His older siblings are doing well too. Tre is now 6 and lost his first tooth a couple days ago. He is growing to be such a handsome and sharp boy. He is also bright, has been reading for about a year now. He is a very fast learner and picks up whatever I am teaching him pretty quickly. He is also has some exceptional skills with his legos! Dude can build whatever he sees or imagines out of those little blocks. Its very impressive. He looks a lot like Daniel and it just makes my heart do things!
Anaiya , 4 years old, is also flourishing. She is my baby doll, my princess, and so incredibly prissy! I just love it. She is so girly and loves alllll things pretty. Tutu's, purses, pretty shoes, dresses, etc. She is gonna be a mess when its time to let her wear makeup and stuff. I just know it. Luckily, we have until she is at least 16! She is learning to read also. She has very good handwriting for her age because she loves to write. She truly enjoys copywork and I just love it. She is the princess of the house but will quickly take of her shirt to play "gorilla's" with her brothers. She used to be so timid to try new things but in the last year or so, she has really come out of her shell. She is so friendly...way too friendly, honestly, and knows no strangers. She loves to compliment others, which I think she gets from me :)
Here are some recent pics of everyone
This last pic was taken on Easter of this year. Levi was trying to make everyone laugh by pretending to pick his nose:)
Life has been a little crazy in the last couple years, I went/am going through a pretty rough season of illness's. In such a short time I was diagnosed with Chronic Sinusitis, untreatable allergies, Eustachian tube disfunction,GERD, gallstones, gallbladder disease, asthma, IBS, and supposedly also have a stomach ulcer! I cannot remember the last time that I simply felt "good". I had sinus surgery in October of 2017 that was a last resort on my treatment plan. The recovery was absolutely horrible and sadly the surgery did not fix any of my issues. Everything the surgery was supposed to fix, including polyps in my face, are still there. So we are back to square one, with trying to find a solution. I also had my gallbladder removed in December of 2017 (yes two months after my nasal surgery). I haven't had anymore gallbladder attacks, but...lets just say that my body is having a hard time adjusting to not having a gallbladder anymore. Anyways, if all that wasn't enough, I suffered through something that I never would have thought that I would have to endure:
I had two miscarriages.
Lets, back up. After Levi was born, I was pretty set on the fact that he was my last child. SO set that I got rid of all my baby stuff as he grew out of it. Crib, clothes, and even my maternity clothes! The problem was, Daniel wasn't completely set. He didn't want another child anytime soon, but he didn't think that we were done. HA! So easy for him to say, right? :) Since I was nursing Levi, we decided that once he turned one, I would get on birth control until we could come to a decision together. When my cycles came back before that time, we just practiced Natural Family Planning, which is basically avoiding sex when you're ovulating. I knew my body pretty well enough that I could always tell when I was ovulating , so we'd abstain around that time and when I wasn't ovulating, we used another form of protection. It worked. My cycles were like clockwork, coming every 33 days. Until one month, it didn't. It was a couple weeks before Levi's first birthday. I woke up that morning surprised that my cycle hadn't showed up. I knew I couldn't be pregnant because we had been so careful. Using protection every time. I wasn't certain when I had ovulated that month but I hadn't been paying much attention because Daniels grandmother had passed away and it was a crazy month with funeral planning and family in town for a few weeks. I was still very surprised that my cycle hadn't come. I was so confident that it was gonna show up that day. So confident that for the first time in months, I had unprotected sex the night before.........duh duh.dunnnnhhhhhhh
Yeap
I had started to wean Levi ( with him turning 1 Sept 18) and didn't realize that could throw my cycle off. It did. I had unprotected sex. About 2 weeks later, on Levi's first birthday; after the party and everyone had left, my husband, his aunt, and I were looking at a positive pregnancy test.
We were a little shocked but only so much. More shocked that once again we had an unplanned pregnancy. We felt a little at ease with it because we felt like it took the decision to have or not have another baby out of our hands. Then at my 3 month appointment to check on the baby, we found that there was no heartbeat. I had what is called a missed miscarriage. My baby had died a few days before, but my body hadn't recognized it and so it hadn't started the process of getting rid of the baby. I had to have a D&C the next morning. They took my baby out of my body and that was that. I had lost another child. It was a huge blow to the gut. After losing Jarrett, I somehow was under the impression that I would have no other babies taken from me. I was so angry. Shocked. Unbelievably sad. So so so very depressed. I am not even going to write about all that I went through during those first couple of months after the D&C. It was bad. Very bad.
We decided to see if I would get pregnant again. Not necessarily try to conceive but not prevent either. A few months later in Feb, I started to bleed unexpectedly. I had already had my first cycle a few weeks before that , so I knew that it wasn't time for my cycle again, so I was a bit confused about it. We were going through a pretty stressful time ( our house had flooded so we were staying in a hotel during the repairs) so at first I assumed it was stress. But, then the all too familiar feelings of pregnancy began to seep in. I couldn't shake the feelings so I bought a test. It was instantly positive. I didn't know what to think because of the bleeding and the feeling that something wasn't right. I didn't say anything to my husband yet until later the next evening. I told him that I felt like it wasn't going to last. I was right. The next morning I took another test and the line was fainter than the one I had taken before. I called my doctor and asked her what I should do since I was bleeding already and the test lines were fading and she told me to take another test in a week and if it was negative, then it meant that my body had gotten rid of the baby on its own. But, if there was still even a little bit of a line on the test, then I wold have to come back in.
I slowly lost that baby over a couple of days and when I took another test a week later, it was negative. I wasn't too sad over losing that baby, only because I felt detached from the beginning, but I was definitely so surprised to have lost another baby. I started to believe that I was done with childbearing. I got on birth control a couple of weeks later.
Daniel and I came to an agreement. I would be on the birth control for a year. After that we would make a final decision on whether he would get a vasectomy or we'd have another baby. It was gonna be it for us. I knew that if I ever did want another one, I wouldn't want to start all the way back over. Once Levi was out out that "baby stage" I knew in my heart that I wouldn't want to go back. I was so torn over the course of the past year because I really didn't think that I wanted another baby, but the idea of saying no to my husband made me a little sad. The first time I brought vasectomy papers to him, the look on his face broke my heart. I knew that since I am the only opportunity for him to have another baby, I had to figure something out. I began to pray..I started off by praying that we would get on the same page about this. My prayers began to change and I started praying that God would change Daniel's mind and heart and understand where I was coming from. The more I prayed that God would change him... the more I felt my own heart began to change.
That is how, a few weeks ago, this happened:
To be continued....
