A "Blessings" Update

I've been spending a lot of time weeding my garden and pricing things for my upcoming garage sale lately, which has given me quite a bit of time to think.  I've been overwhelmed by how many things I have to be nothing but grateful for! 

The number one "blessing", of course, is my salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.  It is astounding to me how God would love me so much that He would condemn His only son to a cross, to suffer in my place for the punishment that I deserve!  If I had only this promise - that I have been saved from my selfish sin - I would have everything.  I would need no more.  And yet, because God loves me so much, He chooses to give me tangible, earthly things as well.  So when I list these blessings, please keep in mind to whom it is that I am grateful. 

James 1:17 - "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow."

Family
1. My wonderful husband David, who loves and cherishes me far beyond what I had ever hoped for.   Just this past weekend, he saw that I was down and he arranged for me to go out with several girlfriends for a night without children, just to enjoy conversation and food.  David works hard to provide for us all and is a great dad, a godly example, and a good friend to many.

2. Samuel, my sweet little boy who calls himself  "Mommy's 'nugglebug".  I am forever being showered with kisses and hugs, which I never turn down!  Samuel is learning to be courteous to others because he tends to be shy in public.  He's doing a great job answering when adults ask him questions, opening doors for others, and helping me to clear the table after we eat.  Samuel seems to have my personality but is all boy to the core, following his daddy everywhere and always telling us he has "lots of work to do."
I am so happy to report that Samuel has not had an asthma-type attack in a few months now - we will be seeing our allergist to check on his progress from the past year very soon. We have also been working with a dermatologist who understands us and we feel is on our side, and his eczema is almost completely under control at this point!

3. Julia, our little princess with a big personality.  She's opposite of her brother and doesn't know a stranger!  Julia has her own ideas about everything, and keeps us laughing with all of her antics.  I love to watch her with her baby dolls as she takes care of them, feeding them bottles, changing diapers, and rocking them to sleep.  Julia is 100% proof to me that God has created boys to be boys and girls to be girls!  She is all about her clothes and hair, keeping her nails trimmed and painted, princesses, babies, etc.  Julia is a Mommy's girl . . . and I am okay with that!  She is also what I would call the "picture of health", which is huge for us after we've struggled with Samuel's health for the past year.

4. Baby L3 has been growing as well - I am now feeling lots of kicks and wiggles, and we're looking forward to having an ultrasound on August 6th!  As I had mentioned previously, I felt far more sick with this pregnancy than with the other two.  It did last about 2 weeks longer than the others, but I am now feeling great!  We are so looking forward to Christmas season this year, with a new niece and our own new baby coming in just a few short months!  Here is a picture of Baby a few days ago, at 18 weeks.

5. My parents and in-laws.  What blessings they are in our lives!  All four are awesome at the grandparent thing, and our kids beg to see them all the time, which we try to do as often as possible!  We got to take a vacation with the Larsons in June, and are really looking forward to going with my parents on a trip to Dubuqe in a few days.  I am grateful to have both my mom and my mother-in-law, as they are always up for a nice chat, meeting to shop, or coming to help out with the kids.  Along with this part I also must include my awesome sister, as well as the 3 sisters and 4 brothers that I have been given as a bonus for marrying into the Larson family!  They're all great aunts and uncles, and are always there for us as friends and helpers when we need them!

Friends
1. What a neat group of friends we have at Harvest, our church!  We are so thankful to have people we know we can count on of all ages to get together just for fun, or for serious conversation.  We have everything from a young marrieds Bible study, to friends our parents' age to act as surrogate "grandparents" when we need them, to friends our grandparents' age with whom we can just enjoy a great visit!

2. David and I both keep in touch with a few of our college friends.  We get together often with David's best friend Rick, and are thrilled that he and his wife are expecting their first baby in February!  Though I don't see my college girlfriends as often, when I do, we can always just pick up where we left off.  I recently got to spend a whole week visiting with them - Sarah, who lives just an hour from me, came to visit one day.  The next day, the kids and I went to Illinois to see Heidi, who returned on the 6th of July from two years in Peru.  Then we drove down to St. Louis to see Becky and Joe, dear friends of ours who just had their second baby.  How wonderful to have friends we've known for years and who know who we are and who we used to be, and they still love us.

3. I recently received forgiveness from an old friend that could only have been given through the grace of God.  I am so grateful that He restores relationships, and am so humbled by His working in my life as well as friends' so that we can live for God and be at peace with each other!

4.  David and I both have co-workers (mine are former, from pre-SAHM days) with whom we enjoy spending time.  It is so nice to have friends from all walks of life, and we both enjoy all the opportunities we can get to see them.

Finances
1. God's provision of jobs for both of us when we needed them.  Though it was miserable on our family life, we felt that God provided a second job for David at McDonald's last year that we used to get out of the "hole" we'd been in since shortly after our wedding.  When that job was too much, He provided a job for me with just enough to help us get ahead and earn some savings.  Both of these jobs were brief, as they should have been, but during that time we discovered how much we needed each other and for our family to be whole! 

2. Shortly after we quit doing everything but David's full-time job, God provided for us in so many different ways, that it more than made up for that extra income we had been receiving!  God sure does work in mysterious ways.

3. Though I cannot yet share many details (I don't know them all, to be honest!), our great God has provided once again for something that David and I most definitely did not bring upon ourselves.  I can just say that David has been asked to help out an older gentleman in our church for a while this fall.  He will be doing one of his favorite things while earning extra income, and I believe there will be other perks to go along.  More information to come on this one . . . let's just say we are in awe and we are thrilled!

I think this will do for my listings as of now, though the great things God has done just keep on rolling into my head!  Something that I did last fall was to keep a daily "thankful" journal, where I wrote five things each morning that I had to be grateful for.  I would love to start that up again - I truly saw a difference in my attitude when focusing on the good rather than the bad! 

Unexpected Allergies: Part 2

We went to see the allergist (whew!  boy, do I have a story on the payment for that one!  but that's another day . . .) in August, two months after the initial wheezing/coughing/hives outbreak in June.  She was wonderful.  She spent about 2 hours in the room with us, talking about all of Samuel's issues and figuring out for what we would be testing that day.  Samuel sat like a champ through 18 scratch tests on his little arms and waited for them to show us our results.  We were pretty surprised - he tested positive for 13 of them. 

Grass.
Dust mites (several kinds).
Cat hair.
Dogs.
Horses.
Pollen.
Soy.
Eggs.
PEANUTS.

The soy and eggs were actually miniscule in comparison to the others, so at this point, we have been told that they shouldn't affect him too much.  But peanuts??  Oh, that one was reeeeeally bad!  Samuel hated PB&J and all other peanut things for a long time, but peanut butter is so convenient, I forced it upon him only months before until he liked it at least somewhat.  Not to mention, there are lots of foods that are manufactured with peanuts in the same plant, so we need to avoid those, too.

And dust . . . who doesn't have dust in their house?  We were advised to clean our house as spotless as possible, as often as possible.  And we're supposed to get rid of our carpet (fortunately only one room of our house is carpeted and the rest is hard wood).  I was interested to learn that it's dust mites.  I didn't even know there was a difference.

 And she told us to keep our windows shut during high pollen times, and that Samuel shouldn't spend a lot of time playing in the grass, especially in the heat, as his eczema is exacerbated by being too warm.

Then there was the prescribed medication, which after a couple of months we realized was triggering outbursts of anger in our sweet boy.  We took him off of that pretty quickly after figuring that out!

We've learned since that Samuel is extremely allergic to bean dust . . . which is a problem since Daddy is a farmer!  We found that out after Samuel took a ride in the combine this fall and I ended up driving about 75 mph the entire 7-mile trip home with him choking in the backseat.  Talk about a helpless moment.  As a result, all through harvest David had to come home and take everything off at the back door, then jump into the shower before touching or even being within a few inches of Samuel.

Samuel's legs during the bean dust outbreak.  Here, he was on the nebulizer while I sponge bathed him in a chair.

So far, we have been with or close to Samuel's nebulizer and a bottle of Benadryl each time he has had an allergic reaction, and for that we are extremely thankful.  We carry epipens, but have not yet had to use one.  (Although, Samuel did administer one to himself at Thanksgiving just "for fun", haha)

As far as these allergies, aside from the bean dust which causes immediate anaphylaxis (throat closing), the hardest part for us is that none of the others cause such a reaction.  Think of it this way.  You have an 8 oz. cup in front of you and pitchers of allergens in your hand.  Pour in 3 oz. of peanut, 2 oz. of dog dander,  and then 4 oz. dust mites, and the cup is suddenly running over with allergens.  This is what causes the reaction.  Sometimes we don't know if or how much Samuel has been exposed to one allergen, and don't realize it until there is just too much for his little system.  There are also likely other things Samuel is reacting to that we have not yet tested, so we try to keep track of exposures as much as possible.

Samuel has constant eczema issues and needs thick lotion once or more per day, and sometimes uses a topical steroid as well.  I show his legs here, but during outbreaks, his hands and eyes are usually swollen as well.  As seen in the photos, Samuel's eczema is a day-to-day issue that is worse some days than others.  We just spent a few minutes outside and he already has the hives all over his right hand and arm. 

Samuel's legs today - a good day!



Backs of Samuel's legs today

 Samuel is also very sensitive to temperature - he overheats from very little exertion, which as mentioned before makes skin/breathing problems worse, and he gets very cold much more quickly than most of us as well.

As far as our eating . . . I am all for sugary, yummy treats.  But a friend in the medical world as well as others have told us that sugar weakens the immune system if it is already weak.  And Samuel definitely has a weakened immune system.  So while we enjoy some sugar still, we have really tried to cut that amount way down.  I don't know for sure if it's helping or not, but we at least feel like we're doing something good!

As I mentioned in the last post, we are just so thankful for God's provision since June, that we have always been close to our nebulizer and Benadryl when Samuel has had a reaction.  We will need to continue to see the allergist once a year and continue to do testing, but the hope is that he will outgrow at least some of the allergies by kindergarten. 

We pray that none of this is a lasting condition, but until he outgrows it or until eternity . . . we'll keep trusting the Lord to show us how to help our son.

Unexpected Allergies: Part 1

I'm not one of those people who gets all hyped up about medical stuff.  You know what I mean - I've never quite believed the ones who are allergic to everything, have pains everywhere, etc.  But I just thought I'd take the time to share our story and my own heart a bit regarding our family's little medical struggle and God's providence through it all. 

Samuel was born in '09 a healthy little boy.  We couldn't have been happier.  David and I have always been very healthy ourselves, only needing to visit the doctor once every few years , so we fully expected to have the same in our children.  And I must interject right now before I really start, that I know there are so many people with much more difficult or severe conditions, but to us, this is huge!

People commented to us right from the start that Samuel was a heavy breather.  I can't count how many times others would ask me if he was okay because he was breathing so loudly!  When Samuel was about 9 months old, he had RSV.  We put him on a nebulizer for a few weeks and he seemed fine.  He also had unusually dry skin.  Not a big problem to us. 

Fast forward to this past summer.  June 18, 2011.  We had Julia's first birthday party and spent hours outside where the kids ran through the grass and got very hot!  My parents and my in-laws became very concerned when Samuel was breathing heavily.  Since this happened fairly often, David and I dismissed it for awhile.  However, Samuel broke out in hives all over and we knew something was wrong.  Not knowing really what else to do, we gave him some Benadryl and used hydrocortisone lotion, and he and David sat in the bedroom for the remainder of the afternoon working on calming down so he could breathe.

We still didn't think too much of the whole thing until exactly one month later.  It was a routine morning at home, and Samuel had been "helping" me fold laundry.  He had disobeyed somehow and I had given him a brief time-out in his room.  At about 8:30 a.m. he started wheezing and coughing uncontrollably.  His skin turned red again, and this time I knew something was definitely wrong.  The worst feeling in the world is when your child can't breathe and you have no idea what caused it or how to fix it!  My 2-year-old baby was so panicked, and so was I!  I did all I could think of - ran the shower with hot water to get some steam going, and held his face over the steam.  I honestly have no idea what Julia was doing at the time, and she is usually pretty "needy".  I thank God for so many things that day, including keeping me at least somewhat calm and keeping the baby occupied and unhurt while I cared for Samuel!

As soon as I got Samuel to a point where I felt he could breathe without coughing (he still couldn't talk, though), I called the doctor's office where they put the on-call nurse on the phone.  She immediately scheduled Samuel to see our doctor just as soon as we could get in.  Another praise . . . it takes 45 minutes to get to our pediatrician's office, and I got dressed, took Julia to a friend's house, picked up David from work, and got to the office within an hour! 

By the time we got to the doctor's office, Samuel was only wheezing every few breaths.  It was at that point that we remembered the episode one month earlier, and I actually remembered at least one other time where Samuel had wheezed and coughed and broken out in hives.  I had completely dismissed that and forgotten until we were at the dr's that day.  He sent us home with a nebulizer, some epipens, and steroids, and scheduled us to see an allergist.  He told us there is usually a link between the breathing issues and what he labled as "severe eczema".

Never would we have guessed before July 18th that we have such a "sick" little boy!  We are so thankful that God has kept him safe thus far and has provided with each subsequent outbreak of hives and wheezing the ability to get help/relief within minutes.  I will continue this story in a second post with the test results from August and how we've dealt with Samuel's issues since then!

Our sweet little cowboy!!