A good night's sleep!

Both Esther and I got some much needed sleep last night.  Esther's IV was leaking when I went to bed, but they found it was the IV itself (the connection part to the lines) was what was leaking, so they didn't take it out, but they placed a second IV in her scalp for giving her replacement fluids (every time she has diarrhea, they weigh her diaper and give her that exact amount of this replacement fluid over the next 3 hours - it replaces the fluid and nutrients that she loses through the diarrhea).

She's still sleeping like a log, and there's nothing for me to do (no TV either), so I've got time to blog!

I slept for a total of 9 hours last night - it's been weeks since I got that much sleep in one night!  I did have to get up a couple of time to use the bathroom (I got dehydrated on Friday, so I was trying to get back on top of things yesterday and paid for it over night!).  But I was always able to go back to sleep quickly.  I had forgotten how stiff those beds in the caves were though!  On my second trip to the bathroom, I snagged a fourth pillow, and that really helped out as my hips/legs were getting sore.

We got about 4 inches of snow overnight, and it's the really pretty snow (sticking to the trees), but it's not going to make traveling very easy.  My sister, Lisa, was supposed to fly in this morning, but I'm not sure if she was able to or not.  Also, there's the funeral tomorrow - unless the roads are really worked over, I'm sure there's many who would have wanted to attend who will be unable to.  Even though Esther's surgery has been postponed, it's just not worth the risk to drive over 120 miles in this weather and bad road conditions, so I'll be missing it anyway.

And my Pollyanna thought for today - now that she's on IV clear fluids only, I'm getting ahead with my breast milk!  I've got over 200 CCs in the fridge!  Yeah!  That means once she can get back on breast milk, then she'll have a great supply and not have to have all formula at all for a  while!

Here's Esther this morning - sleeping peacefully while Fruit Loops and Pink the giraffe keep vigile - they can't wait until she's batting at them again!



Daryl is planning to attempt to come to the hospital, and if Esther's still resting, I might go over to the House and make Christmas cookies with the kids.

The kids and I have signed up for the Christmas Eve Cruise!  All the Ronald McDonald House families get to go on a 5 hours Argosy Cruise in the Seattle Harbor - including dinner! You can read about this here:

Argosy Christmas Ship

We also found out that all families are to be out of their rooms Christmas Eve afternoon so that Santa can make his rounds.  I'm sure that this is the only place in the world that you know exactly when Santa is arriving to deliver presents!  LOL!

We don't celebrate Christmas with Santa - we celebrate Christ's birth.  We don't condemn others for using Santa in their Christmas, we just have never presented Santa as being a real person (yes there was a Saint Nicholas, but the modern Santa has little to nothing to do with the Saint of old!), but instead we choose to put all the emphasis on Christ and His miraculous birth.  We also thought that if we presented Santa as real, and God as real, but when they got "old enough" that they'd have to find out that Santa was not real, then they might also question whether what we said about God and Christ Jesus was real as well.  Also, we always try our best to be truthful to our children so that they can always trust that what we say is truth, but if we presented Santa as real, we would, in fact, be lying to them and that was just not where we wanted to be. The kids have been handling all this Santa stuff really well - I'm so proud of them.  They've fielded the questions asked, without being condemning, and they get a kick out of all the Santa stuff going around.  We present Santa as a fairy tale story, and we enjoy the Santa movies, we just don't present it as real.

We have "goody bags" that the kids get on Christmas morning, but they are from us.  Because of the size of our family, we don't give the kids "big gifts", just little fun things in their goody bags.  Jessica is sewing new goody bags this year, and they are turning out beautiful!  Our tradition is that on Christmas morning, the kids can't get out of bed until Daryl or I come and get them - then they all pile into our bedroom and as many as can fit climb onto our bed, and mayhem begins!  It's sooo much fun for everyone!

The kids started exchanging names a few years back, so that's fun for the kids as well.  A few of them still need to get their shopping done, and hopefully the weather will allow they to do that this week!

I'll update later today if there's any changes.