For those of you who don't know yet, here's a picture of Jackson with his nice, new cast. Here is also a picture of Makayla just because she is so darn cute.
A week ago Saturday, Jackson came into the house crying saying that he hurt his arm. He usually will cry for a bit, then run off to go play again pretty soon. I called Chauntel about 10 minutes after he hurt himself, and he was still crying. When I got home about 20 minutes later, he was wrapped up in his blankie on the couch, still upset about his arm. When I asked him what happened, his lip curled up and his eyes welled with tears as he tried to tell me how he "missed the slide". My heart broke for him as I could still tell he was in a great deal of pain. I still didn't understand how he could "miss the slide" in the backyard, but that's the story. He stayed on the couch, curled up for another 20 minutes when I checked on him again. When I asked him if it hurt, he said it didn't.

*****SIDE STORY*******

Because of all of the surgeries Jackson has had, anytime you ask him if something hurts, he will ALWAYS say no. He is always afraid that if something hurts, another surgery is imminent. Even with his last surgery on his spinal cord, every time the nurses would ask if he was in pain, he would always say no - to which they were always surprised. They would ask 3 or 4 times with the same response, then would finally give him something for pain, because "something has got to be hurting".

SOOOO - when I asked if his arm hurt again later, he said no (with his lip curling again and eyes welling with tears), but this time it was turning purple from his thumb down to his arm. I knew something was probably broken, so . . . off to the ER again. We were just there 2 weeks ago with Isaac with his Concussion episode from Wal Mart - that's another story.
We actually went to the Urgent Care down the street (the same one we've been to several times: stitches, sickness, etc.) and they confirmed the news: Jackson had officially broken his arm. They wrapped it up in a temporary cast and the orthopedic last Tuesday put a permanent cast on it. Jackson picked his current favorite color green and was very brave and took it like a man. During this time also, he is fighting a severe sinus infection that he has had for seemingly months. This round of antibiotics seems to be helping a bit. He sees a Urologist in a few weeks to see why he still can't control his bladder (that we thought his spinal cord surgery was supposed to fix), and his neurosurgeon and pediatrician wants to "go ahead with" more reconstruction surgery on his face.
Jackson is a champion to us. He is completely unaware of trials in his life. They haven't been as bad as others may go through and we have been blessed to bear them all. None of this slows him down. although his cast is on his right arm, he now just uses his left one. Jackson's mission in life is to have fun and make sure all those around him are happy too. Just recently (another blog post sometime) Makayla was very upset over something and Jackson was just smiling and rubbing her back to comfort her. He just wants everyone to be happy. We love him for that. The kids are EXTREMELY sweet on him and he is what brings such joy to our family.
Chauntel and I feel as though the Lord has blessed us so much in our life. Our children bring us such joy and concern. They truly are our greatest source of joy, outside of each other.