Steven!

Time to update the going on's with my wonderful hubby!
Steven is busy, busy, busy.
He works for Millcreek of Arkansas, an in patient facility for boys and girls ages 6-17.
Steven is a therapist for the older boys. The boys are either placed by: DHS (Department of Human Services), parents, Juvenile court or they just don't have anywhere else to go. These boys mainly consist of trouble makers.
With each client Steven does individual therapy and family therapy sessions. He also has to do three group therapy sessions a week. He often tells me about his group ideas and I have to tell you, they are really good.
He generally has around 14 kids to see a week.
These kids are generally really rough around the edges and they need a lot of help. Steven does have a few scary stories that makes me wish he was working in a better environment, but he has proved that he can handle himself.
He has applied for the clinical director position, which we think will be a great oppurtunity to get some knowledge and experience.
Steven is an awesome dad and husband. He comes home from work and helps me until we go to sleep. He is no where near one of those men that just sit on the couch. Soemtimes he will even take over cooking dinner and watching the kids at the same time so I can have some alone time. He was shown his carpentry skills in many ways: he was replaced some wood siding on our house (he had to make the siding because they don't sell it in the stores anymore) And it turned out great! The only way you can tell is because the paint isn't layered on (they didn't scrape the house before painting it so it has a cool texture!) , He has built two very sturdy window seats for our house. And he has built a very pretty dollhouse for Natalie's Christmas!
Of course I will upload pics of everything!
Steven is leading singing during worship some Sunday's and he is teaching the young adults class.
His dissertation is well - a work in progress- he is mainly waiting on the research period to be over. Then he will have to really buckle down if he wants to graduate in August 2009.
I will get Steven to update a little in this space too!
Pictures are on the way!

A Maybe Promise!

I'm making a promise to myself and to my family and friends right her and now!
I promise to keep up with my blog better!
Hmmm...I'll try!
You see, I don't have that much time and I want to do a really good job, so since I know I don't have time to do a good job - I just don't do it at all!
But I have to get rid of that trait and just forget about it.
Too many amazing things happen that I want to remember and share with others for me to just sit and whine about not getting to blog about it.
So - forgive the mess that I may make on here - including grammar! and lopsided pictures (for some reason I can't get blogger to upload the "touched up" picture)

So I'm going to do a BIG update! I will start with Steven -
Soon.

Natalie's 2nd Birthday!

Natalie had her 2nd Birthday Party!

We had cupcakes with the "2" on them!
We had water balloons, a slip and slide and a little pool!




Natalie helping with the cupcakes!


Natalie "dolling up" with Momma!






Natalie was very VERY thankful for her presents - Every one she opened she said "WOW...WOW" "thank you"

hol em!!! hol em!!

Natalie loves to hold her bubba

7 Weeks!!

Oh WOW!
I knew time was flying by fast with Natalie, but this is no contest. Two babies make the clock spin out of control.
Elijah is now 7 weeks old!! And he is getting soooo BIG! He is also getting better and better at letting me sleep at night...so far 4.5 hours is a row.
The last Dr.'s visit we had went pretty good.
They took a chest x-ray - oh I wish I'd had my camera - they put him in this clear tube with his arms up over his head! It wasn't funny - but it was interesting. He did really well for them...so well that the x-ray tech was telling him to cry (because she needed to know when he took a deep breath so she could take the picture!)
His x-ray looked just fine.

Then the cardiologist checked his blood pressure with a dopler machine and found that he has some discrepancies. Usually the blood pressure in your leg is the same or just a bit higher than in your arm. Elijah's was different....his was lower in his leg than in his arm about 12 points higher - they get concerned at 13 points higher.
Needless to say he is still on his blood pressure medicine. They will re-check it in 2.5 months and they will do an echocardiagram.

On Sept 11 we will take him to a nephrologist (sp) - a kidney Dr. They will run a dye into his bladder and see if both of the lines to his kidneys are working and not swollen any more. He has something called - hydrophranosis (sp) Which is reflux of the kidney. So hopefully he will check out fine and we can take him off his antibiotics.

He is a wonderful baby! Hardly cries at all, except for during his fussy time - from 6pm till 9pm - He isn't crying the whole time - he is just hard to pacify during that time.

He loves his sister - he would rather look at her than me! I know this because I will be lying on the floor talking to him and then she comes over and steals his attention away. Natalie really loves to kiss him and to tickle his face with her hair.

Elijah is cooing and making all the sweet baby noises. He loves to watch his mobile and kick up a storm.

Otherwise he isn't doing much else.

I will post pics soon. Hopefully I can catch his contagious smile and show off his dimple!

More pics

Arkansas Children's Hospital

When we arrived at Arkansas Children's Hospital there were friends from the Monticello Church waiting for us - what a blessing.
We were updated by a young female Doctor...she was very sweet and kind to explain everything to us. She told us that Elijah was a very sick little boy and would need surgery. Elijah had a coarctation of the aorta. Along his aorta there is a "kink" or a narrowing - like in a water hose. This caused him to have minimal blood flow to his extremities. This "kink" forms at about 6-8 weeks of gestation...so the problem was there before we knew we were pregnant. So, why didn't we see a problem during pregnancy.....you see, God is very clever. In the womb babies have a "bypass" this is a small tube that bypasses the lungs and sends the blood elsewhere - it is called a ductus arteriosus. This is lined with special tissue that slowly closes after birth. When there is a narrowing this causes the left ventricle to work harder, since it must generate a higher pressure than normal to force blood through the narrow segment of the aorta to the lower part of the body. If the narrowing is significant enough - the ventricle may not be strong enough to perform its task which results in congestive heart failure and shock.

After she explained all this- I just asked "So he is going to be o.k...you can fix him?" and she replied "Yes, this is not the most common thing we see, but we do see a lot of them."
This made me feel much better and the crying stopped.
She did inform us that sense Elijah's coarctation had went so long undetected he had damage to his internal oragans and they were going to have to wait for him to heal a bit before they did the surgery.

Just a note - the coarctation is very detectable. My advice to every new mother is to have the Dr. check the babies blood pressure in both legs and both arms...at every Dr. appt until he/she is at least a month old. The blood pressure in the arms and legs are supposed to be the same...if one is higher than the other it is usually in the legs and not by much. So if there is a difference have them do further tests. Especially if the pressure is lower in the legs.
Oh and if you are worried about your baby...don't wait go ahead and call the Dr. and if they say its nothing....go ahead and go to the ER - its not worth it....trust you instincts.

It was really a sad sight to see Elijah hooked up to every machine known to man. He had so many "holes" in his little body from iv's and such. I could barely get my hands in around all of it to touch him. I constantly wished to hold him. I was able to stay in the room with him. He had one nurse every twelve hours. That was really nice, because I knew that they only had to think about my son and no one else. We spoke to about 15 Dr.'s in our 9 days there. They all explained and re-explained everything. Tiring- but real nice.

Elijah had his surgery on July 4th. This is a rundown of the procedure; They made an incision inbetween his ribs under his left arm - they cut through the muscle and then pried his ribs apart - When they found the narrowing they put a clamp on both sides of it and then cut it out, then stitched it together. Then they closed. I don't remember how long it took. The nurse came out and showed us the part that was cut out - it was so tiny. He said that the surgery was really boring and he even had to wake one of the scrub techs. So that was good...no surprises.

Elijah stayed in CVICU (cardiovascular intensive care) for a couple more nights. We really liked his night nurse - Joe. He would encourage us to help take care for him; oral care and changing diapers.

It took awhile, but they finally took out the ventilator and he was breathing on his own and beginning to eat.

We were there for nine days...We were able to sleep in the waiting room until he was moved to a semi-private room where I could stay with him.


Things progressed very slowly...I was finally able to try nursing Elijah...oh it was rough...he had forgotten everything we had worked so hard to accomplish. It didn't help that they gave him a bottle first, but I understood, they had to see how much was going and coming out.

Before we could go home we had to do a car seat test. We had a, what we thought, was a two hour drive (really 1h 20min) so he had to stay in the car seat for two hours straight, no interruptions, hooked up to machines monitoring his heart and his blood oxygen levels. He passed! We did have to console him with sugar water on his paci...another reason nursing didn't go well.

After that we were finally ready to go home....we made it!

OH, Natalie stayed with her Nana 8 hours away!!! I had never been without her for more than a few hours and I had always been able to get to her quickly if needed....so that was hard for me...easy for her.