Some April Catch-Up

Now that I am (kind of) caught up on the thing that has been dominating our brains and schedules these past few weeks (our hospital stays) I can catch up for a minute on some of the other things that have been happening in our lives. I started this in April and never finished it. So today is the day.

On Jayce

Remember how Jayce was sick continuously for about 2 months? Off the top of my head I don't remember how many prescriptions and doctor's appointments we had to try to get him healthy again, but we eventually went to an allergist because our doctor thought that was probably the root of his recurrent infections. We saw the allergist, she did the scratch test (ugh), and also took blood to test his antibodies and test for further allergens. She sent us home with a few inhalers to add to the antibiotics that he was already on, and wanted me to stop the allergy medicine that we had been giving him.

About 5 days later he had kicked the infection that he had when we saw her, and I was delighted that he didn't start having any more symptoms a few days later. When we saw her after 2 weeks, she exclaimed, "He looks like a completely different kid! Before I was sure he was going to be allergy boy, and we were going to have to just put him in a bubble, but now he looks great!" I agreed.

It turns out that, oddly, he doesn't have any allergies. Everything that they tested him for came back great: he didn't have bad reactions to anything, and all of his antibodies and everything that they were testing came back with great results. So she downshifted to him just using an inhaler and a nose spray once at night, and that's it! That visit was over 2 weeks ago, and he's been perfect ever since. What a relief!

Although the night of the allergist appointment was the first time that I went into pre-term labor. So is that how it goes when you have multiple kids? As soon as one of them is healthy the other starts demanding your attention? It seems that way. But I'm so glad that Jayce is healthy now, I can't imagine how much extra stress that would have added if he'd been really sick when we were in the middle of all of these hospital visits and everything else.

On Chris

Chris has finally finished his Templeton Lecture traveling for the year. This school year, in addition to the normal teaching, grading, mentoring and advising, he also presented lectures at Western Kentucky University, Eastern Kentucky University, Butler University, Cincinnati Christian University, Illinois Wesleyan University, Yale University, Chicago University, and Emmanuel School of Religion. He was going to lecture at UCLA and teaching at a conference at Pepperdine University the first week of May, but had to cancel those because of all of the craziness of these last few weeks.

It has been really interesting to hear about each of these trips and learn how other Universities function, how they treat lecturers in these situations, and the feedback that Chris has received. Furthermore, each university typically has a reception and/or dinner after the lecture, so I'm always intrigued to learn how the faculty at the other schools feel about their positions, and what sort of benefits or trials that they have at their particular institutions. Since Chris and I have worked or studied at 5 different universities I'm always interested to see how they all compare to one another, and it's fun to get an insider's perspective. Chris enjoyed presenting at the different institutions, meeting other people and networking, and the feedback and reception that he received, but is also glad to be done with it for now. The traveling is tiring, time consuming and can be stressful, and we have enough other stresses around here for now.

On the House:

Closets

(Yikes! I hate to start a section with a picture like this, but, oh well.)

Last month Mom came to town while Chris was away at a conference and we did a major overhaul of the upstairs. We needed to move all of my work/craft stuff out of my craft room, so that we could move the baby stuff in and turn it into a nursery.

First on the agenda was to clean out the overflowing closet, which I had been neglecting in a major way. We sat in my old craft room for a little bit and I just looked at Mom helplessly and would say, "I don't know where to put this stuff. I don't know where to start. I don't know a better way to do it." I think it was the unfortunate combination of being tired, pregnancy brain indecisiveness, and putting off organizing some of my stuff until it becoming an overflowing mess. I was happy to just let her take over and tell me where to start. She kept saying, "Which things do you use the most? What do you need access to every week and what do you only use occasionally?" It was so helpful and a perfect place to start.

We got rid of some, organized some, and relocated the rest.

All of the craft room stuff was split between the basement and the guest room, and we moved the sewing machine into the guest room closet. I now am a very happy owner of a "Craft Closet." :) The guest room is the largest bedroom upstairs, with the biggest closet, and the one that gets used the least, so it made sense that it would be the room serving double duty. Mom organized everything tidily, and I was so so grateful. It's not beautiful yet, as in "colorful and fun and pretty to look at," but I think that the clean and organized factor makes it really beautiful!!

The Room We Change Annually

A few years ago Mom and Chelsea helped me paint and fix up this room and make it into an office and surprise Chris. (the picture above.) About a year later we realized that Chris almost never used this room since he has an office at work, and that I would make better use of it since my various creative things were in little stations all over the house. I never did get a picture of the room in it's second stage, the craft room stage, but this year it made it's final change into a nursery.

Mom painted the nursery this gorgeous cool gray color that I LOVE!! I just love the light in there. Even from downstairs I love to look up and see how much brighter and softer the room looks with it's new makeover, even though I can't see the details. (I'll share more nursery pictures later in another post, or they will completely take this one over.) Patsy had been in town the week before and helped me put together Jayce's toddler bed and bedding, so the kids' rooms are set up and ready to go!

Random

This was Chris and Jayce's favorite way to torment me last month. When Jayce got out of the bathtub, Chris would ask him, "Do you want socks that match or don't match?" As I'm sure you can imagine, he would typically pick the "don't match" option, and they would both giggle mischievously as Jayce paraded around in front of me in them. There were plenty of days when I was too tired to change him out of perfectly good and clean socks just because they didn't match. There were also plenty of days that I did.

And now I think we're pretty much caught up on April. Hopefully I can get caught up on May before June arrives. Or before baby arrives. Who knows which will come first?