next time I decide to lose my mind...

Just...breathe, then pray.

Lord, thank you for this sweet baby girl with her head on my heart and my heart in her hands. She is so beautiful to me. I know the last year has been tough, Lord, but you've never left our sweet family's side and for that, we're grateful. We've weathered the storm and come out closer to you and closer to each other. I thank you for the personality you gave our sweet Jaleigh Bean. She is amazing, Lord; headstrong and determined. I know you don't make mistakes, God, and that she is destined to do big, big things for you.

Thank you for trusting her daddy and me to raise her and her siblings up in the way that they should go. Please give us the tools and the heart to seek your will in their lives, every single step of the way. Please heal her sweet little body of wahtever is making her run fever and feel badly. Thank you for all our sweet babies, for their uniqueness, and for their sweet spirits, and for blessing us with the privelage to raise them up. Help us to encourage, not discourage them and to build them up as giants for you, Help us to remember that as impactful as words are, our actions and our intentions are what they take in the most. Help our actions and thte way we treat one another to be a reflection of your love for us.

Thank you for my husband, God. It never ceases to amaze me you create one man and one woman to be together and that, when we're in your will, you bless us a thousand times over with our perfect match. He is absolutely, positively the most wonderful, thoughtful husband and an absolutely amazing father. Bless him, Lord and continue to guide him while he leads our family in your will.

Give us strength, Lord, to continue on this journey you've called us to, because in your will is where we want to be. I know I've struggled, Lord, and even questioned whether you knew what you were doing landing us hundreds of miles away from our families. We've seen you pour out your blessings in the people you've placed in our lives and as hard as it is to stay focused on your will, I'm so grateful for the wonderful, wonderful friends you've given me to help me along (though I honestly can't wait to be home with my momma...). Every problem we've been faced with, you've countered with a solution that blessed us tenfold. Help us to take those blessings and bless others, Lord.

Lord, you've given us a phenomenal testimony with which to share your love. Please give us the mountain tops to shout your love from, and the people you wish to hear about it. I love you, Lord, and I'm so grateful you chose me to love and me to bless with this wonderful family. Thank you, Lord. ~amen

I did it med free...almost!

Posted 10-10-11

Many of you have asked me to take some time to blog, so I'm going to try really hard to make it a priority. :)



There's a lot to update you on, but first on everyone's mind is probably our sweet baby Jadie. Jadie Faith was born 9-14-2011 @ 10;59 am. I'd been having mild, but noticeable contractions since Tuesday morning. They started around 20 seconds in duration, less than 3 an hour. I went to the doctor that afternoon, excited there were contractions and hopeful there was progress. I was still at a 2, 50% effaced. She said no labor this week, but that we could be hopeful for next week. I was a little embarassed to tell her I'd been having what I thought were significant contractions. She chalked the blood in my urine and the contractions up to dehydration. I'd lost three pounds that week, which reflected my disdain for eating and drinking at that stage in the game.

Anyway, by the time I got home, the contractions were extremely random, but had increased to about 30s in duration. We finished our day and went to bed. I was up all. night. long with contractions, 3-4 an hour (that's still 15m apart, people...). They'd gotten signifcantly stronger, more painful and were lasting about 50 seconds. I slept around them as I could, hopeful that it would eventually turn into labor (little did I know it WAS labor...). Jess got up around 5:30 and I informed him he wouldn't be going to work, to go back to bed. I'd taken 2 showers through the night and decided to crawl in the tub at 6:30. It was starting to really hurt to walk or stand. I climbed back in bed around 7:00 and decided to call my doctor at 8:30 because something was going on, I just didnt know what. I set my alarm for 8:30 (who was I kidding?) and called them. At that point taking steps without assistance was not an option. My mind started racing. Had I messed up in waiting to call the doctor? Was there something wrong with my baby girl? What in the WORLD was going on?

I should tell you at this point that while I'd been pregnant twice before, I hurried to the hospital at the first sign of pain with my oldest, Justin and it ended up being a 32 hour labor. With Jaleigh, I was induced, so I still didn't know what real labor felt like.

Anyway, the doctor told me to get to the hospital ASAP because I was having a difficult time carrying on a conversation with them. I told Jesse to load the kids up, called my friend to take the kids, and we headed to the hospital. Funny, we were trying to decide whether to pack everyone a bag, and finally decided not to because we didn't know what was going on. Jesse pulled up to drop me at the front door and I got out. I thought I was going to be real brave and walk in and upstairs by myself. In retrospect, that was real dumb, and I didn't make it far before they met me with a wheelchair and wheeled me up to L&D.

Once they got me in bed, they checked me. At this point, I must tell you about the new nurse, Ginger. Ginger added a comic relief to my situation. Ginger apparently had been a L&D nurse for 19 years, but you seriously would have thought she just graduated nursing school the evening prior. She checked me first (I seriously almost punched her, then held her down and ripped off her fake freaking fingernails one by one...), and came back saying I wasn't even a 2, and was still 50%. I remember saying something to the effect of, "then you need to figure out what's going on with this baby because something is terribly wrong!" Fortunately, the "real" nurse wasn't any more convinced than I was, so she checked me and I was 100% at a 6/7 and had a bulging sack. At that point, I asked for my epidural. Yes, an epidural. I'm not ashamed, folks. I have the pain threshold of....well, it's really low. I needed pain relief, like, the day before. I was exhausted and so over the pain of childbirth. Not to mention I was scared out of my ever-lovin mind. I'd heard horror stories of women who didn't get their epidurals and I'm fairly certain I knew I wouldn't surivive that nonsense. I did the only thing a raging pregnant woman in horrible pain would do; I prayed to God to PLEASE hurry the anesthesiologist up.

Once we knew where we stood, the nurse started to make calls to Jesse to get back to the hospital quickly because labor was going really, really fast. He'd been dawdling; I remember something about waffles, packing bags and him just being him. ;-) Nurse Ginger took about 10-15 minutes to draw my blood for my cdc for my epidural. Yes, 10-15 minutes. They moved me to a labor room where they checked me again and I was an 8. They were waiting for my cdc to come back before they broke my water, but Nurse Ginger (she really rocks...) accidentally broke my water when she went to check me again later. I told her she broke my water and she insisted she didn't. After about three seconds, she apologized and everyone started moving much faster.

At that point, they gave me a shot of...something? I'm not sure what it was, but I started passing out (literally) between contractions. I am not sure when Jesse got there, but shortly after he did they made him leave so I could get my epidural. Less than 15 minutes later, I was pushing. No, the epidural hadn't even come close to taking full effect, but it took just enough edge off that I didn't want to take a flying leap off the third floor of the hospital.

Jadie Faith was born at 10:59 a.m. I labored for an hour and a half at the hospital with no pain relief and I don't care what anyone says, I'm really darn proud of that. The very second they laid that sweet girl on my chest, every ounce of pain left my body (well, except the whole stitching me up part...) and all I could think about was how perfect she was. And she is. She will be a month old on Wednesday and it just blows my mind how perfect she is, how perfect all my babies are. Many of you have asked if our family is complete. Maybe...maybe not. I'm not in the business of trying to figure out what God's plan is (anymore...lol). If our family is complete, then it is perfect. If we have more children, then it will be perfect. And maybe, just maybe, I'll have the mindset to do it completely epidural free next time...

Someone mentioned to me I haven't updated in a while....

Several someones, actually. So here we are. St. Francis FINALLY scheduled Justin's MRI for July 19. I called his doctor one day last week, though, and made him an appointment for the bad headaches he's been getting. The headaches have been localized to his forehead. My initial suspicion was migraines, but he has no light or sound sensitivity and it seems while the intensity comes and goes, the headache is a steady constant.

Anyway, so we took him in to the doctor and had him checked out. The doctor said his sinuses and allergies seemed to be well under control and that, while it could still be migraines, she was more suspect of neurofibromas on his brain. Due to the recent discoveries with my heart, they went ahead and did an EKG. His EKG came back fine, praise God. I told her neurofibromas were my fear, as well, but that the soonest they could get him in for an MRI was the 19 of July. She said to give her until morning to get it sooner and that if we couldn't make it any sooner, we would do a CT scan here. She said neurofibromas are typically too small to see with CT scans, but if they're causing him pain, we would likely be able to see something. The doctor's office called the next morning and let me know they would see him this past Thursday.

We went in for his MRI and sat....and waited for nearly two hours. Turns out, he wasn't able to have his MRI that day, so we loaded up and headed home. They've rescheduled him for tomorrow, Monday at 11:30. It worked out, though, because the geneticist also called to reschedule and moved his appointment to Wednesday morning @ 8:00 am. So, God willing, we should have a LOT of answers by the end of this week. If we don't have answers, we'll at least have direction.

In other news, Jaleigh has a tooth now. One, lone bottom tooth. It's adorable and, as of this morning, a second tooth has broken the gum. You hear about these sweet babies who just magically have teeth and you never knew they were cutting them. She's NOT one of those babies. She's made the entire world miserable as this tooth has come into her life. I anticipate the same for the next one. We're waiting for her to just take off walking. She's cruising and a couple of times, she's let go of whatever she's holding on to like she's just going to take off across the room. Naturally, she plops to the floor, instead. The effort is definitely there, though.

Our goal is to go home Thursday of this week. I'm ready. I'm so ready to go home I'm afraid I'll protest when it's time to come back to OK. I miss my momma. We've lived away before and I remember thinking back, thinking it was so wonderful (and it was...), but you forget how much you miss your family. Your life without those staple people in it just has a big, fat void. Jess and I are just prone to things going wrong, unfortunately, and it's so much easier for things to go wrong when your family is there by your side. We're very blessed, though, no matter how much we miss them because God has provided us a church family made up of a stellar group of people. We're blessed, but we need a good helping of home. Hopefully, for all our sake, we'll get it very soon.

Today was rough and I'm not sure why...

But I think it may have had something to do with four doctor appointments and one other appointment crammed into one day. Not my smartest move yet.

We started off the day seeing the kids' ENT. Jaleigh passed her hearing test, as well as a seven month old is expected to pay attention lol. He looked at Justin's neck, said it was healing great and asked what our game plan was as far as the biopsy results. We talked for a bit, ran and grabbed some lunch and a quick episode of Spongebob at home, then left for the opthamologist.

Justin did well during the eye exam, up to the point they put the drops in his eyes for dilation. Then he just went hysterical. He was swinging at the poor tech and screaming. Apparently it burned. Poor fellow. :( I set Jaleigh down and held him down (seriously- hate holding my children down for things, absolutely breaks my heart) so the poor tech could finish the drops and we went back out and waited. I gave Just his "cool cars sunglasses" (to which he informed me if he had star wars sunglasses, he'd definitely be cooler...) and he sat in the corner and pouted:

He continued to insist it burned and I felt awful for him, but I don't think anything I said or did alleviated the pain or misery any. Sis LOVED the toys there and was pulling (attemtping to pull...) herself up on everything she could find. She's getting SO big. It absolutely breaks my heart. It seems her teeny tiny baby time was spent in the hospital, screaming, at the doctor, or on medication. It just breaks my heart that time is gone and I'm not sure any of us really enjoyed it. She is a happy, chunky little thing now, though and we're soaking her in completely. She gimp-crawls everywhere, she rolls (finally...at seven months old), she pulls up, she laughs, she plays. She's awesome. She's actually sleeping ALMOOOOST through the night. She goes to bed around 9:00, wakes up between 4:00-5:00, takes a bottle, crawls in bed with mommy and daddy and sleeps under our covers (think: little puppy dog) until she wakes up, usually around 9:00. I seriously can't complain. :)

Anyway, once his eyes were dilated, we saw the opthamologist. He said he was a little confused as to why we were seeing him because with neurofibromatosis, the eyes aren't typically affected until age 5 or 6. He said that, by that age, there's some definite spotting around the iris, but not typically before then. He checked him out, anyway, and said right now his eyes, optic nerve and iris are all clear on both sides. He wants to see us back in about a year. I asked him (he was pretty knowledgeable in all things neurofibromatosis) what all this could mean and he pretty well echoed what everyone else had told us. You don't commonly find a neurofibroma without neurofibromatosis. He did say, though, that if he were us, he'd seek a second reading on the biopsy.

We left the opthamologist, I dumped my kids off @ Pam's and I went to my OB appointment. I begged and pleaded with my nurse to PLEEEEAAAAASE do a sonogram and she said she'd talk to the doctor. As chance would have it, they just got a new ultrasound machine and she was itching to try it out. Would you believe....kid had her legs crossed at the ankle nearly the entire time? We saw nothing. At one point she moved...just enough to grab her ankles and pull them up to her head (think: pike position), legs still closed, making it impossible to see anything. She did get a good view from behind and said nothing was hanging out or bulging, so we're still calling girl for now. That's the second time I've gotten, "I don't see anything, so we'll assume girl." My next appointment is the 21, so we'll try again then. Hopefully she'll be in the mood to cooperate by then lol

We finished off the day @ church, sitting Just down for a talk with the children's minister. Justin has really been talking a lot lately about wanting to kill himself so he can go to heaven. This naturally has us concerned, so we asked the children's minister to sit down and try to talk to him on his level. He did a GREAT job with him and by the time Justin left, he was super excited about LIVING for Jesus, rather than dying to be with him. He told me at dinner that he wanted an elevator that went ALL ALL ALL the way up to heaven, so he could visit Jesus without dying and then come back to tell others about him. Seriously love that kid. <3

Justin's mood and attitude have really sucked today. Bless his sweet heart, he's so in tune to our emotions and our stress that I think it's wearing off on him. I sat him down this evening and talked to him and he told me this: "When I wake up, I decide if today's going to be a good day, or a bad day. If I choose bad, then I get to be bad all day." Hmmm, no. I explained to him if he ever felt like he was having a bad day, he needed to come tell one of us. I told him I knew these last few days have been rough, but we're just checking to make sure he's not still sick. He promised to let us know if his day was bad so we could talk through it.

Aunt Na is coming tomorrow, and then Mimi and Grumpy are coming Saturday. Papa and Nanny are coming in a couple of weeks, too. I think it will do his sweet little heart a LOT of good to be surrounded by the people who love him so much. Aunt Na is coming prepared to love him up first. He wants a burrito and some tea from Taco Casa....he's prepared to give nosies.