Of sleep and food...

A couple praise reports here...

First off, sleep:

One little person around here wasn't sleeping... If 2-4 hours a night count as enough sleep for a 3 year old, it would have been fine, but amazingly, it wasn't enough and it was showing... in attitude, behaviors and all kinds of other ways. Annnnd it was beginning to cause enough stress to the rest of the crew that Luke and I were determined to find out WHAT in the world was going on. As an answer to prayer, God showed us that it was lack of sleep that was causing some of these issues. We tried a few sleep-aids to help out in this area but were not having any positive results. My mom suggested Somno-Pro... ahhhh. We've discussed this with our Dr and it's totally approved and encouraged {sleep is very important!!}. It's not only working, it's working WELL! We've had 3 weeks (THREE WEEKS!!!) of amazingly positive results! Some of the issues seemingly resolved are ones we've been dealing with for over 6 months! {We're wondering if he's just never slept well...??} 

But yay!

Another thing that we started doing after the boys came home is play Bible verses set to soothing quiet music in their room at night... ALL night. Riley and Halli enjoy listening to one round of the CD as they fall asleep, also. However, a few months ago the boys' CD player quit. I guess that's what happens if you run it allllll night every night for over a year, right? Well I just hadn't gotten a new one... but a week ago, I did. That's been another thing that has really helped out the sleep/ settling down for bed situation. We listen to the Hidden In Your Heart CD or any of the Harrow Family Sing The Word CD's, with the Quiet Time Collection being the favorite.

That is praise report number one...

And number two, food:

Five days before Scott and Quinn came to our family, Riley was diagnosed with TONS of food allergies. They included (but were not limited to) ALL dairy products, including goat dairy, chicken eggs, bananas, grapes, citrus, pineapple, barley, gluten (wheat products), oats, peanuts, rye, asparagus, broccoli and garlic. I left the Dr's office that day feeling majorly overwhelmed. Riley mourned the loss of "food" for the next few days/weeks/months but really did amazingly well adjusting. He didn't complain much, which was wonderful. As we got into a new "food groove", he improved in so many ways that we were totally amazed. After  one year, we got Riley re-tested... and were again totally blown away by the results! Not only has he improved by LEAPS and BOUNDS, the Dr is fairly hopeful that by the time he's 7 years old (give or take) he'll be completely back to a normal diet!!! We're thrilled, of course, but Riley is ELATED! His ONLY allergies now are to Gluten (wheat products) and Eggs- both chicken AND duck. He's joyfully welcomed dairy products {slowly} back into his life... we still need to stay away from strait milk and ice cream (same with Halli) but he's thoroughly enjoying cheese, yogurt, and butter!

This included a little faith lesson for me, also.

Riley prayed for {literally} months that when he was re-tested he'd be approved to have "normal" food... I didn't want him getting his hopes up too high and also didn't see a high likely hood for extreme improvement, as this can be a life-long diet for many people. So I encouraged him to pray, but also continued to caution him that it *probably* wouldn't be happening.

Ahem.

*O, mom of little faith.*

So now it's been 3 weeks of sleep and improved diet around here! Both of which we owe complete praise to the LORD for!