Isaac is definitely feeling better! He made it through the night with no additional pain medication. This morning I had him take a single Tylenol with his antibiotic, just to make sure he has some help with minimal pain.

Isaac is bouncing around, talking a mile a minute, and bossing everyone around. I can tell I’m going to need to give that boy something to do or he’s going to drive us all nuts! The trick is finding things he can do with only one hand, but I think I’m up to that challenge. The old saying is definitely true: Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. With Isaac that is doubly true! If he doesn’t have something to do he gets into all kinds of mischief, mostly by aggravating his family members. So for the sake of all of us, I will find something to keep Isaac busy. And the next time Isaac is being totally exasperating, I’ll try to remember to thank God that the boy is feeling better.

Evening update:

Isaac is most definitely back to his normal self! I tried to keep him busy today, having him run little errands for me and help with younger kids. One of his assignments was to listen to Amelia read from her school book. Unfortunately, Isaac was not a very patient teacher and was a bit unreasonable with his pupil. Amelia is not the type to give in to a dictator, so she fought him at every step. It was actually rather interesting to see two hard-headed, creative, intelligent people try to out-smart, out-last and out-wit each other. I’m going to need to work on how to have older kids help younger ones with their school work. There’s gotta be a way to encourage them to work well together.

After lunch my sister came over with her three boys for a visit. We had so much to catch up on, and we took full advantage of our children playing nicely together while we drank coffee and chatted. At one point Laura, Isaac and their cousin Nathan came bounding upstairs, each of them with a light-saber in hand, whacking away at each other. I hollered at Isaac to stop his light-saber duel right away before he got whacked on his injured hand. I have no doubt that Isaac will do something crazy and hurt himself before he believes me that he needs to slow down just a bit!

Tonight Michael’s brother, Todd, came over to stay with the children so both Michael and I could go work at the Monroe house. I took Laura with me to be Lilly’s nanny while I worked. Fortunately Lilly was happy with her caregiver and I was able to paint crown molding for a couple of hours before hurrying back home before curfew.

We are grateful that our friend Eric is making time in his schedule to help Michael with the work at the Monroe house. Eric and Michael work well together and encourage one another, which is exactly what Michael needs right now.