Cookie girls!

Recently Ella had a friend from school over and they had so much fun making cookies I had to document it :-)

little girls must embellish most things so I dug out some sprinkles to add to the cookies and they loved it

Ella & Emily

girlfriend loves her cookies

"Where's mine??"

"I'll try it..."

"Yumm!"

Then, everyone got weird and silly...

Fun Playdate!

Broken Wing

Last week we had our first run in (thankfully) with nurse maid's elbow.  In harsher terms, I pulled my child's elbow out of socket. 

It was definitely not on purpose, I didn't even realize it had happened. And sadly, I wasn't even doing something fun, like swinging her around in circles by her hands.  I was trying to coax her into the house from the garage so we could leave for dinner at a friend's house.  She wouldn't come in so I held her hand to lead her inside and in classic toddler form, she arched her back and pulled away from me.  And ta-da, the damage was done.  However, I didn't know at that point. 

I picked her up, brought her in, and we headed to the car.  I must have noticed something about her arm because I checked it as I buckled her in but it seemed fine.  She was crying but I was sure she was crying because she was mad that I won't let her live in the garage.  This is not a new argument for us.

Ella was able to calm her down somewhat on the way to dinner but once we got there she cried inconsolably.  Nothing would calm her down except me singing quietly to her and even that only lasted seconds.  We offered her snacks, dolls, toys, to no avail.  I was sure the distraction of her friend Madi and their dog and just being at someone else's house would help but nope.  Then we started to notice that she wouldn't move her right arm.  Our other friends arrived (this is a weekly dinner with 2 other couples and their kids) and we started offering Sadie cups and snacks and trying to trick her into moving her right hand. She would not do it.  She also wouldn't say any words or answer any questions which is very unlike this little talkative girl.  She just cried.  I have never in my life seen her like this.  So, the 6 adults went into action.

First, I called my friend who has experience with dislocated elbows and sure enough she answered the phone, assured me 3 of her 4 kids have had this happen, and after hearing the story felt sure that's nurse maid's elbow was what we were dealing with.  She told us to go to either the ER or an Urgent Care facility to have them relocate (is that the opposite of dislocate) the elbow.  But, she gave us the sage advice to call ahead and find out how long the wait would be, and ask the Urgent care if they do the adjustment to fix this so we wouldn't end up being sent to the ER after all. 

Right away, everyone went into action calling the closest ER, 2 different Urgent Care places, and googling for info. At one point an ipad and at least 4 cell phones were in use. Can I just say, I LOVE MY FRIENDS!!!  I felt so cared for in those moments.  Deciding what to do and when to do it can be the hardest part in a crisis. Having this little extension of my family hard at work to help us made it simple.  I have no idea what the other 4 kids were doing at that point but I think they were just playing quietly or watching the adults in action (or staring a Sadie and wondering why she was crying non-stop).  Regardless, they were calm and letting the parents deal with this which is no small amount of grace with small kids. There was just blessing all over this situation. Within minutes, we had enough info to decide where to go.  Our friends assured us that of course, Ella would stay with them, we nodded, hugged, and dashed out to the car with poor Sadie. 

The Urgent Care Clinic we went to turned out to be amazing.  It was brand new, super cutely decorated (because that matters somehow), and clean and there were 4 people working and no other patients.  We had their undivided attention and after 3 attempts to "pop" Sadie's elbow back in, it worked!  After the first two attempts they had us play with her and try to get her to move her arm above her head.  Well, that was NOT happening.  She was still crying, super upset by now, and still no arm movement.  She had all 4 staff people there plus Chris and me waving our arms, doing jumping jacks, pointing to the train that goes around the ceiling of the clinic, and basically making fools of ourselves trying to get her to lift her arm.  Then the doctor gave it the 3rd try. It was kind of insane how quickly she went from crying, not talking, mad, sad, and completely unable to move her arm to her normal self with one little "pop."  Phew.  We were so relieved and thanked the staff profusely and went back to dinner.

We texted our friends on the way back and saw that we already had messages from them wondering how we were.  We arrived to lots of dinner left over for us and they'd waited for us to have dessert :-)  Everyone was relieved to see Sadie back to normal from what our friend Brad called "her broken wing." We collapsed into chairs, ate and told the story of how she got fixed and just enjoyed each other for another hour before heading home.

Can I tell you how great it felt to be cared for by friends in this situation?  It wasn't super serious, but it was hectic and upsetting and I couldn't be more thankful that we were at dinner with these friends.  I feel like I'll remember the practical tips on how to deal with this ailment should it come up later.  But what I really can't get out of my mind is what it felt like to sit in a room with my child hurting and so many people concerned and doing all they could to help us get it better.  No one was distracted or doing their own thing.  No one was drawing attention to themselves or spouting off their opinions.  Everyone was single-mindedly serving us. That's humbling, and rare. And felt like real love. It was a picture to me of true, Christ-intended, Bible-preached, seldom-seen community.  When we started this weekly dinner a few months ago, I believe "community" is the word we used to describe it's purpose.  No agenda other than more, regular time together.  Well, if building "community" was the goal, we did it.  I saw it last week.

Here's what they look like...in case you forgot from no pics forEVER

 With the serious lack of pictures lately (storing all our pics on our external hard drive crimps my style when it comes to editing/posting pics) so I thought I'd at least steal some from Facebook and show off Amy's recent photoshoot of the kids while we were in Toronto.

 

Catching up

This poor blog has been neglected.  Meanwhile...

• Ella was the star student last week at her school! She got to wear a special hat and necklace all week and had all kinds of fun priveleges including a special display on the wall with her favorite thigns and picture of her and her family.  So proud of her!
• Sadie Grace is 18 months old!  She is super lively, sweet, and smart.  She has also learned to say "no" and "mine" and run away from me in Target. Alas, it happens to the best of 'em.
• Sadie talks A TON and pronounces many things perfectly.  I can tell a big difference between having a child without hearing loss.  She hears every whisper and dog barking down the street and is able to pronounce words more clearly much younger than Ella did.
• Chris and I took an awesome 4 day trip to Canada (our belated 10th anniversary celebation). It was wonderful to get away and came at a perfect time-things have been seriously, psycho-stressful around here lately.
• Chris and Ella went to visit our friends Lucas and Anne and their baby Mae on their farm in Virginia.  Ella got to feed chickens, gather eggs and paint the new beehive among other farm-y tasks :-)  They had a blast!!
• In our lifegroup's quest to find a ministry we can serve in long term we got to join a ministry at our church and walk around in the city and pray with and serve food to prostitutes in a rough area of town.  It was much less scary than everyone anticipated and I personally LOVED it and hope to partner with this ministry again.
• I'm graduating in 80 days.  Just try and stop me.
• We put our house on the market last week-praying for a somewhat miraculous sale price asap so that we don't have to put ALL our savings into getting out of this house.  I'll miss this house but I'm hopeful this is the time for more space.
• In the last few weeks both kids have had pink eye and colds, I've had a cold and I tore ligaments in my back which was wretched and took 2 weeks to feel normal again (and one lovely pack of steroids)
• Let's see, what else...lots of tough stuff going on that's not blog-worthy but hopefully peace and good news on all those fronts is coming soon.
• I have zillions of pictures to share...someday I'll get to that.  Hopefully sooner rather than later!

Let the little ones come to me...

Ella is in a very spiritually interested and open place right now and I have to say I'm loving it. It's been my prayer since I was pregnant that she would come to know Christ at a young age and walk with Him for a lifetime. Those words almost sound like one long word to me because I've prayed them so many times. So, though I know it won't all be smooth sailing, I'm loving seeing her interest in God explode!

We've been having "family night" once a week for a while now and she and I do her devotional book most days after school. She's been asking questions about the trinity and heaven and what God looks like:) when she was talking about what God looks like she said "does he look like a ghost? They say he's all white and glowy."  Ha!!

At family night we do/read/talk about some spiritually focused thing, read/write letters to our sponsored kids and pray for them, and pick a new memory verse to work on. Ella still loves the method of writing a verse on a whiteboard and erasing a word at a time until we know the whole thing. She's been a good memorizer since we started verses a long time ago but we'd only do them occassionally. She's been begging to do more so we've upped it to one a week lately. Why not lean into what she's interested in? ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S THE BIBLE!!???

She's also such a reader now that she's been asking to read out of our bibles and learning how to look up books and verses in the Bible. So, I took her on a "date" last week to buy her own "big kid Bible."  She was SOOO happy. She spent a long time deciding and she settled on one because it was called a "backpack bible." She said " Mom! That means I can take it in my backpack and even read it on the bus! This is amazing!" SO cute! I casually mentioned to her that not all kids would be interested in it (I wanted to give her some warning) but she didn't care:)

Well, I didn't realize how serious she was. We had family night tonight and when we started talking about our verse over dinner, I thought "oh we haven't practiced together that much this week and it's a longish one so we'll probably need another week to learn it."  But, I asked "do you guys remember our verse?" And Ella said "Hebrews 11:6..." And quoted it quickly and perfectly. What? I was shocked! My jaw dropped and I asked Chris if he'd been working on it with her but he was as shocked as I was. She was smiling and giggling at our being dumbfounded and then after we told her how amazed we were, she told us her secret. "Mom, I've been finding it in my Bible everyday on the bus and practicing. In the afternoons I work on 2 Corinthians 5:17." What??? Cue heart melting. Needless to say I started crying and hugged her forever. I told her she won't totally understand til she's older why I'm so proud but to trust me, earnestly seeking God (Heb 11:6) is worth it. I donKt want my kids to do spiritual things to make me happy but Ella's interest seems genuine and mostly motivated by her own interest and curiosity. Praying her relationship with God grows and can be her foundation in tough times. Love her!!