My Life

Jude’s 2 month post!

05/05/2013 By Luke Leave a Comment

Jude’s second month of life has been so sweet (this is a month late because I’m a slacker – Luke)! He has become extremely social. He started intentionally smiling and “talking” on his 6 week birthday. He has recently started cooing and babbling to get attention. Then with wide eyes he flashes a huge grin. He is SO close to laughing. He looks as though he will burst with excitement and then starts to quickly babble and make noises that resemble a pre-laugh (if you will). My favorite part of his development right now is his eyes. They are nothing short of captivating. They have a depth, awareness, and focus that is just magical. It is so fun to see Jude interact with Titus and Lily. I love hearing them gasp and exclaim, “Mom, he just smiled at me!”

And “Mom, he’s talking to me”. And of course, the endearing and lovingly drawn out, “Awwwwe!” They love him so much. We all do.

Goodness

Luke and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary this past month. So, Jude had his first babysitter and his first bottle while mom was away. Jude also celebrated his first Easter. We took an overnight vacation to the coast, another first for Jude.

We are so thankful for our precious Jude. Life is crazy with three kids, but it’s perfect! We are blessed. We give Thanks and Praise! ~Lindsay

To the one who is able to protect you from falling, and to present you blameless and rejoicing before his glorious presence, to the only God our savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, belong glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time, now and forever. Amen. Jude 24-25

Filed Under: My Life Tagged With: jude

Thankful Praise – The meaning of Jude’s name

03/02/2013 By Luke 2 Comments

Sorry for the lack of bloggage. Life has been busy, so busy in fact, that I had outsource this blog post to my wonderfully, wonderful wife!

Jude’s Name

Our little guys name literally means “thankful praise”. His middle name ‘Matthias’ means “gift of God” (just like his big brother and sister).

Titus Theodore – “giant gift of God” | Lillian Keona – “beautiful gift of God”

Also like his big brother, Jude is an apostolic book in the New Testament. The key phrase of the book of Jude is “contend for the faith” or fight for the faith. Our reliance on God over the past 10 months has been paramount. Naming our bundle of joy Jude is our “shout out” to Faith. Not only have we had to trust God, but we have, once again, experienced His unfailing love and faithfulness. ”Our God is able”. This phrase is only mentioned three times in the Bible. My favorite is found in Ephesians 3:20, “Our God is able to do exceedingly more than we can ever ask or imagine according to the power at work within us“. This phrase is also found in Jude 1:24, “To Him who is able to keep us from falling and present us before His glorious throne without fault and with great Joy“.

The Book of Jude is all about fighting for the Faith. This little book is filled with examples of God’s faithfulness and the importance of us trusting God and being faithful. Our little Jude will always be a reminder to us of God’s Faithfulness and His overwhelming presence in our lives. Even though it is extremely difficult at times, we must fight for the faith. We pray that Jude’s life brings glory and honor to God and points others to His faithful love.

A Series of 2′s

His birth day was yet another gift of God’s faithfulness and presence. We were beyond anxious as we anticipated Jude’s birth. I was convinced he would arrive early. However, he overshot his due date by 3 days. We almost induced 2 days after his due date but cancelled the night before. We decided to wait and trust. Everything worked out just about perfectly. He arrived just in time to give us precious private family time. Titus and Lily (with the help of our good friend Wendy) were able to come to the hospital shortly after they woke up Saturday morning and come in to meet Jude just a few short minutes after he was born. Titus was even able to cut his umbilical chord! We realized Jude’s birth date was significantly meaningful as it correlates with other significant dates throughout these past 10 months. We found out Luke needed chemotherapy on May 2, (Jude was conceived that weekend, before Luke started chemo). Luke’s RPLND surgery was on his birthday August 2, and just six months later Jude was born, February 2! Love it! God Provides!

“The Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with Joy!” Psalm 126:3

Jude’s One Month Old Today 3-2

Our precious gift is a month old today. We have so enjoyed this first month of getting to know our little guy and watching him grow and change. This month has been full of snuggles, kisses, and overflowing hearts. It has not been without stress and challenges as we adjust to our new family dynamic, and as we continue to restart life after cancer. Titus and Lily are amazing with Jude. They love him so much and their gratitude for his presence in our family constantly shows. ”Thankful praise” perfectly describes our family’s heart!

”To the only God our Savior be all glory, honor, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forever more! Amen.” Jude 1:25

Filed Under: My Life Tagged With: cancer, jude

It’s a boy!

10/01/2012 By Luke 2 Comments

Wahoooooo!

Enjoy these wonderful pictures from our “It’s A Boy” photoshoot. We took over 1000 pictures, and these are the best! We had a blast! Click on a thumbnail for fullscreen viewing pleasure!

Names

We still haven’t picked a name yet… but even if we had, we still might not share it as it is SOOooo much fun withholding information. :D

Filed Under: My Life Tagged With: babies, baby mcfadden, boy, pictures, wahooo

We’re Pregnant! BOOOOYAH!

08/30/2012 By Luke 10 Comments

That’s Right Baby!

McFadden #3 is in production, with delivery scheduled for January 29th. And we are SUPER PUMPED! We found out a long time ago, but didn’t want to spoil the news in the midst of all my cancer trash. But now that it’s over, bring on the baby! Lindsay is currently 18 weeks pregnant, and we find out the sex of the baby in two weeks! We were hoping for twins, but there’s just one adorable creature growing in Lindsay right now.

Baby #3 @ 12 weeks!

Before You Ask, It’s not a Chemo Baby

It was on a Wednesday that we found out that I would be starting chemotherapy on Monday. Our Dr. talked to us about the high possibility of infertility after chemo therapy, not to mention the incredibly high chance if I would need surgery. So he talked to us about “banking”, which we just weren’t interested in. He said we’d need to wait at least a year after finishing with chemo before trying again also. This was pretty disappointing news as we’d been planning to start trying for #3 very soon. We asked if it would be ok to try before starting chemo, and our Dr. laughed at us! He didn’t think it possible with such a small window of opportunity. Well who’s laughing now! MUAHAHAHAhaha…ha…ha!

Celebrating the news! Big brother and big sister!

New Life Means New Things

As with any baby sized addition, changes are on the pipeline. We’re going to need to do some new things in the house, swap out one of our cars for a new minivan, and learn some new defensive moves: a zone defense, instead of man-to-man. We also get to spend time thinking of new names! When we learned we were pregnant with Titus, we picked both a boy and a girl name. We got lucky with our second child being a girl, as we just used the “left over” girl name we picked before. NOW WE ARE NAMELESS. And we really haven’t had much time to think about it yet! We are definitely going to find out of it’s a boy or a girl. Oh, and we like names that mean things, even if it’s just to us.

Titus (Giant or of the giants) Theodore (theo = God, dore = gift) = Giant Gift of God.

Lillian (beautiful) Keona (Gift of God, Americanized Polynesian/Hawaiian I believe) = Beautiful Gift of God.

Filed Under: Cancer, My Life Tagged With: baby, pregnant, third

Surgery Tomorrow – Bowel Prep has Begun!

08/01/2012 By Luke 6 Comments

Overview of the next few days.

I won’t be tweeting from the operating room, sorry. But, I thought I’d share what the next few days are going to look like for us. I’m typing this on a train (but posting it from the hotel) that’s taking us to Seattle, beautiful foggy sunrise this morning. We’re decided on the train for several reasons. (1) We won’t need our car as we’re staying at the hospital’s hotel so we’ll save money on parking, (2) it’s awesome (3), it should be more comfortable on the way home even though it will take more time (I can go to the bathroom whenever I need to… lots of fluids!), (4) my dad came up with us for a few days, so he can jump on the train to head back easily, and (5) it’s awesome.

Bowel Prep.

Oh, and I’m getting some facial hair back!

If you watched the video I posted about the surgery, you saw them tossing my intestines around like a jump rope. Today is the day for making sure they are empty. The main reasons being: (1) as my body restarts from the anesthesia, my bowels will take a few days to start working. After several days of nothing “moving”, well, the body turns into a brick factory if you know what I’m saying. (2) if for some reasons they cut my intestines, the less that’s in there the better for minimizing the risk of infections. So, I can have breakfast today, but after 10am, it’s clear liquids only. At 2pm, I’ll drink a wonderful bottle of lemon flavored laxative. After that it’s just water until after surgery. It will likely be a few days until I get to eat any real food, while my bowels return from their slumber.

Surgery.

We check in to the hospital at 5:30am to begin preparing for my 7:20am surgery. Our Dr. said it should be at least a 6 hour surgery, with 2 hours in recovery. They’ll be removing around 50 lymph nodes from my left and right side near my spine in the retroperitoneal zone. After that I get moved into the ICU for at least 1 day, until finally making my way into a hospital room for another 5-6 days. We’ll be released from the hospital once I’ve made it to solid food, had a bowel movement, had all my tubes removed (like my catheter), and I’m able to move around a bit. The estimate around 7 days total, but my recovery might be slightly slower since my body is still recovering from chemotherapy… but I plan on being home to my children as fast as possible (without blowing out my staples).

I’ll try to keep updating things as they are happening, but I’m not sure what that will look like for me yet. I plan on resting and recovering.

Does that make sense? Any questions about my surgery?

Filed Under: Cancer, My Life Tagged With: bowel, cancer, hospital, seattle, surgery, train