April 19

Eli and I stayed home from church today, but Chris took the older three. Daisy and Lily were so excited to wear the matching dresses Chris' mom gave them for Easter. and when Caleb saw his sisters so dolled up, he quickly put on his "snazziest" clothes, too. They looked so cute and were so proud of their outfits that I asked Chris to snap a quick picture of them.

This was as close as they got to being cooperative. Yes, they're cute and smiling, but they refused to stand up.

Aren't Lily and Daisy adorable? I can't get over how cute the dresses are; they even have pockets! Also, Daisy's dress is a 4T. It blows my mind that my girl is wearing a 4T and it fits perfectly. In my mind, she's still a 2T, but that's the size Lily is just starting to wear. How on earth can a mama keep up when they just keep growing??

As for Caleb's outfit... It's last year's Easter shirt coupled with this year's Easter vest. He wore the same combo for class pictures a week and a half ago, and while I tried to subtly discourage him, he was so excited and clearly thought he looked really good, so I'm just grinning and letting it go.

So, the kids are feeling snazzy, plus they have the awesome light-up balls that GREAT Aunt Maggie brought them. And they got to go to church. And they got to go to Costco and get samples afterward. They had a pretty good morning!

Thanks to my MOPS friends and a few others, dinner is taken care of every night this week. I can't even begin to express what a relief it is to not have to worry about preparing meals this week! A friend brought dinner tonight, and we decided to try something new with our seating arrangement: 

Eli formally joined us at the table!

We moved Lily out of the high chair and into a booster seat, and reclined the high chair to accommodate Eli. The big kids were so excited about it!

Eli was pretty pleased with the situation, too. He'll be three months old in just over a week, which blows my mind. 

Another reason we switched up our dining arrangement was this thing: 

My brace (or "knee immobilizer", as the nurse called it) stretches from ankle to mid-thigh, and allows for no movement of my knee. It makes sitting down kind of awkward; I have to have room to stretch my leg out at an angle. 

My pain has been significantly less today, which is awesome. However, my foot remains pretty swollen, no matter what I do. My poor moccasins barely fit on my foot! Much of my pain feels like it's muscular, and it seems to be caused by the brace. When I remove the brace, I can bear weight on my leg without pain to a certain extent, but any kind of twisting motion causes a really sharp pain. Right now I'm trying to limit bearing weight on my leg, but when I do I either use the brace and no crutches, or I use the crutches when I have the brace off. Sleeping is an entirely different situation. Because Eli is in bed with me, and because I have to roll over in bed a lot to feed him, I am really afraid of twisting my leg while I sleep. I've worn the brace to bed the past two nights and it is really, really uncomfortable and I'm in a lot of pain when I wake up. But I'm so afraid of the twisting pain that it seems like the brace is the better option. 

Regardless, things are improving and between the help of our neighbors to get Caleb to and from the bus, and the meals my friends are bringing, and my decreased pain, I'm hopeful that I will be just fine when Chris goes back to work tomorrow. We will probably watch a lot of TV, and getting Lily down for a nap and in and out of her crib may be a challenge, but I think we'll manage.

I hope.

And just because these pictures that Chris took are really funny:

I know. He's hilarious.

Oh, and the flowers in the background are from a sweet neighbor who brought flowers, gluten-free cookies, and an encouraging note. This stupid broken leg has really reminded us that we are blessed beyond measure, and we are thankful.