"Can we play pond again Daddy? I have plenty of time!"

Today, with the help of antibiotics, Jaxon is feeling better. His grandma stayed with him during the day so Mark and I could rest. When we came to relieve her, Jaxon was playing pool. He played with Mark, game after game and kept making these hilarious comments. People in the room were laughing and asked us where he gets his charisma. Mark answered, "It's because he's in his underwear." I guess Jaxon get's his sense of humor from Mark.
The diagnosis is a port infection and with luck we can get it cleared up with antibiotics. After a 10 day round we'll check for the bacteria again and then see if we need to take the port out surgically. If that were the case we'd have another one put in so that we don't have to do peripheral sticks just yet, as that would be pretty painful and traumatic for Jaxon. So far his hospital stay has been quite hospitable.Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers.

Double Whammy

Saturday, the morning of the Salsa Challenge I had a sore throat. After talking all day to volunteers and the public at admissions, my throat really hurt. Sunday morning I woke up with laryngitis. (see post here)
My sweet sister, Tacy, picked Jaxon up from school and took him and Finley back to my mom's for a few hours, so I could get some rest. Then Mark picked up the boys on his way home from work at 4 PM. When Jaxon walked in the house holding an untouched sucker (his favorite candy), I knew something was wrong. He grabbed a 'throw-up bowl' and laid on the couch and promptly went to sleep. Mark said he had been shivering and trying to sleep on the way home. After a great deal of searching I found a thermometer that works and took his temperature under his arm. He didn't even move. 102.9. Uh-oh. He was really sick. And he had been fine at lunch. Weird. Because of his hemophilia treatment, Jaxon has a port-a-cath which is a central line to his heart. With this foreign device in his body, there is always a risk of infection, although we have avoided it for nearly 5 years (knock on wood).
The rule is that if either kid (both Jaxon and Asher have ports) gets a fever above 101.5 we have to take them to the ER in Phoenix as a precaution. So, we call our hemotologist nurse and she says to bring him right in. As we hang up with her, Jaxon sits up and vomits into his bowl. So, now we think he's got the flu (How am I supposed to battle that while I'm fighting this cold? Geez) but the nurse says to bring him in anyway.
Mark takes him and I stay with the little ones. I get a text message that his temp is 103. That's really high for Jaxon, the highest he's ever had. My family usually has ultra-low temps. Anyway, they take some blood samples and decide that he can go home, but they want to wait for a while to see if his temperature drops with Tylenol. Well, it doesn't. Jaxon wakes up to pee and is incoherent, can't answer questions and is just really out of it. So, they tell Mark he's going to have to stay the night. Yeah, so that's no fun. I really hope he's doing okay. It's always so sad to see my kids sick.
Anyway, keep us in your prayers.

Birth through 5 months

Finley will be 6 months on the 29th, so I've been going through pictures to see how he's changed from month to month.
The pics go:
Birth 1 mo
2 mo 3mo
4 mo 5 mo

I'm hoping to find some pics of my other kids that look like Fin and have a guessing game for my next post.

Easy Yummy Recipes

I'd like to post a few of my favorite easy recipes in hopes that some of you will share yours!
I also use mealsmatter.org for menu ideas, meal planning, and shopping list.

1. Hawaiian Chicken Sandwiches
Teriyaki marinated grilled chicken breasts, a slice of your favorite cheese, red onion, fresh spinach, and tomato with mayo on a toasted whole wheat bun. I copied this from Rumbi Grill. (The one in the picture is from Hardee's).


2. Swiss Steak
I made this one tonight. Super easy and my kids love it! (that's saying something)

2 lb Round or Chuck Steak
2 cans Tomato Soup

Cook in Crockpot for 4 hr on high (in the summer I plug my crockpot in on my back porch)

Serve with mashed potatoes and use the tomato sauce in crockpot as gravy.


3. Chicken Bryan (copycat from Carrabba's)

Chicken Breasts (one per person)
Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto
Goat Cheese

Coat chicken with olive oil and grill (I use chicken breasts/tenders frozen individually in a bag, and I cook them from frozen). I use a Foreman grill, but any kind will work.
Warm Sundried tomato pesto. Spread room temp goat cheese on grilled chicken, then top with pesto.
Carrabba's serves theirs with Garlic Mashed potatoes, or pasta. Yummy.

4. Multi-Purpose Shredded Beef/Pork
Got this recipe from a great caterer.

Any size, type roast
2-4 T Montreal Steak Seasoning
NO LIQUID

Cook in crockpot for a long time. Low 10 hrs, High 5-7 hrs. It is done when you put a fork in and twist and the meat falls apart.
Take it out and shred it with a fork. (I should be super easy to shred, if it's not, it's not done)
Stir it in a bowl and it should break apart even more.

Then you can do lots of things: add BBQ sauce (I like Bill Johnson's) for BBQ beef sandwiches, or add green chile sauce (the best is from Trader Joes) for burritos/enchiladas/taquitos. I'm sure there are more, but this is all I've tried. You can freeze the extra and it goes a long way.

My honey has a new blog.
Visit him and welcome him to the blogging world.

It started, or ended perhaps, with a thud. Screaming, I ran down the four stairs to the umbrella stroller, turned upside down on the tile with two fat legs sticking out from the bottom. Big brother had been pushing baby Fin around the house and wanted to take him down stairs, carefully, he said. Only it didn't happen that way. I just prayed that his skull wasn't fractured, and he didn't have bleeding on his brain. But, I reminded myself that this was the child without hemophilia. Whew. There's looking on the bright side.
At five months, our third son has endured more trauma than his older brothers combined. I should have expected as much. But, I did not expect to watch my baby's nose and lip swell to twice their normal size. Within a half hour I took him to the urgent care and he was seen two hours later and diagnosed with a broken nose. It will heal fine on it's own, I was told.
So, I arrive home, exhausted and still sick to my stomach to see my baby in pain and having difficulty breathing. My husband is glad to see us, but still furious at our five year old for pushing the baby down the stairs.
For some reason, I don't harbor the same feelings. When it happened, Jaxon was hysterical with grief. He understood how badly he had hurt his brother and was genuinely sorry for it.
Why, then, is his dad so mad?
Mark says it's because Jaxon was being disobedient during this incident. He was supposed to be eating dinner and had taken the baby for a stroll instead.
To me, letting that happen was the problem, not the disobedience. He's not yet accountable for his own sins. As parents, we're still the ones in charge and therefore responsible for the well-being of all of our children, even when they hurt each other.
Besides the accountability issue, I don't understand the benefit of remaining angry.
No one is better off for Mark's anger at Jaxon.
Not Mark, not Jaxon, not me, and certainly not Finley.

This traumatic event has helped me learn an important lesson, because I'm usually the one who holds grudges, especially against our impulsive 5 year old. Love really is the only way to help us change for the better. Staying angry causes more pain, for everyone.
And a broken nose is painful enough. Really.

Here are our family pics. Jaxon is 5 1/2, Asher is 2, and Finley is 5 months old.

He's so happy, and just starting to sleep through the night!

Asher was grumpy during the photo shoot. This was the best shot we got. Poor guy!

Silly Jaxon, always crazy during pictures, but this one came out pretty well. It's larger than life on our wall, though.