Selah Grace says Thank You!

Translation:

Thank you so much for praying for me. You are my prayer warriors. I hope my story will encourage you and inspire you and give you hope.

Nothing is too big or small for God.








Translation:
I wasn't done yet.
I was wondering if anyone will go ahead and get me out of this seat.

Has it been that long?

10 years ago, I was right in the middle of my 1st year of teaching. Oh my, I'm hoping those (now college FRESHMEN!) learned something that year. lol

The most wonderful thing about that year was the friendships I made. Leigh and I carpooled every day and the memories are a treasure. It was a 30 mile commute (both ways!), so we had pretty much solved the world's problems by year 3. And that girl could keep me LAUGHING.

Melissa and Cori were two other teachers I met that year, and I don't know if I could have gotten through that year without them! We were all right out of college - but they had it SO together. I was clueless!! Ha! Two years later, we had switched schools and met Nicole - and I knew from the moment I met her what an awesome friend she would be. (seriously - I had that exact thought!)

Leigh has moved WAY too far away in my opinion!! But has been a huge support for me over the past years - just knowing that she was praying for me.

And Cori, Melissa, Nicole, and I have all lived right here in the metroplex - but with marriages, and 8 kids between us, and just LIFE in general - we rarely get to see each other. It's like a once a year event that I really look forward to!

Starting in November, we started throwing out some dates to try and plan a dinner out. After some cancellations and reschedulings and holidays, we FINALLY got to see each other last night. SO FUN!!

And just like a great friendship should be, we just jumped right in and didn't stop talking for hours. These are girls I can count on for prayer, for wisdom, for support, for comfort, for advice, for ANYthing! We can cry one second and laugh the next. It was awesome to get to share all about Selah Grace and know that He was a listener - and probably participator! - in our conversation.

Leigh - WHEN you move back down here - we are absolutely going to do the same thing!! :)



Girls - you've seen me through a crazy 10 years. Your examples, your words, your hearts meant more to me that you EVER knew. Some days, your smiles ... it was all I had. The Lord truly blessed me with you!! I love you guys so much!!!

Can't wait for 10 more years with you!!! (will we be in menopause yet? LOL!!)


(by the way, next time let's take a picture! duh!!)

sewing break

We were supposed to be at a playdate today, but ZZ has the sniffles. It's been a fun at-home day. :) Now I'm trying to finish the kids' outfits, but had to jot down some great things from today...


Zachariah:

He's making a book today. Not sure what it's going to be about yet, but I'm guessing something will blow up.


He got a game out today and told me, "I'm going to play this game even though it's against the law. It's for three year olds, and I'm five."





Selah Grace:

ROLLED OVER today! From tummy to back! Now that she can roll both ways, we wonder what trouble she will find.

She says hi. :)

And can you see her eyes starting to turn brown? I have noticed the little brown flecks starting to spread. The flash caught them today. It will be fun to watch!



And I am just so excited that my new lens is the same one that Pioneer Woman has now! I feel very cool.

(and Leigh - I'll try to post about photography soon - AND btw omgosh if you move back here I'll be in Heaven!!!)


...back to sewing...

20,000 visits!

How fun! I thought it deserved a new blog header - one that finally included our little princess! You like?

Also - included our kids' life verses that I pray over them. It's an idea I got from my old accountability group. :)



Today's been relaxing and productive.

We all went to bed early last night. ZZ slept in this morning. SG is such a little darling.... Brian brought her to me to nurse this morning before he worked out, and then we just laid there together for about an hour. She's just so chilled out - it's really cute. :)


Zac was gone this weekend and is smothering Selah Grace today because he had missed her so much. And she loooooves the attention from him. He is getting better about carrying her around and it gives me a break. ;)

Plus it makes for some cute pictures!







What we have going on this week:
* A preppy-punk photo shoot with my cutie pie little boy
* 1st weigh-in for my biggest loser competition
* New preschool class for sweet ZZ
* 1st couponing adventures while he's in school (wish me luck!)

And the thing I'm MOST looking forward to - a new idea I have for matching outfits for my babies. I have the idea in my mind and I need to find the right patterns to make it work. And the perfect material. Can't wait for the finished product and photo shoot!!

I heard the weather's beautiful right now. Waiting for ZZ to finish homework and for SG to wake up - then we're going for a bike/stroller ride!



Wonderful start to a wonderful week!

Amazing. Unbelievable. UNREAL.

I had Selah Grace via c-section. As I laid there while they "finished me up" Brian was back and forth - checking on Selah, checking on me. We were giddy, happy, and excited.

And he said to me, "They are talking about some kind of rash she has."

And I was all, "so? Who does she look like?! How big is she?!"

And we forgot about it.


Until that next morning, when we started meeting with doctor after doctor. And they kept talking about her rash. And how it was "linear." And how it wasn't normal.

But she was so bundled up and cute, I never even looked at it.





Until the day after that when we had a doctor who was brought in from another hospital to talk to us and told us that we needed to take her to a specialist in Dallas and gave us a piece of paper with weird words...

"incontinentia pigmenti" and "conradi hunermann"

Oh, and she told us not to google it. (Yeah right)


And that set us off on an emotional roller coaster. We were never really able to celebrate her birth. It was doctor's appointments and tears and a blur of newborn chaos and 5 year old energy.

We went to our appt at the specialist's office in Dallas. Zachariah was playing on Brian's iPhone. We were given the diagnosis of conradi-hunermann syndrome. What we didn't know was that Zachariah was taking pictures with the iPhone while we were being given the news.

In a sad series of candid pictures, our devastation was documented.


And we couldn't delete them. We just couldn't.





So, we watched her rash transform in all the ways we were told it would. From white, to red, to scaly, to excema-like.

It took me a while to take a picture of the rash. But I finally did. I told myself - what if we have a 2nd baby girl some day... I wanted to remember what it looked like before it changed again.


Lastly, it was supposed to turn into a birthmark. We didn't know how dark it would be, but it would run up and down her legs in a "linear" fashion, just as the rash did.




Over and over, each doctor would show us the same illustration of our daughter's future.




And we prayed and prayed and prayed. And she was on every prayer list we knew of. And then we prayed some more.

"God help us to accept Your will."



And even really CRAZY prayers, like,

"GOD PLEASE HEAL OUR DAUGHTER."

Please God.



You don't really pray until you've prayed for your own child's health.

Humbling.


After our appt with the geneticist, we noticed her rash starting to fade. All of a sudden it was gone. No birthmark. Just disappeared. Weird.





Today, January 7, 2009, we received a call from the geneticist. Selah Grace's bloodwork came back. Normal.

NORMAL.

NORMAL!!!!!!!!



And she was perplexed. And she had spent time brainstorming this week with the original specialist we saw back in September. Before they told us, they were trying to figure out what happened.

And no one knows.

No one knows?

WE KNOW. We SO know.

And the geneticist said, "So, I guess all you have is a little girl with a birthmark."

And I said, "It's gone. It disappeared."

And she said, "It did? Well, I guess then what you have is a little girl who used to have a rash."


She wants us to keep our appt with Scottish Rite. Because they aren't sure what has happened. And why. And how.

But when I asked about her opthamologist appt, she said we could cancel it. (OH, that is a huge answer to prayer in itself - those appts are HORRIBLE and PAINFUL for Selah Grace!!!! They have to do all sorts of terrible things that made me want to faint just watching!)

This is not a case of her NOT ever having conradi hunermann. She did have it. No professional we saw ever doubted that.

The bloodwork was not necessarily to tell us whether or not she had it, it was really because she DID have it, and we were going to be able to tell more about how the gene was functioning.

This is a case of a miracle. In our little girl. This is the hand of God at work. This is the Lord answering prayer!! This is a real true life miracle that we cannot believe we have the honor of holding in our hands!!!!

We are joyful and tearful and in total disbelief!!

COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISBELIEF!!!!

Neither of us have EVER witnessed this before. When doctors are speechless and confused. When they have no explanation of something that was THERE is NOT THERE ANYMORE!!

Please join us in grateful and humble prayer thanking Him for His amazing healing hands.

And we absolutely CANNOT thank you enough for your prayers! To put our baby on your prayer lists and your church's prayer lists... her name was lifted up by people we will never know. I mean, we are ETERNALLY GRATEFUL FOR THAT!!!!!!!! And please pass on this miracle answer to prayer. GOD CAN HEAL!!! Never doubt Him!!!!



Lord,

We are in awe of You. Your power. You kept us in the shadow of your wings until this calamity passed. (Psalm 57:1) You were our refuge from darkness, and You showed Your mighty hands. Your light broke forth like the morning!!! (Isaiah 58:8) Thank you Lord. THANK YOU!!!!

Selah Grace has a new room

I used to have a home day care. Two actually. One when Zac was a year old. Then I moved and opened another one when he was two.

I loved that job! I mean L.O.V.E.D. that job. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. But only if I could have the exact same kids. ;)

I am still friends with several of the families. And I got to see one of my little ones on Christmas Eve and I almost burst into tears when I saw her! Didn't want to let her go!!

How easy was it to just walk downstairs to work? We had calendar in the mornings and music in the afternoon. We played a lot of make-believe and playdoh and parachute games. My first daycare was all babies and I had a quad stroller in which we'd take looooong walks together. SO peaceful! In the 2nd I had this wagon that sat 5 kids and I pulled that monster to the park every day. Did I mention that I was also pushing a double stroller at the same time? No wonder I was in shape!

The 1st daycare was just in one room. 4 one year olds. Oh, they were precious!



The 2nd daycare was much bigger. There were 3 rooms where the kids could play. This is before lunch one day. Too cute!!


And my naproom was the bomb. These kids would sleep hard from 1-3 (sometimes 4!) and I would do my bible study and read books with a flashlight.

There were two kids who didn't sleep in the naproom until they were older. When they took 2 naps a day, the naproom was too close to the playroom and woke them up. SO.... one slept in the laundry room and one in the hallway closet. It probably looked terrible, but the parents were fine with it, and the kids really loved their personal space. lol (I did get big frowns from licensing, but there was no rule in the books against it!)



So, this week, when Selah Grace started a sleep-depriving routine of waking up in the middle of the night and politely requesting (read: screaming) to be held until daylight.... we were EXHAUSTED.

And I remembered my little closet and laundry-room sleepers from the daycare.

And we have this really big bathroom attached to the kids' room.....


Voila! Selah's new sleeping arrangement!




We all got a great night's sleep last night.


Here are my pajama babies this morning. So in love with them!!

Date nights

Brian and I had our first *real* date night in quite a while! :)

We had won a pair of Dallas Stars (hockey) tickets and they were ROW O!!! We were so excited. Not that we are big Stars fans, but it just sounded cool.

I called a babysitter, sweet Ashleigh (thank you Hollie for sharing her!!), and made sure I had enough milk stored for Selah Grace. I scribbled some notes about the kids and squeezed into the cute top Brian got me for Christmas (size small... he has such rose-colored glasses). We even had a *back-up* babysitter just in case Ashleigh didn't want to drive in the snow.

We were SO ready...but then we got in the car. And... well, like, what do you talk about when you aren't being interrupted every 5 seconds with Mom, I'm hungry and when are we gonna get there? and where is Selah's paci? etc etc etc.

At first, we were all... "So.... how was your day?" Lame!

But pretty soon we got all goofyflirty again, and even though we took the minivan, we pretended like we didn't. (wouldn't it be fun to have a datenight sports car?)


So what you don't see...
is that when we get there, we start heading straight down to the very very very bottom row.

Where the cool people are. Where you can feel the cool of the ice. Where you can bang on the plexiglass and yell at the players.

ROW O. Here we come.

And then we got to the very bottom. And we were all... wait a minute. This bottom row says, "A." Turns out the rows are not NUMBERED. They are LETTERED. And our Row Zero tickets were actually Row "Oh."

Oh.

But we decided to have fun in Row Oh. And it ended up being a super fun game that we won! And we got home in time to only pay our babysitter $40.


And we decided to do this whole Date Night thing again soon. :)



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On NYE, Zachariah (who was very hurt that A:we went out without him and B:we went to a hockey game without him) and Brian teamed up to suggest another date night - but this time it was going to be a FAMILY Date Night.

And Brian got to enjoy a true Zachariah outfit. Every once in a while, Zachariah will want to look "handsome." And he always picks out this one pair of dress pants because they look like a pair that Brian wears to work.

But ZZ surprised us both when he wanted to wear a tie. He had chosen the outfit (he claimed the shirt and pants both had "green") and the burgundy/navy tie kind of pulled the whole mismatched look together. We thought he look adorable and he was soooo proud.

What you don't see...
is that I am almost in pajamas and Brian's not much better. Selah Grace is actually IN pajamas. He clearly outdressed us all!

Another quick note about this picture.... see sweet Selah Grace sleeping in the background? This girl - as dramatic as she CAN be - is such a sweet blessing at restaurants and movie theaters. SO easy to cart her around!! And see her little cow? Mimi and Daddymac got that for her and she sleeps with it every night. It's her little lovie. :) Thanks Mimi and Daddymac!!!!



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And this last pic is my new hair. I got some bangs cut and about 8 inches off the bottom. I actually got it cut at a gym where I was able to drop ZZ off to play. I was hoping he'd have fun while I got my scalp massaged.

What you don't see...

is that after picking him up, he says...

Mom? I need to tell you something that happened at the gym.

(pause and a really sad voice)

Someone called me a baby.

I was soooo sad for him. He is so protected in his friendships. Most are my friends' kids and they are all just really good kids. No bullies, no meanies.... I mean, it's rare for Zac to even argue with somebody. (minus with Brian and me... ha!) And I am glad he's in that bubble, since he's only 5 and will have plenty of time to deal with mean people. But every once in a while (usually at the gym) he'll encounter a mean kid and we deal with it.

So anyways, apparently he walked away from the kid. And then he thought of a good comeback and went to find the kid to tell him....

You're going to be sorry when Christmas comes.