Man, it has been one long week!

Hello to all you JonesPod followers! Yes, as the title states, this has been one ginormously long week. It started out fairly slow with Casey back to work full time (I'm still adjusting from his 2 weeks at home; Levi and I both miss him terribly!) and Levi as his newly-teething self. Drool everywhere...gross. I know I'm supposed to be somewhat immune to these things as a mom, but I've come to accept the fact that I'll never really be "at peace" with all that slobber. Sometimes I feel like I'm cleaning up after a St. Bernard puppy!

Or Ghostbusters Slimer...

Our little droolface in action:

One wonderful surprise that we received this week was a visit from the Roundy tribe!!! Our dear friends were en route from NC to WI. And wouldn't you know, Chicago is right on the way :)Thanks so much, guys, for taking the time to visit. We miss you tons!

Here's the tribal leader, Jonathan, holding Levi (who happens to be wearing the very cool onesie picked out especially by Jonathan!). Notice the shirt claims he's "Daddy's Little Alarm Clock". Umm, I know I may be a bit biased but I think Daddy mostly wakes up b/c Mommy happens to be kicking him out of bed! "Your turn, honey."

Here's Elena, the big 5-year old (!) holding our lil chunk.

The Jennys!

Haha. This next one takes a little explaining...

So here we have four kids under the age of 7 who have recently emerged from a very long car ride. After taking a brief survey of our big kid-friendly accoutrements (which are pretty much zippo), they all conclude the most entertaining feature is, hands down, the large-screen television...duh. As we still have not yet been subjected to children's television programming (I'm prematurely rueing the day Levi discovers this!), the kids decide they want to watch a video. But not just any video...a workout video! I couldn't believe they actually asked me to put in the DVD, but what they hey? Wouldn't you know, 5 minutes later I round the corner only to find ALL FOUR OF THEM with their little legs in the air doing the pilates 100!!

TOO FUNNY!!

Elena was the only one who stuck it out long enough

for me to take this picture:

And now we get to the uber-surprise of the week:

Levi's first trip to the ER!!

Now THERE'S a milestone to mark on the calendar.

Thursday night he started getting sick around 9. No big deal, nothing we haven't seen before. We just change the sheets, wash him off, and snuggle him a little until he falls back asleep. But around 11 he was vomiting up BRIGHT GREEN. Scary!! So I call the Dr, leave a message, and anxiously wait around for her professional opinion. 20 minutes later she calls us back very worried and tells us we need to either call an ambulance to take him to Children's or drive him there ourselves NOW. We decide his breathing isn't erratic enough to warrant an ambulance ride, load him in the car, make our way downtown, and yes, youv'e guessed it...get lost in the process. Apparently we were making our way to the future site of Children's, which happens to be about 3 miles from its current location. THIS IS WHY WE HAVE A GPS. But over the summer, some loser broke into our car and stole the charger. So now we have a GPS,

but no battery power. AWESOME.

After calling the police dept, we finally get back on track and arrive at the hospital. The Drs all think he looks pretty decent and don't think there's any sort of bowel obstruction, but they give us a surgery consult and suggest a barium study just to be certain. Once we get back to radiology, Levi's stripped down to his diaper and laid out on this massive table for some belly scans followed by the administration of barium to his GI tract via a naso-gastric tube. I'm told this is a 5-minute process...once they get the tube down, that is. 45 MINUTES LATER they finally get the freakin' thing to stay down. That was easily the most difficult thing we've had to endure as parents...our screaming, crying, gagging, ultra-sad, naked baby lying under this enormous machine with strangers fruitlessly shoving a plastic tube down his throat. Poor boy! By the end he was so exhausted from crying that he was floating in and out of consciousness.

But praise the Lord, all the tests came back negative! God is good all the time; all the time, God is good. He kept Levi safe and stable while we were aimlessly wandering around this enormous city, He kept him happy during our long wait once we got there, and He blessed us parents with nerves of steel during that ridiculously long x-ray process. We finally got our little munchkin home around 5:15 Friday morning with a nearly-clean bill of health. Poor Casey had to get up an hour later for his commute to the 'burbs for training; needless to say Friday was a very lazy day!

The boys snugglin' once Daddy got home from work:

Saturday was spent catching up on lost sleep and rediscovering the lost Jonesie art of videogaming...boring! At least Levi was entertained with his attempts to kick the controller out of Casey's hands :)

Hehe, that's my boy!

And that concludes a week in the JonesPod. Now it's time for some maxin' and relaxin' with Daddy...

and maybe some snuggles with Mommy!

Have a wonderfully fun-filled week!