Rescheduled

Sometimes life with kids is unpredictable.

We were supposed to go to Birmingham this past weekend to go swimming.  Eli was supposed to have his 9 month well baby appointment this afternoon.  But all of that has been rescheduled.

Last Wednesday I went to get Eli up for the day and realized as soon as I touched him that he had a fever.  I yelled at Doug to get the thermometer and got a big, messy surprise when I changed Eli's diaper.  We decided that Doug would stay home with Eli on Wednesday, my sister would watch him on Thursday if needed, and worse case I would stay home on Friday.  We decided to wait to see how he did before we made an appointment with the doctor.

By lunch Eli's fever was up to 102.7 so we called and got an appointment for 1:30pm.  I met Doug there at 2pm.  His fever was at 103, even though Doug had given him some medicine.  He weighed 21.8 lbs and was 28.7 in. long (which is over an inch longer since the last time we measured him earlier this month!).  Our doctor was out of town but the Nurse Practitioner looked him over and told us that she felt like it was either viral or bacterial but wasn't sure which.  Since he was holding up pretty well she sent us home with instructions to call back on Thursday, if he was still running a high temp we would do blood work.

Wednesday night was rough, without much sleep for any of us and a high fever for Eli all through the night, so we knew we were going for blood work that day.  At first we decided that Doug would  go to work and then I would meet my sister for the blood work but when I changed Eli's diaper, I noticed what looked like blood in his poop and kind of freaked out.  Since I don't have much sick time, after using it all for maternity leave, Doug stayed home again.  I met him and Eli at the hospital lab for the blood work and a stool study (thankfully they took the full diaper we had from that morning rather than making us bring back a fresh sample) at 9am and then came back to work while they went home.  We had been told by the doctor's office that it wouldn't take long to get results and they would call us.  When we hadn't heard back at 1pm I called and asked them to call the lab since the lab hadn't called them.  Less than 15 minutes later they called me back and said to bring Eli in right then.  Well, that freaked me out so I called Doug and told him I would meet him there.  Before I could get there they had taken Eli back which only made me more nervous that something was really wrong.  Thankfully, that wasn't the case.  Eli tested positive for an overgrowth of a bacteria that lives in a person's bowels on a regular basis.  Apparently this bacteria only causes problems when it gets out of hand.  Our doctor said that most kids test positive for it but that the positive test combined with his symptoms meant we needed to treat it.  He gave us an antibiotic and we went home with our sick boy.  Thursday night was long again and Friday I spent most of the morning with Eli sleeping on my chest.  Because Eli was so sick they had me reschedule his well baby appointment, turns out he'll have his 9 month appointment on his 10 month birthday :)

Then around 2pm he just suddenly seemed better.  He played for almost 2 hours and the fever finally broke.  It was amazing the difference in just a matter of hours!  Since we knew it wouldn't be a good idea for Eli to go swimming we had already cancelled our trip to Birmingham.  When we woke up Saturday Eli still felt really good so we decided to meet my parents in Montgomery.  We had a great time shopping and Eli hardly slept more than an hour the entire day, I guess he was making up for all the sleeping he had done while he was sick!  We also had some 9 month pictures taken at Sears and while I was worried I wouldn't like "studio" photos, they came out really good.

Next weekend we'll be doing more photos outside and going to a wedding.  That is... if our plans don't get rescheduled.

One More Day

Three years passes so quickly and at the same time it seems like it's been forever.  Two songs have been on my mind lately and I think they pretty much sum up how I'm feeling today.  So here they are:


One More Day by Diamond Rio
Last night I had a crazy dream
A wish was granted just for me
It could be for anything
I didnt ask for money
Or a mansion in Malibu
I simply wished, for one more day with you

One more day
One more time
One more sunset, maybe I'd be satisfied
But then again
I know what it would do
Leave me wishing still, for one more day with you

First thing I'd do, is pray for time to crawl
I'd unplug the telephone
And keep the tv off
I'd hold you every second
Say a million I love you's
That's what I'd do, with one more day with you

One more day
One more time
One more sunset, maybe I'd be satisfied
But then again
I know what it would do
Leave me wishing still, for one more day with you

One more day
One more time
One more sunset, maybe I'd be satisfied
But then again
I know what it would do

Leave me wishing still, for one more day
Leave me wishing still, for one more day
Leave me wishing still, for one more day with you




Home by Nicol Sponberg
What is it like to be held in the same arms that hold the universe?
What is it like to sleep on the chest of the King of Heaven and Earth?
When you open your eyes and look on the face of the Giver of Life, the Author of Grace, do you know


That your days here changed everything
You're missed here and will always be
But you left here the greatest gift of all
Cause our heart ache for home


What is it like to breathe in and breathe out Heaven's glorious light?
What is it like to be robed in perfection, no reason to cry?
When you feel on your face your Father's kiss
His welcome embrace, we prayed for this, you should know

That your days here changed everything

You're missed here and will always be

But you left here the greatest gift of all

Cause our heart ache for home

So twinkle, twinkle little star

We will keep you in our hearts

Twinkle, twinkle little star

We will meet you where you are

Your days here changed everything

You're missed here and will always be

But you left here the greatest gift of all

Cause our heart ache for home

We love you sweet boy and look forward to joining you in Heaven one day!

9 Months

Today Eli is 39 weeks and 2 days old.  No, I don't actually keep track of his age by weeks anymore, but one of the many baby newsletters I get in my email every week does.  So I happen to know that today marks the day that Eli has been growing outside of me as long as he grew inside me (according to the doctors).  I, for one, find that amazing!  I still look at him sometimes and am completely amazed that he is actually mine.  Sometimes I feel like I need to pinch myself.

He weighs 21.8 lbs and now has 4 teeth on bottom and 3 up top.  And tooth #8 is on it's way, just not through the surface yet.

He tries to pull up on everything and gets very frustrated when he can't get a grip on things like the wall, doors and other vertical surfaces.

He can sit himself up now.  A couple of nights ago I put him to bed and he would not go to sleep.  He kept crying no matter how many times I tried to soothe him so finally I decided he could just cry for a little while.  It breaks my heart to do it, but when he gets too tired, there's just no other way.  This particular night he was fighting sleep so hard and Doug and I sat and watched him on our monitor.  He sat up in his crib and tried to prop himself up against the railing, almost like he thought if he could just stay sitting up he wouldn't fall asleep. He bobbed and weaved for quite a while before he finally fell asleep completely bent in half at the hips.  I did go in and lay him flat before we went to sleep :)

Now that he is standing, he loves to dance to music, he even does this thing that looks like he is tapping his foot sometimes.  It is so funny to watch him.

He loves our dogs and they do well with him.  They will go lay down somewhere and he will crawl to them and sit up and try to pet them.  Callie usually gives him her belly, which isn't too smart on her part since that's where the longest fur is, but we haven't had any hair pulling problems yet and I hope we won't.  I always sit with him when he heads for the dogs and I constantly remind him to be easy and not grab.  He has grabbed her hair before but I tell him no and he always lets go without pulling.  Last night he wanted to play with the dogs so bad but every time he got close Callie would move away and Bella would try to lick him.  He thinks it's funny when they lick his fingers but I don't like them to do it so I kept pushing Bella away.   Every time I would push her away he would get upset because he wanted to play so finally I grabbed Bella's collar and turned her back to him so he could pet her back.  He leaned right over and hugged her!  It was adorable and I wish I could have gotten a picture.

Oh how the time has flown.  Only 3 months to go before we're celebrating his first birthday!

What a Weekend!

We have had so much going on at our house lately!

Eli has started his own version of crawling and while it's not a traditional crawl it gets him where he wants to go fast!  We have been re-baby proofing our house, something I thought we had done a long time ago.  But we are finding new things everyday.  The first issue we noticed was the dirt and dog hair Eli was picking up from the area rug in our living room.  We have tile floors throughout our whole house with only one area rug in the living room so rather than buy a vacuum we have been using our shop-vac type vacuum.  We thought it was doing an adequate job, but not so much.  So we got a Dyson vacuum and it is amazing how much it picks up.  The first time we ran it over the rug we got all of this

And that was AFTER we vacuumed with our old vacuum.  We also had to lower Eli's crib mattress which made it possible for him to reach the outlet where our video monitor was plugged in.  So we put in a new outlet above a shelf in his room so now there is no way he'll ever be able to reach the plug or the cord without the using a ladder :)
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We have a safe in Doug's closet that holds all of Logan's stuff and last Thursday I was sitting in there looking at it all and I had Eli sitting right outside the doorway, which happens to be right next to Levi's kennel.  Doug came in the room and started looking at the scrapbook with me and I look up and Eli has pulled himself up using the kennel.  He was so proud of himself!  He kind of looked like he was in jail with the bars of the kennel so Doug went to go grab a phone to take a picture.  He ended up grabbing his work phone and took a couple of pictures and then handed it to me while he went to find our real camera.  I was looking at the last picture he took and hit the back button so I could see the others when I noticed a picture of a bracelet that I had told Doug I wanted.  I questioned him about the picture and he made up a story.  I knew what he told me wasn't true.  Right after Logan died, someone gave me a bracelet with his name and birthstone.  I wore it ALL the time and I guess I wore it out cause one day it broke and some of the beads got lost.  Since that day I have been talking about getting a new bracelet, but never got around to it.  Then when Eli was born I decided that I wanted a bracelet that could symbolize all of my children.  The bracelet in the picture was a "charm" type bracelet with removable beads so I assumed the bracelet was a gift for me for Logan's birthday. Little did I know what he was up to!

As far as I knew, we didn't have any plans for the weekend.  My mom and dad were supposed to be visiting to help my sister with some projects at her house and to help us put in the new outlet in Eli's room.  My grandma has been sick and my mom has been staying with her in KY for the past few weeks.  My mom was planning to come home late last week but then my grandma started having some new symptoms.  I told my sister that there was no way mom would be coming with Grandma not feeling well so we made plans for my dad to come down just for Saturday.

That morning Doug decided to mow the grass and I was just picking up around the house when my sister called.  She said she wanted me to go to Walmart with her because she wanted to pick out Eli's birthday present but didn't know what to get him.  I thought it was a little strange that she was worried about it this early, but then again we've already bought our presents and are planning the party, so it wasn't that weird :)  We went to Walmart and I called Doug as we were leaving so that he could start the grill for lunch.  When we got to the house Lauren got out of the car.  Again, a little weird since my dad was at her house working, but she said she wanted to see Eli real quick before she left.

When I walked in the door I heard "SURPRISE!" and saw lots of balloons and a Happy Birthday sign. My first thought was "who are all these people?" and then I realized that my dad and my mom were there, as well as my brother-in-law and two of our best friends.  The next thought I had was that they were surprising me by being there to celebrate Logan's birthday.  A little bit of a strange surprise party, but what else could it possibly be??  Then Doug steps forward and asks if I know "what today is?", I was frantically searching my mind trying to figure out how June 25 related to Logan.  Then he said "Today... well, really tomorrow, is your 26 1/2 Birthday".  Only then did I get the real surprise!

My birthday is the day after Christmas.  Christmas isn't a great time of the year to have a birthday because we're always doing Christmas stuff.  My grandpa shares my same birthday so as a kid we always spent it with our large extended family.  My parents would celebrate my birthday in the morning before we left (or I would have a party a week before or sometimes after) and my aunt usually had a cake that included me in the Happy Birthday saying.  When we moved to Alabama we started to celebrate my birthday on the actual day, but I still couldn't have a party cause everyone else was busy with Christmas.  When Doug and I got married we started visiting his family or mine for "Christmas" on my birthday.  And I always enjoy spending time with our families.  But it was sooo nice to be surprised with a real birthday party!  And my in-laws came too, although they didn't get to be there for the big surprise because they are small business owners and had to wait for closing before they could come up.

Doug got me an ice cream cake and Eli got his first taste of any kind of desert.  He loved it! What can I say, he is Doug's child after all :)

I'm not sure you can tell in this picture, but in between Happy and Birthday there is a 26.5

There were 26 decorated balloons plus 5 plain pink balloons to represent the .5.  My mom said she tried to get them to half inflate one balloon but they couldn't seem to understand how they would do that.

My bracelet!  The angel charm represents Logan, the green is for Doug who was born in May, the one with the blue stones on the left is for me (December) and the pink is for Eli's October birthday because we haven't seen any Opal charms and the alternate birthstone is Pink Tourmaline.

That night after everyone else left, Doug, my dad, and my brother-in-law put in the new outlet while my mom, sister and I worked on some more things for Eli's party.  There's still plenty of work to do, but we did make Eli a party hat and I finished up Eli's birthday bib.

Then on Sunday, Doug, Eli and I celebrated Logan's birthday.  We went out to the cemetery and brought new flowers, balloons and a little dump truck we had picked out.  When we first got there I put the balloons down and the wind kept blowing them right into the flowers.  I wanted to take a picture and was hoping they would stay straight or at least blow in the opposite direction.  So I told Logan that's what I wanted and asked him to change the wind.  Yes, I talk to him and ask for silly favors like that.  I even scolded him in early June because every single day for the first week of the month he sent me a spider and they still creep me out, so one day I just flat told him to stop sending them, that I got the message and knew he was with me. I haven't seen a spider since, I've seen plenty of other bugs, but no spiders, not even at the cemetery which is where we usually see 2 or 3 :)

Anyways, I sat Eli down on a blanket beside Logan's stone so that we could get a picture of him sitting there and all of a sudden, the wind changed.  It was like Logan was hugging Eli!  Let me show you in pictures

This is actually a "tame wind" picture.  I didn't take any when the wind was pushing the balloons directly into the flowers.

Pretty amazing, huh? We put the weight that was holding the balloons behind the stone so it was blowing forward and to the right!  (You can actually kind of see how the wind was blowing the balloons before I sat Eli down in the picture I posted yesterday.  It was taken after these, but it was doing pretty much the same thing.)

We didn't do much the rest of the day except have pudding cake, which Eli loved just as much as he loved the ice cream cake.  I was kind of surprised because I didn't think he'd like the texture of the cake, but I guess he's just a desert lover.

I also made a paper chain counting down the days until Eli's birthday.  Just 98 days from today... and only 96 until his party!

Happy 3rd!

Dear sweet Logan,

Today you turn 3 years old.  I can just imagine you here, talking our ears off, asking to read the story one more time or watch one more episode of some cartoon show.  I imagine you loving on your little brother, he loves kids so much I know the two of you would have gotten along great!  I imagine the party we would have had this weekend, with lots of little kids, games and toys... making extra cupcakes to send to daycare today... waking you up this morning with a huge "Happy Birthday".  The "whys" would be starting soon if not already and I can just imagine having to answer why Eli cries a thousand times a day... and how I wish I could.

The three of us celebrated your birthday yesterday with cake and of course we visited your place at the cemetery.  I know you were there with us, I felt you there when the wind changed directions suddenly, blowing the balloons right to Eli when I sat him down beside your stone.

I miss you so much little boy and I know Daddy does too.  So much has changed in our lives since you were born... even since your last birthday.  And yet somethings will never change.  There are still nights that I sleep with your blanket.  Times that I cry because the loss of you hits me out of nowhere.  Moments that I have to stop what I'm doing and look at every single picture of you, the cuts of your hair, your footprints.  Days that I wish things were different.

Enjoy your birthday my little angel.  Be close to me, Daddy and Eli today and always.  WE LOVE YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!!!

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I have so much more to talk about from this weekend and the days before but today is about Logan so that will have to wait for another day.

6/16

This date is imprinted on my brain and I don't guess that's ever going to change.

It kind of snuck up on me this year so you would think it wouldn't have the same effect on me.  But still it does.

My heart is heavy, it feels hard to breathe, tears could fall at any moment.  Some would probably label it anxiety, it doesn't really matter to me what you call it.

I thought it would be different this year because of Eli...

Last night I had an awful nightmare.  In fact, I've had several of them since the beginning of June.  The dreams are always different but they have the same theme.

Thinking about the past 3 years, I wonder if I will be feeling the same way in year 10, year 15, year 20.  Somehow, I think I will.  A part of me, hopes I will.  Because not feeling this way would feel like forgetting.

And I don't EVER want to forget.

8 Months

Today Eli is 8 months old!  He weighs a little over 20 lbs and wears size 3 diapers and 6-9 month clothes.  He's starting to army crawl but can't get his arms and his knees up at the same time yet.

He also LOVES the pool.  He started kicking his legs almost from the first moment we put him in.

We had a very productive day too! After the pool, we took Callie to get groomed and did some shopping.  We got a few things for Eli's birthday party.  Yes, I'm already planning it and have several projects started but I know it will sneak up on me if I don't start early.

We also got flowers for Logan's birthday arrangement.  It's bittersweet to be planning Eli's October birthday and not Logan's for this month.  We have been looking for toys for Eli and I've seen so many things that would be perfect for my 3-year-old.  But I know he has everything he needs and until we join him, we'll celebrate here.