I’ve been talking a lot about my hermit problem, and I want you all to know that things are getting so much better around here. The boys are finally opening up a little more at tutoring. I had to practically drag them away from there today! Even John David doesn’t cry when I drop him off for the tutoring childcare! We have all met plenty of people that we truly like, and the fact is that I haven’t met one single person here that I can’t find something to like about.

I’m starting to remember. Oh yeah! I do like people!

Transitions are just hard, aren’t they? John David and I seem to have the hardest time with them. Every time I see him pitching a fit over some great new change in his life, I just remind myself, “This child is me.”

Moving across country and beginning home school all at one time was a huge transition. We’re over the hump. We still have rough days. I still make regrettable parenting errors, but I’m feeling hopeful.

That’s why I could never name my blog “Biblical Homemaking” or something like that. Can you imagine the pressure!? Ha!

All it would take was one time for a neighbor to overhear me losing my patience with my family, and I would be completely discredited. Nope. Not trying to act like something I’m not. We’re just a family, trying to do what is best. We listen to God. We make mistakes. We get back up again. 🙂

I have some really great news for you. John David has successfully made the transition to toddler bed!

Oh! Do you see those black out curtains? I’ve been storing those for 3 moves, and they finally came in handy! John David slept until 8 am for three mornings in a row.

I know! I hope you’re okay. Didn’t mean to make anyone choke on their coffee here. I was shocked too…

Happy JD. Happy parents. Sometimes he still wakes up at 1 am for cuddles though. yep. cuddles. I know. You hard-core folks would never put up with such, but hard-core we are not.

I was sitting in his recliner yesterday, and I chuckled at his neediness, “Oh, JD, you are so spoiled,” and as soon as I said it, I felt so sad! This child is not spoiled. This is the FOURTH baby. He rarely gets Mommy to himself. He gets a fraction of the amount of time with me that Joshua, or even Caleb or Daniel, got. With Daniel, I sent the big boys to school, and I was his all day long. JD doesn’t get that, so let the world shake their heads. If my baby needs some 1 am cuddles, then that’s just what he will get.

….And that’s why I have a strict policy about going to bed at 10pm now. It has changed my life! Over Christmas, I did all of that relaxing and sleeping, and I came home feeling like a new person. I decided then and there that I will never kill myself with sleep deprivation, stress, and unrealistic expectations again.

Do you remember my psoriatic arthritis theory and this thumb nail?

Well, it got a whole lot worse than that by Christmas, but guess what. You won’t believe it. My thumb nail is now completely NORMAL.  It’s all GONE!

So is my shoulder pain! You cannot convince me that the two are not related. I am quite sure that stress and sleep made a difference. I don’t want to end up with those nails, popping Advil 800, ever again.

In other news….Apparently, sleep is important to Alan too.

Caleb came home from the Spongebob movie Saturday and said, “Hey, Mom, just to tell you, at Spongebob Squarepants, Dad fell asleep through a lot of it.”

haaaaaaaa I asked Alan about that. He looked a little ashamed. hehehe

Alan and the boys have a few things in common, when it comes to deciding what is interesting and what is not. The other night, they were taking too long to eat their dinner, so I whipped out a magazine article on glaciers and started reading it to Joshua, Caleb, and Alan. Alan protested and started digging around for the Childcraft book on great battles for freedom.

I thought the glacier article was fascinating. Halfway through, I stopped and quizzed them all, “Wow, so what animal lives in this glacier?”

Three blank stares.

Alan said, “No idea. That was boring. Can I read my story now?”

humph!  Caleb said, “Polar bears?”

“No! Didn’t y’all hear me say the part about the little black worms that feed on the invisible algae!!???”

They all sort of giggled and started making worm jokes. I still made them listen to the rest, though. The boys said they liked it, so at least we know they’ve learned to try to make their momma happy!

I wonder if they liked Alan’s story about the Battle of Tours better.

It’s 9:45, so I’d better get to sleep. Guess who is coming to visit this week!!  We are all so excited!!!

As Joshua said, “Aunt Jennings is coming!!  You remember, Caleb, she has the glasses. Don’t you remember? She gave us the Hank the Cowdog books!”

The Hank the Cowdog books are a hit. I even enjoy them!

Hope you all have a great week!   We’ll be having a ball showing Jennings our favorite California spots!

The post Making Transitions and Solving Sleep Problems appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I fed him pudding. I ran upstairs to get something. I got distracted by a book. When I came back, Daniel had finished eating and moved onto nap. Wow, Daniel.

Daniel, age 6 months, napping on my friend Sherry, during Alan’s promotion ceremony

There are many things my beautiful little boys do well. Yes, I am sorry. I said beautiful.  They are!! Handsome, if it makes you feel better, but my goodness, they look like sleeping angels to me.

This is one of the things we do with FLARE. That’s right. We NAP. We are seriously great nappers. I remember one time, in Sunday school, our class was debating rest on Sundays. Who would debate that? Seriously. Don’t just agree to rest, embrace it, love it, protect it. The people need their naps!!!

All children look even sweeter when they are asleep, don’t you think? My blogging pal Slyvia at Tales from the Mommy Trenches had this post of  her babies sleeping on their daddy, and I thought it was SO adorable. I knew I had to copy cat, but when I went through recent photos, I found most of our pictures are of our children sleeping in the floor, soooooo…

I put together this little napping slideshow for ya. I hope you all get at least one day off a week, to just do this!

 Not one sleeping babe, but two. It doesn’t get any sweeter than this.

 Gotta love the nursing induced coma–a powerful bedtime ritual!

 Caleb sleeping on his Mama 🙂

Caleb sleeping on his daddy…or wait, no, Daddy is doing the sleeping!

 We sleep in the car.

They even sleep in their beds, without us even asking them to. I used to find Caleb sleeping in Joshua’s bed.

Caleb, sleeping in his own bed, with his Daddy doll, when Alan was in Afghanistan.

 They even trust each other. That’s newborn Dan, sleeping on three-and a half year-old Caleb.

 serious rump-in-the-air-sleep
 Caleb, 6 months, passed out on the couch, on Christmas day

I used to have to wake Daniel up from his nap every day at 2:30, to go get the boys from school. I put his gloves and jacket on him, in his sleep, and carried him out to the stroller.

passed out in a room full of kids

I’m going to slide down and go play, wait noooo, nooo, I’m just gonna zzzzzz.

Daniel seemed to prefer dropping down and sleeping in the living room floor.

just plain exhausted

But if I said the words, “nap time,” he’d run and hide in Daddy’s closet.

. ….ah, the ever peaceful Ergo nap.

We wish you all a restful day and a wonderful week!

The post Will Nap Anywhere appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

 I firmly believe that God often prepares us for future events.  Ever since college, I have witnessed lots of different kinds of seizures in many different people.  There are so many different kinds of seizures that a person can have!! The full-body convulsions that most of us think of are just one of the many ways that people can experience seizures.    I have seen those, but I’ve also known a couple of people that just passed out. I’ve even had a friend that had such short seizures, you barely even noticed that it had happened. Then there are absence seizures, where a person just stares off into space. There are partial seizures, where only part of the body convulses. The list goes on and on.

 That day, in the pool, Caleb was standing next to me, and I suddenly noticed that his eyes were crossed, as he stared off into space.  “Caleb,” I said, “Caleb, Caleb!” and I snapped my fingers in front of his face.

No response.

I was very puzzled, when suddenly, he came to, and his eyes uncrossed.  For the next 10 or so minutes, he was an extraordinarily hyper version of himself, acting super, super silly.  Of course, he was 4 years old, so you expect a little silly, but the thing is Caleb has always, even before medication, had a somewhat nonchalant personality.  That day he was climbing the walls and dancing all over the place.

Relieved that he had snapped out of it, I moved on, but it took me a while to admit to myself that Caleb had had a seizure.

Later, after I’d gotten the three boys dried off and squared away, Caleb settled down into a recliner for a nap, in the living room.  Caleb was always an excellent napper.  He has always, even before medication, required more sleep than Joshua did.  Caleb is a huge kid, in the 95th percentile for height, and about that for weight.

 While Caleb was napping on the recliner, I heard a strange, choking type noise, and I looked over at Caleb.  He was gagging or something.  Then his head started shaking, in a rhythmic pattern.  Then his entire body started shaking. I stared at him in horror and fear for a few minutes, but I knew there was really nothing I could do.

Alan was in the basement with Joshua, and I kept calling him, but by the time he came upstairs, I was holding Caleb in my arms, but the seizure was over.

We were both sort of in a state of disbelief.  In hindsight, I can’t believe I didn’t take him to the ER.  They might could have identified a trigger that was causing two seizures, of two different types, in one day.

And no, Caleb was not sick, nor did he have a fever. Fevers can cause anyone to have a seizure, but that was not the case here.

This all happened on the weekend.  By Monday, I made him an appointment with his regular doctor.  I wasn’t even sure if what Caleb had had was a seizure.  I guess I was just in denial.

You can imagine the sinking feeling I got when Caleb’s first pediatric neurologist explained to me that two or more unexplained seizures is considered epilepsy.

I never knew anything about epilepsy when we started this process.  I feel like it carries a lot of stigmas with it.

Caleb had both an MRI and an EEG, and in the process, I witnessed several more seizures that first year.  All of Caleb’s seizures, except for that first one in the pool, have happened during Caleb’s sleep.

Epilespy simply designates a person that has seizures for an unknown reason. 

If someone says their seizures are ‘non-epileptic’, that simply means that they have found the source or cause of their seizures.

Once we had the diagnosis, I read everything that I could get my hands on about epilepsy and the many different kinds of seizures and seizure medications!

Alan and I pushed back when they wanted to put Caleb on Keppra to prevent more seizures, in the beginning.  What parent wants to have their precious child on brain medication?  Meanwhile, Caleb kept having sleep seizures.

Caleb’s neurologist threw a fit and let us know that if Caleb wasn’t medicated, he could not be our doctor.  Meanwhile, Alan was in Afghanistan, feeling powerless to support Caleb and me during all the testing and such.

Caleb, in his hospital bracelets and hospital gown, and Joshua, supporting his brother by dressing as alike as possible!

 Caleb was such a tough little trooper through all of this.  When they took out his IV, they’d warned me that most four-year-olds would be screaming and crying and unconsolable about it.  Caleb simply sat still, watching the nurse intently, and asking to see and know about every thing that was going on.  I’ve told him he should be a doctor ever since!

  Once Caleb’s neurologist explained to me that without medication, the seizures could cause permanent brain damage from the electrical signals going haywire in his brain, I wholeheartedly agreed to faithfully give Caleb his medication!!!

 This was all during Pre-K 4, and his teacher believed that she had seen him have an absence seizure or two at school as well.  He was having a little trouble focusing at school, probably because of the seizures. We started the medication, Keppra, also called Levetiracetam, in very gradual doses.  Even now, he takes a super low dose for his size.

 In the beginning, we noticed two major side effects: drowsiness and headaches.  The key to curbing the headaches is to make sure Caleb is well fed.  The boy can now eat 2 hamburgers in one sitting!  Wow!  Once we knew to fill up his tummy with good food anytime he asks, the headaches subsided.  Sounds like a no-brainer, right?  We weren’t purposefully starving the kid, I promise!  Apparently, he just needed a little extra.

The drowsiness got better as his body got used to it.

His doctors also keep telling us that lethargy, anger, and being easily irritated are also Keppra side effects.  He does display those traits, though we never know how much of that is from Keppra, and how much of that is just Caleb.

In the moving process, Alan talked to a nurse at our upcoming duty station that is a subject matter expert on Epilepsy and Keppra.  She recommended that we give Caleb Vitamin B6 to help him handle the Keppra better.  We’ve been trying everything to get Caleb to swallow the B6 pill but have had zero success.

Can anyone tell us how to get a kid to swallow pills or an alternative method??  We could use some help here!

They say that Caleb’s low energy level could also be a result of the Keppra.  I hate that, but I figure low energy is better than having seizures.

Once Caleb started Keppra, he went one whole year without any documented seizures. Then he had a “breakthrough seizure” a year ago, that Joshua witnessed.  It was so bad that Caleb actually fell out of his bed in convulsions, in the middle of the night.  He was also sick with a cough and cold at the time, which may have aggravated his condition.

Now he has gone another year with no seizures!  Wahooooo!

If Caleb can make it one more year with no seizures, we can start trying to wean him off of the medication, and if successful, he will no longer be considered epileptic.  Many children grow out of this, and we hope that Caleb will too!  That is our prayer!

For more information on epilepsy:http://www.healthline.com/health/epilepsy/effects-on-body

The post Keppra Caleb: Dealing with Childhood Epilepsy appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.