Abby's Surgery

This morning, Abby had her surgery to remove the piece of glass that was left under her scalp after her accident in August. For those of you who don't know, she feel into a window-well and broke the window with the back of her head. At the time of the accident, the ER doctor told us that he was sure that there was no glass left in the wound and stapled it shut.

A ridge began to form perpendicular to one of the original wounds. First the doctor said that it was just scar tissue forming, not to be concerned and he would see me in a month at her 2 year old check up. The ridge had not gone down and there seemed to be something poking out. The doctor looked at the wound with a lighted pair of microscopic goggles and saw something shiny, confirming it to be a piece of glass, but believed it to be about the size of a raisin. He referred us to a pediatric surgeon, because he was unable to remove the glass on in his own in the office.

The surgeon was able to measure the piece of glass in his office and recommended surgery to remove the glass; which he believed to be a sliver about an inch to an inch and a half in length. Based on her age and the possible incision that would be necessary to remove the glass completely, she would be placed under general anesthetic.

She did so well. Much better than mommy and daddy did. She got to ride a cool motorized car into the operating room and was handled by nurses and doctors that were especially suited and trained to handle children. She was smiling and giggling on her way there. Possible one of the hardest things that I have yet to handle was watching her go down the hallway to the operating room.

The actual surgery was very fast. The entire procedure took about 30 minutes. The surgeon only had to make a very slight incision at the edge of the piece of glass and was able to pull it out. It didn't require stitches or staples at all, but was able to be closed with some kind of special surgical tape. The piece of glass was just over an inch in length and about 1/4 of an inch thick.

We're thankful all is well and that this is all hopefully over. :)

Four Years Together

On December 27, 2004, Aaron and I were married. Looking back at where we were then, where we are now and how far we've come is an amazingly beautiful experience.

In that short period of time, we have welcomed three beautiful girls into our world and are blessed with each new addition to our family. We are excited to see who else will be joining us this next summer. :)

We have slowly remodeled our home and settled in. We have talked of plans to add on, but our real joy would be to find a nice place with a couple of acres that we can settle in for a more permanent amount of time. We enjoy talking about our future and the blessing that one day, hopefully, grandchildren will bring to us.

We have made job changes and school changes. We rejoice in all the blessings that God has given Aaron in his job, as well as salary raises with each new child. God is truly watching out for our little family.

Aaron and I have been richly, richly blessed in such a short span of time. We look forward with great anticipation to what God would have for us in the next four years. :)

Christmas!

We had a lovely Christmas Day. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it was the best Christmas yet for our little family. This is the first year that Anna really remembers the things that we've taught her about Jesus and His birth. Both she and Abby have been singing, "Happy Birthday to Jesus." We have tried to stress the importance of putting Jesus first in our Christmas celebrations and hope that each of our children will see that and one day continue that in their own families.

I am putting this picture of Anna first, because it will explain later pictures of her. I do not know why, other than it is a toddler phase that we will someday grow out of (right??), but Anna has turned into something of a little stripper. She takes her jammies off right after she goes to bed and keeps taking her clothes off throughout the day; no matter what mommy does or says against it.

Charlotte, while perhaps to young to understand the spirit of Christmas, does understand toys and presents. Her new favorite thing is the hat from Uncle Justin's family. She has always enjoyed hats...which is the exact opposite of my other girls. I must say she does look dashing, doesn't she? :)

I think perhaps the girls favorite present from "Santa" would have to be the little play kitchenette. They have played with it like no other gift they've ever received. Abby, our designated "little mother" has spent hours already cooking food for all of us and feeding her baby.

Here, in the naked picture of Anna, she shows off her Cinderella and Aurora dolls. She loves these little things and will spend a frantic minute should she realize that she has set them down somewhere or can't remember where she put them.

Aaron and I also exchanged gifts with each other and various members of his family on the actual day of Christmas. I think Aaron's favorite gift from the girls and I was a lumberjack hat like his dad has. We also celebrated a lovely Christmas dinner with the Greenwood clan hosted by Kelly's mother.

With each year that passes for our little family that God has blessed us with, each celebration gets sweeter and more lovely. At this time of year and hopefully everyday, may we pause to thank God for the precious gift of His Son and the salvation He has offered to us and to the world.

Our family sincerely hopes that your families were all equally blessed this Christmas with the love of family and friends and the reminder of the real meaning of Christmas. :)

Children's Museum

Our girls always love the Children's Museum in Indianapolis and it was especiously fun this time because we got to have Daddy, Grandma Greenwood, Uncle Lee and Aunt Mary...plus all the Justin and Kelly Greenwood kids, too! Charlotte was such a good baby, and as all of us mother's of the one and under set know...a baby can easily make or break an outing.

This was really Charlotte's first time to explore the "Baby-Scape" and she loved it.
We always spend a little time before lunch at Playscape to wind the people down a little. The water and the sand areas are always the biggest hit.

We try to go at least once or twice a month (to make use of the membership) and the girls never get tired of it. This was the first time that the girls have been okay with going into the dinosaur exhibit. The loud noises and dinosaur "calls" tend to scare them too much, but once we got to the edges where you could play with the toy dinosaurs and see the dinosaur eggs, they didn't want to leave. Abby still talks about wanting to go to see the dinosaurs again. We'll probably go again in a couple of weeks. :)

My Random Post, Holiday Baking and Baby Kicks

I posted the name of the woman from my Random Post into the comments section of that post. I guess I should have done a bigger post for her, because I had all kinds of people messaging me or calling me saying enough is enough, when are you going to let me know who she is?! I think people were getting a little angry with me. Anyway...that's where the information is.

I've started my Holiday baking and will be doing that the next few afternoons and evenings until it's all done and then putting plates together on Saturday. Yeah! I love the holiday goodies. :)

I also starting feeling real baby kicks, not just the flutters, this week. It's pretty cool. I don't think they're strong enough yet for Aaron to feel, but he always especially likes when he can feel the baby moving, too.

I hope you all are having a wonderful week before Christmas and aren't getting stressed out, but enjoying this time with your families. :)

Random Post

Okay. This post may be really out there and totally random, but it's something I've been thinking about the last couple of days.

A couple of nights ago, while Aaron was doing some exercising in our bedroom, I sat down to relax a bit after putting the children to bed. I turned on the T.V. and did a little channel surfing. I stopped on a biography channel where they were interviewing a young woman. She seemed very well put together, beautiful and had a friendly smile. I didn't recognize the woman, but felt a connection with her, because at the moment I turned it on, she was talking about losing her mother to skin cancer, and broke down. (Her mother had died when this woman was two, after going into the doctor about a strange mole on her shoulder. It turned out to be malignant and she was dead two months later. For those of you who read this blog, you know I had my own scary mole situation a couple of months ago.)

They then went into the promo for the next segment where some "evangelical" pastor said that this woman was going to hell and that may she never have children so that they don't know the pain of having this woman as a mother. They then flashed her name on the screen. I now knew who she was. This puts me at an advantage to you. Before I reveal the woman's name, let me ask you a couple of questions.

Do you believe that anyone has the right to tell anyone else, no matter who they are or how they chose to live their lives, that they are going to Hell? Certainly not! I heard a sermon once about the five surprises of Hell, and I think it could also be done for Heaven. One of the surprises was about who else was there. You know, I don't know this woman's heart or that pastor's, but I do feel that I have a pretty good relationship with my Savior and he said, "Judge not, lest you be judged." There is another verse that says we are all unclean things and all of our good works are as filthy rags. I kind of think the same thing about our "bad" works. God does not put some big scale up there and judge you based on your good and bad works. Man judges by the outward appearance, but God sees the heart.

This woman also struggles with infertility. She has tried for years to get pregnant. She wants to live for her mother through the birth of a child. She wants to give her mother a gift of being able to care for her children as her own mother wanted to do. Like I said above, people have said that they hope she is never able to bring children into this world. This woman is healthy, well-off, intelligent, clean and sober, caring and funny. Do we have the right to tell any woman that she shouldn't have children? Again, I say, NO! If we okay it, to take away such a deeply personal right...the right to bear children...what comes next? If we were to regulate who could have children, would we then regulate how many children we could have, or even the age we could have children or receive assistance in having children? That is a slippery slope that I do not want to contribute to or think anyone I know would want to contribute to. I rejoiced when I saw on her Wikipedia profile that she recently had a successful IVF treatment and is expecting twins early 2009. To me this woman is human and deserves that right and that experience.

After writing this, I don't know if I should tell you yet, who the woman is. I would be interested in a dialogue about our feelings for any woman, not based on who she is or what she has done. I'll update it on Monday with the name of the woman.

Our Engagement Anniversary

Four Years ago today Aaron got down on one knee in my parent's dining room and asked me to marry him. We then shared our first kiss. We were married just over two weeks later and have grown in love, through good times and bad. The story of our courtship to me was a beautiful story of finding the persons that God had had in mind when we were created. I love you, Aaron and look forward to many, many more years with you. :)

Remember When-Alan Jackson

Remember when I was young so were you
time stood still love was all we knew
You were the first, so was I
made love and then you cried
Remember when

Remember when we vowed the vows walked the walk
Gave our hearts, made the start, it was hard
lived and learned, life threw curves
There was joy, there was hurt
Remember when

Remember when old ones died new were born
life was changed, disassembled, rearranged
We came together, fell apart
broke each other's hearts
Remember when

Remember when the sound of little feet was the music
We danced to week to week
Brought back the love, we found trust
Vowed we'd never give it up
Remember when

Remember when thirty seemed so old
Now lookin' back, it's just a steppin' stone
To where we are, where we've been
Said we'd do it all again
Remember when

Remember when we said when we turned gray
When the children grow up and move away
We won't be sad, we'll be glad
For all the life we've had
And we'll remember when

Remember when
Remember when

Morning Sickness and I'M HUNGRY

I have been cautiously optimistic this week that the morning sickness may be fading out a bit. Over the weekend I wasn't getting sick right before supper and Monday was my last day that I've thrown up. I'm still having some nausea, but I am doing my darnedest to control it and gritting my teeth about it. Another good sign is that yesterday I had an appetite. This was not just any normal appetite return either. It was a crazy, hormonal, "FEED ME NOW" appetite return. I can only attribute it to the fact that the pregnancy is moving along and I'm entering a new phase...aka the second trimester. WooHoo!!

My Children

We're making some advances on the potty training front. It's kind of exciting...there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I won't be changing diapers until they're 22. Yeah!! :)

Abby and her Head

I took Abby for a consult this morning with a pediatric surgeon down at Peyton Manning's Children's Hospital. While we already knew that there was a piece of glass that was just under the scalp, we weren't certain as to how big the glass might be or what would be involved in removing it. The surgeon after doing his own probing and measuring estimates the "shard" to be between 1 and 1 1/2 inches in length. He recommends it would be in our best interest to, of course, remove the glass. He said that it would be fine until one day it shifted, she laid on it differently and it cracked.

The only problem I have with this is that it would require Abby to be put under general anesthetic with a breathing tube inserted. Right now, the surgery is scheduled for December 29th early in the morning. I'll probably do a consult call with our family doctor to get his opinion on this as well.

I'm just really nervous about this, as I'm sure any parent is at the thought of their child being put under, but I also want this to be taken care of and not cause her any more pain.