Ouchy!

I was brushing Ben's teeth the other night and getting him ready for bed. He told me to be careful because he had an "ouchy" in his throat. After asking him what happened he went into one of his descriptive, hand-motion-filled stories which went something like this: "Well...I was painting with Lily and I had a paintbrush in my mouth and Mommy told me to take it out cuz it was dangerous, but I didn't. And then Lily bumped me and I got an ouchy."

I looked and saw that there was a red dot to the right of his throat so I got my flashlight to take a better look. To my horror I saw that the little red dot was actually a small hole that was about 3 mm deep! It was about the diameter of a hole punch. Pretty freaky stuff! I showed Nat and a few other mommies in the home and they were shocked that Bennny wasn't making a bigger deal about it. Nat told me that it happened around 5:00 PM and Ben cried a bit, but when she checked his mouth she didn't see any blood and he didn't complain and ate dinner no problem as well.

Anyways, it wasn't bleeding but it was serious enough that Nat and I wanted to take him to the doc. After praying about it we decided to take him to the clinic the next morning. We all prayed for the Lord to heal him and after he fell asleep I laid my hands on him and prayed pretty desperately that the Lord would do a miracle and heal it and that it wouldn't get infected. Well, miracle of miracles, the next morning the hole was closed up completely and looked almost totally healed except for a little red dot! Praise God!

Well, I thought I would share that story with you as a little reminder to keep an eye on your little ones when they are using pencils or seemingly innocent things like a paintbrush. Crazy accidents can happen in the blink of an eye. We used the accident to remind all the kiddos of the dangers of putting pencils or sharp things in their mouths.

We're back!

Sorry for the silence. It's been a busy 2 weeks; so much has happened. Mainly, we moved. Our new house is beautiful.

Because we currently have more kids sleeping in our room than the other families, we got the master bedroom and I'm very happy about that. It's got a beautiful marble bathroom that opens up to an aviary (minus the birds which DV we'll be putting in when Jesus supplies them), a big walk-in closet and enough room for the kids to have a classroom in it as well. I'd post pics but the beauty of the room is presently hidden behind a sea of boxes, suitcases and all the things we're unpacking so they'll have to wait.

I'll leave you with a small pic of our bathroom (it really doesn't do it justice, this is just to give you an idea) and another of our lovely pool.

PS. I LOVE the weather down here. It's perfect! Come visit & see for yourself.

Oh the Horror!!

Something happened to me last night that I don’t wish on anyone except my worst enemy. Kidding, I don’t wish it on anyone.

I had just finished brushing my teeth and was extremely thirsty. I glanced down and saw my water bottle standing there so I grabbed it, popped it open and before I took a drink, I politely mentioned to Nat that she shouldn’t leave my water bottle in the bathroom, on the floor of all places. She looked up at me and said, “You told me to get you that” as I took a big swig of it. She screamed “Chris!! What are you doing?!!” She at first thought I was joking and pretending to drink the clear liquid that was in the bottle, not so!

I had completely forgotten that I had put “THE MOST POWERFUL CLEANING AGENT I HAVE EVER SEEN” into my old water bottle after I had picked it up at a bulk cleaning supplies store. Too late! I had the stuff in my mouth and it took me a split second to know that something was wrong with my water. Firstly by the shocked and horror-struck look on my dear wife’s face, and second, the extremely weird tasting water that was in my water bottle. In the beginning it tasted like condensed sea water but a second later started burning horribly at the inside of my mouth. It felt like my mouth was on fire and continued to feel so as I washed it out in the bathroom sink. The stuff was nauseating and I could feel it burning under my tongue and the inside of my cheeks and lips.

After about five minutes of washing my mouth out I thought it would be ok to have a look at the damage. Small pieces of skin were coming off of the inside of my cheeks and tongue and all my taste buds on the first half of my tongue were oozing blood. It was pretty freaky! All I could do was laugh at the stupidity of the situation and wince in pain as I tried to talk to Nat and tell her I was ok. She felt so bad for having left the bottle there, but she shouldn’t have felt bad, cuz I should have known better! I had after all asked her to get it for me!

When I first bought the stuff, I had the notion (which was apparently God-sent) to not leave the extremely caustic cleaning agent in my old water bottle and place it in a properly labeled bottle. But I shrugged it off thinking to myself, “who would ever think that this liquid was water? It obviously doesn’t have the same consistency as water and it tastes terrible!” So I just left it there and waited for a terrible accident to take place. I was so relieved when I later thought about the situation and how at night my kids normally get up and drink water from my “real” water bottle and how if I would not have been struck with the desire to drink right then, I would have left the bottle there and they would have gotten a hold of it. I painfully praised the Lord that He protected my kids from a disaster like that and how He almost always keeps us safe from our own stupidity.

Nat was happy that I saw the bright side in the situation and agreed that we should be more on top of things like that. I have since put away all dangerous cleaning agents including “THE MOST POWERFUL CLEANING AGENT I HAVE EVER SEEN”. Praise God for his protection and that none of the stuff actually went down my throat! Whew!

PS. This cleaning agent is almost pure lye which accounts for its salty flavor and tarty zing at the end. I could have sworn that my teeth looked whiter after I rinsed my mouth out. They definitely felt clean, heh heh!

One more thing: Doesn’t this sound like something that should have happened to my brother in law Jason Paone as accident-prone as he is? I miss you man! Big hug!

Cute!

Cristina (to Ben): "Your daddy is such a gentleman."
Ben: "Well, I'm a gentle-Ben!"

We have a house!

Thank you so much for your prayers! It's so exciting! Lord willing we'll be moving in to our new house next Friday which means that I need to PACK. I strongly dislike packing; just thought you should know that. But I'm excited about this new beginning and I can't wait to get the kids classroom set up. Please pray that the Lord supplies everything we need to furnish it.

So that's my bit of news for today. Oh & Lily informed me that they (the kids) have new names: Lily is Shadrach, Benny is Meshach and Justin is "Abendego". We'll see how long these last!

I really like this pic...

...so I thought I'd share it with you.

The kids are growing so much. I haven't posted about the crazy conversations/thoughts they have but I'm hoping to start soon. I'll leave you with one of Lily's random musings.

Lily: "Mom, imagine if there were no cars in the world and the only thing you could ride was a motorcycle. That would be terrible because motorcycles are SO dangerous that not only would you have an accident and get hurt but then you'd have to ride your motorcycle AGAIN to get to the hospital!"

How does she come up with these?

One month old!

My handsome Grumpatoose is one month old today! He's so big & chubby. Daddy weighed him & he's gained 1.300 kg.

To celebrate the big day we decided to give him his first bath. He didn't like it. Not one bit. I decided not to put up the video as he's screaming the whole way through and I had to nurse him immediately afterward for him to calm down, but here are some pics of my clean baby after his bath.

Agnes gave us this handsome bathrobe for him.

His first bath reminded me so much of Ben's first bath as their bathtubs were exactly the same, Justin made all the same startled & angry expressions and both of them screamed through the whole thing. Heh.

This is his 'Oh please nurse me Mommy' face.

Yup, he didn't like the bath at all.

All nice & clean.

"I'm such a big boy!"

He loves his Daddy. Chris is really good at burping him.