Please Pray for Katelyn Grace!

[Edit: Please leave comments with a word of encouragement for Mom, and let us know you're praying. Ya'll's comments really do encourage her so much!]

I just have time for a quick update. Katelyn Grace is now over 10 months old, and has grown into quite the chunky baby (I'll post pictures below). We are still desperately praying for answers and guidance.

Katelyn Grace's seizures have gotten worse. She now has "startles" between 10 and 50 times a day. Startles are a very strong jerk caused by her brain spiking. Directly afterwards, she either cries strongly and pitifully, or looks very confused. She is not the happy baby we had just a month ago.

She no longer gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth, and we have only seen her smile very rarely in the past two weeks.

In spite of all Mom has done trying to get rid of the fluid in her ears, Katelyn Grace will probably have to get tubes put in.

She cannot hold onto and focus on toys like she could when she was only a few months old. She does like looking at baby books if we hold them in front of her face, though!

Something bothers her practically all the time. She cries, fusses, writhes, and rubs at her face almost constantly.

She is eating smooth homemade baby food well, thankfully, and seems to enjoy her apples, apricots, prunes, peas, carrots, and pears very much! She is also happy when we take her for long walks in the stroller. She loves being outside, and just thinks Paton (our dog) and Ravel and Suzuki (our two cats) are the most wonderful things in the world (besides her mommy).

At night, she generally wakes up two or three times, often from seizures, and is up for an hour or so each time. During the day, she'll maybe take an hour's nap on a good day. She gets so worked up from the seizures, we believe, that she can't rest.

Poor Mom is suffering from lack of sleep and a feeling of helplessness as she watches Katelyn Grace go through these seizures day after day. She has put thousands of hours into research on Katelyn Grace's medical issues (with tremendous help from Leslie), and has thankfully made some headway. It looks as if we will probably have to make another trip out to San Diego to see a doctor we're working with in the next week or so, maybe over Christmas. Not exactly how any of us had planned to spend our last Christmas all together, but if it helps Katelyn Grace we'll be more than thankful.

Please, please, please pray for Katelyn Grace! Pray for the doctor, Dr. Thiel, as he works with Mom and Dad to help Katelyn Grace. Pray for Mom and Dad as they have to make so many important decisions.

Thanks so much!

~Lauren

"Talking" to Daddy from San Diego in October

Near Arroyo Grande in California, on our way back from a doctor's visit

Playing "hand" - her favorite game - with Daddy

Learning her alphabet with Mommy : )

"Please pray for me!"

Ever Applied for a Passport?

"If you are traveling to Bangladesh, you must apply for three passports. If your mother's maiden name was Smith, you must drive at least 100 miles to a passport acceptance facility. If you do not have a birth certificate that includes a picture of your umbilical cord, you must bring your first tooth, the book you are currently reading, a distant relative, and the instruction manual for your dishwasher. If your dog has flees, do not apply for a passport. If you have had the chicken pox, you may be required to give a blood sample. If you live in Alaska, bring a cup of snow from your driveway, proof that you have never suffered from frostbite, some reindeer sausage that has been in your refrigerator for at least six months, and your kitchen sink if you have one. If you do not fit into one of the above categories, please call our automated answering service at 1-800-NO1-HERE or talk to your local plumber."

"The Ring"

See ... Tait wanted to propose in Alaska, but pick a ring out in South Carolina. So, guess what ... he proposed in Alaska, and we got a ring the first time he came to visit, just two weeks ago. Esther has been begging for pictures, so here they are.


I got two proposals! My answer to the second one was even more wholehearted and enthusiastic than my response to the first. (Partly because I wasn't so out of breath this time. I'll tell that story some other time....)


I hope to post plenty of pictures from my "pesky person's" visit soon. Also, I realize that I never posted most of my Alaska pictures. Katelyn Grace pictures are desperately overdue as well. Ahhhhh! Where, oh where, is the time to come from?

Isn't He Just Wonderful?

Guess who's coming!!!

Tait will be arriving at our airport in exactly eighteen hours and fifty-four minutes!!! Oh, excitement!

A Happy Baby!

Today, Katelyn Grace was the happiest she has been in months. What a blessing! The osteopathic treatments really seem to help her more than anything else, and we're also following suggestions given to us by a nutritionist. We believe we're starting to find the answers we need for our little baby! Pray that this relief - for both her and the rest of her family - lasts!

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Edit: We got home late Monday night. Somehow, I forgot to mention that vital information in this post.
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The Evacuees

The original plan was to stay with my aunt Sharon here in northern San Diego while we were here for osteopathic appointments for Katelyn Grace. But I'm writing this from a hotel lobby in the same city. If you've been watching the news at all, you can probably guess why. My last post mentioned that we could see and smell the smoke from the Southern California fires. Before we went to bed, we could just barely see a red glow behind the hills. We didn't think too much of it, and headed to bed. At 3am we got a call informing us that we should keep close tabs on the approaching fire. At 4am, Mom and I headed out to fill up the van and found out that the fire was only a couple of miles off, heading our way. We returned to the house, packed up some essential items, loaded the car, and headed out through the thick smoke.

Before we left, I looked out the back window and saw flames and emergency lights on the next hill over, less than half a mile from my aunt's house.

As we pulled out of the driveway, three police cars raced onto Aunt Sharon's street. Three policemen jumped out and started banging on doors, telling everyone to get out. We were so thankful we had more notice than that and had a couple of hours to pack things up!

The smoke was thick, and traffic was heavy from a portion of the half million people who were eventually evacuated due to the fires. We drove to Oceanside, fifty miles north of San Diego, and stayed several nights in a hotel. But there was another fire east of there, the air quality went down, and everything was covered in a layer of ash. The next town over was evacuated, and we eventually ended up moving to another hotel here in downtown San Diego where the air quality is better, and we are closer to Katelyn Grace's osteopathic appointments.

So here we are. Not exactly what we had planned for our trip to San Diego.

If you've been watching the news, you probably know that the Witch Creek fire was the most severe and threatened the most houses. You may also have learned that Rancho Bernardo was the hardest hit area from any of the fires. In that one area, 700 homes were burned to the ground, and other homes and businesses were damaged.

My aunt and uncle live in the heart of Rancho Bernardo, less than two miles from where the fire jumped I-15. Two homes just up the road from them were burned to the ground. And remember that hill I saw the flames on as we were heading out that morning? When Uncle Bob and I went back to the house to check for damage last Thursday, I noticed that there was nothing left standing on the top of that hill. It had all been burned except for a few small bushes and a single palm tree.

Thankfully, my aunt and uncle's house was untouched, as were many of the homes around them. We can't understand how in the world these fires work. You drive down a street; everything looks perfectly normal. And then, all of the sudden, you see a blackened tree. You drive further; everything looks normal. Out of the blue, there are the charred ruins of someone's home. Drive a little further, and everything is normal. Then there's another burned fence or car. It seems inexplicable.

We can't go back to Aunt Sharon's house just yet because the air quality is bad and the house still reeks of smoke.

The Lord has led us to just the right hotels where we can get good deals. We tell the people there that we are poor refugees, that we have a little baby with us, that we need a place to stay for the night, and their hearts melt. : ) I'm just kidding. But the Lord really has directed us to the right places, and people have been very kind.

Back home in South Carolina, we're fairly used to dealing with hurricanes, and have had to evacuate for them once or twice. But wildfires are a completely new experience for us. Not exactly what we had planned on for our trip to San Diego.

Mom, Katelyn Grace, and Me [Lauren] in San Diego...

I can look out the window here at my aunt's house and see the smoky glare from the Southern California fires. Even though the closest fire is - as far as we know- about thirty miles away, we can still smell the smoke, and our eyes sting and water. Everything is extremely hazy, and this afternoon we couldn't see the nearby hills behind Aunt Sharon's house. The sun was a blazing red behind the smoke.

Things are going well here, I suppose. We are desperately praying for answers for Katelyn Grace. She has some respiratory problems - which the smoke from the nearby fires is not helping. Something - we don't know what - seems to be terribly bothering her much of the day, but she has been sleeping better at night, normally waking up only twice. Unfortunately, she's still on South Carolina time, and gets up between 4:00 and 5:30 each morning. Poor Mom!

Please pray for us here. We need to figure out what is bothering our precious little baby!

Blessings,
Lauren

A Glimpse Into Our Everyday Life

Hello!

Here are a few everyday pictures from the last few weeks.

Sisters

Please excuse the sunburn! : )

Lunch break in the middle of some wedding shopping with Aunt Dottie

Pop and baby

Ready for a walk - or stroller ride - in the frigid 61-degree weather :D

What a little angel!

This is just a very "Leslie" picture!

It was cool enough to eat dinner out on the porch the other night! Outdoor dinners are always so nice!

A southern October:

Let's see ... We went swimming at the beach last Sunday. The pool around the corner is still open. It got just about up to 90 degrees several of the last 7 days.

Finally, we're getting some frigid weather! At least, it's supposed to get down to the lower 50's tonight....

Alaska will be quite the switch! They had some snow flurries today!

I'll put up a better update when I get the chance. And I need to get some more Alaska posts up. All in good time.... Mom and I [Lauren] are leaving early Monday for San Diego for some doctors' visits for the baby, and won't be back until around the end of October.

As always, thank you for your prayers!

~Lauren, for the whole family

Our New Home

Yesterday, Tait started work on our new home! It's on a one-acre lot just a mile down the road from his parents' house - plus a half-mile driveway. : ) It is surrounded by several big parcels of land, so there's not much chance of someone building right smack dab next door to us. There is an old, rundown house on the property already. He's planning on tearing that house down most of the way, and building on that foundation for our own house.

He has done so much work towards getting this property! I feel very blessed to be marrying a man who takes the responsibility of providing for his family very seriously, and I am sincerely thankful for him!

When Mom and Dad and I were in Alaska in July, we went out to look at this property. Tait hadn't put an offer in on it yet, but he had had his eye on it for quite awhile. It's just beautiful!

A fresh bear print at the back of the property

:o