My Crazy, Beautiful Life

So, I don't know how many I will come up with, but apparently steroids make me philosophical lol. Hopefully this can help someone...or at least make you smile! 1. Love people and spend time with those important to you! This seems obvious to me, but I realize it's not to everyone. If you do this, realizing you're not always the most lovable, you can have so much more happiness and less regret! I don't know how people go through life otherwise! This also leaves you complete and never having those terrible feelings of "what if" or "why didn't I" when you lose someone you love! Don't just say you love someone, show it. Words don't mean a lot anymore! 2. Another that seemed obvious, be your kid (s)' number one fan and biggest cheerleader! I actually had a mom tell me one time that her kids weren't anything special, but they were ok. That broke my heart for her kids! If she'd tell a stranger, I can only imagine her kids know how ...

If any of you know me or have read my blogs, you know my life hasn't been full of sunshine and rainbows. I have almost always chosen to suck it up and move on instead of playing the victim. There are times in anyone's life though, where you have a pity party...and that's OK! For anyone reading this that doesn't know me, I am a wife and mother of a 6 year old and 5 month old daughter. I also have 2 large dogs that are the sweetest, and most annoying creatures on the planet...and I think they must think the same thing of me lol. I am very flawed. I curse...which is one thing that I hate about myself. I know a lot of people don't think it's a big deal, but I just wish I could stop because I don't think it's very classy and it doesn't reflect my values and morals. I lose my temper, easily! This is another trait that I could live without and I know my kiddos and husband wouldn't miss it! Most recently though, as you read, I had a baby. This baby was a...

Growing up in a Christian home, I've always known the importance and real reason for celebrating Easter. As I've gotten older and learned more about the Bible and Jesus, it has become more important to me personally. I don't know about any of the other parents, but I don't believe I could sacrifice either of my children for anyone...let alone a world full of sinners. My children are two of the most precious humans on the planet to me and I would do anything and everything to protect them from any danger! That said, it just shows how much God and Jesus love us that God sacrificed his only child and Jesus willingly allowed them to abuse him beyond recognition! I wanted to leave you with the words to a song I recently heard for the first time that really made me think of Easter and how much I am loved! Drops in the Ocean by Hawk Nelson I want you as you are not as you ought to be Won't you lay down your guard and come to me The shame that grips you now is crippl...

  So, if I haven't said it yet, my world has been turned upside down. A minimum of 10 hours a day are spent related to feeding my child between my husband and I. I've had to replace an NG tube twice, replace the tape holding it down another time...almost as fun. I've held my daughter down for blood draws...which will be a bi-weekly thing for a while and then monthly...and shots. I've been utterly exhausted from not being able to do much of anything outside of taking care of Charlotte because of all of her doctor appointments, medicines, and lengthy feedings. I worry that people are going to think I don't care about my child's pain because I don't get upset or emotional when she's screaming and crying. Please know that's just because I've had to deal with it so much in her short life that God has given me the strength to get through it. I've screamed and cried over how unfair my life has become! However, I was brought back down to Earth wh...

So, we finally got our newest Andrews home on Friday evening! It has been quite the adjustment. Again, I'd like to say that I am not looking for any sympathy, but I think a lot of us see parents of special needs kids and think, "Wow, that's got to be tough...I could never handle that!" At least I know I did. My special needs kiddo will most likely not be special needs past a few years, but it's going to be a rough few years. My special needs kiddo is thankfully still mostly "normal"...and I can't express how grateful I am for that enough! However, I do think that sometimes, it's nice to let others know what all can be involved in taking care of a special needs kid...not for sympathy, but just because people should know. My new routine has made me feel like I should go to nursing school lol. Charlotte has a feeding tube as she stopped eating while still in the hospital. They really aren't sure why, but she slowly ate less and less. As ...

So, I posted a status on facebook yesterday about how I am feeling. Since it came up, I wanted to share more. I believe in brutal honesty, so I wanted to be honest about what this journey has been like for me. I started out very surprised when I found out I was pregnant. I, like a lot of moms, knew that I would love my second child, but worried about one of my kiddos feeling left out. All of these worries seemed to ridiculous when we found out that our baby girl had something wrong with her. We discovered this around 18 weeks. Honestly, I had already been struggling with my emotions as I was missing my mom like crazy. She was at almost every single doctor visit when I was pregnant with Anabeth. I was kind of feeling like I was going through this alone since Matt was working mandatory overtime and it was so difficult for him to get time off for anything. I was missing a piece of me, but at the same time, it was like God was filling it with this new life. They never figured out 100% wh...

This little girl has rocked our world since the day we found out I was pregnant. She was a very happy surprise, but a very big surprise :-) Just for those that don't know, we found out around 18 weeks that she had some kind of problem going on in her abdomen. Between her being a girl and having more organs than a boy and the fact that they were taking pictures of her through me, they couldn't tell us for sure what the problem was. They decided to do an MRI while I was still pregnant and started thinking it was her lymphatic system. After she was born, on January 7, they took her to the NICU and started running some tests to try and figure out exactly what was wrong and what they needed to do about it. They decided that she needed to go to Nemours Hospital in Orlando, FL for an interventional radiology treatment. We got to Nemours on January 13 and were given a pretty grim outlook. This mass had totally taken over her abdomen and was surrounding all of her organs. The surgeon ...