A New Year and New Challenges

I don't think anyone has really noticed the lack of new posts on here but I know I have rather missed blogging and want to get back into it, even if it's just random little things here and there. The problem is that this new year brought with it several unexpected and slightly unwanted challenges, namely involving our two year daughter Pumpkin. My old term for her as Baby is being regulated to the new arrival we expect in July, so she gets to be known as Pumpkin in the blogging world from now on {unless I forget what I'm doing}. 

Anyway, Pumpkin had injured her ankle in October last year and we were treating it as a sprain. But when it didn't really heal like a sprain should've, we became concerned. And when she stopped walking, we brought her into the local urgent care place to have her looked at, thinking it would be something minor. Well, three x-rays and a blood draw took us to UC Davis for four days and an MRI and more blood draws took us to UCSF in San Francisco for a week, all leading up to the lovely announcement that our daughter has Juvenile Arthritis in multiple joints. And if that wasn't bad enough, because we didn't agree with the vaccines the hospital staff wanted to give her and left against medical advice, CPS became involved and is taking us to court over the vaccine issue. I don't feel like getting into details regarding that challenge at the moment {a much longer detailed post will probably cover that}, but we are looking into natural alternatives to the heavy duty immune suppressant drugs the doctors want to give my Pumpkin and we're researching the vaccines. Aside from the sheer gross factor of the ingredient list, we're still on the we-don't-want-to-vaccinate page of things at the moment.

So for the beginning of 2016 we have a happy new pregnancy, a toddler with arthritis that she'll be dealing with for the rest of her life, diet changes for both challenges {no more alcohol for Mummy for awhile}, a court issue over vaccines {of all things!}, we're on the hunt for a bigger house before July and my husband is working part-time while looking for a full time job. On the happier side of things, we were able to use our tax refund to buy a bigger car which is a blessing.