Happenings

What a week so far! Zack is in Haiti this week on a mission trip with the college students. I was so excited for him to go and I will admit scared to death for him to leave me--hah! We co-parent. We are definitely NOT one of those families where Daddy sits in front of the t.v. after work while Mama takes care of the kids haha! I am always amazed at how much of a help he is to me, especially at bedtime. The bedtime routine can be somewhat of a nightmare mainly since we have had our newest precious addition and that is her fussy time of day. Getting the older two in bed while she is crying is a mighty task all by yourself. Thankfully I have had my mom with me since Monday, but she and Shan left yesterday to go out of town until Saturday. But never fear- my sisters will be here with me and my fabulous in-laws are up the street, so I am very well taken care of while Daddy is away :) Things like this make me realize how blessed we are with people that we love and that love us. I had so many people offer to help me with the kids while Zack is gone. The Lord is so gracious to bless us with community! I am so thankful for that!

So with Daddy being gone, (aside from counting down the days till he's back :)) I have tried my best to keep the kids, Asher especially, distracted and busy. Asher and Zack have such a special relationship. I have never seen a child love a father so. Zack gets home from work and Asher tackles him and they play everything from super boys to wrestling to army men and legos until it's time to go to bed.  I knew this week would be hard for Asher so we have tried to stay busy. They have gone to school all day Monday. They love Wee Care. Asher is such a social butterfly. (He adores other children--anyone, honestly, I have never seen him meet a child he dislikes. He is an instant friend. It is one of the things that make me crazy about him :))
 Tuesday, oh Tuesday. Tuesday has been our hardest day so far. We took a trip to the mall and let the kids play at the Play Place hoping to wear them out so they would have a good nap.

 Bouncy fun

 And sweet Isla slept the whole time

 After all that fun, both my kids decided they did not need a nap, which I am sure impaired their judgement severely, which is how Honor ended up nearly bald. Yes my friends, it happened. A day dreaded by parents everywhere. Haircuts by the hands of a three year old.

The pictures doesn't do it justice. It was bad. And she also had a nice chunk missing from the front.

And I'd like to just say in my defense that I only left the room to change Isla's diaper, a mere two and a half minutes. Just goes to show I guess that trouble can come upon us in an instant. As soon as I noticed, I texted a picture to Jennifer who cuts our hair and she is now our family's most treasured friend because she came right over, to our house, on her day off to fix my girl's hair. I would have been able to laugh it off a little easier if she weren't the flower girl in my sister's wedding in two weeks.....and if it hadn't taken two years to get what little hair she did have to grow that length (which wasn't very long) Sigh. At least it will grow back. And she looks pretty darn cute no matter what her hair looks like anyways.

Wednesday somewhat made up for the horribleness that was Tuesday. We went on a great birthday adventure for Honor's birthday (which is tomorrow!!--is it crazy that she is about to be two?!) We set out in the rainy weather and headed to Birmingham. We made our first stop at Toys-R-us. and we probably could have just stayed there all day. Asher found the battery powered cars and spent literally 45 minutes getting on and off of them, pretending to drive.

Next stop was lunch at Jason's deli (mommy's choice:)) and then GiGi's for a birthday cupcake! Honor is such a hoot. If anyone knows my sassy little girl, you know she will talk your ear off and loves to sing. She makes up songs all the time. When we told her we were going for cupcakes, she started singing "I lick it, then I eat it. I lick it. I eat it" over and over. and she did just that with her Mississippi Mud cupcake. (Shan and Zack--you will appreciate this trait she got from her Mama: she changed her cupcake choice three times before finally picking out one:))

ZOO time! The sunshine finally came out after lunch. It was the perfect day, because the rain really made it cooler. so it was very enjoyable! We saw all the animals and even rode the train!

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Worn out after a long day....

 but not this guy

A special day for a special girl!

Family and Friends please continue to pray for Zack and the mission team in Haiti. They will be back Monday night. Pray for us here. We have had many tears for Daddy, but we are so excited about the good work he is doing and can't wait to share that with all of you.

 Some things coming up: Isla and Honor both have well-visit doctor appointments on Tuesday. Two girls, two sets of shots---one Mommy...need I say more?
Isla will be going to the Eye Foundation June 18th, So please keep that date on your calendar. We are excited about starting this process and meeting the people there that we will be getting to know quite well I'm sure in the coming years. (speaking of Isla, she has tagged along on all our adventures like a champ! She is awake more and more now and starting to look around and notice things. She loves to watch her toy zebra on her carseat. Every time I notice her watching things I just think about how grateful I am that the Lord blessed her with sight. She can see!! Praise God for his goodness!)
And last but not least--my sister and BFF is getting married in two weeks! Woohoo! Excited for their special day and to welcome Stephen to the family!
Check back for a BIG BIRTHDAY update on precious Honor Casey Boo! :)

Haircut with a side of Awesome Sauce

Today Asher got a B-I-G hair cut. This is the shortest his hair has ever been, but he went in and told Mrs Jen that he wanted a spikey haircut. I kind of can't believe we cut it because people always comment on his hair and even strangers say how much they love his hair, especially when it was really long. But I let him do it because I know it will be hot this summer and his hair is so so thick and it will be much cooler like this. And he looks so stinkin big now.

...Isla likes it too :)

Easter Pictures

Some photography friends of ours did a fund raiser photo shoot for the trip to Haiti our church is taking and we were so excited to support Hali and Micah (and also to get our sweet kiddos pictures made:)) Isla was not particularly in the mood to have her picture taken, but we got a few cute ones of them wearing their Easter best.

My Honor Casey-boo

Sibling Love

Our attempts at a family picture after lunch on Easter Sunday....

My favorite...

6 weeks old

Isla Rose is six weeks old today! What a blessed 6 weeks they have been. Our family has adjusted more beautifully than I could have ever imagined, welcoming a new sister with such love. She is a joy, most of the time. She definitely has her fussy moments. Every night she "wakes up" between 8 and 1030 and cries. After that, she usually sleeps until about 230, wakes up to eat and then goes back to sleep until 4 or 5. We are getting good rest (for now) When we went to the doctor for our one month check up, she weighed 9 pounds and is growing and healthy. Dr Ebba talked to us a lot about genetic testing and counseling. We have decided not to have her tested any further. When we talked to Dr Elsas, he said it was something we could do, but genetic testing takes so long that it could be years before we ever had any results and if she seemed healthy and didn't show any other problems, then there was really no reason to do it. (We also opted not to have any counseling ourselves. We trust the Lord for our future and our future children and don't feel like that is necessary.)
My sweet Isla had her first smiles for her big brother and just this week really seems to "mean it" when she smiles. Asher loves when she smiles and him. Honor's two phrases she says when she plays with Isla are: "She's nookin' at me" (looking at me) and "She's waking up Mommy!" (Even if she's been awake for an hour :)) I haven't been able to capture many of her grins on camera yet, but I'm sure I will soon. She nurses like a champ, every two hours, except during that 4 hour stretch at night. She loves for me to keep her in my Moby wrap and it is wonderful for Mommy too as it is the only way I can get anything done that requires two hands! :) She is happy wherever you lay her: Moses basket, bouncy seat, swing, until she is bothered by the other two little people in our house that can't seem to keep their hands off of her. Another reason why I usually end up wearing her haha! She loves her Daddy! He is often the only one able to get her to calm down during her fussy time. We are looking forward to watching this precious girl grow and change and watch her personality develop.

We had some pictures made of Isla when she was 7 days old by H+M photo and I am crazy about them! These are some of my faves.

Analyze this....

I always have this obsession when I meet a new baby of trying to figure out who the baby looks like? Does he have Mommy's nose, Daddy's ears? Does she look like her sister, does he favor his brother? I will not rest until I find some sort of resemblance between the newest baby and some family member. and then of course you have the wild card, like we did when we had not one, but two red headed babies. Everyone wants to know where our girls get their red hair from, because it sure ain't from Mommy or Daddy--haha! So to satisfy myself I pulled up some baby pictures for comparison....

Asher when he was just a few days old





Two day old Isla....not much resemblance

 Two day old Honor

 Three day old Isla Rose

So....who does Isla look like? :)

Never Has a Sister Been More Loved

This is my first attempt to upload a video. Hope it works ok! Asher and Honor love Isla--this happens quite frequently on a daily basis. I don't know whether to be happy, or feel sorry for Baby.... Our primary parenting goal with Isla at this point in time: Keep her alive--hah! Isla is one month old now--a more detailed update and post coming soon! For now enjoy some Casey Craziness :)

This was one morning before school. Dancing/Druming Duo.....and Isla slept through the whole thing.

Isla Rose

Well our baby girl is finally here! She was born a week ago today, March 16th at 10:14 am. She weighed 8 pounds 6 ounces--our biggest baby yet! I was almost a week past my due date and I had been having some irregular contractions Thursday. I went to the office to be checked and I had made some changes/progress, so Zack and I made the decision to go ahead and go in to the hospital that night for an induction. Friday morning around 7:30, they came in and broke my water, I got an epidural and they started the Pitocin. I went in dilated to a 3 and by 9 am I was already a 6 and very shortly after that a 10! One of the things I prayed for over this delivery was that it would be quick and easy. Well it was both of those things. I am so grateful it went quickly. However we did have quite a scare during the delivery. Right before Isla was born, her heart rate dropped in to the 50s (which is too low for a baby) for about 6-7 minutes. It was pretty scary for a few minutes, but thankfully I have the greatest doctor in the world! :) He came in and said, "okay, we've got to get this baby out now". I think I realized how serious it was at that moment when I heard his "serious voice", saw my mom starting to cry and about 12 more people appeared in the room, (okay maybe only like 5 more people, but it seemed like 12.) But a few pushes later she was here! Slightly purple, but here nonetheless. She was immediately given oxygen and taken to be put under the light and she pinked up and began to cry. The next few days proved challenging for Miss Isla Rose. She had problems keeping her blood sugar up. We had to give her sugar water, a shot of Glucagon, and eventually an IV because her glucose wouldn't stay above 40. We worked very hard feeding every hour and with the help of the IV we were finally able to get it over 40 and eventually up in the 70s. She also had an elevated bilirubin level and had to stay an extra night in the hospital for light therapy. So amidst all of these somewhat normal challenges with a newborn, I noticed that her left eye was swollen and she wasn't opening it like she was her right eye. I, of course tried persistently to examine it and open it, but couldn't actually see her eye. On the second day we were there, the pediatrician said he opened the eye and could see her actual eyeball, but couldn't open it enough to see if it refracted light. The third day, he said he couldn't open it enough to see her eye at all. He recommended we follow up with an eye doctor because they would have the tools to open her eye to examine it.

We finally made it home on Monday and had our appointment with our pediatrician on Tuesday. Her routine newborn check up was great, but he did tell us that there was definitely something wrong with her eye and he wanted us to be seen by an ophthalmologist.

We were able to get an appointment as a work-in today with a pediatric ocular plastic surgeon in Birmingham. We knew we needed to be seen by an actual pediatric ophthalmologist, but he had a two month waiting list! We wanted to be seen sooner than that, so we took the appointment with the plastic surgeon, hoping to at least get an answer or a referral to someone else.

We headed to Birmingham today and made it to our 2:00 appointment at about 1:30, expecting to be there for several hours since we were being worked in . Thankfully, we were only in the waiting room about 10 minutes before we were called back to see they doctor. He was wonderful! He looked at her eye and told us she had what is called microphthalmia, which is a developmental eye disorder that basically means a "small eye". For some reason her left eye did not develop properly. There is no known cause, it is not necessarily genetic and is not linked to anything that might have happened during pregnancy. He told us that her eye would never grow normally and that she would never be able to see from that eye. He then told us he would really like for us to see a pediatric ophthalmologist, Fred. (the same doctor that had a two month waiting period) and sent us over to his office. We were put in a room to be seen--all before our scheduled 2:00 appointment! The Lord totally went before us and opened the doors for us to be seen by exactly who we needed to see. In less than an hour we were seen by two specialists! The pediatric ophthalmologist did a more thorough exam using a tool to open her eyes and confirmed what Dr. Long had told us about the microphthalmia. We were concerned about her vision in her right eye, but he said she has a completely healthy right eye--Praise the Lord!

Where we go from here: in 3 months we will go to the Alabama Eye Foundation to be educated on and hopefully fitted for what is known as conformers that we will put in her left eye. The goal with these will be to help her eye socket and lid grow as her face grows so she doesn't have any asymmetry in her features. Eventually she will be given a prosthetic eye that she will use. Both doctors said that the prosthetics are great and you often may not even notice when people have them.

It's never easy when your child is "sick" in any way, but as Dr. Long told us today, this is a bump in the road, not a catastrophe. We went expecting similar news to what we received and we were glad to get clear answers and know that we are on the best path for Isla. Even when we were suspect of there being a problem, Brittany and I reminded ourselves (Zack writing now) that the masterful Creator formed Isla in the womb and knew exactly what He was doing. As far as we know, Isla will live a healthy, happy life, just like our other children. She is beautiful, and we can't wait to watch her grow with her brother and sister. The Psalmist says,

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,

the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior

are the children of one's youth.

Blessed is the man

who fills his quiver with them!

He shall not be put to shame

when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

(Psalm 127:3-5 ESV)

Our quiver is filling up! We will covet your prayers as we continue this journey with Isla. There are obvious challenges that will come along the way, but as we've already seen today, the Lord is faithful and is going before us preparing the way.....not surprising though is it!?