Summer, you have my heart.
We kick off every June with Stockham's Vacation Bible School.
Trevin had so much fun at Operation Arctic doing crafts, playing games, eating snacks, singing songs, and playing with friends!
Myla tagged along to VBS, too. Normally, she hates going to nursery at church, so I wasn't sure how she'd do going to nursery all week. By the third day she was reaching for the nursery workers when we walked through the doors. She had so much fun and has loved playing during church ever since.
Her favorite thing was the milk carton igloo. We couldn't keep her out of it.
I took pictures, made a slideshow, and designed graphics again this year for VBS. I love having that responsibility because I get to take part in each event. I bounce from room to room and get to see all of the things that make up Bible School. Not to mention, I get to take some cute pictures of all the kids for their parents.
Cousins seriously make the best friends.
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We went straight from a week of VBS to a week of family visiting! James' dear relatives, the Helms' from Illinois and Florida, came to enjoy the farm.
Ruthie and Maeven were so sweet to Myla. She had a fan club all week!
Myla got to hold her new baby cousin, Keira. She couldn't stop grinning and pointing at her, until it was my turn to hold Keira... Myla's grin quickly vanished.
The crazy Huenefeld/Helms crew. Hate having them all so far away, but it certainly makes these moments special.
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James and I took Trevin to Valentine for a weekend of camping and fishing.
Trevin caught the first two fish and managed to reel in a few nice ones over the course of the trip.
We caught mostly pike with a few bass. Trevin and I both caught 31" pike and James had the catch of the weekend with a 34" pike. And I caught my best bass ever, an 18-incher. We caught 44 fish in a day and a half of fishing. It was the most fun fishing that I've ever had.
We had so much fun camping out, even though we chose the coldest weekend of the summer to go. Trevin couldn't stop giggling in the tent, and it was the sweetest memory. It was so cold that we ate breakfast, cuddled up in the tent, before deciding that the truck would be much warmer.
We lost our anchor at 7 AM on the second day, and James hopped in after it. It took him several hours to warm back up after that. And no, we never found the anchor, but it was fitting because James found that same anchor in the same lake several years ago after someone else had lost it.
This is one trip that I hope Trevin never forgets.
He fished so hard that he slept the whole way home.
Trevin:
+He's been chalking up farming hours this summer. He asks to go to work with James several times a week. Lately he says that when he grows up he wants to be a fisherman and just farm for fun.
+One day during lunch he kept picking at his teeth. I asked him what was wrong and he asked if there was something in his teeth because he could hear it clicking. When he showed me, his bottom tooth was pointed out a 45 degree angle. He wasn't too sure of the idea of a loose tooth at first, but it didn't take him long and he had it out. We're not sure if it got knocked loose or if another tooth was already growing up and pushing it out. He was introduced to the idea of the tooth fairy and was thrilled to find his treasure the next morning. Suddenly my sweet preschooler looks like a big kid.
+Everything is about toads right now. Where can we find them? Can we keep them? Where can we keep them? How many can we keep? What can we name them? What can we feed them? When can I play with them? I'm not a good boy-mom in that regard. If I could vote no toads for the rest of my life, I would. But my son and my husband seem to outvote me every time.
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| When boys see a snapping turtle on the road, they insist on stopping. |
+Trevin starts school next month and I am completely oblivious to it. I have not processed it at all and I'm afraid my heart is going to struggle hard for the first few weeks. Our life is going to change so much with him gone every day. Myla won't know what to do with herself. But I'm excited to see him thrive in this new environment, making new friends, and learning new things.
+Trevin took swim lessons again this year and passed level 1! He made huge improvements since last year and is now going under water by himself and almost happily. He really enjoyed lessons this year and talks about them often.
He even got to go down the slide all by himself for the first time!
Myla:
+We are just learning so much about this child. She's a wild one. She climbs. She has no fear climbing on anything and everything. She's constantly trying to climb on stools, boxes, toys, chairs, and anything else she can find.
+I've discovered very quickly that she's a runner. If I put her down in a public place, she takes off running, (Trevin was very cautious and always stayed close to us, so this is a very new experience). She is quick and she doesn't look back. My grocery shopping has gotten a whole lot harder.
+She has really found her love for the farm this month. She begs to go with James every day. She loves riding in the tractor and playing in the mud.
+She has plenty of mischief, too. I was working in the garden one morning and had my phone on the ground by all of the day's fresh produce. She was trotting around and as happy as ever. Later I realized my phone wasn't on the ground. I knew she had taken it and couldn't seem to find it. Then I remembered that she had walked over to our kiddie pool at one point. I just knew. I walked over, and sure enough, my phone was sitting at the bottom. I figured it was in there for at least 10 minutes and it was still on! Fortunately it still works, but I've realized I have to watch her like a hawk.
+Her personality is really starting to shine through. She loves to entertain. She's a goofball, always doing silly things to make people laugh. She's a social butterfly. When we're in public, she says hi to everyone. Sometimes it's awkward because she says hi to the same person so many times that they don't know if they should stay there and keep saying hi or if they should move on.. We're just stuck in this limbo of a conversation with a 1-year-old on repeat.
+She loves headbands but always takes them out and tries to put them back on herself. So we've started wearing ponytails. They make her look like such a big girl.
+She had her first ear of corn! (Should start processing corn this week!)
+Her favorite game is to put blankets or any laundry that she can find over her head and walk around giggling. It gives us a heart attack because she's constantly falling or running into things. I don't know how to hide every piece of cloth in our house from her, but that seems to be what I'll have to do.
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I mentioned our garden earlier. This year has been the first year we've gotten a decent amount of strawberries from it. The kids loved being able to run out and pick strawberries to eat fresh from the garden.
The kids have really started to play nice together now that Myla is able to do more. Of course, playing together naturally brings fighting. Welcome to being a parent to siblings. But generally they do a great job entertaining each other and making each other laugh.
We were able to make a quick trip to Omaha to see two of my high school classmates get married. Lyndsee has been a dear friend for so many years and we were thrilled to celebrate with them. It was such a fun night catching up with some of my best friends from high school and seeing how God has worked in their lives. Makes me miss them all over again. Also, they are some of my biggest blog fans. Diehards, really. So I'm happy to give them an appearance here. I'll probably make their day. I tell them they just need to come visit me more and they can be on here all they want.
I just found out that I was the only person in the world that still used Mapquest. James just showed me how to do the exact same thing on my phone. So now I'm afraid that they've just lost their last customer and will officially go out of business. I'm really a pretty tech-y person, but there are things that somehow slip under my radar and I end up about 5 years behind the time. So that happened.
We are slowly adjusting to life after Ashton. She's been back to visit a few times since her wedding, but we have certainly missed having her home. Every time she's back, the kids can't get enough of her.
We were able to steal James away from the farm for a morning at the Lincoln Farmer's Market. It's something we didn't get to do last year and really missed it. Trevin and Myla had a blast and we enjoyed having precious moments with all four of us together.
James and I celebrated our 6th anniversary last week and we're finally getting our date in tonight. The last two years have brought us things we never imagined we'd face, but we're doing it together and pursuing Jesus with all we've got. We've been together for a decade now and I am still incredibly impressed by my wisdom at age 14 in choosing this guy. He's still out of my league.
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Oh friends. The past month has been so hard. My best friend, Nicole, lost her precious babe at 16 weeks, with zero signs of problems, only an unfound heartbeat at a regular appointment. She had to deliver at the hospital and found out that they had a precious little girl, Lennon Elaine. The entire night she was in labor, I couldn't sleep. We went to the hospital first thing in the morning to hold Lennon and to comfort our dear friends. They decided to have a memorial service for her and we did all we could to honor a baby that meant so much to us all. It's been a challenging road to walk with them through, but one that I wouldn't trade for anything. It makes heaven that much sweeter and has given us so much opportunity to love on them well.
There is another family that is so very dear to us that also lost their daughter a few weeks ago, before being able to meet her. Our hearts break with both families and we are hoping that God will use us in their lives through this. But so many tears have been shed over these two sweet girls. Our hearts are just so heavy for them and the journeys they are walking.
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This 4th of July is one we will never forget, though I wish we could.
We were at Mitch and Nicole's house, along with our other friends, Trey and Emily. Our plan for the evening was grill some supper together and put all the kids to bed at the Nuss' on time, (they all had been up several nights in a row, watching fireworks and playing with friends, so a regular bedtime was needed). Then the adults were going to hangout, play games, and catch up. It all started according to plan. We got the kids fed and were trying to finish up our own meal when it was made very obvious that Myla was done for the day. She was quickly deteriorating and I opted to put her to bed, even though the adults hadn't finished eating yet. I got the pack-n-play ready, changed her diaper, and started to get her into pajamas. She knew what was coming so she took off running down the hallway before I could get her shirt on her. I ran after her and brought her back to the room and plopped her on my lap. She was crying at this point and after I got the shirt over her head I could tell she wasn't breathing. (Since her seizure in May, she has held her breath and passed out at least once a week. I'd estimate that she had done it a dozen times in the almost 8 weeks that had passed, not counting the many times she'd hold her breath for a long period and not passed out. So I knew what this looked like. I was familiar with the process and the expectations of the events. I always blow in her face when she holds her breath, and sometimes it would make her take a breath, but most of the time she'd just flinch or turn her head and continue to hold her breath. But she always reacted to the puff of air.) I faced her towards me. When I looked at her this time, she looked different. I had plenty of memories to compare it to, and this looked different. She looked frozen. Her face appeared to be stuck in the open-mouth crying position. She was almost stoic. She wasn't thrashing around for a breath like usual, she just froze. I blew in her face and she didn't even flinch. She didn't blink her eyes, she didn't turn her head. She didn't move an ounce. I stood up with her and headed to grab James. I got partway down the hall when she started seizing in my arms. I screamed for James and laid her down on the floor. It was 7:00.
Then the blur began. I remember feeling like I wasn't there. Like I was watching the entire event unfold from a different place. Like my brain had so many thoughts, but the words wouldn't form in my mouth. Almost like yelling at the TV. I was screaming in my mind but I was unheard by everyone there. I remember just feeling mad. Mad that the first time wasn't a fluke. Mad that we didn't know why she was doing this. Mad that the seizure wouldn't stop. Mad that I had to watch. Mad that I couldn't hold her. Mad that she had no control. Mad that I had no control. Mad that she didn't even look like my child. Mad that the fear was back. Mad that I was mad. And the anger came out in tears. Nicole came to be by my side and prayed over us. Emily took the rest of the kids outside so they wouldn't see what was going on. Mitch called 911. I think the only words I formed during the seizure was asking Trey, who is a nurse, to come over with us. I knew there was nothing he could do, but just having him there with us, helped me in ways I can't explain. Later, I would learn just how important it was to have him there.
The seizure felt like it lasted for hours, but finally slowed to a stop after 1.5-2 minutes. Much shorter than last time. She looked like she was really out of it, almost as if she was sleeping. She began to cry and I picked her up. Mitch was still on the phone with dispatch when it stopped, so we told them not to send the ambulance. We'd done this before...
We were told by her pediatrician last time that if she seized again to let him know and take her to the ER. We loaded up our things, they offered to keep Trev and we were on our way. Myla was still crying, half the time with her eyes closed. If they were open, she wasn't really looking through them. She didn't respond to any noise and when her eyes were open, she wouldn't really focus on anything. She was still crying when we loaded her in the car and continued to cry until we got to Grand Island. Finally her crying shifted and she began looking around a little more, and took her pacifier for the first time. She finally came out of it and was acting more like her normal self; this took about 30 minutes from start to finish. I called the clinic on our way to Grand Island and I was put in contact with the on-call pediatrician. Of course, it just so happened to be the same pediatrician that had burned us once before. As soon as I heard the name, my heart sank. She asked me to explain what happened, I started by telling briefly about Myla's first seizure in May and that... She cut me off.
"Well, first of all, it wasn't a seizure. It was a breath-holding spell. It wasn't a seizure."
I'm generally a very composed person, but my blood began to boil. I'll remind you, we were talking over the phone. She didn't have our chart. She's never seen Myla. She hadn't spoken with the doctors that treated Myla. She hadn't even heard the whole story. But within 15 seconds, she was convinced that she knew more than the rest of us. I replied calmly, but sternly, "It was a seizure. The ER doctor and our pediatrician that dealt with her told us it was a seizure. She went through the post-seizure activity. It lasted longer than the "breath-holding convulsions" are supposed to last. That's what convinced them that it was more than just breath-holding." I continued to tell her what had happened that night. At the end of the conversation she told me, "Trust me; you don't want it to be a seizure." No kidding, lady. I struggled to stay pleasant, so I opted to keep my mouth shut. I let her continue to tell me how much she knew and how many cases she had like this. It was so frustrating. I got off the phone and we prepared ourselves for the ER. Remember, everything that happened after the seizure was after Myla's bedtime following an already exhausting weekend, with the seizure making her even sleepier. She was miserably tired and we knew we had several hours ahead of us.
We got checked in and they checked her vitals. We went over both seizures several times with different doctors and nurses. The ER doctor asked a few questions, but seemed unfazed by the length of her convulsions, the post-seizure activity, and the obvious difference in her demeanor from when she's simply held her breath and passed out. He left to call the on-call pediatrician. You can imagine how that went over. We didn't hear from the doctor for over an hour. I was able to get Myla to sleep on my lap. Finally a nurse came in to draw some blood. Myla was out of control. Still no word from the doctor. The only thing that calmed Myla down was me singing to her and eventually she fell back asleep. Just in time for us to be told 45 minutes later that her potassium tested high (but this can be from human error), so they wanted to retest. A needle wakes Myla up for the second time. James and I are exhausted and discouraged. We calmed her down again...back to sleep. The doctor comes in at 11 pm, says the second blood test came back normal. He told us after talking with the pediatrician, they were both convinced it wasn't a seizure. We were discharged.
The drive home from the hospital was confusing. Were we overreacting? Is this something we shouldn't worry about? Why are we getting such opposite opinions from doctors? Who do we trust? Where do we go from here? Why does our gut say that this is more than just a common thing?
I called Trey the next morning to get his take on the situation. Granted, he doesn't deal with seizures every day, but he said it looked like every other seizure he's seen. I felt at ease, knowing that we weren't losing our minds. I bounced a few things off of him and was glad to talk to someone who watched it happen and had an outside perspective. I seriously had to keep telling myself, "I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy."
We met with our pediatrician a couple days later and went over the entire scene again. He said that he wasn't comfortable just assuming it wasn't a seizure. He ordered an EEG to be done through Mary Lanning in Hastings. The EEG would show signs of epileptic activity. If that showed up on the results we'd be transferred to a neurologist at Children's Hospital. If the EEG came back normal, either
1. She was experiencing the breath-holding convulsions and is just a rare case because the duration of and recovery from it don't fit the normal standard, or
2. She was seizing as a result of the breath-holding
The EEG was scheduled for the next week. We were given instructions to keep her up until midnight the night before, wake her up at 4 AM, and check into Hastings at 7:45 without letting her fall back asleep, and no caffeine. I laughed when the nurse told me that and thought, "who gives there 1-year-old caffeine?" (But now I'm glad she made that clear, because I could see myself trying that in a weak moment.) Myla normally sleeps from 7-7, so it was going to be difficult. I laid her down for a late nap, James took her out in the tractor for a couple hours, we gave her a bath, let her watch TV... It went surprisingly smooth. We laid her down at midnight and dreaded the 4 AM alarm. The morning proved to be much harder. She was so fussy. She didn't want breakfast, she didn't want to play, she didn't want to rock. She wanted her bed. Finally by 5:30 she kind of woke up and seemed to be her normal self. We got everything packed up and loaded in the car at 6:30 so James and I could grab coffee before we checked in. I sat in the back seat, next to Myla and kept her awake with Cheerios and Kindle games. We checked into the hospital and were taken back to a small room. The goal was to get her to sleep for the test. The technician performing the EEG put a bonnet-type hat with holes in it on her head. He marked each hole with a marker on her scalp. She hated that on her head. I sat in the chair with her on my lap, gave her a bottle, and I sang to her. The technician started putting a clear gel on some of the dots, she fell asleep while he did it. Next he took the sensors, put some cream on them, pressed them onto the gelled dot, and covered with tape. I think there were 28 of them all over her head. She slept through it.
Remember that cup of coffee I had? Yeah, it hit my bladder about the time we got all the sensor on. To make matters worse, she was most definitely pressing on my bladder. They wanted to have the sensors on for at least 30 minutes for good reading. At one point during the test, she woke up startled and reached for the wires. She managed to pull one off before I settled her back down. I was so afraid they'd have to start over, but thankfully we caught it quickly and had most of the test already done, so he gave it a few more minutes and we started to remove the wires. She slept through all but the last 8 wires and tape being pulled off. Poor babe was so tired. They gave us a weird stocking-hat thing for Myla to wear home so that the greasy gel wouldn't get all over. They answered our questions and we were out the door.
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| I'm pretty sure everyone thought we had a cancer baby when we left the hospital because of the hat. |
We were called this week with the results from the test. Everything looked normal, no epileptic activity! This is the result that we were anticipating and hoping for. We have a few options going forth but for now we are just going to continue watching her and are preparing ourselves for the next time she seizes. Myla has been taking quick breaths (or gasps) with each convulsion, so we're not concerned about permanent brain damage, because she is not fully cut off of oxygen during that time. In Myla's case our doctor is not concerned that it was cause her to regress developmentally. He did say that a seizing brain isn't a growing brain, mostly because of the stress it creates and the recovery needed. But if she's going weeks or months without seizing, it's not something that will affect her in the long run. He told us that we can pursue medication, but since we believe her seizures are directly related to the breath-holding and not an obvious neurological problem, it's very unlikely that we will find the right medication to effectively treat her specific seizures. Plus each medication comes with numerous side effects that we are not comfortable introducing to her at this point. Since we are assuming they are directly related to the breath-holding, we have high hopes that she will outgrow all of it. So, as of now, we are just transitioning to a new normal with this as our reality. Honestly, it hasn't affected our day-to-day in very many ways; mostly just feeling the need to prepare other people that care for her, like grandparents, babysitters, nursery workers, etc. We also have to keep a closer eye on her when she is crying. Sometimes I don't even realize she's throwing a fit at my feet when I'm washing dishes; I assume she's moved on and forgotten why she's mad, when in reality she'll be standing next to me not breathing. The biggest risk right now is her passing out or seizing in an unsafe place, like at the top of the stairs, in the tub, or even just when she's walking around. I don't think it will ever get easier to watch, but now that we know this could very easily happen again, we're more prepared.
What some people don't realize is that we still need to parent her. So many people have told me that they just couldn't let her cry anymore if they knew she could pass out or seize, but the truth is we still have to teach her that no means no and that Mom and Dad hold the authority. Could you imagine if we never let her cry again? That terrifies me about what kind of a woman she would become. That's not the answer here.
Even though we've received the test results, it's only opened up many more unknowns. We feel that we're in a season of the unknown. (How often will this happen? Why does her body react this way? Are we doing the right thing?) As hard as the unknown is I've realized that there's never a season of known. We are always living the unknown. We like to believe we hold the control in our life, but we never know what tomorrow holds, or even what tonight holds. We never know when sickness, or car accidents, or tragedy, or betrayal will strike. But up to that point we feel that we are living in the known, but instead we are just oblivious to what's coming. Then there are other times when we're made very aware of our unknown. It slaps you in the face and you realize that you've been living in the unknown all along.
There's been more weary days than encouraging, more tears than laughter, and more questions than answers, but we're trusting it all to the One who never lives in the unknown, the One who holds my tonight and tomorrow, the One who provides the strength in the hardest moments, the One who meets us in our unknown and speaks words of truth and life.
Facing the unknown, growing on the farm...
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