Jeremiah prayed with me tonight. I was holding him and rocking him, and he put his hand on my belly and prayed, “Dear Lord, Please be with Mama’s baby. Please don’t let it die and don’t let it get hurt in her belly. And please let it be borned ok. Amen.”

I don’t know when this will be posted, since I am going to be MUCH more cautious about telling people this time around. I’m assuming another miscarriage would not so closely follow one, but I really didn’t feel like double blows would be fun to share with everyone! But anyway, this was written on Jan. 30. I found out today. My friend Kelly came over with a dollar store test, just to see. You see, on Monday at choir practice, I was sure I was starting my period. I had wiped in the bathroom (just after discussing buying pregnancy tests earlier on the way to practice) and found very light pink blood. One little bit, in that one wipe. So I assumed great, it’s coming. Tuesday it didn’t come. Wednesday it didn’t come. Thursday it didn’t come and I ordered some of those cheap testing strips online. So today (Friday) when Kelly called telling me she’d picked up from dollar tests, and asked if I wanted one, I said sure! Why not, right? It had the FAINTEST line. But it was a line.

So there you have it. So far Kelly knows, Mom knows and Amanda knows…Oh and the boys know, because I had to explain why I’m so tired and grumpy (now that I know). I am trying to think of a fun way to surprise Jerry, but by the time you see this, that will already have happened and I’ll have to add that to my story.

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PLEASE pray for Baby Bless (this is the nickname that came to me). So far things seem normal, so that’s good…I’m telling as little people as possible this time around, just to be safe. I haven’t blogged about it yet.

(I’ve got a secret)

(I’m gonna be a BIG brother again!)

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Telling Jerry (try not to be as disappointed as I was!):

And no, it’s not pictures of a pregnancy test, so please don’t go there.

This was Jamin last week sometime…

This was him last night, right after his bath, right after Jerry had cut his hair short and we were concerned it would look horrible until it grew out:

And last but not least, this is after his hair was properly gelled and styled in that not-fussy-messy kind of style (oh and right after eating, hence the food on the face):

We have ourselves another BIG BOY and what a handsome one at that!!!!! Can you believe how big he looks????? WHERE IS MY BABY????? I seem to have no more baby boys around anymore!!!!!! *SOB*

How is it possible that my little baby is going to be FIVE YEARS OLD tomorrow? I know I say this with every boy’s birthday…but FIVE YEARS OLD?! That is half a decade. That’s exactly half the years I’ve been married. That is when he’s considered a “big boy” and no longer my baby (although, thankfully, I’m still allowed to call him my baby. *grin*). It’s time for me to decide whether we are going to homeschool him or not. I always “knew” I wanted to, but lately I’ve become more uncertain. I’ve really begun to doubt myself. Can I really homeschool him AND handle Josiah? Even though Josiah is doing amazingly better, he is still quite a handful (I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about there, as I haven’t blogged in half a month…so forgive me and just pretend you are following me for a minute), and I don’t know if I can devote enough time to schooling and Josiah too. Plus the cost of homeschooling is freaking me out…I know the Lord will supply if this is what He wants us to do, but the upfront cost is very daunting! I worry about what he would pick up in school on the one hand, as he is a sponge and picks up bad behaviors from everyone at church, but I also wonder if he would do well with another teacher. He is the kind of kid who is very hard to motivate…He’s very similar to how I was as a child (oh who am I kidding - I’m still this way!); hard to motivate, easily discouraged, stubborn, doesn’t listen to his parents well…He seems to listen much better to authority at church. And I’m not saying he’s a disobedient child - he really does want to please us…I think it’s that he doesn’t want to fail, so he doesn’t want to try. That has always been my problem…A discouraged perfectionist, at five years old!!! Anyway, Jerry and I still have a while to pray and talk about it. He is doing a very LOOSE preschool thing with us…meaning he learns things by playing and reading, but we are in no hurry to have him reading books when he gets into kindergarten or anything. He and I went to get his five year portraits taken the other day. I’m going to put a random pic thing in the sidebar so you can see how CUTE they turned out. For some of the pics, he wore my favorite sweater, and for the others, he dressed up as a pirate, and took his new pirate ship with him.

Josiah is now on a gluten-free/casein-free/corn-free diet. YES it is hard. And I mean H.A.R.D. YES it is expensive. And I mean, I don’t know how we are going to do this. BUT IT IS SOOOOO WORTH IT. I have seen amazing results in this boy. He is still rambuncious, still rowdy, still busy, but he is SOOO much more alert, responsive, and thoughtful. He can sit with us for more than a minute, and listen to a story, instead of bounding away every minute. He can do one thing for more than a minute. He is doing much better about staying in his chair at meals (not great yet LOL), and his personality is so much more the REAL JOE that we have always known was in there. The sweet, smart Josiah that we have always been in love with, but knew no one else ever saw. We still have a way to go. We are still looking into a few additional things that may help even more. We are fairly certain he has ADD or ADHD. He has sensory issues, but he is NOT autistic - or if he is, he is so high-functioning, I’m pretty sure he would never be diagnosed.  Same topic, but off the topic of Joe - WHY HAS NO ONE INVENTED A GLUTEN-FREE, CASEIN-FREE CHEESE SUBSTITUTE THAT TASTES GOOD? The only one I found, I bought and it is despised by the boys…I’m not sure how the mozz flavored one will taste…Pizza is their favorite food and it’s so hard not to be able to give it to them. It’s so sad that “dairy-free” or “lactose-free” aren’t enough - it has to be CASEIN-FREE. Which means even goat’s milk is out of the question. :/

Jamin is growing like a weed. He is still just as adorable as ever - in fact, he gets cuter each and every day. No one can resist his charm! He’s getting a little attitude on him though, I’m afraid. We need to nip that in the bud soon! I think it’s because he’s the “baby” and thinks he can get away with things the big boys can’t. Not so, little man! I am trying the GF/CF diet with him too, because he has had chronic diarrhea. I’m actually kind of concerned with the frequency of it lately. Every morning, he wakes up with it literally dripping from his diaper. He isn’t a big eater already, and he just seems so thin to me. Aside from his big old belly that is! Oh have I mentioned his belly button fettish?? He LOVES playing with his button. I have to put him in sleepers at night because his belly button was getting scabbed from him scratching and playing with it so much! (Remember Josiah did that too - he turned his into an “outtie” LOL.)

Well now that I updated everyone on the boys, I thought I’d reassure everyone that I am doing ok. They are 99% sure there was no baby in the sac. When they got my last numbers back of 12 (down from 1477!), he didn’t run the test on the sac because it would be a lot of expense that he didn’t feel we should incur because I was out of the woods. I still haven’t really grieved…I’m still waiting for it to hit me hard. If you think about me, please say a prayer.

Another reason I think I’m kind of in this “suspended animation” mode is that a good friend from high school attemtped suicide on New Year’s day. She is now “improving but not out of the woods”. I haven’t gotten detailed reports on her in a while…When we were told only family was allowed to see her I kind of backed off. Please be in prayer for her too - you can call her “T”.

Last but not least, I want to mention the new Digiscrap Community I started. If any of you are into digiscrapping, or just curious about it, please stop by! Coming up we are having a Brag Book Page Swap (you get free mini kits to make one brag book page, and then everyone involved gets to “swap” each others pages! It costs you nothing at all!) and our second Speed Scrap Crop (you meet on the forum to get “orders” to make a one of a kind page, using your own supplies and photos, with the directions given) - we had so much fun the first time. I really hope to see some of you there. Speaking of the store, tomorrow, in honor of Jeremiah’s 5th birthday, you can get everything in my personal store for $5. That’s nearly 15 dollars worth of kits, when they are at full price (about 8 dollars worth when they are half off, which they are until midnight tonight)!

God bless all of you. ((((HUGS))))!