A Heart Full of Love

She's getting so close to walking.  She is practicing standing on her own.  How did the world's longest year go by so quickly?

The kids woke up to a little treat at their spot.  My mom would sometimes have treats on our beds when we came home from school.  I loved that.  When we go home I still check the beds for a little surprise. 

St.Valentine's Day comes in the middle of a very busy, very sugar-filled week at our house.  With a birthday the day before and a birthday three days after (not to mention two more birthdays in two more weeks!) we have a lot of celebrating around here. 

We don't have any big plans for today.  I know for a fact that my husband is not taking me out to dinner, no surprise baby sitter, no lavish gifts.  I'm okay with that.  My ideal date is a quiet night with my love at home.  Truly, I'm that easy to please. 

Currently I'm letting the kids' blood-sugars level out a bit before I try to make them learn something.  Of course they were petitioning for the day off...uhmmm...no. 

Our Rojita

That's "little red".  Our sweet Veronica Therese turned three today.  What to say about this girl?  I can't imagine my life without her.  She's been fiery from the beginning and has a great personality.  You don't want to cross her on a bad day though, watch out!  She spent her birthday in quite a sombre way.  She didn't get too excited about anything although the rest of us were partying all day long.  She's serious and thoughtful, yet funny and spunky.  There are three years between her and her "birthday buddy" Gianna.  We lost a baby between the two of them and that really opened my eyes to the fact that we don't always get to meet all of our children here on earth.  I was so overjoyed when my (favorite!) doctor handed my sweet girl to me. 
Nica is the current favored playmate in the house which I think she is becoming aware of.  She's old enough to play fun stuff with, yet young enough to be 100% cute at all she does.  She loves sleeping in Emma's bed, loves sitting next to Aidan at the table, and loves playing "Kaya and Lucy" with Gianna, all...day....long.
Happy Birthday sweet one!  

Quote of the day

Gigi has four stitches on her knee (have I told you that?). 

Gigi has been working on a "store" selling pipecleaners twisted up as "mice".

Gigi took a bath tonight.

Gigi put her pajama shirt on, but we were letting her knee air out a bit.

As she left the bathroom, "Oh, it looks like I have a customer.  I better go put some pants on."

Short lived

I'm not sure how much I have shared here about our ongoing sleepless nights struggle with Felicity's reflux.  Medications haven't seemed to help, some making it worse, a strict elimination diet helped for awhile, but didn't cure the problem.  It's been such a part of our life that I stopped trying to find a solution and just figured this was "normal".

A couple of weeks ago Felicity was diagnosed with a double ear infection.  Apparently her ears were like those of a child who has had numerous undiagnosed/untreated ear infections.  Great.  Our (new!) doctor prescribe some antibiotics and her ears cleared up, and....her reflux disappeared.

I wish that was the end of the story.  It's back, and back with a vengeance.  Upon further research I discovered that antibiotics are sometimes used to treat reflux because of what they do to the GI system.  However, once the abx are over the reflux comes back.  And, did I mention it's back?  The poor girl doesn't know what it's like to eat without her food coming back up to irritate her throat and nose, and we don't know what it's like to sleep at night without being awakened by a choking, gagging baby. I shudder to think what would happen if we didn't have her in our bed.  Yeah, not going there.

So I'm not sure what her/our future holds.  We have an appointment with a Pediatric GI doc in like 23 years (maybe a slight exaggeration).  In the meantime I'm going to be more systematic about cutting foods out of my diet (again), and we'll see if that helps. 

Felicity is 11 months old.  I'm a little bit of a mess thinking back to the past 11 months.  There are often times I want to say, "Enough is enough!", but it would do no good.  If I've learned anything it's that everything happens for a reason.  Even this trial that seems to be so overwhelming has its purpose.  Am I handling it with grace?  I know for a fact that I'm handling it with coffee (and do I realize that caffeine can affect reflux? the answer is yes, but I'm convinced we are dealing with much more than a 1/2 cup of coffee can cause).  I also know for a fact that Felicity Perpetua is worth all of this "hardship".  My, oh my, how our hearts are full of love for this girl.  

A Stitch 'n Time

The Stitch:  Actually, make that 4 stitches, and in Gianna's knee.  This poor girl.  First her sledding, "head meets pole" incident and now this.  The story isn't really that great either.  We were at a neighbor's house for dinner, the kids were playing quietly in the living room, and bam, a sliced knee.  Gianna thinks she maybe, might have been walking, or maybe running, and her eyes might have been closed.  I still don't know what she cut her knee on, but it was bad.  We said, "Thank you very much for dinner, sorry to eat and run" and Brett dropped the rest of us off at home and took Gigi to "Urgent Care".  I hated not being there for my girl, but I knew that Brett was fully capable, and he played the "rescuing father" quite well. 

The Time:  I performed an experiment today.  I didn't check my phone or turn on my computer all day.  Wanna know what happened while I was "not checking in" with the whole world?  A couple of things. 

#1: Nothing.  Every one's life was completely unaltered by my "absence".

#2: Everything.  I was present to my children and we had the absolute best day possible.  We got a lot accomplished in school, all of the household chores were completed, the kids got some free time outside (except for the above mentioned one who is on injured-reserves), every one's moods were great, fighting was at an all-time low, and I could go on and on.  I won't.  Let's just say my little experiment confirmed to me what I already know.  Enough.  Enough blogs, enough facebook, enough articles, reports, "findings".  Enough is enough.  It is important to be informed, but it is not important to know that "friend #123 ate at Taco Bell and saw the funniest dog in the car next to him".  Okay, I completely made that up, but you get the gist (nope, still don't like it...if you were wondering or have any idea what I'm talking about).  The point is, the technology will be turned off during the day and if/when I have free time I will spend a minimal amount of time doing necessary things.  Like blogging, of course.  And reading friends' blogs, and posting adorable pictures of my children or writing about controversial topics.  Would she? 

Wait and see....

Separation Anxiety

I just read a blog post about the upcoming election.  Every part in my being wants to hide from this election.  Is it awful to say that as long as the current President gets replaced I don't really care who gets elected?  I don't really feel that way, but almost. 

The issue this "commenter" had with Rick Santorum (for the record, we haven't decided who we support...this is just what the topic was on) was that he is a Catholic.    Not a Catholic!  Run!  Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic.  She went on and on about the whole separation of church and state thing.  She claimed that she wanted a President working for her, not the Vatican (it would be pretty amusing if it wasn't true).  

Do people not remember what the separation of church and state was all about?  It was to protect the Church....you know that whole "religious freedom" thing that seems to be flying out the window.

Where's the separation when Catholic nurses are being forced into assisting abortions, or pharmacists are being forced to prescribe contraceptives, or contraception is mandatory coverage on all healthcare plans regardless of a religious affiliation? Or a less obvious "separation" when schools are being soooo pc in their Christmas programs that "Christmas" isn't even a part of them although every other religion is.  Am I in favor of separation of church and state.  Uh, yeah!

In less political news...I just tried to warm my coffee up in the refrigerator.  I'm that exhausted.  What a blessing Felicity is, and what lessons we are continuously being taught.  The lesson yesterday was, "Regardless of if you agree with the doctor you must refrain from reaching across the room and throwing a punch, or grabbing said doctor by the face and say, 'look at my eyes...you're not listening to me!'" Oy! The lesson last night was just being you stepped foot into a doctor's office doesn't mean that she's going to be cured and she's still going to keep you up all night long.

I should stop hiding my kids...uh, I mean should get on with my day!  

Uniform Update

Just an FYI, I love using uniforms for our homeschool.  We are going to do this year after year, for sure!  I highly recommend it.  My children look put together, are ready to focus for the day (even on the days when we don't do "table work" they focus), and are able to get ready quickly for the day.  We've received several comments when we are out and about about how nice the kids look.  Now I realize that appearances aren't everything, but I believe that "we" have gotten so informal about how we look that it's nice to step it up a bit.  We also don't get those "shouldn't your children be in school" looks and comments because it is clear that they are a part of some school. 

That is all.  I'm off to teach my put together, focused children something before we head into town for a doctor's appointment.