Month: December 2006

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Wee Hours of the Morning Blog Post

I am up again in the early morning..the very early morning. Little Josiah continues to struggle with sleeping peacefully through the night, as he has rather frequently since the month of March. He will definitely win the prize among our children for “highest maintenance sleeper” in the early months of life. (Not counting the newborn months, the first six of which he slept like a little angel.)

We know that all of his ear infections (which started in March) months six through about twelve certainly contributed to wakefulness at night, as well as to an overall general destruction of the good sleep patterns he’d established up to that point. But those troubles have thus far been curbed with his ear tubes, and we are so thankful.

These latest issues at night appears to be nightmares or terrors of some sort – he wakes, and cannot be easily comforted by Mommy or Daddy, but cries and cries as if in distress, and acts scared until his attention can be otherwise focused. Allowing him to “cry it out” does not seem to work, as he can go on for hours, intermittently crying, trying to settle himself, only to burst out with wails again in another few minutes. Only time and patience appears to help…and just being in Mommy’s arms isn’t enough to necessarily calm him in the midst of one of these episodes. After managing to help him calm down tonight/this morning (?) I finally put him back to bed about 15 minutes ago, and he is back to a good cry again…but sadly, as with most of these incidents, it’s been over two hours since the crying began, with no obvious end in sight, and that’s a long time to be awake and upset.

So, here we are, trying our best to figure out how to help our little fourteen month old guy, first for his sake – he certainly needs more sleep than he is getting, and it is hard to watch him start to settle down only to “freak out” again and work himself back up to a state of high distress – and for the sake of his Mommy, who, given all the night-wakings, is once again feeling like she has a newborn…to say nothing of developing those attractive little circles under her eyes again just in time for Christmas!

If any of our dear readers has had a baby who struggled with something like this – where it was more than just waking every night to eat, or because they just hadn’t learned to sleep through the night – and if you found a helpful solution for your family, please feel free to chime in with any advice!

Good night, and sleep tight (I hope!)!

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Sweet, Tiny Babies…

The children and I have been following the progress of these two tiny preemies, Andrew and Adam, with prayerful and hopeful hearts. Their parents are in my brother and sis-in-law’s small group at church. Lindsey and Kenny’s faith as witnessed on these pages is so encouraging to me. Especially since every time I get on this weblog, I have to blink back tears as I watch these tiny boys struggle for their lives. I so want them to grow and thrive and become strong. Say a prayer for the Bolline family this Christmas if you will…

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Old and New House Updates

I haven’t made time to post much at all this season. The already very busy Thanksgiving through New Year’s Holiday time has been that much busier at the Horne House because we have been in the process of moving along with everything else.

A couple weeks ago our realtor suggested we clear our old home of the remaining furniture to try a new strategy for marketing. It had been a little over two months since we’d gone on the market, we’d had about 50 showings in that time (including through the Thanksgiving holiday), with not one “bite”. James hoped that clearing out the house might help buyers envision themselves in the home more easily. We planned a move for last Saturday, but knew that after we cleared out furniture and belongings, that we’d need to take the plunge and replace our carpets, much of which downstairs, were in sad shape. That meant an outlay of cash, which we were quite willing to make in order to sell the home, but which we weren’t looking forward to.

Well, WHILE WE WERE STILL BRINGING THINGS OUT OF THE HOUSE, we received a call from our realtor, saying we had an offer on our home! And you cannot imagine the elation Jay and I felt. The potential buyers were from California and had already placed an offer on another home in town, but the sellers never responded to their proposal, so they moved to their second choice (us!). We had a mutually-agreed-upon contract within a day, and inspections the morning following. They were in a hurry to return home as their plane left later that day! This past week we agreed to terms on the repairs (which are very few) and as of today, we are out of the option period and PENDING SALE!

This is so amazingly providential in its timing. We will not be replacing the carpets…or fence for that matter, as we’d been planning to. While no sale is final till close date, we have a great situation with a good deal of hope that it will ultimately result in the sale of our other home. And the buyers are happy because now they have a home to live in when they move here. While they didn’t love all the cosmetics of our home, they did fall in love with our lot, which is really nice. And they can change around the insides to suit their taste.

We are so grateful for this answer to prayer…and pray this will all come to a smooth close in early January, as planned. And in the midst of this excitement, we are so grateful to have all our furniture back in our new home. Sitting on a couch in my living room, and putting my children to sleep on beds feels like a luxury after going without these things for a few months. How happy we are to be finally setting up house in our new place.

We’ll keep you posted on the sale…I know many of you have asked about this and prayed for it to happen….thank you for your love and care for us!

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A full scholarship

After paying tuition for a time, I entered the next phase of my trading: utter chaos. First, a picture:

Phase 2

I was starting to have some good ideas, but had no rhythm or discipline in my trading. I was all over the place, with no sustainable system to follow. That first spike was rather heady, as it reflected a doubling of my account in a matter of weeks (without using any leverage). But the same practices that led to the spike also led to the subsequent downturn. Another lesson learned.

Toward the end of the phase you’ll see the graph settle down. The spikes and drops smoothed out. But it also settled down, as in pointing down, generating negative returns.

At the end of these tumultuous months, I was back where I started. Or was I? In hindsight, I had learned just as much during this second phase as I had during the first phase of my trading, and this time I had not lost additional money. So school was still in session, but now I had a scholarship.

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Only in Florida

Who would have thought a major news item could be found with the following search:

“naked man” alligator “crack cocaine”

Head on over to Google News and see for yourself.