Speedbump

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

The Frederick Meijer Gardens Holiday party is always a good time!

Leo's favorite new napping spot.

The gifts are bought and wrapped, and the house is decorated.  I hosted my annual cookie exchange party last week and I now have almost a hundred holiday cookies calling my name every time I walk in the kitchen.  And because Matt has successfully pledged not to eat sweets in 2011 (and has stuck to it!) I need to find more willpower.  I've been binging on cookies.  That, when paired with the fact that I have not had time in the past two weeks to get to the gym for a workout (finding time to just eat and shower is challenging) is not good.  You have no idea how much I like cookies.

Matt and Madeline are now officially on Christmas break and it has been absolutely wonderful having both of them home.  And tomorrow I finally get my Jeep back from the engine rebuilding shop (non-technical term, I know.  I'm a girl.) so we can finally put the car up in the barn for the winter and get ready for feet and feet of snow to fall.  I am so happy that we have been able to keep driving it this past three weeks while the Jeep was being repaired; it's not safe to drive in snow.  Here in Michigan it's almost unheard of not to have a base of snow by this point in the season.  Having a heavy front-wheel drive vehicle or a 4X4 is necessary, especially for those of us who live out in the rural areas.  Matt's method of 'plowing' the driveway is to grab a hot cup of coffee, get in the truck or the Jeep with 4X4 engaged, and drive up and down the driveway until it's all compacted down.  By mid-January we usually have about six inches of ice on the drive.  It doesn't melt until mid-April.  But the alternative would be to pick up a shovel and do it myself.  Ummm...... no.

Elliott has continued to do very well post operatively.  He's even asking to brush his teeth several times a day, though he is still very cautious as there are several tender areas to avoid.  He is still such a good little eater.  But over the last week and a half his complaint of occasional headaches has escalated into several crying episodes a day. We drove to the Detroit area (almost 3 hours each way) on Saturday to visit with my extended family for the holidays, and he was in tears at least an hour each way.  Each time we experience this he points to his head and says "tung" which means "pain".  He can go from happy and engaged in playing to wailing in the matter of ten seconds.  And there seems to be no correlation to eating.  The occasional discomfort he feels while eating he is easily able to express by pointing to his mouth and saying "ouch".  This is different pain.  He started getting headaches about a month ago and they are getting more frequent and severe, so today while I was at work I had Matt take him in to see our pediatrician, who ordered a CT scan of his head tomorrow at noon at the hospital.  While this is a very simple, fast, and non-invasive test, it requires Elliott to lay absolutely motionless for the period of about ten seconds.  While we are not planning on having to do sedation for this, we have to keep him NPO (nothing to eat or drink) after 8:00am just incase we have to resort to that.  Elliott is a snacker/grazer, so that is going to be difficult to do.  So instead of spending my birthday the way I had planned, I am going to be downtown again, visiting my place of employment on my day off, hoping that nothing serious is wrong with my sweet little boy.  Never a dull moment for the Beresfords!

Please keep Elliott in your thoughts and prayers tomorrow.