Sick

Look what I found in my drafts:

So I think my family is starting to finally get over being sick. These moments for us are so rare, in fact I think this is the first time something has struck almost all of us! Today is the first day somebody has not thrown up. Ugh. I'll spare you the gory details and just say that we've gone through multiple pairs of clothes and blankets and I think we're coming out of the darkness! And now I'm tackling the massive amounts of laundry...and dishes. I'll post soon about the boy's birthdays. :)
  -written 5/24/11

Teehee. I want to be more consistent with the blog, so no time like the present, right? Sickness. Holy Cow!! Like I said my family rarely goes through bouts of sickness, but I feel like at least one of my kids has been sick everyday since Thanksgiving! The throwing up! The fevers! The diarrhea! Uuugh. Its all been bounced around back and forth between the kids I watch and my children and the kids we play with and see socially. What a horrible season for sickness. (Sorry for the small pics.)

On a much grander scale it seems as though more serious illnesses are popping up at an alarming rate. Our prayers are full with thanksgiving for what we have and well-wishes for those we love who are ill or are hurting. This is a rough time for our family, honestly, and I think when we can focus our prayers on others and their needs it helps us keep our sights in the right place.

There's so much going on right now. There's so much I have swirling through my head, but the stories are either not mine to tell or are too broad to share right now. The nice thing about wanting to blog more is that I'll have that opportunity soon, right?? ;) One little story at a time, like the pensieve with it's bowl full of swirling mists, I'll pluck them all out and share them with you one by one. Aren't you excited?? lol.

And no Ryan. That was not a cackle.

Love,
Meesh

The Metamorphasis

We spent last Tuesday afternoon with the Martins! It was great! We had lunch at Chic-Fil-A with Kyle, Heather, Benjamin, and little Alex. Of course, we had to sit at two separate tables because we have too many kids! ;) The boys all played great together. When we first arrived Elijah had so much fun watching 3 motorcycle policemen get on their bikes and ride off. I did a good job getting excited with him and smothering my animosity toward police officers.

Now for the good stuff.

After lunch we followed Heather to HEB and did some grocery shopping. We started off in the produce section and things were moving along quite well! I'll add that this was Heather's first time to the grocery store with boy of her boys! Go Mom! Anyways, I digress. We had stopped briefly to get something and I was coming around the cart from putting some type of produce in and I see a flash of orange exchange hands from Shooky to Elijah. Before I finished saying the sentence, "Don't put that in your mouth!!!" Elijah had given me his smirky look and taken a big bite. His face portrayed the look of, "Am I going to get away with my current bout of rebelliousness". Then, the metamorphosis began. His eyes get HUGE. Then his face just melted. He spit out the habenero in my hand and started screaming the 'I'm very hurt' cry. Mom's you know what I'm talking about. Luckily we had a little bit of milk left in Shooky's bottle which he downed in 0.0001 of a second. We were right by a soda fountain, so Heather filled up the bottle with water and he downs all of that in 2 seconds. Poor guy. We get to the dairy section and I grab some string cheese. After he finished that he joyfully exclaimed that his mouth didn't burn anymore. Phew. I also knew this to be true because he was instantly jabbering on about muffins and Spiderman or something else.

Lessons to be learned here: Don't take things off of the shelf; Don't take things from your brother; Don't eat things that aren't given to you by your parents or someone deemed ok by your parents; Always carry a bottle of milk with you while grocery shopping; ALWAYS OBEY MOMMY! Feel free to add anymore you can think of. ;)

The offending party.

This was totally the boys fault and I by no means am trying to put the blame off, but this leads me to ask...why do grocery stores put the hottest peppers closest to the ground??

Surgery

So my sweet Elijah had surgery about a month ago and was a super star!! I won't go into the details because I want to respect his privacy when he gets older, but I do want to share the experience.

Mary Liz had written a book about surgery for Ryan when he was a kid and we borrowed it from her to help prepare Elijah for his big day. Ironically enough less then a week before we found out he was going to have to go under the knife I was telling Mary Liz that she absolutely HAD to get it published. Anyways, he loved that book. As a matter of fact, it was what he wanted to take into the OR with him when they asked if he wanted to bring a blanket or a stuffed friend! I'm getting ahead of myself.

We get there and we're sitting in our little nook doing all the prep work. Mary Liz was with us to help with the baby because I'm still breastfeeding and he refuses to take a bottle. Elijah starts right off charming the nurses. They take his blood pressure and count his respirations. The aide was telling the nurse his vitals to record and Elijah pipes up, " No, I'm three!". At different times that morning Dr. S , the anesthesiologist, and some nurses all came out to discuss the surgery and again Elijah would eagerly insist he was three when a figure was said. He was very adament about it and it sort of became the theme for the morning. Kim, or pastor, joined us while we waited and we all got to enjoy an episode of VeggieTales. Both Kim and Mary Liz were a great comfort to me that day. :)

Skipping forward to when it is time for the surgery, Elijah had attracted a crowd of about 5 or more nurses and doctors around our little pod just charming them all! He chose cake for his anesthesia scent and the last time I saw him before he had stitches, he was riding Dr. S's back piggyback down the hall and through the OR doors.

They moved us all to his recovery room and I walked up and down the halls pushing Leland to get him to fall asleep and prayed. With the baby fast asleep I settled down in our room to wait for Elijah. The surgery wasn't very long, but what must have been a total of 30 - 45 minutes total before I saw him again felt like hours. The doctor came and told us everything went great and that they would bring him back once he came out of the anesthesia some more. Kim went ahead and left and Mary Liz toke Leland to go get lunch for us.

I heard him before I saw him. It is common for kids to be upset when they come out of anesthesia. You can and should try to prepare yourself when they inform you about this little detail, but, after being on pins and needles waiting to have my child back in my arms and know that he's ok, nothing can prepare you for that initial sound of your baby screaming and crying. I'm not quite sure if I recall who it was but I think it was a nurse who walked around the corner with Elijah in his/her arms and set him in my lap. Oh, just to hold him in my arms brought tears to my eyes.

He was a bit shaky. He was a lot sweaty. He wasn't quite sure what he wanted for about 20 minutes. Then he was definitely hungry. :) He wanted to know if he was going to get to stay the night there like in Grandma's surgery book. He was very disappointed that he wasn't. So, thank you Jesus that it seems as though he has come through this whole process without being afraid of doctors or hospital like settings!

We were on our way about an hour later. He tried to insist that he could walk (he had a type of epidural) and tried to stand on his legs. It was like watching an old cartoon where his knees just wobbled back and forth and I quickly scooped him back up! Of course, he was right next to me and there was no danger of him hurting himself or his surgical site.

We broke the rules and he had his favorite breakfast meal for dinner. Sweet potato belgian waffles, homemade peach compote, bacon, and eggs. Grandpa Boston joined us and we all feasted!

He bounced back super quick! He was playing again by the next day and completely back to normal a week later.Maybe one day, my sweet Elijah, Dr. S will be your new step-grandpa. ;)

Bebeh.

Holy cow it's been a year since I last posted!! Time flies!

The house is coming along, but I still have boxes. :)


Baby boy Leland Rex Boston was induced and born October 21, 2010. He weighed a whopping 5 lbs. 15 ozs., was 18. 5 inches long and was born at 3:39 PM. He was measuring small so they induced him 10 days early to be sure nothing in me was keeping him from growing properly. Of course, he's just tiny.

He had a newborn photo shoot with Melanie Dodds, a local Austin photographer, and here are just a couple of his pictures.

She designed some birth announcements and we choose the fist one.


Again, I am so very blessed for all my amazing boys. :D Thank you, Lord!

Meesh

It's been FOREVER!!

Yes, I know. I have not forgotten about you, my blog. I am so sorry for neglecting you for so long. I don't have pictures to show you, but I wanted to fill you in on the many many changes that have been happening in our lives.

So, we moved. Likes months and months and months ago. Teehee. Our new house is 4 bed, 3 bath, 3 living, 2 dining. And is pretty much fabulous! Ryan and I figured the timing is good and we new we wanted at least one more child, so the space would be a HUGE bonus. :) I know you won't be surprised, based on our own personal relationship, but I still have boxes everywhere.

This was done just in the nick-of-time, too, because we're pregnant again!! Yay! I have my doc appointment in a couple weeks, so we'll be able to tell how far along I am by then, hopefully. I'll have to tell you the story later on how I found out about this new pregnancy.

Ok, so I'm tired after a day of fun in the sun at Zilker with some of our best friends, so I'm going to keep this post nice and short.

Mwah!
Meesh

New House?

Soooo, yeah. The title says it all, right? If only it were that simple. (sigh)

The new news in the Boston household is that we're looking at houses! We had found a fabulous house in the Anderson Mill West subdivision, but we decided to put an offer on it HOURS after some other chumps did. How's that for luck. Here's the clincher. The owners had really wanted to sell the house to us, too, since we were a young Christian family just starting out, but they had just come back from a Campus Crusade for Christ conference all about Godly decision making. Just our luck. I would be putting it mildly to say we were disappointed to lose that house. But you know me, ever the optimistic one. My outlook was that if God wanted us to have that house it would have worked out, so He must have had something better out there for us. And, I think we found it.

On Sunday (not today, a week ago.) we went over to my besty's house so I could feed Hendrix and chat. When we left we passed this house that was for sale right behind them. Ryan pulled the flyer and a short hop down the road while Ryan ran into Randalls to grab a pizza for the demanding Elijah, I called Scott, our realtor, and talked to him about this house. He pulled it up online and we got all excited about it. Anyways, we went to go see it Monday before marriage group and we put a contract on it Tuesday. The only thing that's not perfect about this place is that it's 20,000 more then what we wanted to pay. Ouch. So we will be on the tightest of tight budgets until the Brentwood house sells. I'll post pics once we get past the option period and know a little more for sure that it's actually ours.

Please keep us in your prayers. :)

Oh. And look at these cute boys. :D
Errrrrr.

Official 4 Month Review

Ok. So I waited to do Hendrix's 4 month stats until we had his doc's appointment (which was today).

So here's where we're at.

• 27 1/2 inches long - OFF THE CHARTS!!! The nurse guessed he was probably at about the 100th precentile. It sounds like you're going to be tall like your grandpa Greg!
  
• 17 pounds 3 ounces - 90%
• 43 centimeters in head circumfrence - 75%

When Dr. G (our beloved pedi) picked Hendrix up he exclaimed that he looked and felt like a 6 month old! Big H got check marks across the board and got an excellent bill of health! Yay!! So, things you're doing these days Mr. Hendrix:

• Craning your head so far back you're half way rolled over. Dr. G said that bigger babies like you tend to take longer to roll over just because you poor little dudes have so much more to flip around.
  
• You have the most amazing sense of humor already! Out of no where you'll look at me and just start laughing!!
  
• You talk and talk. I think you're learning that from your big brother. :)
  
• You eat at 7:30 AM, 11:00, 2:30, 6:00, and 9:30 PM. You only eat breast milk at the moment.
  
• You generally sleep from about 10 PM until 7:15 AM and go right back to sleep after your morning feeding until your 11 o'clock feeding. You take 2 or 3 naps during the day about an hour long.
• You love to sit in your Bumbo while we eat dinner and practice chewing while the rest of us are rudely smacking in your face.
  
• You LOVE your exer-causer. You'll sit in that thing for a good 45 minutes on your own sometimes.
  
• The floor mat is one of your favs still. You'll work your way around in a circle just from kicking!
  
• Man are you a kicker!!!
• You love the Little Red Caboose song.
  
• You've learned to suck on your thumb just like Elijah. You hardly ever use or need your paci anymore.
  
• Drool, drool, drool all over the place. I change more outfits on you from drool overload then exploded diapers!!
  
• Your eyes are still grey-blue. Sometimes I think I might see a swirl of brown coming on in your right eye.

I think that's about it and should catch us up to speed. Hopefully, I'll keep up with it in the future and I won't have to list millions of things next time. Although, it's insane how much you little guys learn and change in your first year!