It's A New Liturgical Year!!

It is out most favorite time of year!!! We LOVE Advent!! Today is the first Sunday of Advent and this begins the season of hopeful anticipation and preparation for the birth of Christ!

This first Sunday we always break out our big nativity scene and assemble it. This year we kept things on the simple side and a bit smaller. No water falls, streams, ponds, or caves this year. But it still looks lovely.

This year Ben helped make design decisions and put a few things in place.

And the little critters eating some macaroni and cheese. This has become somewhat of a Sunday tradition....mac n cheese at the kiddie table usually while watching a video as a special treat. Tonight they just watched teh nativity scene go up!

Uh! What a handsome boy!!

Wordless Wednesdays

Worship

Nothing like a little girl's love for her daddy....especially while wearing a smurfy hat and sharing a snack!!!

Sweet Moments

Benjamin spent several days re-enacting this sweet scene below with some of our dollhouse furniture and figures.

He would take the baby and put it carefully to bed, attach its "music" (mobile), and then seat momma and pappa carefully in chairs to watch vigil. In the crib with the baby he would put a little hair bow of Anna's that I think was functioning as a stuffed animal or lovie of some sort.

For some reason this just struck me as so tender and sensitive. We have bathrooms and bedrooms and kitchens for the dollhouse but he just gravitated to the sweet nursery and the care of the little baby and that it should be put down for a nap lovingly. I hope he always has such a sweet and tender heart and I pray he learns of these tender scenes from what he observes in his own family. What more could a momma ask for?

Here is one of those sweet scenes I am referring to: A quick outdoor Fall lunch with daddy.

Who cares about raking leaves when you can have silly faces and pizza with daddy!!

Anna's Health Update

Well we are home at last!! We came home Saturday...so 4 days ago. Lots of ups and downs since my last post. Poor Anna must be like Job.


Anna progressed from her munching on crackers and juice to eating her usual things (pasta, tuna salad, cereal, sausage, fruit, etc etc). Here she is very excited about a banana!



Unfortunately soon after this picture was taken Anna spiked a fever that at its highest was 104 degrees. To make a long story short Anna's PICC line wound up getting infecte with staph and fungus. The line had to be pulled an instead of going home we had another several days stay so Anna could receive IV antibiotics and antifungal medication.


Because the PICC line came out they had made the decision to stop her TPN (intravenous nutrition) because that is what was blowing out her IVs and now she needed good IVs to receive the antibiotics. Luckily she squeaked by by the skin of her nose on calorie intake and avoided another NG tube in her nose for feeding.


As soon as the PICC was removed her fevers subsided and the infection was caught fast enough that the infection did not enter her blood stream but was localized just to the area of the PICC, so she improved quickly. She is now receiving one more week of oral antifungal meds at home.

I wanted to get good pictures of them removing her IV after her last dose of antibiotics and of signing the discharge papers, getting dressed, and walking out, but of course after this not great photthe battery on the camera died and I got nothing else! Oh well...at least there is the IV and a nice shot of her really cool scar.

Getting everyone home and reunited was SOO wonderful! Benjamin had clearly been missing and worrying about his sister. He has been showing her a lot of love since being home. It is incredible to watch Benjamin learn the dynamics of sibling relationships. He is learning how to successfully negotiate toy use, how to play together, how to be sweet and gentle.

And Anna is in full mimic mode. So a common "argument" I hear around here is Ben will tell Anna "this is mine". And she will respond "MINE!" very excited that she can mimic the word she just heard. But he thinks she is arguing so he will say "no it's mine!!" and she will respond "MINE!" LOL! It is hysterical to me.

Here is a loving moment between brother and sister soon after we got home: