Round 2, ugh!!!

In my last post, I talked about how our girls had the stomach flu. When I posted that, they had just gotten better... and they were healthy for a week! Yesterday it started again, and now all three of them have it again - Chad is even feeling it this time. I continue to feel fine though - let's pray it continues that way!! There are so many people sick just now, and everyone is blaming it on this heat! It is at least 105F this afternoon, and there's no relief in sight. Even at night it is hard to sleep with fans blowing right on us. So between the flu, Elysia's eye teeth coming in and this heat, it is the perfect recipe for a miserable household. So Chad ran to the mall today and came back with this little 'kiddy-pool'. Even though we're just here for another month, we thought it would be well worth the investment and the girls will get a lot of use out of it. As I write this, they haven't even seen it yet - they are napping and we set it up after they went to sleep. I'll post some pictures at a later date of them playing in it.

My little climber! She's standing on the arms of the booster seat.

You might remember some pictures I posted a while back of my friend Priscila who was pregnant and due a month after me. This is her little Giovanna, born Oct.1 and Callie in the back.

I love this picture!!

Ready for your nap??

Little photo-shoot after church...

Flu, yuck!

Chad got home safe and sound on Saturday, and it is so wonderful to have him back!! As a welcome home gift, Larissa got the stomach flu and had us up a good part of the night Saturday night changing bed sheets and running to the bathroom. Not pleasant!!! Sunday throughout the day was more of the same. Then on Monday afternoon, Giselle and Elysia both came down with it although theirs was not as severe as Larissa's was. As of now (Tuesday night) they are all in bed and seem to be over the flu.

Callie is sleeping quite well. For the last 3 nights now, she has her last feeding at 10:30pm and sleeps until 4am, eats and sleeps until 7:30am. And she's a really fast eater, so I'm usually just up for 15 min. to nurse her and get her back to bed. So compared to the first 5 weeks, it feels like I'm sleeping through the night :) I know that actually sleeping through the night is just but a few weeks away! YAY!! But I can't complain, God has blessed us so much with good babies. I think He knew that it HAD to be that way or I would completely go insane! I always recuperate really fast from my c-sections (all 3 of them) too, and I completely give the credit to Him also. I feel like it's a gift He gave me... since we don't have family around to help us out, He just heals me quickly so I can get back to taking care of my family again. Living away from family and familiarity these past 7 years has really made us rely on God in a way we never had to before. We have truly been amazed time and time again in how He has provided for us and taken care of us. I even had to think of Larissa getting sick - thank the Lord it happened once Chad was here to help me out! I can just see His hand at work daily. Giving Callie her medication for her stuffy nose - it is much better!

I took the girls over to the neighbor's house Sat. morning before Chad got home, and they played in her little pool. They had so much fun. The above picture is Giselle under the water.



Larissa playing with the neighbor-girl's makeup. She LOVES putting lipstick on. She is our little 'Miss Priss' - loves dressing up, pink is her favorite color, etc. Giselle, on the other hand, could care less about dressing up, blue is her favorite color, etc. It's so much fun watching their personalities form.

Callie - the little 'chubster'
Elysia 'reading' to Callie
I've talked about the heat before... this is our 'windtunnel'. Every night we have 4 fans running in the girls' room - one on each bed. It has been so hot that we have to give the girls showers before their afternoon nap, or they can't sleep. It's been hard on Chad adapting to the heat again after being in the states. Last night he didn't sleep until 1am, and he had even gotten up at midnight and showered to see if that would help him cool off and fall asleep. By the way - doesn't the girls' room look like an orphanage with all the cribs and beds in one room?!?!
Little miss smiley. We're getting more and more of those smiles every day, and often accompanied by a coo.
I think it's a gift for Chad to be able to read with a little girl standing on him like this! He's reading a book called "The Shack" by Wm. Paul Young, and says it is absolutely amazing. I hope to find time to read it next.

Just 3 more days!

Things continue to go well here, as I'm down to just 3 days until Chad's return... YAY!!!!! God has just blessed me with some wonderful people who are helping me out. Saturday night the three girls who have been taking turns sleeping here, went with the girls and I to the mall. My poor girls were cooped up at home all week long, so they really needed to get out! Below are a few pictures of us at the restaurant we ate at. With 4 of us adults, there was one for each child - that worked out really nice. The girls did good and Elysia slept the entire time - never even knew she left home.

Callie has been having some nose-related breathing problems. Right before Chad left, the girls all got colds. Callie also started having a stuffy nose. At first, I thought it was just the same cold the girls had. But her nose never ran (in fact, I rarely saw any mucus at all) and she wasn't coughing. I talked to the pediatrician over the phone, and she told me to use a nasal spray and see if it helped. So I did that, but it just kept getting worse, while the rest of the girls' colds got better. So on Monday I took her to the pediatrician, and she thinks it is allergy-related. She gave me anti-allergy nasal drops and I also had to buy a machine called a nebulizer to give her medication that is inhaled. It has a mask that I put up to her face and the medication comes out in a vapor and she inhales it. She takes it twice a day. It does seem to be getting better. There is just sooooo much dust here, and it is sooooo hot, so MANY people deal with allergies. Chad even deals with them here, and he never did in the states. So I'm confident that when we move to the states she won't have any more problems. Here are a few more pictures - I tried laying her on her belly to see if it would help her breathe better. And the last picture is of her taking her medication (it was cute the way she had her hand on the mask)... and I was by myself, so I had to take the picture myself - that's why the angle isn't the best.

This 'n That

Chad has been gone 5 days already... just 7 more to go. It has been going really well and actually fast for me. A few girls from the church have been helping me out and one of them always sleeps here. The girls have all been battling colds this week, so that hasn't been fun. Larissa is almost completely better, Giselle is getting there, but Elysia's is really taking its good old time. Callie has had a stuffy nose all week, but that's it. It's worse at night, so our nights haven't been so good. She wakes up crying, and I'm sure it's because she's having trouble breathing. The doctor told me to use a sodium chloride nasal spray, but it doesn't seem to be making a huge difference.


Chad's flights all went well and Molly got there fine - a little worked up from the trip, but she adjusted quickly and is loving it at the Miller house. The one major bummer is that the airlines lost his suitcase! He got there Thursday morning and when I talked to him Friday morning I forgot to ask him if they had delivered it yet. I guess it's better that they lost the luggage and not Molly!


Giselle and Larissa are really starting to talk a lot of Portuguese. In one sense, it's sad that we're leaving, just when they are really picking up the language. When Brazilians are here, they talk mostly Portuguese to them, but with us they speak almost all English. It's funny though - they will say a sentence but it will be mixed English/Portuguese. The other day Larissa said to one of the girls here, "Vamos play bola" (Let's play ball). Every now and then they will say a Portuguese word that I would have never known that they know. We hope to speak Portuguese in our house when we get to the states so that they don't lose it. I know that's easier said than done, but we want to try.

I am so glad to say that I am finally over my 2-month-long skin allergy!!! It appears to have either been the boxed milk or drying our clothing out under the cashew tree. I cut both of those things, and it got better. I won't be trying one or the other though to figure it out - it's just not worth it!!

These are the cashew fruit that I talked about in the last post. We have a tree of them behind our house, and they are dropping like crazy right now. They're really tiny though - a good cashew fruit is much bigger - like maybe the size of a pear. They hang from the tree 'upside down' - the nut hangs off the bottom.

Callie just starting giving us smiles. Her very first deliberate smile was to Chad on the day before he left. That was really special for him. This morning I got a big open-mouth smile and coo from her. It is so much fun when they start to respond to us! Yesterday she was 5 weeks old.

Chad got the suitcase out to pack, and Elysia promptly curled up in it with her blankey as if she was going to sleep in it. Then they all thought it would be fun to crawl in...

The above picture is of Elysia 'eating' a yogurt by herself. I obviously wasn't paying attention to her and when I did look at her, this is what I saw. Then the doorbell rang... when I got back to the table, the picture below is what I returned to... she thought it wasn't enough to have it all over her face - she needed it in the hair too!

Busy, busy, busy

Yup, that was me the past 2 weeks. It really has been crazy, and I am often amazed at the abundance of grace God has given us right now in our lives. I feel like I have a lot to write about, so I'm going to pick out some topics and share a little on each.

One area of busyness for me was paperwork, and more paperwork! First was getting all of our documents in order to go to Fortaleza to the American consulate to apply for Callie's passport, birth abroad certificate, and social security number. Just a few days before we went to Fortaleza, I found out that they now require a document proving that you resided in the states for at least a year before you turned 18 (for your child to have the right to American citizenship), so I had to call our schools and get transcripts. Thankfully in this wonderful age of technology, they were able to e-mail them to me. We went to Fortaleza this week and got it all taken care of...one thing checked off the list! Secondly, Chad is taking our dog, Molly, along to the states with him next week. As you can imagine, this also requires paperwork, shots, etc. After making many phone calls and finding out exactly what we need to do, the paperwork & Molly are ready to go.

Drastic change of topic... let me tell you about the heat here! Right around the time Callie was born, it got suddenly extremely hot here. That is normal for this time of year. We will be leaving here at the hottest time of year and arriving in the states at the coldest time of year. That will be quite the temperature shock for all of us - especially the girls! Anyway... it averages 95F during the day, with absolutely no wind. It is just a very intense dry heat. At 10pm, for example, the temperature is still in the low 80's. Just to give you an idea - the other day I did a load of laundry and hung it out in the afternoon in the shade with no breeze what-so-ever. An hour and a half later I checked it and it was dry!! We are also going through about 2 1/2 gallons of drinking water a day - just our family. We have a water cooler which holds 5-gallon bottles, and we're changing them about every other day.

The girls are doing good - keeping me busy. Callie is 4 weeks old today, and we're in a pretty good routine with her (especially during the day). She still usually wakes up twice at night to eat, although there have been a few nights where she just woke up once. She is a very good baby and I think she's really close to smiling 'on purpose'. Giselle and Larissa are into imagining and play so good together. Elysia likes to follow along and join in too. If you are having trouble with our girls' names, maybe their Brazilian nicknames would be easier for you to remember :) Here they are: Gigí (Gee-GEE), Lalá (La-LA), Lilí (Lee-LEE) & Kaká (Kah-KAH).

As I mentioned, Chad is headed to the states next week. He flies to Fortaleza on Monday, takes care of a few things there on Tuesday, and leaves for PA on Wednesday (arriving Thurs. morn.). He'll be there for a week and gets back here on Saturday, the 18th. He will be gone from here a total of 12 days. Please remember the girls and I in your prayers over that time. It's no fun for us when he travels, but the Lord always gives me the grace for it. I will have one of the young girls at church sleep here while he's gone - it will also be nice to have someone to help with the girls in the evening. After that trip, Chad will be here for a month and then he goes to Peru for a week. He gets back from that trip just a week and a half before we move back to the states! So needless to say, these next 2 months are going to fly by!!! What I need to concentrate on now is going through our house and deciding what we will take back to the states and what we will sell/give away. This is a HUGE task and feels overwhelming at times. We actually don't plan to take too much back with us - the hard part is figuring out how we are going to rid ourselves of all of our stuff. This is my project to work on while Chad is in the states.

Besides all that has been going on, I have been battling a bad skin allergy. It started right after we moved here to Juazeiro. For the first month though, I just had little spots here and there - nothing overly uncomfortable or in need of medication. Well, right after Callie was born it started to get worse - larger spots of it, and incredibly itchy. I've tried two medications my doctor said I could take while nursing, but I can't take them for long periods of time. They help, but as soon as I stop taking them, it gets worse again. My legs are more than half covered in it and I have a few spots on my arms. The heat doesn't help the itching either! We just haven't been able to pinpoint what is causing it. We've gotten this before, and the one thing we do know that causes it is mangos - especially if we peel them and handle them with our hands. I can drink the juice and eat the fruit - as long as I don't touch it with my hands. Chad breaks out though just from drinking the juice. But I haven't had mango for ages. Here at this house there is a Cashew tree out back. For those of you who only know of the cashew nut, the nut actually grows on the bottom of the cashew fruit (I'll have to take a picture and post it here for you to see). Anyway, there is a lot of pollen that falls from this tree and that is where my washlines are. I am skeptical that maybe I am allergic to the cashew pollen and it gets on our clothes while they dry. So Chad hung up some washline for me out front and I'm starting to dry our wash there. I do have one other theory too... just yesterday I remembered that when we lived in Juazeiro before, we thought we were allergic to the boxed milk. In Fortaleza we found pasteurized milk that we liked and rarely bought the boxed (long-life) milk. Here in Juazeiro it is hard to find the refrigerated milk, so we had been buying the boxed milk. But just today Chad found a store nearby that sells the refrigerated milk, so we're switching back to that. So I'm hoping that this allergy starts getting better and that we're right on one of the two speculations as to what the cause is! I sure don't want to be itchy for the next 2 months!

Ok, that pretty much gets you up to speed on what's been occupying my time these days. I'm hoping for things to get a little more relaxing in the next weeks.

Check out the previous blog for pictures from the last 2 weeks.

Pics...

I've been absent for the past 2 weeks... here are some pictures for your enjoyment... Don't think Giselle could smile any bigger!! How about that double chin on Callie... not bad for 4 weeks old, huh?!?!

Elysia giving Callie a kiss.

Cute little feet... I think she's going to have little toes like me.
Happy dream...
Peaceful
Already playing guitar!

Precious Moments!


"What are YOU lookin'at??"
Callie's sisters are constantly loving on her.

I just love the way babies sleep all stretched out... or is she praising Jesus??


This is what happens when a 16-mo. old plays with markers unsupervised!