His first tooth (bottom, front, right tooth) broke through on Gabe's 30th birthday (12/24/11). His second one (bottom, front, left tooth) came in two days ago. :-) What a big boy!

Today is Jada's 3rd Birthday. The past 3 years have been such a blessing and we are incredibly thankful that God chose us to be her parents.

We celebrated by going out to dinner to Red Robin tonight, as a family. Both of the kids were fantastic. Here are some fun photos of our family along with a video of everyone singing "Happy Birthday" to her. So fun!

Miss Jada is turning 3 years old in just a few days. I can't believe how fast time is flying.

We had a little birthday party for her at our house last Saturday (12/10/11). Because she loves Dora the Explorer and has an equal, if not greater, love for crafts, we decided to throw a Dora themed party with "decorate your own backpack" activity. So fun. Here are pictures from her party.

Jada is potty-trained! We're SO proud of her!!!

Last Wednesday morning (8/31), Jada told me that she wanted to wear her Dora underwear. Immediately, all plans were cancelled for the rest of the week and we started potty training! We are so, so excited that she doesn't want to wear diapers anymore. I think she's been physically ready for a while, but she's a little strong-willed (I have no idea where she got that from... ha ha), so we were just waiting for HER to make the decision that she was ready.

We started Potty Training Boot Camp on Wednesday morning and pretty much just stayed home for the next 6 days. Thursday morning, Tracy and her sweet girls came over for a play date, which was awesome. I get stir crazy very easily (which is why the kids and I usually go somewhere almost every day). It was great to have another mommy over to hang out with and to help hold Micah for me when I had to run Jada to the bathroom a couple of times.

On Friday night, we met the Marson family, at a park for dinner. It was perfect. So wonderful to spend time with friends AND a safe, outdoor place to visit during potty training. :-)

Jada had about 4 accidents the first day, 2/day for the next few days then NONE yesterday or today!!! Whoo hoo! She is doing fabulous.

Here's a little look at Potty Training Boot Camp... a painting station, a "picnic" lunch in the living room, the classy potty chair in the middle of the room & Micah just hanging out trying to suck on his toes. Pretty hardcore training, huh? :-)



Also... today was Jada's "First Day of (home)School"! I started a few days before Micah was born and had a few scattered lessons during the spring (then took the whole summer off), but now we're officially starting. My friend, Brianne and I are following the same curriculum (which is awesome because I need someone to hold me accountable with the lesson planning!) for our kiddos. The plan is to have a 20-30 min. lesson every Mon., Wed., & Fri. morning. I'm going to try to coordinate that with Micah's morning nap... we'll see how successful that is! :-)

Jada really thrives on structure (again... I wonder where she got that from... ha ha!) and I'm looking forward to having a scheduled, intentional one-on-one time with her. She absolutely loves it. She even invited her friend Fiona to school tonight. "Nona, you want to go to school with Jada tomorrow?" (I might just have to throw in an extra day of school this week because she's so excited about it!) :-)

One of my favorite pictures of Jada is her 5-month old shot that I took in front of our neighborhood playground. I thought it would be fun to take a similar picture of Micah, since he's 5-months old, in the same location.

Here's the outcome:


Taken 5/19/2009. My little chunky monkey.




Taken 8/17/2011. My long & lean little man.

Jada, Micah, & I headed over to the Washington County Fair (just a couple miles away from us) this afternoon! We met our friends Becky, David & Garrett and had a wonderful time together. We said hello to some fun animals in the barns, played in the children's area, sat on some huge tractors & even enjoyed a little picnic for lunch (Jada is REALLY into picnics right now). Not to mention, it's a beautiful, sunny day today - couldn't have asked for a better afternoon!

Here are some cute pictures of our adventure:








Jada LOVED moo'ing with the cows. It was pretty entertaining to watch - here she is in action! ha ha.



And here she is explaining that these roosters actually belong to her & David (hmmm...). :-)

It's been 2 weeks since Micah & I came home from Emanuel Children's Hospital. He is doing well on his medication. We're still figuring out the best dosage for him; we want to give him the lowest possible dose, but obviously need it to be effective. Unfortunately, that means that he's been having a few seizures here and there during this transition time.

Emotionally, it's very tough because I know that my baby could have a seizure at any moment and all I can do is hold him, make sure he's breathing, pray for it to stop, try to concentrate on the symptoms so that I can report it to his neurologist, time it (to make sure it doesn't last longer than 5 min.), then just comfort him when he comes back and is upset afterwards. Definitely a trial.

However, I am incredibly thankful that we have this medication and an amazing pediatric neurologist and pediatrician who genuinely care about my son. Most of all, I'm thankful for the opportunity that this has given us to grow closer to God and to completely trust Him. This experience has made me realize, more than any other time in my life, that I don't have control over what's going on. I don't understand why this is happening. I can't make it go away. Our only comfort is that God sees the big picture when we don't and He has only good plans for us.

Romans 8:28 - "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called, according to His purpose."

Jeremiah 29:11 - "'For I know the plans I have for you', declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'"

Hebrews 2:18 - "Since He himself (Jesus), has gone through suffering and testing, He is able to help us when we are being tested."

I'm so grateful that we're not in this alone. I can't wait to see how God uses this; may He be glorified!

Last weekend, I noticed that Micah's face started twitching a little when he was sleeping in his swing. It just lasted about 15 seconds or so, and honestly, I thought that he was just in an active state of sleep. You know how during REM sleep, your eyes move around (thus the name "rapid eye movement", ha ha)? And sometimes babies sleep with their eyes halfway open (kinda weird looking, but it happens)? Well, that's what I thought it was at first.

A couple of days later, he did it again, but this time the mouth twitching was more pronounced. I started to get worried enough to grab my phone & record a short video of it. I figured that I'd just run it by his pediatrician at his 4 month appointment, which was only a couple of weeks out. As the week went on, it happened twice more and we started to take it more seriously. I had seizures when I was a newborn (very newly born, actually... about 1 week old) and we wanted to make sure that these little twitches weren't actually seizures. The last one occurred at about 8pm on Friday evening, so I waited until his pediatrician's office opened the next morning at 9am. I left a message stating pretty much everything I said above. As I heard myself audibly explain what was going on, I think the gravity of the situation hit me and I started crying on the voicemail. After about 15 min, the nurse called me back and told me to go straight to the ER. Not St. Vincent's ER (our hospital), but the ER at Emanuel Children's Hospital. Immediately.

Only 5 hours after I had first called his doctor's office, I was sitting across from one of the best pediatric neurologists in Oregon and she was viewing that video of Micah on my phone. Think about that for a minute. How blessed are we? Seriously. If we were in a 3rd world country, we would just have to watch our son continually have seizures and not have access to this kind of medical help. We are so, so incredibly blessed!

After an EEG, which confirmed that he most likely did have a seizure recently, she prescribed phenobarbital and he had his first dose via IV at 5:30pm. (It took 6 attempts to place the IV; a little hard for Mommy to watch, to say the least). As thankful as I am that we have this medication, if you know Gabe and I very well, you know that we take medication very, very seriously and only take it if absolutely necessary. It was really hard to give our 3 month old a medication that effects his brain. The thing about seizures, though, is that they beget more seizures. If we didn't treat it, his little developing brain would very likely continue to have more intense and frequent seizures; it would develop a repeating pattern that the brain would accept as "normal" behavior, therefore, reproducing that pattern over and over again. The medication prevents the seizures by calming that overactive brain activity and tells the brain that not having seizures is normal (instead of the brain thinking that seizures are normal).

We've actually decided to switch the medication to something more mild and which has substantially fewer side effects. The goal is to completely wean him off of medication in 6-12 months. About 50% of children grow out of seizures, of which I was part of that 50% and my seizures were more extreme and started at a younger age. We are 100% confident that God is in control and absolutely knows what's going on. He has an incredible plan for little Micah's life and our prayer is that little Micah would be a bright light shining God's power and compassion into the world.

Micah and I came home from the hospital at about 4pm on Sunday evening (Gabe cancelled his business trip and stayed home with Jada, took care of the house, visited us, and was such an amazing support to me over the weekend). We decided to go to the Sunday Night Celebration service at church that night. As we were singing, "God, You are mighty to save, mighty to save", I started crying. He is SO mighty to save. Thank you, God, for saving us.

Daddy & Jada visited Mommy & Baby Micah at the hospital

A very tired Micah... all of the poking, exams,

& EEG (notice the impressive hairdo) wore him out.

Our Room

Our Precious Boy

Jada Update:

Oh my goodness, Jada says the cutest things. We drove down to the Woodburn outlet malls a couple of weekends ago and she had a blast running down the aisles. She would run all the way around the corner, then I'd say, "Jada Faith, come here right now". She'd reply, "Oh okay, Mommy" and promptly book it in my direction. That's my girl! :-)

As we were walking down one of the aisles, she suddenly stopped and started swaying back & forth. "Watcha doin', Jada?", I asked her. "Oh, I just dancin' a little bit, Mommy. Just dancin' a little bit.". How cute is that?

Okay, next story... I'd better give you a little background info. on this one. Many of her toys take batteries and when they're not working very well, she tells us that they need a new battery. So... she's also really into wrestling Daddy, but she's dropkicked him a few times in the ribs (I'm so glad that Mommy's not really associated with the whole wrestling thing!). I'm usually downstairs feeding Micah while this whole wrestling match takes place upstairs. After one such dropkick, I heard a "Ughhh! Ouch, Jada. Daddy has an owee.". She replied with "Uh oh, Daddy. Do you need a battery in your tummy?". Ha ha!

She also has a new pet... Diego the Betta fish. She feeds him twice each day and loves choosing little rocks from outside to give to him (we clean them & place them in his bowl). He is her little responsibility. She's also in charge of opening the backdoor in the morning for Kaya to go potty outside. What a big girl.

Micah Update:

Little Micah is growing up so fast. His smiles are simply amazing and can brighten up any day. He absolutely LOVES to get his diaper changed (a complete difference from Jada as a baby) and smiles even more when I wiggle his legs around and say "run, run, run!". He thinks it's hilarious. :-) This past week, he also started cooing. We take turns "talking" back & forth and he just seems so proud of himself. At 10 weeks old (about a week and a half ago), he even gave me an EIGHT hour night. Eight. That's right... a full night's sleep. Loved it. Usually, it's about 6 hrs. in a row, so I really can't complain.

Our kiddos keep us very busy. Gabe's job is going well, my little bookkeeping business is growing and our babies are growing up fast. Life is crazy, but life is awesome. We're so thankful for everything God has given us. He has blessed us in big ways.