Overdue

I have seriously neglected my blog over the last several months. I just don't have much free time...or perhaps I should say that I don't have much uninterrupted free time. Also, the last six months have been extremely difficult on the parenting front. While I don't try to paint a false picture of our lives, I do mainly try to concentrate on the positive, memorable, and funny slices of our lives, as I suspect that I'll have no problem remembering the negative things someday. Recently, there have been an overabundance of negative issues, and not many positive things to post about. We have been dealing with an unending stream of sassiness, one of the downsides of having two highly verbal children. Benjy and I have come to the conclusion that having a two year old and three year old at the same time is much harder than having two babies at once (Mercy and Judah are just 16 months apart.) Mercy is a little negotiater. She is always one step ahead and has an answer for everything, not an endearing quality in a toddler. Judah is a mimic and has a huge vocabulary, but that often sounds obnoxious when spouted with terrible two-year-old angst ("You a scoundrel, Mommy.") He disagrees with everyone, even himself. Here are some examples of recent conversations in our house:

Judah: "Mommy, look!! Clouds!)
Me: "Yes, baby, I see all the clouds.
Judah: "NO. They NOT clouds."

Judah, talking to himself: "I will praise the Lord!"
Judah, again, talking BACK to himself: "NO! I WON'T praise the Lord!"

Me (for the 43rd time): "Judah, pick up the Mega Blocks and put them in the box.
Judah, to himself as he wanders about the room aimlessly: "I not see me picking up."

Me: "Judah, say 'Yes, Mommy."
Judah: "No, I NOT say 'Yes, Mommy.'"

Judah: "My (may I) have a 'nack?"
Me: "No sweetie. Mommy's fixing supper."
Judah: "No. You NOT fixing supper."

Those are just a few examples. This is ALL. DAY. LONG. I am absolutely weary of it. We have exhausted every discipline tactic we can think of short of just putting a piece of tape over his mouth, and though I've felt like it a few times...oh, okay, a few times every day...we don't want to venture over to the dark side. We are desperately hoping this phase passes quickly and in the meantime correcting him every single time he argues, contradicts, and backtalks. It does absolutely no good, but at least we're being consistent. For Mercy, age three was much, much worse than two. If Judah's third year is going to be worse than his second, I'll be on meds.

In other news, Zion had some serious health problems starting at 9 months. He was fine one day, started coughing the next, and within about 36 hours was fighting to breathe. We took him to urgent care before he became critically ill, but the moronic doctor we saw who diagnosed him with RSV, bronchiolitis, and pneumonia put him on a totally innapropriate antibiotic. The next day as he continued his downward spiral, with a fever of 104, vomitting, refusing to nurse, and retracting when he breathed, I took him to the emergency room. The triage nurse almost immediately said we would be admitted. He was loaded with massive doses of steroids, antibiotics, and three back-to-back breathing treatments. Within about three hours, Zion was no longer listless, was breathing much more easily, and wanted to play. Because Zion had made such a dramatic turn around (and probably because Benjy is a nurse), the ER doctor let us come home with a grave warning that he was still very ill, and to continue breathing treatments every two hours around the clock, and bring him back immediately if he worsened. It took nearly two weeks, but his lungs finally cleared. Just a week later, he had pneumonia again. Two weeks after that, bronchiolitis. He had a total of four respiratory infections in about 10 weeks. During one of his xrays, the radiologist spotted a chest-wall deformity where the sternum points back toward the lungs. This is a frequent sign of Marfan's Syndrome, a genetic disease that is prevalent in Benjy's side of the family. Because of the cluster of illnesses and the chest-wall defect, our PCP sent us to University of Virginia in Charlottesville, to a pediatric pulmonologist and a geneticist. We just had those appointments in the last week. The pulmonologist thinks Zion has asthma. The genetics appointment was inconclusive, as we have to have tests run on Benjy. We have a treatment plan for the asthma and are hopeful that he grows out of it, as many children his age do.

There have been many other things going on, but I won't try to write about them all in one post (snore). I am going to try to back-post pictures from the holidays and birthdays we've had over the last few months, so keep looking for those.

See What God Has Done

I know Easter is a time to celebrate something BIGGER, but every holiday when we take family photos, I'm reminded of all the years of holidays I longed for a child with whom to make memories and share special traditions. See what God has done!

Easter Morning At Our House

Benjy and I have tried to be careful about giving too much attention to secular traditions for sacred days such as Easter and Christmas, choosing instead to focus on the real reasons we celebrate these days. However, I have fond memories of little traditions my parents started (or continued) with my sister and me during our growing up years, and though I want to keep Christ at the center of these holy days, I also want to make special memories, whether with food or gifts, for my children. We had never done Easter baskets before, but this year, we had read about Easter baskets, coloring eggs, and other such things in some of the many library books we read about the holiday (some favorites were Legend of the Easter Egg, Parable of the Lily, Easter Eggs for Anya, Tale of the Three Trees, and Legend of the Sand Dollar), and Mercy and Judah would get nearly hysterical when they saw Easter eggs, and began asking about Easter baskets and coloring eggs. We didn't get to coloring eggs this year, as we simply had too much going on with Zion's appointment in Charlottesville, Virginia on Good Friday, Zion's party Saturday, and early departure for church for the Easter Drama Sunday. But the baskets...ah, I think I had more fun assembling them and anticipating their reactions than they did receiving the baskets!

I had actually ordered their special chocolate back in February from a site that sells organic chocolate called Sweet Earth Chocolates . One of the rare disappointments of being organic and gluten free is the chocolate. My parents bought my sister and me handmade, confectionary chocolates from the time we were toddlers ( I can say now with more experience that that chocolate was every bit as good as the famed Godiva). That's what we got in our Easter baskets, Christmas stockings, and Valentine's boxes. As a result, I'm quite a snob when it comes to chocolate. There are good organic chocolates out there. Green & Blacks has a salted peanut bar that is to die for. My children like those, but the disappointment comes in not being able to find novelty things like chocolate bunnies or cream eggs. My search is over. Sweet Earth's organic, fairly-traded (and gluten free, though you have to read the ingredients as they don't advertise them as such) were beautifully packaged and tasted as good as they looked. My littles got organic chocolate bunnies and cream eggs for Easter! In addition, we put a few things pertaining to each of their interests in the baskets. Mercy got mini baby dolls and art supplies. Judah got a backhoe loader and a construction book, and Zion got a racecar and a things that go book. They also got some fruit snacks and yogurt crunches (probiotics to offset all the sugar, right?) What fun!

As you can see in some of the pics, I made flower pots for their breakfast. I wanted something special, but not too loaded with sugar since we had just eaten birthday cake, they had chocolate in their baskets, and we would be having dessert with Easter dinner. So I made low sugar peanut butter muffins and baked them in the silicone flower pot muffin cups. I iced them with a thin layer of leftover frosting from Zion's cake and sprinkled naturally-colored green sparkle sugar for "grass." Then in the pot, I stuck "flowers" that I had made out of almond cookies (the base is almond meal, butter, and arrowroot, and it is very low sugar) and decorated the centers with different colors of the naturally colored sparkle sugar. I have a delicious recipe for GF sugar cookies, and I thought of making those and cutting them out with flower cookie cutters and frosting them, but nixed the idea to go with a healthier version. I'll try the sugar cookies in the pots sometime we aren't overloaded with treats.

I laid down one of Zion's cookies while I tried to take the stick out the other one. He snatched it up and began gnawing it. He ate all three of his cookies that way:

Ah, Judah. Such a beautiful little boy. I hope we can teach him to act beautiful. We're working on it.

Happy Birthday, Zion Joel!

Our baby boy is officially no longer a baby. Zion turned one on April 3, but we decided to have his party on Easter weekend since it would be a long weekend for the grandparents to spend with us and he was born Easter weekend anyway.

Zion is a delightful little boy. He is much more laid back than Mercy and Judah. He stopped being our good sleeper about age 5 months, but he ALMOST makes up for it by being pleasant and incredibly adorable during the day. He is quite smart. We usually only have to show him how a toy works once or twice, and he can do it himself. He loves balls and is starting to show a fascination with things that go (though Judah usually wrenches his trucks/cars/trains out of Zion's hands before he can inspect them thoroughly--thus the new vehicles for Zion's birthday. Just what we need at our house--more trucks, fire engines, and cars. The testosterone will soon be palpable when you walk through our front door.) Zion isn't walking yet. He cruises expertly, stands alone, and has even taken two steps at a time, but he crawls like a shot, and I guess for now, that's faster and less frustrating than walking. He is our first to not walk before his first birthday. Mercy was 10 months, and Judah was an obscene 8 months (yes, 8 months) when they started walking. I don't mind, though. Still seeing Zion crawl around allows me to think of him as a baby for a little longer.

Here he is on his actual birthday:

At his party, Easter weekend. Are all these for me, Mom?



This was a hilarious toy that my mom and dad got him. The fire chief tumbles down two levels of ramps, then drops into the fire truck. As the fire truck is rolled, the chief spins. I showed Zion where to put the fire chief at the top of the ramp one time, and he immediately started doing it over and over himself. He shrieked with laughter as the chief dropped out into the vehicle

 

Lots of books!

Zion loves to put things (anything!) into a container and dump them out again. I couldn't find any "fill and spill" toys that I liked so we made our own with a handmade basket and handmade bean bags made with real beans and herbs. He loved it. The beanbags are great for hauling in his new dump truck, too...

...although chewing the dump truck is always an option.

He wasn't too excited about the lemon creme cake, but everyone else thought it was good.

Happy birthday, Zion! You are such a wonderful addition to our family!

From Zion

Being the third child is rough. I have to fend for myself for just about everything.

Seriously...what's a kid gotta do to get something to eat around here? Do I have to stand on a stool to cook my own fish? Maybe the dog will help...? Sissy...?

I even have to take care of myself when it comes to sleeping. Will no one put me in a proper bed?

And here, sleeping in the garage. Really.

Note from Mommy: I had put Zion in the bouncer to make sure he was contained and safe while I got a shower. I assure you that this is the first time in our four years of parenting that a baby has fallen asleep while not being bounced, rocked, swayed, shushed, patted, sung to, or nursed, or at the very least without passing out from screaming his head off. I was quite shocked to emerge from the shower to see him sleeping. And the garage sleeping...well, he had been on a very long walk with Daddy. He was taken inside after the photo.

Thanks a lot Zi. We'll have CPS on our doorstep if YOU keep posting.