A tough week for a five year old!!!

This has really been a hard week for our little boy. A week ago he was sitting watching television with a plastic sheath to a martial arts practice sword sitting in the edge of his mouth. He decided to bend down to pick something up but still had the sheath in his mouth. He hit the end of this near 3 foot long sheath on the floor and basically rammed I down his throat. It cut his tongue on the way in and left two gaping holes in the back of his throat. When he first came to me my initial instinct was to find out which of his siblings had hurt him. This was quickly replaced with he realization that he had a mouth overflowing with blood. I had his older sister get him some water so I could access the damage and determine how badly he had 'bitten his tongue' or so I thought.. Obviously once his mouth was clear I was able to see that he had punctured the back of his throat. It looked like something science fiction. The holes appeared large enough to fit the end of my ring finger in. I happened to be on the phone with Chris, my husband and his daddy, at the time. Upon seeing the extent of the damage I decided to get him to the Emergency Room to make sure he didnt need stitches and see if he would be okay. Off to Baptist we go. They got him into he back pretty quickly and after three doctors and four consultations they took two xrays. Fortunately, he didn't hit anything vital; no arteries, veins or vocals. So he was put on a liquid diet consisting primarily of ice cream and popsicles for the next three days until his follow up with the pediatrician. I was sure he might get to eat again after his follow up. They wouldn't keep hm on liquids too long, I thought. Surely he'll get to eat again soon but to my dismay he was to stay on liquids for the next week and a half while it heals and scar tissue forms sealing the holes up. While it would probably be most five year olds dreams to get to eat nothing but ice cream, Popsicles, jello, yogurt, applesauce and cold Sprite, my little guy has seriously gotten tired of it and has just about completely stopped eating. His full day consists of maybe a popsicle and a half and a couple of cups of Sprite and that's it! For a week now!!!!

A New Us in the New Year

Typically you would post something like this around the New Year when resolutions are made and broken but we're a little behind this year. I decided that for 2011 I would make a concerted effort to change the way the family eats and to try to help everyone get more active. So, I joined Ediets and signed both my daughter and I up for Curves. I'm going to try to keep an update running here on how the family as a whole is doing, as well as, how my daughter and I are doing with Curves. We have our first weigh in on Tuesday evening.

I've been on ediets since last Wednesday, March 2nd and so far I love it! It does get costly with all of the grocery items you have to get in the beginning but I feel healthier already and don't feel like snacking all of the time. I am going to take the knowledge I get from ediets for myself and stretch it out for the whole family. I am so hoping that they all jump on board with this. I think my biggest challenge will be curbing snacking and trying to get my little guy, Phalyn, he's 5, to eat anything other than a sandwich.

I'm taking pictures of some of the meals I prepare and I'll post them along the way, too. Here are two meals I prepared over the past two days. The first one is Pork with Pasta and Vegetables (with an apple). The second is a Grilled Chicken Sandwich with a Cranberry-Walnut Salad. Both were very delicious and filling.

Weeee'rrrreeee Baaacccckkk!!!!

After spending the better part of the last year mostly "unplugged" we are back. We did away with cable television and disconnected the internet just about a year ago. It was a long year but worth it. We began the year with lots of questions from the older kids about what they might be missing on Facebook and their other sites of choice. They just knew they couldn't live without YouTube. We stayed away from the internet almost entirely for the first six months then we began needing to spend more and more time at our local library in order for me to conduct our family business on line. By the end of the year, it was clear that we really needed to and were ready to welcome the internet back into our home. The kids did learn that they really weren't missing anything on Facebook and things weren't so dire that they needed to check in all of the time. They do enjoy having the internet back on in our home, as do I, however, Shawn, who is 15 now, has taken to staying up late into the night to get his computer time in. Mostly, this has to do with the fact that his new girlfriend seems to be up half the night doing the same. I can't say that I like this for him, but then I stopped to think back to when I was his age. Chris, his stepdad, and I didn't have the access to the internet like the kids do now, but we did fall asleep while talking on the phone together nearly every night. Most nights we would talk well past 3 am. So really, what Shawn is doing isn't all that different from what Chris and I did back in our day, at his age.