Now- Just Memories

I finished brinley's scrapbook before jace was born. Now, I am going back to do all the journaling. Because of this, I have reflected much on our precious little angel on her first year: average of 2 doctor visits a week, constant nurse and physical therapist visit's to our home, total of 5 weeks in hopital stays, poked and prodded by hundreds of specialist's, 5 months of a feeding tube down one nostril, 4 months of (the hideous) trumpet down the other nostril. 5 months of her parents pinning her down while she screams with pain as they switch tubing every week, being connected to 20 different wires all over her body while conducting a sleep test once a month, 2 months of oxygen, 8 months of tape covering her face (that poor little face) one 4 hour surgery, and 2 weeks of arms restraints. brinley has come a long way since she was born and she was such a trooper through all of it (which is why today she screams when we go to the doctor even if its not for her) She is one BIG daddy's girl and our little princess!

We'll show you some 007!

Call for a babysitter a week ahead of time for a
saturday night date-check

3 children all sick at once - crap!

1 child better by wednesday-check

Take children to doctor thursday-check
sound fine, just have cough in the throat not in lungs-check

All doing better saturday morning-check

Prepare 2 for babysitter-check

Prepare 1 baby for grandma-check

Get ready for hot date-check

20 minutes before going to pick up babysitter, 1 child runs a fever-crap!

Gave tylenol -check

Pick up sitter-check

Child's fever has reduced by the time we leave-check

Drive to grandmas drop off baby-check

Having one awesome date shooting our hand guns at the shooting range, filling our tummies with delicious mouth watering steaks and loving every bit of having a uninterrupted conversation with the person you love!- check

Mommy's little boy-ok BIG

We can't believe how fast jace has grown. He is now 6 months and is just learning to sit up.

when he was about 2 months old his skin looked like he might have eczema. jaron had it and has begun to grow out of it. so we started to use jaron's eczema cream but it didn't seem to do a very good job. one night after visiting mark's parents we noticed how red and rashy jace's skin became. he began to cry and noticed him trying to scratch himself. when we got home i gave him a warm bath to take off anything that might be irritating his skin and it seemed to help but the next couple of weeks his skin was looking even worse and i then took him to the doctor. he suggested to give him a stronger medicine for his skin and to put him to bed with a warm wet onesis underneath his clothes that would keep him moisturized. we did that for a couple weeks and it seemed to help but did not completely clear it up. his head also was so dry that he would dig his nails into his scalp and draw blood. after the second trip to the doctor he thought that it might not be all eczema but an allergic reaction to something so he then reffered us to an allergist. this last week we took jace to an allergist to look at his skin. he said that it looked like he had very sensitive skin and has developed a baby's rash but wanted to test him anyway in case there might be other factors in play. i have never seen how they do this test and it was quite interesting. they had me hold jace facing me and with a pen wrote a ton of numbers in columns a long his back and then took a little device that would gently scratch his skin and release little drops of fluid next to each number. they would use about 30 different droppers. After this was done i would have to hold him in that same position for about 15 minutes. as i was sitting there i noticed how much one side of his back was turning brillant red next to certain numbers and knew then that he was definatley allergic to something. when the nurse came back in i asked her what the columns meant on his back. she said that the right side was all evironmental like weeds, grass, pollen ect. and the left side is all food. she then said it looked like he is not allergic to anything evironmental but is definately allergic to some food and how that is where we run into trouble. of course she couldn't tell me what it was and i waited for the doctor to come in. as i was sitting there i was just praying that it wasn't wheat or flour. well it wasn't, but he is allergic to eggs ( though he can grow out of it and it is ok if its cooked in something) which means no flu shots for a while. he is aslo severly allergic to peanuts! (well at least it wasn't all nuts) but he did give me some reading information and a prescripton for epipen in case he does come in contact with peanuts and needs that adrenaline shot. good news though the shot has enough doses for two so if we don't get him to the hospital in time we can give him one more ( that was comforting). as for his skin i need to rub him down with this awesome lotion VANICREAM (which i highly recomend for anyone's dry skin) 4 times a day and use baby's head and shoulders on his scalp once a day just until his next doctors visit. so we are very grateful that at least we found out ahead of time that he does have these food allergies.

At the end of this doctors visit he turned to me and said " now about his weight" ( he weight 21 pound and is 27 inches long) " his rolls on his skin does not help with his problem and he is definatley a big boy". " Is your husband a big man?" ( i had to laugh at that one!) i then explained to him that from birth this child never stops eating and even at 3 weeks i had to start subsituting formula because i wasn't producing enough and pretty much since then (even with solids) he stills eats just about every two hours but that he does sleep thru the night. he then told me that i need to be feeding him every 4 hours at this age and to get him to that by the end of the month. he thinks that jace has just become acustom to eating every 2 hours and i need to lengthen that because right now he is the weight of a 1 year old. brinley now weighs at 2 years old 22 pounds and is 29 inches long, jace has almost caught up to her in 6 months- i mean just look at this boy- he is solid and has man boobs! ( definately going to be our football player) and what a cutie!

Late night games

mark and i have found a new hobby to do together. it is something not too many wifes may do with their husbands or even have interest in but i have found myself addicted to it. its something we can do together when the children are in bed. ( no its not sex though yes i am addicted to that too!) i find that it is not only fun but frustrating at the same time and yes sometimes you might even hear a little profanity slip out. what is it? XBOX 360! we have purchansed the subscribtion to play live with other players and currently we play with some of our good friends. right now we love playing Ghost Recon- Advanced Warfighter. mark tells me as soon as i become real good that he will get me a PINK controller. I never thought i would really like playing video games -( mostly because of how all those buttons looked so confusing and it was overwhelming to me) but i find that it is actually really fun ( especially when i get the chance to kill mark- only because he is soo good!) i love being able to sit next to my husband and play late into the night and even laugh at myself when I accidentally shoot someone on my team. recently we all had a good laugh- it was maybe my 2nd time playing and hense the conversation:

me: it's really hard to control moving my guy around and shooting someone at the same time.

mark: just keeping pushing the left joystick up and move the right joystick at the same time to look where you are going and focus on who is around you.

me: hey this guy is running around me and not shooting me - hey i can't move that fast- what is he doing? great i'm dead!

mark: (laughing)

me: what? i am still learning how to make my guy walk straight

mark: that was brett, he came around the corner and saw this guy wandering around looking at the sky and knew it had to be you and decided to have a little fun!

me: nice brett, nice!