Story behind the Break...

Since many of you have been asking and I know I will continue to be asked how Kyla broke her wrist, I thought I would just take a moment to share the journey of our week this way.

Monday night actually is when my week began to go downhill.  It was a typical night, everyone exhausted and ready for bed from a fun summer day. Only 15 minutes after I had fallen asleep for the night, I was awakened by my 4 year old throwing up due to a coughing fit.  She's completely healthy, just getting over an ear infection/icky cough and when that girl gets a coughin, she gets a coughin!!! And she just kept coughing, throwing up, coughing, throwing up for a good 20 min. Poor kiddo. Everything cleaned up, new sheets on the bed, battled a fly in her bedroom for another 20 min so that she could calm down to go to sleep. Yeah...needless to say, I finally got to bed by midnight which if you know anything about me is WAY past my bedtime.  I thrive on sleep!  Then Kyla decided after finally having 4 nights in a row of sleeping through the night (woo hoo!)  she was going to wake up multiple times again.  Yippee. I awoke Tues, exhausted, but upbeat and ready to tackle another summer day.

That all changed at about 10:15 am.  The girls and I were having a great morning doing puzzles, playing with play doh, you know the usual.  Then Kyla decided to bring out her 2 year old karate chopping leg tantrums on her sister.  I tell ya, dealing with the hitting/kicking/biting of a 2 year old is exhausting and not to mention totally new for me.  I didn't have to do this when I only had one child.  Geez! Kyla just doesn't like to put up with that sister of hers and she can be vicious. I give Kinsleigh the credit that she was using her words the best she could to tell her to stop and I was too until finally she just wouldn't stop so I used my arm to move her legs real quick and get them out of the way from Kinsleigh to keep her from hurting her.  Still don't know exactly how it happened but Kyla was sitting on her bottom while she was kicking so when I moved her legs, sent her into kind of a pivot and what probably happened was she was leaning back supporting herself on her arms and when she turned, her wrist twisted. =( Ouch! Next thing I knew she was fallen over on her tummy with her armed turned backwards, screaming. I thought it was her shoulder based on how she landed but she just kept holding her wrist screaming...and screaming...and screaming.  I knew this wasn't an ordinary ouchie so we had the pediatrician called within minutes.  Sean sped home from work to watch Kinsleigh (for what ended up being the rest of the day) so I could only have to deal with one child at the Dr.  Ended up being in the office for an hour and a half then finally got sent over to the imaging center for xrays.  This part went fairly quick but keep in mind it was now 1:00pm, kid still had had nothing to eat, was missing nap, and in terrible pain. Got her home, stuck her in our bed to try and get a little rest in her and she ended up sleeping there until near dinner time.  Dr. called back and said xrays looked ok but we should check back in a couple days if she still wasn't acting better. Now sleep patterns are obviously off so yay for that!  Another bad night of rest.

How we spent our entire day...

Wed, awake to another day of pain.  Still not using her hand at all.  Completely swollen and couldn't move her fingers.  She cried ALL DAY LONG!  Oh and I forgot to mention that she hasn't been eating this entire time either which I don't come to discover why until Thurs. morning when I notice a sore on her bottom lip. She does take a ridiculously long nap that afternoon and looked mighty adorable if I do say so myself as you can see...

...only to wake up with a 100 degree fever. What?!  When it rains, it pours right??? Toughed out the rest of our evening followed by another awful night of sleep.  Big sis was an awfully big sweetie in taking care of her though.

Thurs., wake up.  Fever gone. Acting a little better but about 10am we start going downhill again and start crying NONSTOP. Kid is so upset she can't even go to the bathroom.  It was that bad.  Try a lunch, nothing.  Down for a nap, 30 min later, wake up screaming and can never go back to sleep.  Call back the Dr. since it has now been over 48 hours.  Tell her the condition.  She immediately refers us to a pediatric orthopedic Dr.  They said bring her over right away.  Since she's not napping, that was quite easy to do so got her going in a snap.  He took a look at her for literally 2 minutes.  Said she had a "nursemaids elbow" first of all and just snapped it back in place without me even knowing it.  That was causing her a lot of pain I'm sure.  Then moved on down to her wrist and could tell just by feeling that it was broken. Said she has a "blah blah break" (some medical term I clearly do not know).  Apparently since it was a minor break and the location of it, in small children it can be hard to see in an X-ray.  I seriously felt like this dude was a miracle worker. He did such an amazing job.  Had no doubt what was wrong and had her bandaged up and out of there in minutes.  So if you ever need a referral for a child injury, I've got the man for ya!

Let's just say, the kid didn't cry again for the rest of the evening.  She's such a rough/tough trooper!  Praying for a good nights rest and to get our sweet little Kyla girl back quickly.  I mean she does just have the cutest smile on the face of the planet, ya know?

And yes, I've had to keep reassuring myself that I'm not a bad Mommy because I made this happen.  The nurses let me know that stuff like this can happen all the time.  If you twist something just right, it can even be ever so slightly, and it just snaps.  It has not been fun however having to tell the story over and over to every nurse/Dr. we've seen and start crying about it.  But I think I'm good now...thank heavens!!!

Prayer for Patience

I'll be the first to admit that I have been lacking in the patience department lately.  And I will also be the first to say that I blame myself for being the root of this problem.  I'm completely overwhelmed with all sorts of things on my plate and I know that many of them don't have to be there if I didn't choose for them to be.  I'm an overachiever and try to do too much, way too often.  And because of this, my brain gets on overload.  This has been a huge reason of why I haven't been blogging much lately either. I'm trying my very best to cut the things out of my life that really aren't necessary.

Clean the house, take care of the kids, go to work, take kids to all appointments, go grocery shopping, lesson plan for school, plan fun activities for my kiddos...it never stops.  And I'm exhausted. I sleep few hours (partially because of busyness but mostly because our 2 year old likes to sleep terribly many nights).  And when I wake in the morning, I'm worn.  Many days I don't want to talk to anyone and I don't want anyone to talk to me at least for the first good hour or so of being awake.  And if someone does talk to me, you better watch out, because I'll be grouchy.  I mean grouchy with a capital "G!"  Don't believe me?  Just ask my husband.  He won't leave out any detail.  And this is not an okay place to be in.

I've made a conscious effort to not let this feeling of "worn" take over.  I'm trying to maintain my focus on the importance of cuddling my children rather than finishing my To Do List.  But it's oh so very hard when my brain wants to take care of everything I see before me.  But I also want to be set apart from what the majority of modern homes are like.  Mommies getting their "ME TIME" while the kiddos watch T.V., play games, etc.  I've never allowed this in my children and I have no intention to start now.  But in response, what this turns into is me not allowing them to watch T.V. more than a very short amount of time a day but then getting frustrated when they bug me to play something with them while I'm in the middle of a task.  I try to save my big chores for after the kids are in bed but lets face it, by then I'm beyond exhausted because my kids don't even go to bed until 8:30 and I would love to just kick up my feet.  So here is to my new pledge of not being so nit picky.  Summer is coming, I'm loosening up and I'm going to just let my kids be kids!!! I used to be so good at this and I don't like the "me" I've been lately in this regard. Don't be surprised if you see my in public with no makeup on either. School is almost done so the hair and the makeup are going to be placed on the back burner for now.  Because nothing is more important than my family and these are the years that are most important in molding who they are and I refuse to let them go to waste.  

Today, I'm praying for patience and that it will overtake my entire being and mold me into the person I know God wants me to be.  To show grace to my children when I have nothing left. To show honor to my husband for all that he does. To uplift others needs before my own and just be patient and wait for what He has in store for me. 

Amen

"Worn" by Tenth Avenue North

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUEy8nZvpdM

Happy Easter 2013!

What a wonderful weekend of Easter celebrating we had! Started our festivities off on Saturday at the Kirk Crossing egg hunt.  

We got our hands painted

Dug for rocks (each one of these stations had a story behind it but honestly I can't remember them all. Sorry! =( ) 

Painted wooden eggs

And decorated cupcakes (I do know we made a tomb for Jesus with a marshmallow on top!)

Had a short, fun play at the park afterward. I can hardly stand their cuteness in these pictures! 

Easter morning. Not so sure about this shot but they were trying! 

Our efforts at family photos.  It's kind of become a family tradition to take it in this same spot every year. Everyone besides Kyla did awesome!. She however decided to get in crank mood right as we were ready to take these. Oh well! She still looks beautiful, even with tears!

And for the egg hunt...Kinsleigh decided we needed to hide them in the back AND front yard this year.  Yes, she knows that we actually hide the eggs and do the whole Easter basket, that sort of thing.  We don't do beliefs of Easter bunny here.  I can only handle so much make believe so Santa is it for us.  Plus, we try to keep the focus really where it needs to be, that Easter is about Jesus dying for our sins then rising from the dead.  Keepin it real! 

We had a little miss competitive here this year! 

Woah, bet you can figure out who won the hunt!

Happy Easter from our family to yours!  Hope it was filled with lots of special memories! 

Stay tuned and link up to my "Random Thoughts and Polka Dots" blog here

to see all the Easter activities we did throughout the week! 

Kyla's girl is 2!

So...it's been over 2 months since I last posted on here! 2 months! So what better way to get back to it than with some adorable memories of Kyla's 2nd Birthday celebrations this past weekend?! Yes, you heard me correctly.  My BABY girl is 2 years old!  Somebody please tell me how this is even possible.  

She got to start off her morning opening her special gift from sister and enjoy some birthday donuts (even though they are covered in green sprinkles because of St. Patricks Day). 

Then she headed to preschool and got to have a birthday celebration there with some fun Elmo cookies with all her little friends.  Aren't they all so cute?

This is my favorite photo of the day because it just wraps up her personality in a nutshell!

She (and big sister) adore the new ariel vanity from Mommy and Daddy. Flounder likes to kiss himself.  They even give eachother makeovers.  Having two girls is so much fun.

On Saturday, I was busy making her Elmo cupcakes for her Incredible Pizza birthday party with the family! They turned out pretty adorable if I do say so myself.

The girls have a new favorite hobby.

And this was the game winner for the evening. Punch out the duckies! =)

Who do you think is more excited to see what is inside?

Our newest member of the family, Lamby.

You're 2! Happy Birthday Kyla Hope!  Thank you for bringing smiles, cuddles and giggles into our lives each and every day.

                                                

Happy New Year!!!

2012 was a magnificent year!  We all grew in so many ways.  Kyla finally started talking more (yes, I promise it's true).  Kinsleigh has made huge strides in all aspects of her development.  Praise the Lord!  I believe I have learned to be a more patient mother and Sean's understanding of the gospel has become even greater. I'm not really one for resolutions (ok, to be honest I kind of think they are dumb) but my number one goal for this year is to be more intentional in my relationships with others.  Thank you to everyone who has supported/walked alongside us in our journey this past year! 

Happy New Year! 

  

A little reminiscing of 2012...