Spending this New Years Eve with my three favorite people...

Our big excitement of the night is making chocolate chip cookies!!

 

 

From the Johnson family, we hope you have a safe and happy New Year!!

 

 

Sanai says "Hush up, so we can eat these COOKIES!"

 

 

We got home last night around 8:00pm and have been resting at home since then.  When we left the hospital Sanai's fever had just gone down and luckily it hasn't shown back up.  The doctors said her fever was caused by some sort of virus because all her labs came back clean.  She also had an EEG which analyzed her brain waves and everything came back normal.  We are VERY overly sensitive to her fever and are checking her constantly.  But besides being a bit fussy this morning when she woke up, which isn't like her at all, she has been in good spirits. 

She's not eating as much as she usually does but we have been trying to push fluids so she doesn't get dehydrated.  She seems to be back on her normal nap schedule also.  She slept a lot while we were in the hospital because we were told seizures tend to wear them out completely.  She was such a trooper, she was poked and proded so many times.

The Neurologist told us to probably expect more seizures but that we hope she will grown out of it.  She is at a slight risk for epilepsy when she gets older but we can't worry about that right now.  When/If she has another seizure we need to time it and if it lasts longer than 5 minutes we need to call 911 and if she doesn't wake up after 30  minutes we need to call 911.

It felt really good when the pediatric specialist who came and hour and a half to pick us up told my husband that I was a really good mama and that I stayed calm and was there for Sanai when she was going through her seizure.  That really wasn't the case with the first two seizures at all!  It felt good to hear a total stranger say something like that!  Needless to say, we hope she is on the mend.  And I want to thank everyone for their prayers.

At our local hospital, she was resting before the Vanderbilt team arrived to transport us

Leaving our local hospital, after her second seizure.  She was still not awake but stabilized.


 

Her little feet...we were waiting to be moved from the ER to a regular room

 

 

 



Sleeping after a morning bottle

 

 

We both squeezed on this tiny pull out bed!

Looking rough on this fine morning! LOL

 

Only my child would be this cute as a spaghetti head.  The tech asked me to send her this picture because she looked so cute!

Update

I received a call yesterday I had been dreading.  Sanai has been acting very normal the past week.  Let me back up and say that on December 5th while in Georgia for my father in laws funeral, Sanai had her second seizure.  She also was diagnosed with RSV which is what caused the spike in her temp resulting in her seizure. RSV turned into a touch of pneumonia so our dr put her on some antibiotics as a Pre caution.

I got a call around 11am yesterday that she had had another seizure at daycare and that they had called 911.  I rushed over there and found her still coming out of it.  I took her to our regular dr and they ran several tests trying to find out what was causing the fever but couldn't find anything so he sent us on to River Park hospital where a pediatric specialist was going to come via ambulance to transport us to Vanderbilt Children's hospital in Nashville.

They arrived around 3:30 and Sanai was doing well.  She was up and babbling so they went ahead and hooked up her ECG stickers to her chest and did the IV. Not long after they were there she looked at me, cried out in pain and her eyes rolled back in her head and starting having another seizure! They quickly gave her some medicine to calm her brain and loaded her into their ambulance.

We arrived at Vanderbilt around 6pm and was visited by the doctor and a neurologist. We were told they would keep her over night for observation and do an EEG in the morning to look for abnormalities.  They are working on getting the EEG machine up and running as I type and are hoping for a consult from the neuro doc around noon depending on his schedule.

Hopefully the pediatric doctor can also figure out why she's had a temp for so long with no obvious sign of infection.  We are hoping to go home today but Ill try to keep my blog updated when I know things. In the mean time, please say prayers for my sweet baby girl,

I haven't uploaded pictures in awhile - especially to facebook because I had to take the app off my phone so I had enough memory to take MORE pictures.  So here is some pics that sum up the past few weeks.



Doing her favorite thing...eating Puffs, watching cartoons







Looks like she's stealing that can of tomato sauce! ha ha



 

How can Granny's always get them to fall asleep in positions like this??





Being naughty, trying to turn off the lights.  (Paw Paw says she has a fruit salad on her head!)





Micah and Santa at his Christmas party.  He told him he DID NOT want an airplane

At the Christmas Parade...I swear Micah had a great time although you can't tell by his face

Front and center view, thanks to Ms. Dawn :)



It's a little late in the game, but I wanted to offer up some meaningful suggestions in case you have some last minute shopping to do.  I don't know about you, but my home is over saturated with TOYS!  And although my kids love toys I'd like to start explaining to them how lucky they are that they don't want for basic needs like food, water and a roof over their head.

Here are a few things I came up with:

Donate to the victims of Sandy by visiting www.redcross.org

Visit Olive Tree Branch to purchase a product where a certain percent of your purchase will go to an adopting family.  www.olivetreepromise.com

Order a bag of coffee (might be too late for shipping, but the brewery is in Murfreesboro, TN if you live in the area).  www.justlovecoffee.com

Make a donation to a non-profit organization in the name of your loved one to something they are interested in.

Order a FLEX watch - 10 colors, 10 causes.  I got one in BLUE of course :) www.flexwatches.com




Visit this page for ways to give back: http://www.newparent.com/news/gifts-for-a-good-cause/

Order a pair of TINY TOMS - some of these are so adorable!!  http://www.toms.com/youth/tiny?view=all

Consider donating or volunteering as a family at an organization like Green House Ministries.  Micah has grown out of a lot of his clothes and of course he's got a million toys he doesn't play with anymore.  I'll be donating to their food pantry this year as well.  www.greenhousemin.org

I stumbled acrossed this website through another website that I check and was inspired to add this page as a place to shop.  It's called Worthwhile Wear and the proceeds from items purchased go to stop slavery.  This is their mission:

"Preventing entrance into and rescuing girls from the sex slave trade by addressing the root cause, poverty, and by providing women and girls an alternative means of income and a NEW life."

Some of their products are beautiful, check out those metal bangels!  I've got my eye on a neckalce too.  Check them out.  http://worthwhilewear.org/







Any other great ideas, leave a comment!!

Daddy's Girl

It was to be expected that Sanai was pretty attached to me in the beginning.  I spent 5 weeks maternity leave with her day and night primarily by myself.  Tommy was mid-football season when we traveled to Ethiopia so he was pretty busy the first 2 months that Sanai was home.

But recently he has been home more and spends a lot of time with her. Her eyes light up when he comes in the room and she reaches for him to pick her up and it melts my heart.  Tommy is definitely the fun dad, he's always on the floor playing with the kids.  They are usually always crawling all over him and you can tell he loves it.

I'm so glad that they were able to bond so quickly and easily.  She already has him wrapped around her little tiny finger!  He says she's not dating until she's 30. LOL

It's funny...but it's not

My main focus right now at work is life insurance and educating people on the importance of it.  It's hard to convey to younger people that it's cheaper now than when you are older and although it might be crude, everyone dies.  It's responsible, especially if you have children, to get something in place so they are left with the funds for their future or to at least pay for your funeral.

So a girl at work took out a life insurance policy on her daughter when she was born.  At the time, she really only took it out to help us get our application count.  But when she was a few years old she started having seizures and is now on an anti seizure medication that she will probably have to take for the rest of her life.  Thank goodness she took out that policy on her daughter when she was born because now her daughter is ineligible for any sort of life insurance policy because of her seizure condition.

When I was home for Thanksgiving I had a conversation with my dad about that situation because I was considering getting policies for my neices as part of their Christmas presents.  My dad had mentioned that it's pretty rare that kids become uninsurable...especially from a seizure.  I actually agreed with him because it's not too common that I know of. Therefore, I'm pretty sure he jinxed the fact that as soon as we got home Sanai had a seizure.

I literally had the application for her life insurance in my computer bag, I've just been waititng for her social security number to be issued.  NEVER did I think she would have a seizure.  That's the whole point though...you never know when something will happen to you or someone you love and it's better to be prepared!!

Luckily, her seizure was caused by a fever and it isn't something that requires medication.  But her life insurace will now be higher because of the seizure and will be considered for a lower rate two years from the date it's issued if she doesn't have anymore seizures.

It's funny that only a few days ago my dad had mentioned how it was pretty uncommon for kids to have uninsurable conditions...but it's not really that funny.

I survived Thanksgiving...barely...and not without a large hit to our bank account!  Each year for T-giving and Christmas we alternate who's family we visit.  This year we were headed to Iowa to celebrate so on Tuesday before we left we took my vehicle in for a tire rotation and oil change.  Unfortunately, one of my tires needed to be replaced adding a hefty tag to my bill.  It's ok, rather safe than sorry.

We were about 6 hours into our 10.5 hour trip and my car decides it's over heated and I have to pull over.  We waited an hour and a half for a tow, the guy was super nice.  He took our vehicle to his shop then loaded our bags, car seats, presents and other useless travel items into his truck and drove us 20 minutes to the nearest rental car place.  We loaded up into the rental and finished out our trip.

In the tow truck

My dad ended up driving us 4 hours back to the repair place and we picked up our vehicle.  Apparently the water pump broke which was not cheap.  Another lovely bill.  We made the 6 hour trek back to our home in Tennessee.  Between the coughing, crying and crabiness I tried to keep my sanity.  We got home around midnight.

This morning I got up and got the kids ready for daycare, but when I woke Sanai up I noticed she was very hot.  She's been teething and her nose has been running so I didn't think too much about it. I gave her some tylenol, got her dressed and took her out to the car.  I buckled her in and was looking for something in the car when I heard her sneeze.  This normally means that there is a rocket of snot smeared on her face but when I peeked to check on her, she was staring blankly at the sky.  I rustled her and said her name but she didn't move.  I quickly unbuckled her and she was limp!  I strapped her back up and ran into the house to grab my three year old.

My poor pumpkin

Luckily, we live very close to the hospital and I'm sure I made it there in record time. I could hear her convulsing while we were driving and I was so scared. I have never experience a seizure and wasn't even sure that is what was going on. I parked and ran with her in my arms into the ER.  The nurse promptly came and took her and we undressed her.  I fumbled my phone and called my husband and my boss.

My friend Dawn, an incredible nurse, who came to help

In about 5 minutes she started becoming more alert.  They took her vitals, xrays, blood work and gave her a few shots.  Her temp was 102.9 and apparently she had a febril seizure which is caused when an infant/toddler's body temp is very high.  She also has an ear infection and an upper respiratory infection.  She received a breathing treatment and was dischared about 2.5 hours after we arrived.

She's been prescribed an antiobiotic and a steroid and has been sleeping most of the day.  This evening she's been back to her normal self. I'm sure we'll take turns checking on her every hour tonight!

Slept on mommy most of the day

I saw this video posted on a friends facebook page and I die laughing every time I watch it!!

I've heard quite a few of these comments and I know most of the time they don't mean to be rude, it's to be expected I think because a lot of people aren't educated about adoption.

ENJOY...

Boy...life gets in the way of my blogging!!

If you didn't know, November is National Adoption Month!!  Whether it be domestic or foreign adoption or foster care, we are all called to care for the fatherless.  I hope you will take some time this Holiday season to go out of your way to do something for a child in need whether it be in your own town or half way acrossed the world.  I plan to write another post about giving with a purpose, but that will be another day :)

On Sunday, November 3rd it was "Orphan Sunday".  Orphan Sunday was designed to get your church involved in discussions about adoption and caring for the fatherless.  I was a little behind the ball and didn't have a chance to discuss this with our Pastor but it was neat to hear about other families who had big discussions with their whole church about their experiences with adoption and how they answered questions from people who might be considering adoption or foster care.  So as a way to celebrate Orphan Sunday we decided to meet friends of ours in Nashville to see their sweet boy Eli Thomas who came home about a month after Sanai did.

When we went to Ethiopia to meet Sanai in July our friends, Ashley and Dwayne, had already been there to meet Eli and took some photos of Sanai for us.  We made sure we gave Eli some love while we were there.  We haven't had a chance to see him since he came home in September so we were super excited to meet him!!

They weren't real sure about each other, there was a lot of looking and grabbing. ha ha  Look at Eli's bottom lip, soooo cute!!

I couldn't believe how much bigger Eli was than Sanai...and he's a month younger than her!  I didn't realize how petite our little girl was until I held Eli. ha ha

I'm so glad that we have met another family who has gone through this journey with us.  Another family to bounce ideas off of and share our concerns and obstacles as we move forward.  We haven't started planning their wedding yet but we both wouldn't mind little Ethiopian grand babies running around in the future :)

We had another great weekend at our friend's cabin in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky.  I love going to their cabin because we are forced to relax!  There's no laundry or dishes calling my name and we can spend some good family time.  We napped, layed around and watched tv.  We packed a lunch Saturday afternoon and headed to a near by park for some fun.  We headed back home on Sunday and back to reality. 

 

 

 

 

I wanted to do something fun with the kids this weekend and it seemed like the perfect weekend to head to Chattanooga to visit the Tennessee Aquarium.  I had heard it was awesome, and the rumors were true!   It was an easy drive and downtown Chattanooga reminds me of Louisville with all the cute little restaurants and the river front and bridges.

Petting the river otter skin

Inside the tube!

 

Posing with the fish

 

Being silly

 

Fishy!

 

 

The best pic of the day, by far :)

 

Learning about turtle shells

 

Posing by a giant black snake that Tommy wouldn't get near!

 

 

The birds slid up and down the branch

 

Petting the stingray and then squealing with delight!!

 

Walking acrossed the pedestrian bridge over the river

 



 

 

 We had a great time and I definitely recommend a visit if you haven't been there!  Both kids were sleeping by the time we pulled out of the parking garage so we decided to indulge in some Five Guys burgers in the peace and quiet in our car, ha ha.

Next up, I'm really hoping to get to the Nashville Zoo next.  We haven't been there since we moved here almost three years ago.

Oh...and Sanai turns 8 months today!!

 

HAPPIEST. BABY. EVER.