New Discovery

Ever seen a dog chase his own tail? How about a baby chasing his own foot?

A Few Words by Aubri

Our van is having some issues so we had to take it to the shop today. On the way there Aubri's continuous talking went something like this:

I mell moke. (I smell smoke)
Daddy wears his seatbelt so he can drive sast. (fast)
Papa Steve's nice but Grandma DeeDee is nice too.
Yea ummm...daddy has to get his van six because Ron has to get his truck sixed because his friend sixed it because his car not drive now.

Then she broke out into the songs, "Jesus Loves Me" and "The B-i-b-l-e." She sang these over and over with different volumes and pitches. :)

A Bad Dream

Gavin informed us of his bad dream yesterday when he woke up. In his words:

"We went to someone's house for lunch and they had a bad cat. And Aubri ate some cat food. And she turned into a cat. A bad cat. She chased the other bad cat. She scratched me in the face and made mean noises at me."

We've recently seen a few cats that haven't been friendly to him at my mom's house and friend's house.

When I told Aubri later that Gavin had a silly dream about her, he put on his angry eyes and yelled that it was not a silly dream...it was a SCARY dream.

A Little Glimpse of Aubriella's Days

Aubri is a mad little artist. The family will be listening to music or eating dinner and out of no where she will run to her drawing board and just start creating. Usually she draws a person or decides to color something else she has drawn with dramatic strokes. It totally cracks us up. She can't seem to get the idea out of her head and onto her drawing board fast enough. I wish I could describe the out-pour of emotion that is present while she is creating. We love it.

Do not try to sneak a cookie around Aubri. Her latest fetish is adamantly sniffing our mouths and asking, "Hey, whach you have?" with her brows furrowed. We never want to tell her because of course she's going to want some of it too. It can be the smallest thing and she will still spot you.

On Wednesdays I enjoy taking Aubri to story time to spend some time together. She enjoys listening to stories at home but at the library it's a whole other story. She will purposely get up and start running around the librarian with a devious grin on her face. Sometimes it's to catch her friend, Caroline, other times it's just for the fun of it. I then proceed to hold her down in my lap while she fusses until the song and dance follow the story. That's definitely her favorite part. She gets up and usually demands that I dance with her too. After that, another story...another fight. I'm not smiling or nice when I correct her but she seems to enjoy the game of it just the same. After storytime, she picks out books for me to read to her or usually just goes and sits alone and reads for fifteen minutes. Go figure.

Recently Aubriella has become more motherly. She likes to gently rub our backs. She particularly likes giving Micah lots of hugs, too many, and usually it ends in Micah turning red in the face or crying. She has a tight little grip you know. :)

She's still so skinny. We have to laugh because no matter what she wears she usually has a little plumber crack sticking out because the pants just don't stay up on her. Speaking of...did I mention she likes to change her clothes at least five times a day? With each change she seems to think she needs a change of new underwear as well. We have a had to put a lock on her closet and limit the number of outfits that are in her dresser. This way it's easier for me to have some order to her wardrobe.

One of her favorite activities to do is watch music videos with her daddy. She is very particular on what she likes though. Her latest favorite is James Blunt. The other night she was deeply disturbed because she watched her dad's old band video and saw that my foot was painted blue for the album cover. When I came home from meeting with friends, she told me about it and started crying by letting me know she did not want my foot blue.

She enjoys telling her dollies about Jesus and heaven. She conveys a dramatic version of Jesus on the cross with her facials. After Gavin said a bad word today she responded with these words, "Yeah umm so Jesus doesn't like bad words and he die on the cross and we say sorry cause he doesn't like bad words right Gavin?"

Aubri enjoys doing my exercise videos with me too. She will actually sit and try to get through the entire video. It's pretty sweet. The only downfall is that I have to be careful not to trip over her because she is right under my feet.

She's a cutie, she's a handful, she's delightful, a bit irrational (she is only two) but undeniably kissable and lovable.

Micah had his stitches taken out this morning and everything looks good. He did have a little piece of stitch embedded into his nail bed so that took about three different sized tweezers and some prodding to get out. That obviously caused him some pain but at least it is all done. She also said that his top two teeth are extremely swollen and should be coming through soon. I assume that some of the pain he's been going through is trying to cut all of these teeth at one time too.

Thank you all for your prayers. They seem to be helping. He's been smiling most of the time despite what has been going on.

Micah Update

More doctor visits than I would like to count. After visiting the doctor Saturday morning, I thought things were going well. However, a few hours later we had non-stop crying again. Micah's bandages finally came off his other fingers and I noticed he was wincing every time his ring finger got touched. It also look somewhat inverted at the knuckle. I thought to myself, "Great, is this finger broken too and we just didn't notice because we were so focused on the other finger?". Ahh...so we went in again. It's not broken but pretty bruised up with a big crease in knuckle. We figured out that it most likely was caught in the door too and is very tender now that he is able to use it. I also noticed he cut his first tooth on Saturday so that could explain some of the pain as well.

So today was going okay. I was finally starting to relax and was calling the library when Micah fell over and started screaming. One of his stitches ripped out a little. I re-cleaned and bandaged everything up again. He's now running a fever close to 101. I hope it has to do with something else like his teething and not the infection he is on antibiotics for.

He has a doctor appointment tomorrow to get his stitches out. I feel like a huge ball of stress that can't focus on anything but Micah. It seems like every time I try to relax, some new little nuisance surfaces.

On a good note, he did sleep for five straight hourse last night!

Poor Little Guy!

We had a very long hard night. Micah seemed to be inconsolable last night so we finally called a neighbor at one in the morning to come over to watch the other kids. Of course on the way to the ER he miraculously stopped crying so we turned around and went home. He has been on tylenol with codeine and it still wasn't stopping the pain. This totally stinks! Anyhow, we brought him in today and it looked a little infected. So now he is on an antibiotic for the infection and we have to bring him in again on Saturday to have it looked at and re-bandaged. Just pray that he heals and that the infection will be cleared up quickly so that it is not adding to the pain that's already there for him.

Good News!

Today after more gruesome torture (he had to have his finger cleaned, re-bandaged, and x-rayed) they discovered that his bone wasn't broken. Thank the Lord! He was even trying to use and bend it a little which his pediatrician said was great. It still looks awful since he doesn't have a nail there and it is trying to grow back together. The doctor said she doesn't know if he will ever grow his nail back or if it will grow back bumpy...time will tell. She also said he might need physical therapy. I’m not sure how physical therapy works with a baby. Praise God that it was only one finger, it didn't fully detach, it's healing properly, and the bone is still intact. There's a lot to be thankful for but I can barely handle it. I keep re-playing it in my mind and it makes me sick. Sick because I've never experienced anything like that before, sick because I'm so scared for him to move or touch anything, and just concerned about the pain he might be in. Please pray that he heals properly and that his nail grows back. I'm not sure what I would do if anything really serious ever happens, I'm having trouble dealing with this.

Dead Furnaces, Gas Leaks, & Broken Fingers... Oh My!

So, the craziness began last Thursday evening. Sara's usually gone Thursday evenings so I'm at home watching the kids. I had been suffering with a bad cold all week and I was anxious to get to bed that night after getting the kids to sleep. It was 9pm by the time I got all the kids situated. It seemed a little chilly in the house so I peeked at the thermostat.... 60 degrees. Hmm... so I went downstairs to check the furnace. The pilot light was out, so I fetched a candle lighter. I tried to relight it, but it wouldn't light. Our furnace is almost 30 years old so I feared that it had finally decided to die. We had a similar type thing happen several years ago, and the Centerpoint guy came out and cleaned things up to get it working again. I decided to take some things apart and do some cleaning myself before calling Centerpoint this time. I did all that I could to make sure things were clean and hooked back up properly, but I still had no luck getting the pilot going.

I called Sara at this point to let her know what's going on as this could potentially be a big problem. The weather forecast said it would get to about 10 below that night. We figured the next logical step was to call someone to diagnose our furnace. We began making phone calls to different places as we prepared ourselves for a cold night. We called Centerpoint first, but they said no one could come out until the next morning. Sara called three other places claiming to have "24 Emergency Service" and we still haven't heard back from any of them after leaving messages that night. We were beginning to lose hope at this point. We had some backup plans to stay with Sara's sister for the night to get the kids out of the cold, but we were also concerned about water pipes freezing if the house got too cold. I called our neighbor, Rob, to see if he had some firewood we could use for our fireplace. He said he did, but also asked permission to peek at our furnace. I welcomed any help that was offered.

He tinkered for a while as the house temperature was nearing 50 now. At about 11pm, Rob found a loose wire that restricted the furnace from firing up. Once the wire was back in place, it started right up. It turns out that Rob actually went to school for furnace repair years ago, but decided not to pursue it as a career. I had no idea! Praise God!

The next day, Friday, Sara called me at work and said she smelled gas. She's got a pretty particular sniffer, so I trusted she knew what she was talking about. She called Centerpoint and got everyone out of the house. I left work shortly after she called me and the Centerpoint guy was already there checking stuff out by the time I got home. He couldn't find anything anywhere. I couldn't smell anything, but my cold (and my cold meds) makes my senses numb. Finally, he checked the hose to the pilot on the furnace and found two leaks. He immediately tagged it and shut the gas (and the furnace) down. No heat again! Luckily, he was able to fix the leaks and get us up and running again.

So, just as we think the stressful situations are coming to an end, we end up in the Emergency Room on Sunday afternoon! Aubri slammed a door in Micah's face as he was crawling around and got one of his fingers caught by the hinges. There was instant crying and bleeding everywhere. The door got him right above his first knuckle of the right index finger. It literally got cut off and was hanging by a little bit of skin. I was afraid it wouldn't be able to be kept, but the doctor did a good job stitching it back on. Hopefully it heals properly, we'll find out in the next couple weeks. Poor little guy! He seems to be doing pretty good so far, although he recently started sucking his right thumb and is a little confused how he can manage that with a bandage from his hand to his forearm.

Sara and I are both a bit exhausted and overwhelmed from the craziness of the past few days. Hopefully we'll be having some less stressful and less expensive days in the near future!