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Met one of the coolest dudes last night. Here’s a brief bio. His name is Kilani (sp?). He was born in Hawaii, but has lived in Tahiti most of his life and lives there now (but he also has a house in Long Beach). He is a filmmaker who does documentaries. His last project was an underwater project filming sharks. He’s currently working on a film about illicit drugs and prostitution in The Netherlands. He knows some of the people who worked on the Life series on The Discovery Channel, but says they’re a bunch of prima donnas. He looks 38, but is actually 52, and he has sweet islander tats. About the only thing I don’t envy about him is that he is not married and proudly told me that he just picks up chicks for casual sex wherever he goes.

Today, I was having a pretty good day until about one o’clock. I started having some pain in my lower back, so I thought, “I must be really slouching,” so I kept stretching to make sure that I was sitting up straight. That didn’t help, and then the pain moved into my guts. The discomfort started to really build, and I called Amanda to confer. She said that I should go to the doctor just so I would have some peace of mind that it wasn’t anything serious. I’m really glad that I listened to her, not because it was anything too serious, but because if I had just gone home, we probably would have ended up in the ER.

The pain became unbearable. I started to tear up in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, and by the time I actually saw the doctor I had lost control and was just crying in pain. He said that it was almost certainly a kidney stone.

I don’t think that I have ever been in that much pain, at least not in constant pain. He said that he could give me a prescription for some Percocet, but that if I wanted to leave my car at the doctor’s office he could give me a shot of Demerol. I was desperate and asked for the shot.

It was the biggest shot I think that I’ve ever had, and it was the first shot that I ever got in my rear end. As I waited for the Demerol to kick in, I was pacing about the office, still whimpering. Amanda and the kids arrived, and I was looking forward to going home as soon as the pain abated, but it just kept coming. I felt a little warm and fuzzy, but still in a lot of pain, so they gave me another shot. That did the trick.

The Demerol lasted up until just a few hours ago, and I followed it up with some Percocet. I think that I may have already passed the stone, because I’m pretty much pain free right now. We’ll see how things are going in the morning. They say that passing a kidney stone is worse pain than child birth. I don’t know about that, but it sure sucked big time.

First, Jonny Fashbaugh got his first client!  PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW!  Honestly, in less than a week and a half!  I’m just so proud of him, and so thankful that God gave us such an immediate confirmation that he’s doing the right thing.  Even when things AREN’T going smoothly, I will believe that.  Even if the business goes down in ashes, I will trust that God has something amazing to teach us.  But it’s still exciting to focus on the positive right now!

Secondly, that awesome little monkey Gavriel Zakai Fashbaugh is COMPLETELY potty trained!  I figured I’d wait a full week before stating that so forcefully, but the kid hasn’t had an accident since the first night I trained him.  He wakes me up in the middle of the night – up to three times – when he has to go, even.  The only thing I would change about this monumental success is that he could pull up and down his pants on his own.  It’s not all his fault; he gets slathered up with vaseline and other ointments multiple times a day, and it just makes it tough to pull them up.  It will be easier when he can just wear elastic waisted shorts all the time!  Praise God AGAIN, because this is a huge blessing.  The ease at which this happened is just ridiculous.  I thought I would have a harder time with him than with Caleb because a) I started five months earlier and b) he’s WAY stronger willed.  But this is a good example from God to where that strong will is going to come in handy!  He made up his mind to do it and it got done.  Not always will his will be set against mine ~ someday he’ll use it for good!

Declan actually grew in TWO teeth!  I don’t think I put how I was freaking out in my last post, but I could only feel the tooth coming up right in the middle of the bottom jaw, and I honestly thought his teeth were going to be funky.  Nope, it’s TWO teeth that were growing in, and since we couldn’t see them, I just assumed the worst.  Ridiculous!  He’s a little crankier now than normal, which I can certainly take, because that kid is usually so easy-going it’s ridiculous!

Nothing new is really going on with Caleb, but he’s an awesome guy nonetheless!  He’s so strong, so gorgeous and so smart that sometimes I catch myself thinking about how the girls in youth group a decade down the road are going to be going gaga!  We had a couple in our church growing up – actually two – that had all or mostly boys that were all so beautiful.  I’M THAT MOM NOW!  Little girls will curry my favor so I will promote them to my children.  Okay, I’m drunk with the image of power now.  (It doesn’t happen a LOT, I promise!)

Altogether, even though we’re in an incredible time of testing and faith, I believe that our family has never been stronger, my marriage has never been better, and I’ve never been happier.  Whoa.  I didn’t know I was going to write that last part until it came out of my fingertips.  What a weird time to be happy!  But having no strength of my own, I’m leaning on the Almighty, trusting that He cares enough about my day-to-day to give me joy.  OH!  And in my long silence, I neglected to recommend the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  It was a game-changer for me.  It put some scripture into new and exciting perspective.  Check it out!

I’ve been silent so long that the words are going to just SPEW forth!  I won’t even make any apologies for the million words that are about to be put on this page.  Silence might be golden, but a FORCED silence is kind of like purple mixed with green AND orange.

The biggest deal for me has been my excitement about Jonathan’s business ~ without being able to talk about it because he wasn’t ready, I haven’t felt able to talk about ANYTHING!  So let’s get that out of the way right now.  Jonathan told me in December that he wanted to start his own business.  I didn’t want to talk about it, so I just ignored the issue.  By January, I had forbidden him from talking about it.  The next month, we talked about it, and the month after that, God got ahold of my heart and made me as excited about it as he was!  You have to understand, this is a complete 180 degree change for me.  I am risk-averse, hate change, and am morally opposed to having no money.  (Not morally, but you get the idea.)  But all of a sudden, I was ready to have Jonathan quit his awesomely paying job and destroy our savings to make this happen.

In the week since he quit his job, he’s gotten two tiny jobs from people, and has his first maybe on a monthly client that he’s waiting to hear from.  Not only is our marriage as strong as it was in December, it’s BETTER!  This is the FOURTH time in our entire relationship that we’ve been not only in agreement, but known that God was behind the decision.  (The first was the decision to get married.)  So now that I’m released from my silence, I will say this: I was the hold up.  It was me that kept this from happening sooner.

SO!  Other things going on – Declan is getting his first tooth.  I noticed it poked through on Thursday, April 22^nd.  (I don’t know when my other children got their first tooth, but by golly, my third son is going to have just as much excitement as my first two.)  He’s the best sleeper I’ve ever had.  Which is funny, since my last post – TWO MONTHS AGO – was filled with desperation that he would never sleep.   Honestly, he goes to bed when they do, and he goes right to sleep while they read for an hour or so.  Then he sleeps until they wake him up at five or so.  All told, he gets more than nine hours of sleep in a row.  It’s absolutely gorgeous.  Plus he’s still taking one to two naps for a total of another two hours during the day.  Oh, it makes me happy!

And he crawling like a CHAMP!  (I accidentally typed “chamo,” which makes me giggle.)  I think he’ll probably try to walk within the next month or so, with success shortly thereafter.  He’s SUCH a stander, bouncer and pull-upper.  Considering the fact that he’s been in the jumper and the exersaucer  for over five months, I can’t imagine that he lacks the strength – just the balance and coordination.

Gavriel Zakai was potty trained today!  Hooray!  He’s had two accidents during the day, but kept dry during his nap time, so I’m taking victories where I can.  Another victory is that he’s gone poo in the toilet twice already, which Caleb didn’t do until he’d been working on it for a month.  I just put him down for the night, and we’ll just cross our fingers that he tries to go potty at least once without a reminder from me.

As for my Caleb, he is the smartest little monkey ever!  And I did register him for preschool starting in August.  He’s so excited it’s ridiculous.  I wish we could start him immediately, because he has no concept of time, and the idea of waiting four months to start is absolutely ludicrous for him.  I’m just excited for him to have some time away from his little brother.  The two of them are all about sibling rivalry right now, and I’m excited to have just a couple hours a day where Gavi is unable to scream at his brother.  Of course, it might mean I catch the brunt of it, but at least I don’t scream back at him like Caleb does.

I need to cut this short, even after threatening to write an epic, because my brain just can’t conceive all the things I’ve forgotten.  I need to think about some of the joys of parenting as right now I’m overwhelmed with the frustration of potty training and a screaming baby.  Thanks for fixing our blog, Jonny Fashbaugh.  You are brilliant!

So, Blogger (Google) decided that they didn’t want to support FTP blogs anymore. They only want people to have blogs hosted with them, and that would mean that we would have had to port over our entire blog to Blogger’s server, and …well, I just didn’t want to do that. So, now this blog is built in WordPress. You can still access the old blog posts through the archives on the left-hand side of the blog.

Also, Amanda and I used to have separate blogs. Now we’re just going to both post to the same blog (mainly Amanda).

Thanks for caring enough to read out stuff!