An overview of the past 8 months...

It's been quite a while since my last post. A lot has happened but then a lot is also still the same. In March we discovered we were expecting a new baby, a boy to be specific. He's scheduled to be born on November 13th and will be named Brennen Craig. We celebrated Jayden's 1st birthday on September 6th (his party was on the 8th) and Analeigh turned 2.5 years old on October 9th. The first photo above is a picture of the kids in their Jake & The Neverland Pirate costumes from Jayden's party. He was Jake, of course, and she was Izzy. They were both absolutely adorable.

The second photo is a recent picture of Jayden giving his sissy kisses. I can tell he loves her and I'm sure we'll see that even more as time goes by. I can't really tell you what she thinks of him but I am sure she loves him too!! I don't know what he's going to think of a little brother but we shall soon see.

Things with the new nursing agency have been going pretty well. We got to keep a couple of our regular nurses, one who has been with us since the very beginning and another we picked up about a year and a half ago. We had a new night nurse who was pregnant and ended up on bed rest until her baby was born so we now have a new night nurse who also recently discovered she was pregnant. I guess it's in the water these days lol.

Michael had gotten a very good new job but after 6 months was let go. The last couple of months have been very trying for us to say the least. He found a new job with a reputable company but it took weeks to get through the hiring process and now he's in training. So, the money isn't going to be that great for a while and we had to give up our place and move out to the country to a much smaller place that my parents' friends so graciously offered us. I'm having a hard time being so far away from everything but I keep telling myself it's only temporary.

Analeigh just celebrated ONE WHOLE YEAR of being hospital free. That means no admissions since the end of October last year. She had one outpatient procedure when we had to have her GJ replaced a few months back but it was not an overnight stay. Things with her have pretty much been the same which is actually welcome because it means she has not been sick enough to land herself in the hospital. We saw a different Analeigh after we got rid of the nurse we believed was drugging her and that version of her has become her new normal since February.

She has considerable pain from her dislocated hip that we are still managing with her regular doses of Diazepam and frequent doses of Ibuprofen. Surgery is not an option because she is not weight-bearing and her hip would just dislocate again after having gone through a very painful surgery and recovery.... so, for the time being we are just trying to keep her as comfortable as we can. Other than that, we haven't really made any significant changes to her vent settings. The pulmonologist recently adjusted her tidal volume and tried to go down on her breath rate but we had to go back up. The changes were only made in an effort to make her settings more age appropriate since she's getting bigger. She has been on 1/2 liter of oxygen for some time now and can occasionally go for several hours without any oxygen... it's really a comfort thing for her.

Other than all of this, we've just been trying to make it day to day and awaiting Brennen's arrival. I'm so glad it's almost over as this pregnancy has by far been the most painful and miserable for me. To top it all off, I have developed a chest cold that has brought coughing spells that seem to have strained a muscle in my stomach so that every time I cough it feels like someone is cutting into my belly. Looking forward to his newborn pictures on the 25th of this month and family Christmas photos on December 8th (both free sessions I won from fabulous photographers). Hoping we can get through the holidays and start saving up to find us a new place that we'll love and that will give the kids everything they need.

I'm probably leaving a lot out but these are the highlights of the last 8 months or so....