I'll never forget the first time we went to the children's hospital... As we walked through the area to check-in we passed many sick babies and I had to fight back tears more than once. When we sat down in the waiting area I looked at Jer and said, "coming here makes me realize just how blessed we really are.. I mean, we are only coming here for a cosmetic thing.. and there are so many people here for something worse."

We now know that our baby boy has more than just a cosmetic thing. He has a rare genetic disease that has caused benign tumors to grow on his brain. I could sit around, worry, and question "why our baby, Lord? Why??"  but I'm not.. and I haven't. Instead I'm choosing to trust God.

 ^"Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."  Philippians 4:6-7

God has definitely given me peace. That's the only way I know how to explain it. I've been a worry wart all my life but I haven't worried about this situation once.

I know He is in control.

MRI Results

Joel had an MRI of his brain yesterday afternoon. Everything went well. We couldn't feed him four hours prior to being sedated which was the worst part of the whole thing. I think this picture shows you how Joel felt about that..

The neurologist called this morning and said the MRI showed that Joel does have tuberous sclerosis. It's definitely not the news we wanted, but thankfully there were only a few small lesions on his brain and they are non-malignant. {The irritation from these lesions is what was causing the seizures.}

So.. now the next step is to have more tests to check his other organs (heart, kidneys, eyes) for lesions.


Please continue to pray for our precious baby. Pray the other tests will be normal, and pray that the lesions on his brain won't effect his development/learning as he gets older. Also, please pray for Jer and I. I think the hardest part of all this is that we don't have our support system here.

Pumpkin Patch

On Sunday we spent the day at a local farm with our friends the C's. We walked a corn maze, picked out Joel's first pumpkin, and attempted to take took a couple family photos. We had a great time with our friends, and definitely enjoyed the beautiful autumn weather! (I may or may not be getting spoiled by the PNW weather. I will never admit it though. HAHA) I can't wait to take Joel again next year. :)

Thank you for all the prayers and support. I'm beyond happy to report that Joel hasn't had any seizures in a few days!! Praise the Lord!! Please continue to pray that his MRI will be normal, though. He is having the MRI this coming week, and he will have to be sedated for it.

I'm Back, and I Need Prayers For My Baby!!

A couple months ago I lost all the pictures on my blog. I'm not sure what happened but it seriously made me want to cry (let's just blame those terrible postpartum hormones ok?), and that's when I realized I needed a break from blogging. It had become just another stressor in my life instead of a fun outlet for me.

I still haven't recovered all the pictures, but I got over it. There are more important things in life to worry about. Like my precious seven month old son for example...

Joel was born with linear epidermal nevus on his right arm/shoulder. I never mentioned it because we didn't know much about it until recently. Our pediatrician didn't have a clue what it was so he sent us straight to a specialist. We were told that his case was very mild, he shouldn't have any problems, and it's mostly a cosmetic thing.

Well, last Thursday Joel started doing a weird head nodding thing. He would drop his head down and then quickly bring it back up. It freaked us out but we thought maybe he was just super tired because it was past his nap time. The next day he did it again so I called a nurse. She suggested we bring him in to see the doctor. We took him to see the pediatrician on Tuesday, the 20th. He wasn't 100% sure what was going on. He didn't think it was serious because Joel was staying alert during the little episodes. But since Joel has the epidermal nevus he decided to consult with the specialist to see if it could cause what he was doing. Turned out it could, so they sent us to the big city for an EEG on Thursday, the 22nd.

His EEG went well but it showed some abnormal brain waves. We had a consult with two neurologist right after his test, and they seem to think he is having seizures because of the epidermal nevus. So he is now taking seizure medication to hopefully stop it. They want to do another EEG after a few weeks to see how it's working.

They also want to do an MRI (he will have to be sedated for it) in 2 weeks to check for tuberous sclerosis, which can cause non-malignant tumors on the brain and other organs.

We're still trying to process everything, but I'm sure you can imagine how scary all this is for us. We're hoping and praying the medication will start working soon for his seizures. It absolutely breaks my heart when it's happening because he looks at me like "what's going on momma, make it stop." I feel like I'm failing him as his momma because I can't just kiss it and make it better. :(

So please keep my baby in your prayers.. Pray the seizures will stop, and pray the MRI will be normal.

I will post an update as soon as we know more.

Point No Point & Hurricane Ridge

A few weeks after we returned home from our trip we bought an SUV. It was much much needed! My compact car was too small for us as a family of three. In fact it was so small that we would have to move the passenger seat up as far as it would go just to fit Joel's car seat in. No I'm not kidding! haha It was ridiculous! We knew we needed something bigger, and thankfully we found the perfect SUV on the first day of looking. We seriously luuuuvvv it. Anyway ~
Now that we can all fit comfortably in a car together we decided it was time to explore Washington! Our first adventure was to Point No Point. It was nice.. Nothing to write home about though.

PNP Lighthouse

Our second adventure brought us to Port Angeles. We spent a few hours walking around downtown enjoying the beautiful weather. For dinner we went to the restaurant where a fictional character from a famous vampire book went on their first date. It was extremely overpriced for what they had to offer, but hey.. at least we can say we went there.

After dinner we headed to the Olympic National Park to visit Hurricane Ridge. J had been dying to go since we moved here, and I'm so glad he talked me into it! It was BEAUTIFUL!! The drive up the mountain was scary at times but the view was so worth it.

The drive down

4th of July

We had a great time celebrating Joel's first 4th of July!

Our fun started on Sunday night.. We stayed up past our bedtime and joined our friends, the C's, for a local firework show. {It was the first time I've ever been freezing cold while watching fireworks by the way, which was super weird to me! I'm use to sweating my butt off in the southern heat!} We were nervous about how Joel would handle the loud booms but HE LOVED IT! He seriously giggled the entire time! It was too cute!! (I've been kicking myself for not taking a picture or a video of him that night!)

On the 4th we hung out with the C's again. We went over to their house and had a yummy lunch. Afterwards we all went to a street fair in B-Island. The fair turned out to be really lame but we enjoyed the company, sunshine and fresh air.  :)