Brax, Brody and Everleigh

Happy Birthday, Baby! I can't believe you're 3!!

We celebrated Brax's 3rd birthday with a low-key party at our church pavilion and playground. Brax requested a pirate theme, so we prepared the party accordingly and invited family and a few close friends. As you can see, Brax was feeling better after Friday's adventures (I'll fill you in on that toward the end).

We had hats, eye patches, swords and facepaint. A few of his friends were active participants, but Brax had already grown tired of his costume by the time that the party started. Here are a few of the guests all decked out in their pirate gear....

(I may get in trouble for this next one....)
My friend, Sarah, made some amazingly cute pirate cupcakes to complete the festivities. They tasted delicious, too! All the little mateys said so :)

After the majority of the party guests had ventured back home to sleep off their sugar buzzes, Brax and Runkle Ty participated in a sword fight. Thankfully it was just for play because the birthday boy lost his sword and was at the mercy of the great pirate....

We had a great time with our buddies, just eating food and running around on the playground. It was exactly what Brax wanted.

Brax, I can't believe that it's already been three years since we welcomed you into this world. You have changed my life in so many ways. Being your mommy is one of the greatest honors that I've ever experienced. I didn't know that this kind of love existed before you grabbed onto my heart with your grubby little hands. You bring such joy and laughter to your daddy, to me, and to all of those who enjoy your presence every day. Your personality is infectious and others want to be in your presence. You are so sweet, so incredibly funny, and have some dance moves that most adults would envy :) You make my days brighter (and sometimes a little more challenging as we enter the "No, no, no I'll do it" and "it's mine" phase... but we won't harbor on that :)! I see SO MUCH of myself (and your daddy, for that matter) in you and pray that I will teach you to use your God-given traits to help grow His Kingdom and bring joy to others... (as I'm still trying daily to learn this myself). God could not have given us a more perfect gift on September 6, 2005 at 8:23 am... 6 weeks early... perfect and healthy. I could go on and on about you and all of the wonderful things that I believe that you are destined to do. I love you, little boy. I won't be able to call you that for too many more years to come. Happy 3rd Birthday!

So, that was how we spent our Saturday. Which was an incredible blessing, straight from God, if you consider how we spent our Friday. Brax woke up Friday morning, crying and limping with a large red area over his infected lymph node. Now, at our doctor visit on Thursday we had gotten an "ok" bill of health- instructions to continue antibiotics, return in a week for a recheck, and call if things got worse (ie, increased pain, redness or fever). So, of course, on Friday morning, we met two of those three criteria. We placed a call to our pediatrician and started packing up to head down to Vandy Children's. Due to the length of this infection, combined with the the fact that it wasn't responding well to TWO different antibiotics, our pediatrician wanted us to be seen by a pediatric surgeon. I started sending out texts for prayers and we headed down to the hospital to see if/ when he would have surgery to remove this lymph node. They asked us to not feed him so that he would be ready for surgery at any time, so we were prepared for something to happen that afternoon. After seeing the surgeons (who thought it was most likely an abscess) and having an ultrasound done, it was determined that it was really just a very large infected lymph node. (Keep in mind that this process took about 5 hours... nothing happens quickly at a hospital, right?... and the whole time I have a three year old who hasn't eaten since the day before... not fun :) The surgeon elected to give the antibiotics some more time to work since Brax was not running a fever and was generally feeling well, not wanting to perform a surgical procedure when it was unnecessary. So, after all of that, Brax woke up Saturday morning feeling much better! The lump appears to be a bit smaller, the redness has decreased immensely, and I even saw him touching it last night which would have NEVER happened on Friday because it was so very, very tender. We thank all of you who have been praying for him and know that the Lord was watching over our little guy (just as He would have been if Brax had had to have it removed). Please continue to pray for his healing as we finish out the course of antibiotics. There would be no way that I could write this post without taking a minute to thank my friends. I know that I have said this at least a million times, but I have the BEST friends in the whole world. I have been blessed. To my medical professional friends, who stopped what they were doing to answer my many calls and offer me reassurance, even stopping their work to visit us in the clinic, I could not be more appreciative. To all of the MANY people who called and texted me throughout the day to ask what they could do to help- from keeping Brody to coming to Vandy to be with me, to offering to host life group so that I wouldn't have to- your gestures spoke volumes to me. And to my dear friend, Heather, who left her house in her pjs and drug her two little ones (also in their pjs) over to my house within 10 minutes of my phone call, there are no words. Thank you for caring for Brody so that I didn't have to worry for one second about him. I was able to put all of my energy into Brax and that was a gift. Thank you for cleaning my house because you knew that I was having company. Thank you for always being there without me ever having to ask. As I said, there are no words. We have been blessed by our community of friends on more occasions that I can count. God is good in so many, many ways and I praise Him for watching over us!