Good evening!! Merry Christmas season!!!

Well first, I'll tell you something exciting. A few weeks ago Mason started calling me "Mommy"!!! One of the most exciting milestones ever!! At least for me. He's been able to say "Mom" for a few years, but there's something about being called Mommy... ahhhhhhh.

A week later he started calling Daryl, "Daddy"!! Two syllable words have been extremely difficult for Mason, so this is quite huge.

Mason loves singing the christmas songs, like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and Frosty the Snowman (loves watching that on TV!!) I have no clue what he understands about the real Christmas story of Jesus, but he says 'baby' when he sees the pictures or nativity scenes. He loves playing in the snow ... yes we've had it a few times now. And it's cold enough to have to wear a jacket, not just our cute puffy vests. Well, the girls are still wearing their vests, I can't convince them to dress warmer...

Thanks again for your prayers for my friend in Alababma, whose little boy has what Mason has. She was so grateful, and they've adjusted the medications as a result of the testing. Not sure yet how that has affected the seizures. Time will tell.

So here's a prayer request for Mason:

He has some unusual things going on that are affecting him and increasing his seizures a bit. I will emphasize 'a bit', in the big picture, it's hardly anything, BUT we don't want to start a trend of increases in seizures.

Unusual things:
1. In summer Mason had hayfever for the first time in his life. Because of the seizures and medication interactions, he's never been able to have cold or allergy medications. But the sneezing etc got so bad that it triggered a lot more seizures and I finally asked the pharmacist if there was anything we could do. So we gave him the newest one on the block. It worked on the hayfever, and brought his daily seizures back down to a few mild ones per day. :) The unusual thing here was that after the allergy season was over and I stopped giving him the allergy meds, the seizures went up again! So I have been trying it out this fall, and sure enough, when he is taking it daily, seizures are down.

2. Mason has been having random fevers without getting sick. They are very low temperatures, but what happens is that they trigger seizures, and if not dealt with they go into status, which means he continues to seizure without stopping. Tylenol does nothing, but children's liquid Advil works, thankfully. The next step is IV fluids in the hospital, not pleasant!!! But why does he keep getting these fevers? He had one a couple of weeks ago, without any symptoms of illness, and had another one today, and once again doesn't seem sick at all.

So I talked to our nurse at Childrens Hospital today. One of Mason's meds can lower his white blood cells, so he needs to get a blood test to check that. I'm going to need to take two or three people along with me to help hold him down for that. We also need to find out what's causing them. So far we're only treating the symptoms to keep the seizures at bay.

We are also going to look into allergy testing. We suspect he may have some underlying allergies that are triggering the seizures, even though he doesn't sneeze or sniffle or anything.

Time to pray for: Friday December 14, 3:30 pm for Dr appointment (family doctor) then the blood test some time after that. Then pray for God to give his wisdom, guidance, and knowledge to figure out what's going on, especially as Mason can't communicate any illness, or what he's feeling, with us.

FYI, he has several seizures a day (since a few months after surgery, two years ago), but still next to nothing compared to what it used to be like. He has been waking up at night again with a seizure, but falls back to sleep quickly. (unless he's on the allergy medication, then he sleeps through the night - no seizures to wake him up)

So there we go. It's actually kinda nice to not be asking for prayer nearly as often as I used to. So when you don't hear from me it's because Mason is doing so well, and I get caught up in the 'normal' of life as it is now!!

Well, that was longer than I'd planned to write. Thank you in advance for your thoughts and prayers. And we (the Martens') wish you a wonderful Christmas Season with your friends and families!!! I often think about how amazing it is that Jesus chose to leave his incredible home in Heaven to come to earth, to 'move into our neighborhood', to connect with us and invite us to choose to be His friend. That's what it's all about!!! And all we have to do is say, "yes to Jesus, I want to have a relationship with You!!" If you are reading this and have no clue what I'm talking about, just email me and I'd love to explain more!! He did not come to make another religion.....

Merry Christmas!!!

Shirley