banged up beauty.....

Oh my goodness can the girl really not get a break??? Another injury to Madison's every growing list!!! Last night on Jed's duty (side note: chipped tooth and stitches have also happened on his duty!!!) the latest injury occurred, not that it has anything to do with neglect or not paying attention. I think that it is comical that when a mother leaves home wild accidents happen!

The kids were in bed early because today was Madison's first day of kindergarten. Jed heard some chatting upstairs, not unusual since the new adventure of sharing a room. A few minutes later the laughter turned to blood curdling scream...... here is the injury!

Ouch........

Madison was annoyed that Olivia "kept waking me up" so she invited her to come sleep in bed with her in hopes that she would settle down. Somehow on the way into bed Olivia's head collided with Madison's..... I came home and Madison was sound asleep with the icepack still in place. This morning it was a beautiful shiner. She cried because she did not want to go to school like that... we tried to tell her that the boys would think it was cool.

Always lots of reasons for pictures in this household!!!

Tonight we went to the fair to celebrate Madison birthday coming on Sunday. We took her good friend Gabby along! They had a great time and we are all pooped out!! And speaking of poop...we have had no accidents in 48 hours and 2 days of successfully pooing in the big girl potty!!! I feel an underwear shopping trip coming on!!!

Here are pics of the wild day.......

First Day of School

Still friends....even after the injury!!

At the fair....this is before Olivia freaked out because she was NOT a fan of the ride!

Gabby & Madison

Pouting after the "freaky" ride!!!Now we are better!!!

Taking it all in....Having a blast with NoahMadison is always up for a challengeAll tattooed up!!!Olivia was also not a fan of the noise in the barn!!

Madison was in love with this sheep!!! This is a GREAT fair picture...

dirty girl with missing teeth, black eye, petting sheep in pink leopard "outfit" all while carrying the bible she received at one of the booths!!!

another day with good news....

real quick update to be followed with more info later!
1- Madison pooped again!!!!!
2- Danielle has been discharged!! Scans looked good so she will follow up with her OB on Monday for pain management issues with the severe headaches... probably being causes by the other tumors that she has in her neck and shoulders.

Stay tuned for pics of Madison's latest injury!!! The girl should be living in a rubber room!!!!

We are off to the fair to celebrate all the good news and Madison's birthday(8-24) !

Nikki

pray for my little sister.....

Lauren, Danielle and me at the baby shower last Sunday.

my sister Danielle is 33 weeks pregnant. She has struggled her whole life with hemagiomas, tumors that form in your blood vessels. Danielle has been under special care since her pregnancy began. Last night she started having allot of pain and was having some involuntary eye twitching. After seeing her doctor today they have decided to admit her to the hospital. She will be having scans done in the morning to see how everything looks and then decisions on how to move forward will be made. Please pray for Danielle and Ted these next 24 hours as I am sure they are anxious about what the scans will show.

Danielle's doctor told her that a baby born at 33 weeks would do fine..... not something I would wish on anyone though. It brings me right back to the days with Maddie as a preemie.

We love you Danielle and Ted and are praying for you!

great news.....

hello all!! Just wanted to give you an exciting update! Madison has been on the new dosage of meds for 2 days now with no results. We were instructed that if after 48 hours we had not had any poop that we were supposed to give an enema. That would have been this evening and we have had no results.....until.... after lunch I made Madison sit on the potty. For the first time that I can ever remember in her life she had a normal solid stool that she said she could feel!!!! Can you believe it! I wanted to take a picture of it! I was so excited but since I know that more than family is checking the blog I will show restraint! Madison asked me why I was crying... I told her that I was so happy that she was able to go potty. She immediately decided to take advantage of the situation and said " do i get a surprise"!!!! Of course the answer was YES!!!

I will email Dr. Levitt and let him know! I am sure that he will be thrilled as well! So we will continue on with NO EXLAX and 2TBL of Pectin for now!!!!

technical difficulties.....

OOPPPS.....

do you ever just want to curse modern technology??? Every morning, just like clock work I walk down stairs ...right to the kitchen where my husband has already brewed coffee (bless him!). The next two things are just habit - first, the ipod Bose docking system is started up. A day without music is torture to me. Some days its kids praise music, others it's a little rock and roll... you just never know until the day begins what music is in order. After the coffee is poured and the music is pumping.... its time to check email, look at blogs and check Arbonne business stats. Now the day can begin. The kids have slowly woken up with a cartoon and it is safe to start interacting! Trust me the girls and I need our space in the morning. Jed, the "morning guy" will never totally understand this concept... he wakes up dancing and smiling, somewhat of an annoying trait to the "night girl"! However, I will never understand why someone would not want to start a project at 10 Pm in the peak of "high performance"! I get my best work done from 10-12pm and Jed works the 6-8 am shift..... we have just learned to appreciate our different time clocks!

Imagine the distress in our home last week when I came down stairs and the coffee was not ready because Jed was out of town, the Bose docking station completely stopped working and my computer would not turn on!!!! It was a rough morning to say the least!!! Of course all the warranties had just conveniently expired! So it has been a rough week without our modern day conveniences...or as i feel necessities. It is quite in the morning and the girls always laugh and plug their ears when i try to stand in and take the place of the good music we once enjoyed! Hopefully the dear UPS man will be delivering both items any day here.....

no luck....

Madison has been on her new meds for almost a week now. We are not having any luck with getting things straightened out. Some days we are still having several accidents and then other days she is not going at all. We had the xray yesterday and it showed that she is still empty!! Dr. Levitt has decided to take her off of the ex-lax completely. We will stay on the 2 TBL of pectin. if she goes 2 days without stooling we have to give an enema. We just started this routine yesterday so it will be interesting to see how it goes. School starts on Friday so we are bummed that we are still at a place where there is no consistency or ability to predict what her patterns will be.

Jed and I remember a conversation with Dr. Levitt back in May when he informed us that there is a very small percentage of kids that you just can not find the correct dosage of meds for. 1 square is to high but a half is to low..... please pray that this is not the case for Madison. Pray that we are able to find the meds that will work for her. We are going back to a very strict eating schedule like we did in May just to see if that will help at all. So we will be doing no snacks at all and a very regular meal schedule. Dr. Levitt has not instructed us to do that but we are trying to do everything in our power to get her in undies as soon as possible....without having to introduce enemas.

Thank you for your continued prayers!
Nikki

great news for our sweet girl...

Just wanted to update you all on the great news that we received yesterday at Madison's appointment.

Madison and I traveled to Sycamore on Wed night and stayed with Lauren and Derrick. Lauren, Madison and I left at 6 am yesterday and drove straight to Maddies appointment at 3. Madison is a great traveler and we made it with no problems at all.

Dr. Levitt was excited to see Madison and started with his normal joking the second we walked through the door. Madison LOVES him! The exam showed that her incision is doing great and there are no problems at all. My biggest concern, as I have shared with you in the past, is that Dr. Levitt would want to start the enema program as we are having NO LUCK with the potty training or getting out of diapers.

I could tell that after telling him how many accidents that she is having he was bummed because he is DETERMINED to have her in big girl undies for school....in 8 days! After really looking at everything he believes that we are over medicating Madison. The decision was made to drop down to only HALF (!!!!) of an ex-lax a day and double the pectin. He said that he is hopeful that it will slow down the colon and that she could be in undies by next Friday!!!! That was GREAT news and not at all what we expected to hear. Dr. Levitt said that he was impressed that she has been able to go from 6 squares in May all the way down to a half! We will do an x-ray on Tuesday morning and then decide if that will be where we stay with the meds. The x-ray showed yesterday that she was totally empty! So far today we have had no poo... I am hoping that she is able to empty with the lower amount of ex-lax.

After the appointment last night we went to get some fun stuff for Madison bday invites (I will take pictures once they are done!) and then to get all of her school supplies. She had so much fun! This morning we got up and drove to Akron to surprise Danielle! She was so excited! We will stay through her baby shower on Sunday and then head back to Freeport on Monday!

We will keep you updated on how we progress with the change of meds. We are hopeful that it could be our answer and that after weeks of worring about her accidents we could finally have some success.