2 updates in 1: Katie's arm and Caleb's sleep

Katie and her arm:
We saw the orthopedist today. Katie's arm isn't broken. I'm SO SURPRISED by that. The doctor said she bruised a bone in her elbow. She told me that type of injury can be pretty painful and takes awhile to heal. They put a splint on her arm and gave her a good sling and it seems to be helping. It really seems to make her more comfortable. I'm still skeptical, but I guess I should believe her.

Caleb, Night 2 and 3:
Last night went fair. His naps were messed up all day and he ended up taking a catnap at 6:30pm so that made going to bed challenging, plus he went to bed later than normal. Not a good way to start off. I fed him at 9:00 and put him in bed at 9:30. The first time I checked on him, he freaked out so I decided it was better not to check on him. Michael is sharing a room with him now so I just had him go in there and read. I figured it's not really a "sleep crutch" because he's going to be in there when Caleb wakes up in the night. So I knew he wasn't like stuck in the crib slats or something because Michael was watching out for him. Blake went in a couple times and that seemed to be a better solution.

He cried for an hour and then crashed... and didn't wake up till 5am! That's amazing considering this is his first night of night-weaning and he went 8 hours without eating. (Normally he only goes 2-3). At that point I really didn't want to make him CIO since he wakes up sometimes at 6, so I pretended it was morning and got him up. I had to wake up at that time anyway for Katie's doctor appointment.

Tonight was harder, as I expected it to be. He cried for almost an hour and a half. He'd get quiet for awhile and I kept thinking he was finally asleep and then he'd start up in major protest again. He just barely fell asleep. Phew!   I hope that was the worst night. It seems that normally night 2 or 3 is the worst and then gets better and better. Hopefully we've hit that night. It just breaks my heart to hear him calling, "Mommy, I wanna get out!" At the same time, I need sleep!!!

I guess last night was "Night One"

Caleb is a horrible sleeper and has been for a long time now. He wakes up multiple times a night and I still feed him in the night because it's the path of least resistance and gets us both back to sleep the fastest (sorta). But it's really not the best solution as we all know. I often end up falling asleep in the chair and not sleeping good because I'm sitting up. Lately, I'm just plain exhausted from getting up with him a bazillion times a night with him. He needs to learn how to sleep!!!

I kept hoping that he'd just "get it" without having to cry it out (CIO). I even read The Sleep Lady over the last week in hopes of finding a gentler approach than the CIO method  that we did with my other kids. Plus I didn't want to make him CIO with his reflux and ear infections and teething. My sister says I'm just babying him and making excuses and that I should just night-wean him and let him CIO all at the same time and get it over with. And that I should do it now. I agree with her, but I can't bring myself to do it. We have his reflux under control, he got tubes so no more ear infections, and he only has 2 more teeth left to get. So I really have no excuse. Well, I did have one other excuse - he had a fever for 6 days straight and felt miserable. That made his night sleeping even worse and put me to the point of beyond exhaustion. I can't even drive without being afraid I'll fall asleep at the wheel. I knew we were close to taking the CIO plunge, but I didn't want to sleep-train while he had a fever. He just got over his fever so, like I said, I have no more excuses. And the scary thing is I think he's getting close to climbing out of his crib (he tries, but hasn't yet) so my window of opportunity is slowly closing. I know all his problems are my fault but I really just haven't gotten up the motivation to fix him... till last night.

He woke up, I fed him back to sleep and then ended up falling asleep sitting up in the chair for an hour. I woke up from awful neck pain and he was sound asleep on my lap. I put him in his bed and he woke up as I laid him down. Usually he just lays back down, I sit with him for a minute and he goes back to sleep - no big deal. He does put himself to sleep at night, but I have sit in the room with him. I don't have to hold him or feed him so we've made progress there, and that's why he usually just lays down and goes to sleep. Last night after I put him in bed, he woke up and started crying. I got him out to feed him again, but it had only been an hour and I thought that was just crazy.  I had no milk left, I was tired and annoyed so I just put him back in his bed. He got mad and refused to lay down. I know he was tired. He sat there on his knees, whining and would fall asleep sitting up, but then tip over and it'd wake him up. Then he'd scream/cry again, fall asleep sitting up and repeat the process all over. I sat with him in his room. A few times he stood up and tried to get out. He kept saying, "I wanna go downstairs." "I wanna to go to mommy's room." I showed him it was dark outside and he has to sleep when it's dark. (A concept he just started understanding this week so that's a plus.) Eventually... FINALLY... he gave in and went to sleep and slept for a good 3 hours till he woke up at 6:30. That's amazing in itself because he has only been going two hour stretches at the most lately. (Yes, he's like a freaking newborn who wakes up every hour or two wanting to eat...and I caused this. I realize that!)

While I sat there with him, exhausted and annoyed, I decided it was time and it's all his fault. I told him while we were sitting there, "You know you're about to make your life really miserable in the next few days buddy. You've just worn out your sympathy from mom." He shouldn't mess with the sleep-deprived mom!  We got into a battle of the wills and I'm going to win this one. We both need our sleep!!! I wanted to wait till his last 2 teeth broke through, but now that we already went through that last night I might as well keep going and call that night one. He just sealed his fate!  I know it really won't take long, but it's just such torture for the first few nights.   I have to stick with it now and sleep-train and night-wean my spoiled little 7th child!

Wish us luck!

Update on Katie's arm

They told us to call my pediatricians office (since she's the one who ordered the x-rays). Of course she wasn't in today so we saw another doctor. The x-rays show no break, but the doctor I saw today believes there's something going on and just can't figure it out. So he referred us to a pediatric orthopedist. They can't get her in till tomorrow. So my poor little girl has to be in pain longer. She's still not using her arm and she still complains that it hurts her. The weird thing is that she CAN move her arm. The doctor today manipulated it all over the place (**cringe**). She didn't really say anything - just winced here and there. So he couldn't tell if it hurt her or not. I think she was trying to be brave. After he left, she looked really pale and said her tummy hurt - probably because of the pain from her arm. He thinks it's her elbow and says elbows are tricky to diagnose. So that's the update... we still don't know anything basically.

I get to spend all day tomorrow driving downtown and waiting at the orthopedic clinic. They are the slowest place I've ever seen! That's the same clinic I was at JUST YESTERDAY for Michael and his broken leg. The appointment took 4 hours yesterday and 6 hours the first time we were there. Fun times for us!

I hope they can give us an answer... any answer.

Another update: Katie just had a blessing.  She even asked for it herself which is incredibly rare.  She was blessed that she would be comforted from the pain and that the doctors will figure out what's wrong and be able to fix it.  That makes me feel a lot better.

I think Katie broke her arm

Katie fell at school yesterday.  She came home with a scrape on her elbow and complained about it a lot, but she complains about aches and pains a lot so I didn't think much of it.  She also woke me up at 5am to tell me that her arm hurt.  I should have figured out then that a scraped up elbow shouldn't wake you from a sound sleep.  The school nurse called later to say that she was babying her arm all day. We both kinda put it all together and wondered if it was broken.

I called her pediatrician and they sent us to the hospital for x-rays.  But they took long getting them done and by then the doctor's office was closed.  So they basically just sent us home since she didn't have a doctor following her case at the hospital and the doctor that ordered the x-rays (pediatrician) wasn't around.  Ugh.  So we have to wait till tomorrow to find out what's going on.  There's something in my head saying I know it's broken.  Moms just know these things.  Katie can't sleep because her arm hurts.  It's going to be a long night!

Oh and the "funny" thing is... we spent the entire morning at the hospital (same hospital, just the downtown location) with Michael checking out his broken leg!!! The update on him is that the (annoying) doctor wants to wait another month and "see what happens". Basically it hasn't healed like he expected and if it's not better in a month then they're going to do surgery. (I don't think I updated about his leg - it's a long explanation that I'll save for another day because I'm tired.)  My thought is if he thinks there's a possibility for surgery, why not do it now and get if over with so Michael can start healing rather than waiting and then taking more time to heal after surgery? I don't like it that he wants to wait another month and THEN do surgery and then Michael will be hobbling around for months recovering from surgery. Not that I want my kid to have surgery, but if it's gonna happen let's get it over with!

What a day it's been over here! Broken bones abound at our house. I'll be waiting for a knock on the door from Child Protection Services.

Family Fun Night

We decided a few months ago to make one night a week a "family fun night".  We still have our regular Family Home Evening once a week, but we wanted to add an extra family night just for having fun.  Life is so busy and the routine is so... well, "routine"... that we sometimes just don't stop enough to enjoy each other's company and just have FUN.  We've found that Sunday works best to have our regular Family Home Evening since Blake travels the rest of the week, but he's almost always home on Sunday.  Sunday just lends itself so naturally to more spiritual discussions anyway.  So on Sunday we do our spiritual family lessons, scripture study, family council, stuff like that.  Then one day during the week we do some kind of fun activity. That night can change depending on what's going on that week.  Most of the activities we planned are cheap or even better - free.  But hopefully they'll be fun and build family unity and make us laugh.  So we planned on every week, but so far we haven't done them every week.  Still, we're making an effort and are having some good, quality family time more often.  So far we've had a Family Game Night, Chinese Jump Rope "lessons", and worked on a Family Service Project. 

FAMILY GAME NIGHT

We spent an evening playing board games, had a family bowling tournament on the Wii, played Mario Kart, and ate ice cream. We all had a really fun time!

First, playing Connect 4.

Caleb had a ball playing Connect 4.

Eating ice cream:

Playing Mario Kart.  MOM even played!!  (I think Caleb is teething here. This made me laugh because he looks like it's a nail biting moment as he cheers on mom.)

 Katie working really hard to stay on the track:


CHINESE JUMP ROPE:
I remember playing this as a kid ALL summer long.  We loved Chinese jump rope!  So I got the idea of getting a Chinese jump rope and teaching my kids how to play.  We had a great time and laughed a lot.  (Which I guess is the purpose of our family night's so now that I wrote that, I realize maybe we're having success.)  I forgot to take pictures of the first Chinese jump rope night.  These pictures are from the second time we played so Blake and Nathan aren't in them, but they did join us for one night.  Also they're after Michael broke his leg so he didn't have as much fun.  He loved the first night though... pre-broken leg.  I highly recommend getting a Chinese jump rope (it was only $3 on Amazon) and playing it with your kids.  Super fun, and even a bit of exercise.

Lydia trying to remember what comes next.  (There are instructions on the package and on the internet if you don't know how to play.)

Michael helping Lydia with the "diamond" part.  She couldn't get her feet out and jump at the same time so Michael picked her up.  lol

I never got a picture of Elizabeth's face because she was too determined in her jumping.  Here she is doing "twisty"

Caleb got in on the fun and held the rope.  He mostly just enjoyed jumping and trying to step on the rope or climb under it.

 

You have to hold your tongue just right. 

Not the best quality picture, but I thought this was such a cool picture.  Look how high Anna got off the ground!

FAMILY SERVICE PROJECT:
We made snack bags for a local center.  They basically help local families within our school district by providing assistance with food, clothing, school supplies and holiday assistance. They have a small food pantry.  We decorated bags and filled them with snacks for kids to eat after school when their parents work or for school breaks when no parent is home.

Getting started:

Let the decorating begin!

Caleb was very serious about putting stickers on his bag:

After decorating the bags (and getting in pjs to avoid later chaos), they helped fill the bags.  We filled each bag with: peanut butter crackers, granola bars, juice boxes, and a mini candy bar.  (And there just so happened to be extra candy bars left over that mysteriously disappeared over the next 3 days.  Remind me never to buy a giant size bag of chocolate at Costco - they're too bad to have around me!)
Filling bags (oh and Elizabeth put her pjs on backwards on purpose.  She has a lot of interesting fashion statements.)

The finished bags:

I had all the kids pick out their favorite bag that they decorated and took a picture of each kid to show off their creation:

Caleb didn't care about bags - he just wanted to play cars:

We later took the bags to the Service Center.  I had the kids bring them in to hand deliver them so they could see where they were going and feel a part of the project.  The girls just carried a bag each while my big muscly boys hefted the boxes for me.  It was SUPER windy.

 Anna was really touched after hearing about kids who didn't have enough money to buy food or have snacks.  She was also really proud and happy to help: 

It was a great family project because it was something that they all could do - even the little ones.  And they were really impressed when they learned where the bags were going and what they were going to be used for.  When we delivered them, I had one of the ladies there explain to the kids how their agency worked.  She said something about these bags going to kids who wouldn't otherwise have snacks.  Anna was shocked to learn that some kids don't have snacks and was really worried for them.  All the kids felt a sense of accomplishment and were proud to give other kids snacks (probably since their lives include LOTS of snacks!)
 

This is a serious LOVE of shoes!

Elizabeth LOVES shoes... all kinds!  She was shopping online for shoes with me one day when a pair caught her eye and she said, "I NEED black high heels mom!"  I don't even know where she learned what high heels are, let alone that she needs them.  And she wants every style of shoe in every color.  It's actually really cute to me because I know it's totally her own personality.  She obviously didn't learn any of this from mom. I wore the same style of shoe for 10+ years, just kept buying new ones when the old ones wore out.  (Those of you who knew me from high school will remember my favorite Reeboks!  I even wore them under my wedding dress.)  She's very aware of what shoes "go with" what outfit.  One day she told me that "black shoes don't go with brown pants."  Which is probably true, but how does she know that?  Check out this picture.  I found her this way one night before I went to bed.  If you look closely you'll see her 2 bears sleeping on their own pillow and SHOES on her pillow!  Yes, she's sleeping with shoes! 

This love of shoes started really early too.  Here she is around 18 months.
"So many shoes, so little time... it's just exhausting!"

Always wearing shoes, even if she wasn't wearing clothes.

More Easter Pictures

Just 2 more... all dressed up and ready for church!