Siah – Page 6 – xangelle.com

Barfing Sucks

Geli had her appointment on Tuesday for this week’s dose of chemotherapy.

Not surprising her counts were low enough to score her a free bag of platelets. In fact, she was actually too low to receive the intra-muscular injections BUT………there seems to be WAY TOO MANY BUTS recently……..they were out of platelets and had to have some brought in from an outside source.

They did end up giving her the injection anyway and had her hold bags of ice on her thighs to help her blood clot. (Platelets help your blood to clot and when they are low you are more susceptible to nose bleeds and other uncontrolled bleeding from cuts or bad bruising.) After the injections, they have to observe Angelica for 3 hours to make certain that she doesn’t have a serious allergic reaction and so if they had waited for a couple of hours until the platelets came in and then gave the platelets over an hours time period and then gave the intra-muscular injections and then watched her for the 3 hours…..well, they wouldn’t have been able to leave the hospital until after 7:30pm. This way, they were able to leave and get home by 6pm. So, it cut a few hours off the day, which was nice.

Angelica felt pretty good on Tuesday during the day, but started to feel a bit off by the time they got home…..She ate about half of her dinner and then started to really struggle with nausea. She tried valiantly to not barf but about 10:30pm she just couldn’t fight anymore. It was not pretty and it was the start of a very long, very nasty night.

We were up ALL night with her barfing and barfing and barfing and nothing was helping.

Finally she fell asleep around 5am and slept until the next “episode” at 7am. She managed to eat a tiny bit of breakfast, took her meds and around 10:30am was having a hard time keeping her eyes open or being able to sit up and so I sent her off to bed. She slept hard, only waking for me to give her some more anti-nausea meds at 11am and then slept until 2pm.

When she woke up, she ate some soup and crackers and seemed to look and act a little perkier than she had been. She seemed to be acting like she might be on the mend in the afternoon. Although, she was still pretty tired; she tried to eat some dinner and then when the other kids went to bed around 8pm….she did too.

I had planned on going to an exercise class with my sister and so I dragged myself off to the class and although it wasn’t my best class, for having next to no sleep, it wasn’t too bad.

I wondered how the night would go for us, but aside from our two littlest men tag teaming each other and managing to wake us every other hour, it was a pretty quiet night.

This morning, I was so tired, I couldn’t get up and so Jon got the kids up and off to school and I was surprised to hear that Geli had been up and at ’em like nothing was wrong…..AWESOME!

Her and Jon headed off to a BC BioMedical Lab to get her blood work done to see if she’d need another transfusion tomorrow and then they came home.

I asked Geli if she’d like to make some buns or bread with me and she was quite excited by the idea. If Geli was excited…..Siah was ECSTATIC! He LOVES to cook and bake. I’m not usually so excited as he makes quite a mess and making buns is already quite a messy endeavor, but I figured we could try to make it work.

Here is Siah, excited by his little bit of dough. (We were at “waiting for it to rise” stage)

In this next picture you can the “mess” a bit clearer…..Siah really “gets into” his baking.

I told Geli that this could be a “Home Ec.” class and that part of the Home Ec. mark always included the clean up.

We waited for the dough to rise and then punched it down, then it rose again and we punched it down again and then broke the dough up to make Cinnamon Buns, Coconut Buns, Cheese Buns and Plain Buns. The Coconut Buns are baking, but here are the rest of the buns still rising.

Angelica and Jon have gone to the High School to meet with her teachers. Based on her number today, she will be able to attend school on Monday. (They are trending upward, and should be okay for Monday.) She has more chemo on Tuesday, but should be good to go for Wednesday through the following Monday. Then she starts the Third Round of her treatment on Tuesday September 21st and that stage requires her to be admitted for 3-4 days every 2 weeks.

We are praying that Angelica would remain healthy and be able to attend school over this next week and a bit and that she would totally enjoy her school time and be able to feel integrated in with all her other class mates. Also that our other kids would remain healthy and not pick up any illness from the other kids in their school.

Rice Balls just for fun

Jon and Geli are at BC Children’s today. We have no idea if they’ll be coming home today or not. She is still vomiting and still has a headache. She is scheduled for a lumbar puncture and one dose of chemo and then……..ya, I have no clue.

She ate some yesterday, but she’s obviously not well. I really hate seeing her like she is. It’s pretty brutal.

Yesterday while Geli and Judah slept, I cooked.

I bought this recipe book on the advice of my naturopathic doctor and it’s probably one of my favorite recipe books ever.

The author, Cynthia Lair, has her own Amazon page where you can read blog posts and you can even subscribe to her You Tube Channel….where she hosts her cooking show – Cookus Interruptus.

We have found some of our all time family favorite meals and snacks from this book and yesterday, Josiah and I decided to try making the rice balls.

I know it sounds funny and honestly, its as simple as it sounds, but totally healthy and DELICIOUS. Even better, Siah had a ton of fun helping and then eating them.

Here you can see what’s involved…

I prepared the sesame salt in advance by toasting sesame seeds and then grinding them with sea salt.

I also steamed the rice which is a blend of brown and sweet rice and let it cool to room temperature.

That’s is the total of the ingredients involved. Rice, sesame seeds and sea salt. AWESOME!

One the rice was cooled to room temperature we started.

You need a bowl of water to keep your hands moist so that the rice won’t stick to them. You wet your hands and take a small ball sized amount of rice and roll and press it into a ball and then you roll it in the sesame salt…

It’s pretty much that simple.

They are ready to eat right away. Here Siah shows that you can dip them in soy sauce. We use Braggs Aminos. So SO delicious!

You can see by looking at his shirt that we really jump into cooking….like totally and completely….or maybe he just had a dirty shirt from lunch!

Mmmmmmm! They are so delicious.

These would be fabulous for school lunches and they last for 5 days in a sealed container in the fridge.

We’ll definitely be making more of these in the future.

I’d totally recommend this recipe book to anyone. It has tons of delicious whole foods recipes and they are easy to prepare.

Exhaustion….

is having your 3 year old son come to bed at 1am only one short hour after you’ve gone to sleep and having him awake and thrashing around in bed when at 2am you hear your daughter barfing. Then to have your husband fully wake you with the knowledge that your daughter has a fever of 38.1F.

Any fever is treated as serious and severe and warrants an immediate trip to the ER at Children’s Hospital.

The magic number that earns you an immediate trip to the hospital is 38.5F and so we called in to the oncologist on call to see what they’d like us to do…seeing as she wasn’t far off. Just so you know, her normal temp hovers between 36.4 and 36.9. We have to take her temperature daily in the morning and in the evening because when your counts are low, you don’t typically present with normal symptoms of infection…you just get a fever!

So when we talked with the oncologist on call, they said to wait half an hour and take her temp again to see where it was going….At this point I was up and Jon was up, Geli was up and Siah was up….Geli was finishing packing her bag as we were certain that she was heading in for a 2+ week stint of an antibiotics run. When there is a bacterial infection that runs rampant, she gets put on general IV antibiotics for a few days while they culture for the exact strain of bacteria and once they figure that out, they give her the correct antibiotics and then they take her blood every day looking for a test to come back negative for the bacteria. Once they get the negative test, then it’s two weeks on the antibiotics and then she can come home……lovely, eh?

This is what we were preparing ourselves for at 2am on a Wednesday morning. Jon was getting a last minute snuggle in with Siah. Geli had a bag packed and was laying on the couch and I was frantically cleaning the kitchen…..all the while trying to figure out how I was going to “do” everything especially when there was no way that Siah was going to sleep anytime soon, and honestly neither was I. Although I could go and lay down, I seriously doubted that I’d be able to sleep until I heard an update from Jon.

Finally, the half hour was up and her temp had gone from 38.1 to a 38.4 and so Jon rang to let them know they were on their way and that the temp was creeping up and they headed in.

I brought Siah back upstairs to my room and put on a movie for him on my laptop. He watched Enchanted, while I lay there waiting for an update. In the early morning hours time seems to stand still, but Jon finally messaged me and really had no update other than they were there.

He kept messaging me with what little information that he had and the end result was that things looked kind sketchy because she had a fever while already being on antibiotics and who knows what that meant and yet her counts weren’t indicating a bacterial infection and they weren’t admitting her, but they wanted her to say until the Oncology Clinic could assess her and it didn’t open until 8am so they were gonna try to rest and hang around until then. Siah’s movie finished after 5am sometime and I convinced him to fall sleep.

I finally fell lightly asleep around 6ish and then Judah woke at 7:30am to eat. Siah woke up for good just after 8am and I’d not heard anything regarding Geli yet.

Jon finally messaged me that they were giving her a IV dose of a big antibiotic and sending her home thinking she was dealing with something viral and that she could recover just as well at home as at the hospital…. She does have to come in tomorrow morning for some follow up blood work and another dose of antibiotics.

It was nice to have them come home. We have no idea where she could have picked this virus up, but this does speak to her compromised immune system. We feel fine, but somewhere, somehow she’s picked up something. Fortunately, her counts are just on the high-ish side of low, enough so, that she can be at home. Were her counts lower, that would not be an option.

But, this is one of the reasons why we must be so careful right now….Her system is just so fragile.

She’s been sleeping on the couch since 10:30-ish about half an hour after they got home. Jon took Siah upstairs and convinced him to fall asleep with much wailing and tears, but in spite of his exhaustion….Jon couldn’t sleep. Sucks!

I’m surprised that it’s already 2pm….I’m hoping that the rest of the day flies by until the moment I can crawl into my bed and that there are no more hiccups and especially that Geli starts to feel better so SO soon!

High Tide and Low Tide

It’s been almost a week since my last post and we’re still trucking along.

The chaos hasn’t really settled down as much as it’s just shifted or changed direction.

Geli has completed the first two weeks (out of 8 weeks) in this second stage of treatment. She was in the hospital yesterday for another lumbar puncture (with accompanying chemo into the spinal fluid) and then received one chemo drug through her IV and another chemo drug that gets given by two shots, one into each thigh.

She walks away from the day with a sore back, a headache, two thighs that feel like they’ve been kicked by steel toed boots, an upset tummy and some serious fatigue. She woke up this morning feeling really off and has spent the day on the couch or hunched over a bright shiny silver bowl. I’ve given her a substantial dose of Codeine and she is sleeping right now.

She’s doing well considering what she’s dealing with, but it’s not all sunshine and lollipops over here.

I had a really bad day on Sunday. It started out okay and somewhere along the line I ended up feeling completely overwhelmed by everything and then spent the rest of the afternoon/evening crying. If all of “this”, the emotions swirling around everything comes in waves, then Sunday was definitely a low tide day for me. I managed to wake up on Monday morning and things were a bit better, but when the evening rolled around and I needed to decide if I were going to my exercise class or not……I forced myself to go as I need to go for emotional and mental reasons as much as I need to go for physical reasons.

I find that if I can go and work so hard that I can’t really think or focus or concentrate on anything else…..it gives me a break from everything and then I feel so much more able to jump back into the thick of everything and deal with it all from a position of strength…..and so I went. And….surprise, surprise! I felt a lot better when I was finished.

We have a quiet week ahead of us.

This second stage of Chemo is a total of 8 weeks. There are 2 weeks of intensive everyday treatments, and that’s followed by 2 weeks where she’s only scheduled to be in at the hospital for 1 day per week. This week is the first of those 2 weeks. Then we do two more intensive every day weeks and then 2 more weeks of 1 day per week.

Here are the most current prayer needs and praise reports.

Angelica has done amazingly well as far as side effects go and we are so thankful for your prayers. Some of the most common side effects from the drugs she’s currently on are mouth sores, nausea and vomiting, fever and low blood counts. Geli has had very little nausea and has only had one real episode of vomiting. She’s had no mouth sores, or fever, no real other side effects and although her blood counts are low – they are not as low as they could be.

These are amazing things because she could be feeling SO. MUCH. WORSE. than she currently is.

We would love prayer that she would stay physically and emotionally strong, and that her tummy would stop hurting. She says that she doesn’t feel sick and nauseous most of the time, but her tummy hurts or aches and it would be nice if that would go away. Also, we would love prayer that she would recover quickly from her big day yesterday and that the headache that is bothering her would go away.

Jon and I could use prayer that we would stay emotionally and physically healthy and strong. It is tough to deal with everything that is on our plates right now. Also that we would have time and opportunity for each other in the middle of all this craziness. It’s difficult to find the time, and resources to be able to invest in each other at times like this and yet even if everything lines up well….often we are so exhausted that it feels like too much effort to go anywhere and do anything.

Xani is struggling with all the emotions that she is feeling. She tends to feel extremes when it comes to emotions and has been swinging between stuffing her emotions and exploding with her emotions…..both extremely unhealthy ways of dealing with her emotions and so we are trying to walk her through sharing her emotions in a healthy way and at the same time dealing with the fall-out of the stuffing/exploding cycles.

Jeremy is Jeremy! He has so many thoughts and ideas racing through his head and often it is exhausting trying to keep up with him. Alternately, he is frustrated with us that we don’t seem to get or understand or that we just don’t have the time and energy to put ALL of his ideas into practice. It feels like we are in a constant tug of war with him mentally and verbally. It’s hard for him and us.

Josiah….well, lets just say that Josiah turned 3 on August 4th and I still haven’t written odes of love and adoration to him as I reflect back on the last three years of his life. That may or may not have something to do with the fact that currently……on any given day……I’m about ready to strangle the little bugger. He is my love, my darling, my miracle baby and yet…..

The whining, yelling, screaming, constant arguing, climbing, getting into things…..well, it can all be summed up by saying that he is testing his boundaries in a BIG WAY. Normally, this would be okay and we’d just set the boundaries and enforce them repeatedly until he figured out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable…..with everything else going on and the exhaustion that is a result of everything else going on…….lets just say that our consistency is not as it should be. I honestly think that he senses that things are not “right” that they are not as peaceful, calm and consistent as they have been and the chaos is affecting him negatively much in the same way that it’s affecting everyone else.

We will all get through this, and we keep telling ourselves that its just a season, but if you are wanting to pray….this is what we need prayer for right now…

To everyone who is praying…… We appreciate every single prayer.

One too many things to juggle

I was talking with Patti the other day about the ‘costs’ of dealing with a child with cancer. The medical protocol is a well tuned machine at this point, but the schedule for visits, drug administration, tests, etc. has the hours of a full time job. We can see how a family could loose everything, or have to sell a house, or something to get through this, because you can’t go back to “normal”.

In our situation, there are some things that we are finding hard to balance. 1) we have a daughter who is fighting cancer (and winning). 2) we have a new-born son who requires a lot of holding and feeding and usual new-born stuff. 3) we have a 2 year old that is very busy and wants to touch and climb and jump and run and search for gum, not to mention spitting, throwing food, peeing his pants, dumping makeup on the floor, and he also has an egg and dairy allergy that keeps us on our toes. 4) we have work to fit in there somewhere. 5) oh yea, there are two other kids, one that has AD/HD, and one that has well developed adult emotions.

Patti is a very organized and capable person… she could do any combination of 1+2, 1+3, or 2+3, but 1+2+3 is too much. I could do the work thing, or carry the load of the one that patti cant carry, but both is really hard. We are trying to find balance and we have very understanding work situations and supportive family and it is still almost more than we can carry.

Today serves to show what I mean. I have a daughter that needs new glasses and needs a visit to the optometrist that we really trust in abbotsford, but he only works a few days a month here and we booked a visit… but had to move the visit because of a conflict with an appointment for Angelica. I’m not usually the one that would organize this stuff, but we are all giving-and-taking. the appointment got moved to Thursday and i made sure to take the last appointment slot at 6:00 so I could make it and I JUST made it after driving ALL day.

The receptionist looks at me blankly and says “I don’t have your kids booked today”. ???

It seems that NEXT Thursday they are booked and that detail was overlooked in the conversation between Angelica’s doctors and me taking the call from the optometrist’s office and trying to remember all the details for everything until I could write it down…

I sigh and realize that I will have to do this trip again next week and that… I have one too many things to juggle.

Jon

The First Cut is the Deepest

Well, yesterday was a momentous day in our house.

We had the first ever head shaving party.

When Geli was diagnosed with Leukemia, the Doctors and Nurses had mentioned that Angelica might lose her hair as a side effect of the chemotherapy. She seemed to be okay with that, but then…it hadn’t happened yet and so we figured that we’d just deal with it, if and when it happened.

Well, Geli managed to make it all the way through the first month before her hair started to thin and then….it started to thin quite rapidly.

The biggest issue was the hair falling out and sticking to her body. You know that feeling when you’ve got a stray hair stuck to your back and you can’t quite get it off….now imagine 50 hairs all over your arms and back and neck and inside your shirt….not fun eh?

And so, yesterday I asked Angelica if she’d like to shave my head so that she could see what it would look like, if she were to shave her head…and she said yes!

So, we grabbed the buzzers, took a picture to show the “before”……

….then we cut the pony tail off….

……and then started shaving….

We had lots of help…..

Lots and LOTS of help….probably more than we really needed,but hey! Gotta pay attention to the details, right?

And then we moved on to Angelica….

And Siah decided that he wanted to get in on the action…

But trying to shaving a moving target……

Well, lets jut say that his head shave is a little less than perfect…

We finally remembered to take a good shot of Momma and Geli…

Xani came home after dinner and decided she wanted in on the action…

So, here was the before shot…

And here we are after it’s all done…

And later on, Papa came over to join in…

Here we are listening to him ask for just a little off the edges…

We figured while we were at it, we might as well see what Papa would look like with a little male pattern baldness…

We needed to rock star it out a little…..

Here is the official Head Shot…

But…..the best part of the whole day AND night was when Pap put on this wig….

And watching him do the head shake and hand flick made it apparently obvious that he’s had long hair in the past….

He looked like he’d just stepped out of the Coast Capital Banking Commercial….it was AWESOME!

We had a good day with lots of laughter and although it could have been a tough day….I think it turned out okay.

We will be adding pictures of Nana Karen, and Aunty Chelle as soon as download them off the camera….they came over this morning to add their beauty to the mix……

Everyone looks so beautiful……its amazing how much stock you put in things like hair, but to see that hair only adds to your beauty…it doesn’t make or define you as beautiful…..Beauty is who you are!

Hanging Around with Nothing New

Well, I got nothing in regards to a pregnancy or baby update. Nothing’s happening and while the ladies at our church threw us a Baby Shower last night….I’ve not gotten to those photo’s yet and so I’ll delay on sharing about that just yet.

We did go for a walk on Sunday afternoon. Geli stayed home and the boys and Xandra and Jon and I walked around Walnut Grove. It’s such a great little community.

I got some great shots of Jeremy….

He was in a great mood and posed for a bazillion shots……

A lot of times, he takes BRUTAL photos and so I’m always THRILLED to get some decent ones of him….

But today…..today we had some winners and I’m so pleased.

Which is your favorite?

My boys paused for a quick hug and I was able to snap up this shot…..

Siah was just mellow and chillin’ this particular afternoon……

My boys……I sure love ’em!

Shifting Gears

Today was a down day and yet it was a great day, in it’s own way.

I got up this morning and get myself put together. In other words, I got dressed, did my hair and make up and had something to eat.

I find that when I do this (even if it feels stupid because I’m home by myself) “getting ready” helps me mentally set myself up for a better day. This is not to say that I don’t have days when I don’t “get ready” but more often than not I do “get ready” for the day.

I debated on driving Jon into work, but decided against it.

I’ve actually had quite a bit of Braxton Hicks over the past few days and while I hope they are getting my body ready to “do its thing” I’m actually quite tired. It’s a massive head trip, noticing that you’re having contractions, and not knowing if it’s the beginning of something or just a big tease.

In this case, serious tease and I’m tired of it.

So, I thought that I’d take a day to relax and spend some time on the couch; attempt to just chill out and get some rest.

Because I had no plans and because I’ve been working like a crazy woman to get my house tidy……I took some time this morning to just snuggle on the couch with Siah. It was nice to just enjoy some time with him as my baby, knowing that I don’t have this time for very much longer.

Then, he tired of the snuggles and we were off. He watched a movie on the computer in the kitchen while I made some playdoh.

He’s been given some little tubs of Playdoh when we’ve gone to Ricky’s Restaurant but hasn’t had a chance to sit down and play with a decent sized clump of it and to just muck around. It ate up a bunch of time and he seemed to really enjoy himself. One thing that I noticed is that he wants or needs to be “shown” what to do. I’m hoping that with time and given the opportunity that he’ll start to want to “play” and “create” on his own.

We had lunch after that and then we sat back down on the couch. I figured that I could sit and cut some paper people and that it might entertain him.

It was interesting for about the first 2 minutes and then…..well, then he ripped a head off one of the people and stressed out about it until I tapped it back on……

So, it took up some time, but not nearly as much as I’d have liked.

I’ve been trying to find some of the paint with water books that we used as kids and that I used with my older kids, but I haven’t seen any recently. I’m still looking though.

We did a bunch of painting….It’s funny how so many little kids paint in brown….all the colors mixed together. I hadn’t remembered that from when my other kids were little, but it’s funny how much of that comes back and so quickly.

We painted until Siah had had enough and then moved on to making some cards. I got Siah to cut the straight lines with my paper cutter and to glue everything onto the cards.

It’s been a busy day and yet a fairly quiet one.

I’m starting to shift gears. I remember when my days were filled with one craft or activity after another. It will be interesting to see how things “normalize” after the new baby comes.

I find that “this” being an at home mom is a little bit like riding a bike. I used to do this all the time and then life changed and I had to define a new normal. Now I have the chance or opportunity to do this again, but with more confidence and knowledge about where I’m headed and how long I’ll be there for. It’s makes it a little bit easier. I’ll have to keep this post handy to remind me of this when I’m back in the thick of it all and stressing.

But for now, things are okay. I’m okay. We’re slowly finding our groove….

And then it’s all going to change again, eh?

Little Bits and Pieces

This whole ’bout with Measles is completely over and done with except for a few little bits and pieces……

….of dried, dead skin shedding on Siah’s litte tiny fingers.

He’s spent a considerable time in this position over the past 2 weeks, picking at little pieces as he notices or sees or is bothered by them.

The very first symptom that we noticed on Siah was a rash on his hands….it seems that his hands were hit the absolute hardest out of all of this.

I did read that there could be some skin that shedded as a result of the rash associated with measles, and saw some pics on-line of these little kids with the skin on their torso’s peeling off and so I wasn’t completely shocked when his hands started peeling. The only other thing was that the skin on his torso felt like sand paper and so I do know that the rash basically burnt the layer of skin off. Not that it actually burnt it, but the rash destroyed the top layer of skin enough so that it needed to peel or rub off. We have been slathering cream on him, not in an attempt to “save the skin” but to ease any discomfort their might be as a result of dry skin.

His little hands have looked so cute and the look on his face has been so focused that I wanted to try and catch a picture of him……I got the hands, but try as I might (and I tried more than a few times) I could not capture the face….he just kept moving too quickly once I got my camera out.

I love grubby little boy hands.

LIttle Bit ‘O This and a Little Bit ‘O That

I’m sitting on the main level of my house killing time listening to my baby scream his head off because he,
“WAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNTTTTTSSSSSS MMMMMMOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMAAAAAAA!” and seeing as he is mostly over the whole measles thingy and I’m so tired of his incessant night waking, we have started to institute the

Back to Bed, Baby! Initiative.

This involves getting up every time he wakes up and putting him back in his own bed. He is in a bed, and so he can easily get out and the biggest issue that we have is not even him coming to our bed in the middle of the night.

The biggest issue is the fact that since the while measles thing, he’s been waking up around 11 or 12 and screaming for no reason that we can figure out. He is quite verbal (as in everyone who hears him speak can’t believe he’s only 2 years old) and his language skills are quite advanced and so if he so desired, he could tell us if there was an issue…..I think that he’s OVERTIRED and can’t even really handle himself. You should see the dark circles he’s currently sporting under his eyes. Poor Baby.

The 11-midnight scream fest comes in a close second in the frustration factor. The number one issue is that he’s decided that regardless of whether we let him sleep with us or if we put him back in to his own bed, around 2am, he wakes up and then is basically restless and awake from 2am until after 5am. This time usually involves TONS of thrashing around. Crying because the covers are on. Crying because the covers are off. Kicking mommy and daddy in the head/stomach/back/whatever happens to be closest to the thrashing feet. Crying because we won’t let him watch a movie. Crying because he wants to go to the bathroom. Crying because he doesn’t want to go to the bathroom. Basically, there is lots of crying and very little sleep.

And so, it is time to learn how to sleep again.

This likely means that we will get even less sleep over the next 3-4 nights as we sleep train him to stay asleep or at the very least, to once again stay on his bed. YUCK! but it will be so worth it by next weekend when we are all sleeping soundly. I hope I’ve not jinxed it by saying that.

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It was my baby girl’s 13th Birthday today. Angelica became a teenager today. I’m still a a bit amazed that I have a teenager and yet….it’s really not that different feeling from yesterday as she was quick to tell me. Time sure flies doesn’t it.

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Jon and Jeremy went to church today and Xani and Siah and I stayed home. Siah’s still officially within the contagious time period and Xani was coughing like a mad woman. We made coffee cake and an egg/hashbrown hash-type breakfast. We cleaned the kitchen and then sewed like crazy.

I’ll be showing you over the next little bit some of the fun things that I made. Xani made 2 pillows and she did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.

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We’ve filled and hidden the kid’s Easter Baskets and tomorrow morning we’ll have a treasure hunt for the kids. They are looking forward to it and if it weren’t for Geli’s birthday being today we probably would have done them today, but I wanted to make her birthday special. We had her favorite meal of roast chicken, and potatoes, with carrots and asparagus and gravy AND…..Yorkshire Pudding. And she was a very happy girl. We’ve still not given her a gift or even had a cake so I’m not sure how special of a day it was, but ….well…….ya know……it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?

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I’m still trying to come up with a fun activity for us to do as a family tomorrow……ya know, one that involves being trapped inside the house with a contagious child….ya! should be fun! It’s been a long LOOOOOOOOOONG week and I still have a few days left to go.

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The baby has been making the funniest movements. I’ve been bent over the sewing machine and apparently, he didn’t like being squished because he kept trying to streeeeeeeeeeeeetch out and kept kicking out the sides of my body towards my back. It felt so weird, and yet……….TOTALLY AMAZING. Baby movements are the best thing ever.

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Some people from our complex just had a stillborn at 24 weeks. One week shy of when Nathaniel was born. My heart os breaking for them and all they are going through right now. I only hope that I can, in some small way, reach out and be a support or comfort to them. I’m feeling stressed that I’m pregnant, though and am feeling cautious as to how that might make them feel. So many sad conflicting emotions. In some ways, it’s like reliving the whole loss over again. So SO sad!

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Well, after half an hour, it’s quiet and so I’m gonna sign off and head up stairs to bed. I hope you all had a great Easter Sunday with great food and hopefully lots of chocolate…….

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