It's been a while

No, I haven't fallen off the planet, at least not yet. Some days it does seem that I am only being held down by a very thin string, that may snap at any given moment, which would send me twirling out into outer space.....ya know, now that I think about it, that might not be such a bad idea.....:-) I have a ton to write about! But right now is not the time. I am waiting for Jedidiah to get done with his tube feeding so I can go to bed and get up in two hours to give him his next feeding! But do be on the lookout for a new post coming up that will catch you up on how we have been. Jedidiah turned one this month!!!!!!!! I can hardly believe it!!! Moira just turned eight, and in a few weeks Isabella turns double digits!!!! I have pictures of some things to share, and an update on how Jedidiah is doing health wise. So you all stay tuned. Hopefully it won't take me long to throw a post together.

a couple of pictures

I think I wrote about the girls playing "Old Fashioned Times". They decided that it would be g=fun to do things like wash clothes by hand. This was totally their idea! I had nothing to do with it. The funny thing was that when they were done Isabella comes inside and tells me that she *knows* why they made washing machines! It's so that you can do the wash faster. Ummmm, very astute of her I would think :-) So I took some pictures of them washing and hanging the clothes to dry.

We went to church yesterday! It had been at least 6 weeks since we last went. It was great to be back. Jedidiah did well. Although giving him a tube feeding in the van just does not work as well as when we are at home. It moves way tooooooo slow! (the feeding, not the van)

We have a quiet week here. Just schooling, cleaning and preparing. I am trying to prepare some fun themes for a "summer camp' to do here after our school year is over. We end June 29. We will have a three week break before we start our next school year. We will be trying a year round approach this year. We'll see how it goes. We are also preparing Isabella for her first away from home experience. She will be staying with Jerry's parents for about 4 days at the end of the month. We will then all go down to get her on the 4th of July. She is so excited! She is making a paper chain to count down the days.

In less than on week our little man will turn ONE years old!!!! Oh my goodness how time flies! I am so amazed at how far he has come, and at the same time, how far he has to go. We went to a graduation party this weekend and met up with a family we used to go to church with about two years ago. The wife was immediately asking questions about Jedidiah. She then shared her own experience of having found an orange sized tumor inside of her that the doctors gave her 6 months to live. Well it's been six months and she looks totally healthy. She said she went to a homeopathic doctor as she didn't trust the regular doctors. It was by following the regular doctors advice that she got the tumor. Long story short, long term use of benedryl can cause these rare tumors, the kind that she had. So she sought alternative help. She will be giving me his name just to see if he can do anything for Jedidiah. I'm game. I'm not sure if I wrote about the medicine we gave Jedidiah this past thursday/friday. The GI doctors gave him this antihistamine that has the side effect of increasing appetite. Well it worked! However, it also totally altered his personality! He wouldn't smile or interact, was constantly fussy. So we said, no way! And so our saga continues.

Well I have some pita bread to make and laundry to fold and kids to school and.....well you get the idea. Have a great day!

Scrub a dub dub two girls and their tubs, washing their clothes away....

Along came their sister, who sat down beside them and washed her clothing too.

Here they are hanging their clothing up. Isabella rigged up the clothing lines between the porch steps and the soccer goal, and between the wheel burrow and steps.

Here's little man working on his balance. His feet look so tiny in this picture!

It looks like Jedidiah has something to say! Here he is with some of his fan club.

an update and dinosaur flies

Happy boy! He was had a great time playing with this box.

Look Ma, I'm standing. Granted he didn't get there by himself, but standing there is a huge feat for him. He is really wanting to get around and was thrilled to be standing.

Creatures from the dark side.....her from under cabinets I mean. Read the exciting story below.

First the update on Jedidiah. He had two days of tests this week at Duke. The first day was for a stomach empty test and an upper G.I. x-ray. Both tests came back normal. The x-ray did show some reflux, but the doctor said everyone has a bit of reflux and what he had on the x-ray was nothing significant. I am not going to halt his reflux medicine at this time however. Then he had an endoscopy on Thursday. They had to put him under with general anesthesia. They failed to tell us what to expect when he was falling asleep. Something along the lines of : oh don't worry if you see him flailing his arms/legs and heaving his chest like he can't breath is all normal. Yeah that would have been really great!! Nothing like thinking your child is dying in front of your eyes! He came out just fine and the findings did not show anything abnormal. We will have to wait for the biopsy results to come back next week though as not everything can be seen visually. He has lost weight due to having to fast before the procedures! Ugh! We just can't seem to win. But hopefully with the pictures below you can see just how happy he is in spite of his small size. He is getting stronger. He is trying to move around on his own in what ever means he can. He doesn't get really far, but he has determination :-)

And as far as dinosaur flies go..... I do believe I wrote about them last year. You have your deer flies, then horse flies and then there are the flies that I believe fit more to the size of a dinosaur. I had one in the van with me. Not a good combination to be sure. I have to say I was glad that my van as a mess as I had something to whack it with ( a tennis racket to be exact). I thought it had flown out the window, but as I opened the passenger door today there it was in the foot well. Dead of course, the best kind. So I told Moira to go and get the camera and a quarter. She wanted to know why I needed a quarter. I told her that way people could see how big it is as you really can't tell with it being in a picture all by itself. You need something to compare it to. She said I didn't need a quarter as she could just hold it in her hand. Then she proceeded to pick the disgusting thing up! Now mind you Moira is a girly girl. She loves kitties, and anyting pink, and wouldn't mind being a ballerina....AND she is the only one who will willingly handle bugs, dead and alive! Surely she is not related to me!!!!

So here are the pics: Oh bummer I can't find a few of the pictures on my computer!!! We had some technical difficulties and sent some of the pictures by email to Jerry's email account and now they are not on our computer anymore. Maybe I will be able to find them later. The last picuture above was what Saoirse saw when she opened the cupboard underneath the bathroom sink to get some toilet paper. The poor thing came to me and said in a quivering voice, "Mommy, come here, there is a big spider in the bathroom." Then she said, no, not a spider a big bug. I went in opened the cupboard and let out a scream. That made the girls come running to see. They saw it a screamed and then Daddy came to the rescue to rid our house of such a creature. Life is never dull around here!

Ok, so I found the lost pictures. Here is the dinosaur fly!

Here's Isabella bird watching. It is her new hobby.

Here are our brand new, VERY stable stairs. We are very glad to walk down and not think that the stairs may sway out from underneath us. Ok, it wasn't that bad, but compared to these stairs they seemed that bad. Jerry has been working hard to get these done.

This is proof that these girls are not related to me. Well I suppose it would help to know what it is that they are doing that make them not my daughters. In that bucket happen to be 4 very unattractive grasshoppers! Not only are they looking at them, but they are touching them and they named them!! Saoirse's favorite was Lemon. Yeah, they are totally not related to me. I only named worms when I was a child, which is far more acceptable than grasshoppers hands down.

14 pounds again

Finally, Jedidiah has regained the lost weight. I am a little apprehensive to stay excited though as we won't know how long he may stay this weight. He goes for his first round of G.I. testing tomorrow at Duke. He will have a stomache empty test and an upper G.I. x-ray done. Then he has his first physical therapy session on wednesday. And last but not least he has his endoscopy on thursday. I am so very thankful that someone from our church will be able to watch the girls for us then. Jerry has to go into work that day and has a doctors appointment himself later on in the afternoon. I am hoping to make it to the weekend all in one piece :-)

The oldest three girls get to go see a professional soccer game on friday. They are looking forward to it. We are pretty sure that we will be able to return to church very soon. Hopefully this coming Sunday. It will depend on Jedidiah's test results.

So my house if pretty clear of toys as of today. After two days of nagging and nagging the girls to pick up their mess we decided it was time to "help" them learn how to clean up after themselves. So we put all thier toys in the attic. They got to keep out one toy. Things like coloring, puzzles, board games and outside toys were exempt from being banned to the attic. So if they can keep their one toy taken care of then we will let them have two toys, and so forth. I assure you they still have plenty here to make a mess with though!

Well I must be off to get their schooling done. Then make dinner. TTFN

GOODNESS!!

My how time flies. I wish I could say it was all fun as well, but not so. Some amazing things are happening here, some good some bad. I think I have a novel in my head of all the things that I want to write about. Of course I can only write so much in whatever time I have before Jedidiah wakes up from his nap.

Speaking of Jedidiah....he's the one who is not so good :-( We are going to see a pediatric gastrointerologist (sp?) tomorrow. Three or four weeks ago when we started feeding him all his food all of the time, he started taking in less and less on his own, which made me have to give him more tube feedings. Then the week after he started refusing to nurse on both sides and not eating his solid food. so I switched around when he ate his solid food and that took care of that, but he still only eats half of what he used to. Then this past week he started throwing up. I thought it was because he outgrew the dosage of his reflux medicine. Although that is still a possibility he never even used to spit up let alone throw up! He threw up his feeding tube on Thursday which was traumatic for him and I. I tried putting in our last tube on Friday and when I opened the package the tube was defective! Ugh! Of course it was after hours and the health care company that we get our tubes from couldn't help us. So I was really hoping that we could hold out till Monday before having to get a tube, but I could tell he was not putting out enough fluid to make it the weekend. Not to mention his soft spot on his head has sunken (it's not actually sunken, as it is usually bulging, but it sunk from where it normally is). So Jedidiah and I got to spend the morning in the ER yesterday so we could get a new tube in. A three hour wait in the empty waiting room first. Then we were out of there two ours later with some very expensive tubes. Expensive in the fact that buying them is only 14 dollars but the emergency visit will be more than that! Ha! We would have been out of there an hour earlier but there was a lack of communication between the doctors and nurses. Because Jedidiah has neurological issues (his big head and the past history of the scans yada, yada, yada..) the doctors wanted to make sure this was a gastro issue and the throwing up wasn't because of increased pressure in his head. Once they determined that is was only gastro they failed to give the green light to the nurses to give us the feeding tube. Oh well we are home. Possibly only temporarily though. The receptionist for the G.I. doctor told us to be prepared that Jedidiah may have to be admitted to the hospital if they can't do all the testing that they need to in their office. Oh joy. You know I am looking forward to that possibility! But hopefully we can get some answers and fast. Jedidiah was up to 14 pounds 1.5 ounces and today he was at 13 pounds 8.5 ounces. I could just cry. Every time we go forward we have to go back.

The girls had their end of year testing a week ago. It went pretty well overall, but their shortcomings were definitely evident. I already knew where they needed more work, but if I had doubts before, I don't now. Isabella did great in math and language, and resources. But the reading comprehension is lacking. It's not even that she can't comprehend what she is reading, it's just she doesn't take the time to read carefully and look back for answers. Ugh. Moira did well in math and reading, but did poorly in spelling and her timed math. She can do all the math problems in the timed section. However if you tell her she is being timed (about anything, even in a game) she freaks out and "can't " do it! I already knew spelling was going to be a sour point. She can read well, but she can't spell. There seems to be a disconnect with her hearing something and being able to do it or spell it. She has always been this way. She can read a word, but give her that same word to spell and she can't. This will be our last month of school. Then we will have a three week break before the new school year starts. I decided to take the year round approach as that seems more beneficial to the seasons and them retaining their past learning. It is so hot here in the summer it didn't make sense for us to waste our inside time, when we could be learning.

The other big news has been pretty amazing to see develop. It has come time to adopt. Well, starting the process at least. We always knew we would adopt, but it was always, someday. However God told us it is now. I had been praying over the years on and off that I would have the same love for our adopted children as our biological children. I was afraid that I wouldn't and there would always be a difference. Well I happened to visit someones blog the other week. I went there to read what she had to say about nutrition. It just so happens they have two adorable boys they adopted from Ethiopia. The first picture I saw on her blog was of the youngest. He reminded me so much of Jedidiah. He has a big head, small jaw, those beautiful happy eyes....oh my I had to read their story. I searched back through her blog to read about their adoption story and all of a sudden I knew we had children over there that are ours to raise! I can not explain it. My heart was burning to hold our children. I have this love for children I have not met yet. I really wanted to tell Jerry about it. But I thought it would be best to let God convict him in His own time. Well that would have been only a few hour wait!!
Jerry came to the table with a very serious look on his face. I was terrified he was going to tell me he lost his job! He said a few things about how he know God was telling him we would be going into ministry sometime in the future. Hmmm. Ok, I thought. I wasn't really sure what to say as he was obviously very overcome with what ever thoughts or convictions he was having. So I decided to wait till he was ready to tell me. Then after dinner he was on his laptop and he turned it around to show me what had convicted him. It was a picture of a starving African child. Oh, how my heart started burning again. He went on to say that he didn't know why God gave him this love for these children. Well I thought I knew, it was because he was convicting both of us at the same time! So we've been looking into it. My heart is with the Ethiopian children. Jerry has a burden for the children of Liberia. So I thought it best to look up other peoples blogs about adopting from Liberia as I wanted to be on the same page as Jerry. I didn't find too many. But I found on in particular that documents their whole journey. And oh the horror of it over there! I don't think I can go into it. Sixty percent of babies under a year die there. There is no running water or electricity. The atrocities being done to children there are horrid. The poverty is overwhelming. It is so bad. So my heart is turning to Liberia. Although somewhere in my heart there is an Ethiopian child waiting :-) Like I said we are in the very beginning stages. There is a long road ahead of us. It seems almost impossible that it will happen. There's the saying: Where there's a will, there's a way. Well I was thinking that is really is more like: With God's will he makes the way. I am eager to see how He makes the way for us to adopt our children from Africa.

Ok, I think I better end this novel. I'll let you all know how Jedidiah's appointment went.

catching up

i had a bunch of cute things to share. Unfortunately I forgot most of it! I will share some pics that are cute. I tried making a video of Jedidiah sitting, his new skill, but our camera is messed up. It won't let us download the video to our computer.

We have a bunch of head hunters here. There is a reward of $5 per siting that leads to the "capture" of each enemy. That enemy being black widow spiders. We didn't see any last year so I thought we were going to be in the clear. But not so. Isabella has made 15 bucks so far! One of them was on the outside of our house near our back door. The other two were near the house. I read up on them. I think we are seeing a lot of them now because they are looking for a new home. Once a female black widow finds where she wants to build her home she doesn't leave her web. You will also find her upside down in her web as well. Interesting stuff. The good new is that they are not agressive, and very rarely lethal. But non the less dangerous!

I had Isabella take the picture of Jedidiah all messy. This is a very encouraging sign....making messes! The fact that he didn't ever want to touch his food, and when he did he would freak is a sign of his reflux. This was the first time he decided to dig in and explore. So I let him! It might of helped that he didn't care for the meal. Otherwise he eats his food right up.




We have put ourselves in isolation. Jedidiah had been losing some weight due to many colds back to back. It has been VERY frustrating. So we decided to not go anywhere for a month. No church, no library, no park, no grocery store.....As hard as that is we have been rewarded with the fruits of our sacrafices--He's gained weight!! In the past few days he's gained 6 oz. We are very pleased and will continue with what is working.


Isabella and Moira have their year end testing next week. This will be Moira's first year of testing. I thought Isabella would grumble when she found out that testing was next week, but she is excited about it. She says she likes reading the stories and seeing pictures of animals.



I've been making small changes in our diet. I personally would really like to go cold turkey and switch right over to eating mostly raw foods, but no one else is with me :-) So I felt that doing something would be better than doing nothing at all, and that eventually we would make our way to eating mostly raw. The girls really love the whole wheat pancakes

I make, but I hated that we were drowning them in 'toxic' syrup. So I started making some froit toppings to put on. At first they protested, but eventually they caved and ate it, and lo and behold they like it! Their snack time has been healthier as well. I would really like to do away with store bought yogurt. It's toxic as well. Anything with that much sugar is toxic. I want to start making my own yogurt. Then their bodies can actually benefit from the good bacteria.



Well Little Man is supposed to be napping.....notice the words 'supposed to'. So I will have to write more later.

A Devo wanna be. Actually this is what happens when you leave the baby in Daddy's care :-)

Both Flannery and Saoirse could tell you how to put a feeding tube in a baby amd explain how you use the tube. I'm praying they won't have to use that information in their future.

I suppose people would look at us strangely if the girls took their dolls out in public. Their dolls all have feeding tubes! I took some pictures but they didn't come out too well.

A heavy heart...

My words escape me. I am not sure how to say it in a way that makes it ok....because it's really not ok. My Babci (my grandmother) passed away this evening. I have a ton of thoughts running through my head, but they can't seem to get out. So I thought I would make a list of all the things I remember about her.

Pop. (for you southerners, that is what northerners call soda) She always kept a large selection in her frigde, and if not she would always tell us where to get it, on the basement stoop.

Pajamas, we could always count on some awesome new jammies for Christmas. I always loved them.

Slippers of papchas (not sure how to spell it, but the Polish word for slippers). She always wore her slippers in the evening getting ready for bed.

Then there was the stickia (another Polish word for dish towel). Doing dishes with her.

I remember staying overnight one time and my sister and I getting in big trouble for talking in bed!

Sitting on my grandparents porch, trying to catch a summer breeze. She would be calling out to her neighbors who would be passing by.

Bobcageon (spelling?). Where we went almost every summer as a kid. We would have a cabin and then there was Babci and Dziadzi's (Polish for grandfather) cabin. It always seemed to smell of coffe. I remember her making fish there. Sitting around the bon fire, as the adults chatted away.

Then there was the time that she came to take care of us while my Mom went to the hospital to give birth to my youngest brother, Ryan. Tracy and I were about 10 and 11 years old. And as you know at that age a person posseses all knowledge :-) Babci didn't do anything right! Well we didn't think so anyways. We kept telling her we didn't do things that way, we did them this way, and I think she got a little tires of hearing that as I remember her telling us that while she was there we would be doing it her way :-) I seem to remember calling my Mom at the hospital and asking her WHEN would she be back?!?

She always cooked great food. I am thankful that I have her pierogi recipe and her pineapple squares recipe.

Of course she coined the phrase, " you're so bootiful"

She said the word 'thousand' as 'tousand', it always bugged me out when she did that :-)

Her playing cards. The adults would play cards in the evenings at gatherings. And of course they had to speak Polish half the time so that you didn't know what they were saying.

Well I am sure there are a bunch more, but it is late, the kids are still up (except Little Man). I need to get them off to bed as they were up early today.

Amazing feats,banana ice cream for breakfast and chicken pullups

Now there's an interesting title! Now for this amazing feat. My immediate family members will totally understand why this was such an amazing feat. Three of the girls needed allergy medicine. We got pills for Isabella and liquid for Flannery and Saoirse. Well I go to pick it up at the store. They only had Isabella's med and it was like 75$!! Whoa there! Thankfully it was because they didn't have our insurance info. So Jerry went back the next day to pick up the other girls liquid med and I told him it should be about 30$. Well it was like 150$. With insurance! Ok, so it's all the same med, just in a different form, and so our insurance won't pay for it. So I told the pharmacy to give me pills instead. They asked how they were going to take it, especially the 3 year old. I told them I would put it in applesauce. We get home and I put it in the apple sauce but Saoirse wouldn't take it. Flannery said, here give me mine. I told her how to put the pill in her mouth, follow it with a sip of water and swallow it all. Saoirse says, I want to do that too. Ok, i thought what is there to loose, but one of her pills. I give it to her and you would have thought she had done this before. Sip, swallow, she giggles, and runs off to play. Now I am still standing there almost with my jaw to the ground. If you have ever seen me take one pill, you would understand!!!!

Chicken pull ups are something new around here, sort of. It's not a recipe though. Saoirse came up to me the other morning and was mumbling something about chicken pullups. What? I aked her if she needed a new pull up as she is potty training and we have switched from diapers to pull ups. She says no, gets all frustrated and keeps talking about chicken pull ups. So i ask her if she wanted to eat some chicken, to which she just got more frustrated. Finally Moira chimes in that she wants one of her new pull ups (I bought a new package before we have used up the old one. The new ones have Tweety Bird on them). Moira said that Saoirse thinks that it's a chicken! Ha, ha! Ok, then chicken pull ups it is.

And for banana ice cream. We have really cut back on the amount of tv/movie time the girls have. They are obviously going through withdrawls as they asked to watch one of my videos called Rejuvenate with Serene. It's about eating raw and it has Serene showing you how to put some recipes together. One of the recipes is for ice cream. The girls kept bugging me to make it. They had asked to watch the video a few more times. They like to pretend they are doing a cooking show as well, when they are watching it. I told them that any raw food recipe that tries to mimic a cooked food recipe does not taste the same. That doesn't mean it tastes bad, but it's not the same. So I warned them that I would make the ice cream, but it wouldn't be the same. First I made a "chocolate sauce", which Saoirse really loved, the other girls didn't seem to like it much. Then for the ice cream. Frozen bananas, soem vanilla, a bit of milk (just a tiny bit), whirl it up in a food processor. They LOVED it. I made myself some (I can't have milk) with some bananas, water, vanilla and some almond butter (like peanut butter, but made with almonds). OH MY!! It was divine! Mind you I have only had some ice cream (made from soy) twice since Jedidiah was born, since I cant' have milk. This ice cream we made was awesome. This morning I didn't have time to eat what I've been eating for breakfast, as we were trying to get out the door to Isabella's soccer tournament, so I made some of the ice cream. Hey, it beats the normal breakfast fare!! It's actually great for you. :-)

Jerry took some really cute pics of Jedidiah the other day. I'll try to put them up later.

Birthday today

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAOIRSE!!!!!

Baby girl is 3 today!!!! She had a great day. Today was the girls last day of soccer and they had a few of those moon walk thingies there. So they all got to play on those for a while today. Then we came home and cleaned up a bit. The girls set the table with the plates, cups and napkins. Then after dinner it was cake time and present time. A great fun day. I have a few pictures to share of the day.

The last one was taken about two weeks ago. I have to share a funny. Isabella decided to put on a puppet show for the girls and made up some stories that had morals to them. WHOA!!! Scary stuff!! If I was a kid I would make sure to listen to my parents after hearing those stories. All of them had gruesome endings. Here is one:

There was a koala who would climb up trees acting all crazy and knocking them over. His mom finds out he knocked the trees down and went out to put them upright again (hey you can do that when they are playmobil trees). So she tells the koala that he can not do that again. Well the kid koala decides to disobey and does it again. He goes out climbs around acting all crazy and knocks the trees over again. So the Mom finds out and scolds him and sends him to his room for disobeying. Well the kid koala is in his room and comes up with the idea that it would be fun to sneak out and climb the trees by the river and tease the alligators. So he sneaks out, climbs the river trees, but knocks it over into the river where the alligators come and eat him up for dinner. Yum.

So there you have it, make sure those kiddos of yours don't fool around on trees by rivers that have alligators in them :-)

toofers!

Umm, ok, that would be, "a tooth" in mommy language :-) Little man finally has a tooth coming in! We are so excited, especially seeing how he is going to be 10 months old next week! My, where does the time go? We heard back from the early intervention people. They will come out next week to do an evaluation to see what Jedidiah may need help with. The poor little guy has been sick. The kiddos all got a cold. Saoirse had it for like 2 days, Moira had it for about 5 days, but Jedidiah has had it for 10 days now. He needs to get better.

The girls have their last soccer game this saturday. Then next Saturday Isabella has a tournament. They have all done very well this spring season. This Saturday is also Saoirse's birthday. Three years old! She is all excited. I took her to Walmart to pick out a cake. She picked a Barbie princess cake. I'm just glad they didn't have a camo one ;-0 (ha, ha). She's been asking to open her present for the past few days. Too funny.

Ok, I have to get the kids to bed. 'Nite

13 pounds!!!

Yes, he has FINALLY hit 13 pounds!!! We have hit a few bumps in the road along the way getting to 13 though. We seem to take 2 steps forward and one step back. Even now, he doesn't have his feeding tube in because he pulled it out a couple of mornings ago. Jerry didn't have time to help me put it in before he left for work. He said he would do it when he got home. No biggy i thought as that only meant two feedings without it. However i noticed he was doing this 'little' cough. I figured it was due to him pulling out his tube, and maybe he didn't get it up all the way at first and had irritated his throat. No, that wasn't it, he was getting sick! By the time Jerry got home it was a congested cough and he had a fever. UGH!!! But even with his sickness he went up in weight! Thank the Lord! I am only concerned now because when we put the tube back in he may get the runs again. And that puts his weight at a stand still. Over all he is doing well. His solid food eating skills have been improving immensely. He is almost sitting up all by himself now! He claps and is waving bye-bye too. Sooooo cute.

The girls have only two games left in their soccer season. We will have to come up with a game plan for the rest of the spring and summer. They need to keep active. Flannery was just born active :-) She is always on the go! Saoirse's activity level would be more of a normal active. But he older two....well they are below normal in activity level. Moira has always been that way. She has always walked slow, moves slowly, is quiet... Isabella used to be a whirlwind, but sometime around 4 years old she stopped. Hmmm, not sure why. But we are working on that now.

I had been concerned about being two weeks behind in their schooling (due to being in the hospital), but when i was working in their lesson plans for the month, we still come out ahead. We may have to still continue schooling the first two weeks of our summer break just to get in the 180 days required of us, but they will be ahead in lessons. As a matter of fact Moira starts the next level math book next week. And Isabella starts her next math book in about 3 weeks. So they will be a few months ahead in math by the end of the school year.

Not much else to write about for now. Saoirse, Jedidiah and I will be heading to the park in a bit. Our midwife started a homebirth meetup in this area. That should be fun! Have a great weekend.

Oh, yeah...Tracy.... we'll have to take you up in your offer to help us stock up in camo :-) I bought some camo material to make a tierd skirt for Isa out of it. But it is the desert camo. Although I don't think she cares what kind it is! We will be getting a toy bow and arrow for them soon. How and when did my life not become my life anymore? I always imagined pink, princesses, dress up as in "dresses" dress up, makeup.....now I have cowgirls, horsies, hunters, camo......very strange indeed :-)

It's all Uncle Jame's fault!!!!

Ok, we have determined the source of Isabella's love of camo...... It all started when she was 11 months old....here is the proof. This is Uncle Jame's hat, so therefore it is his fault, perfect logic!

The picture is blurry due to the fact that it's a picture of a picture! But you can get the jist.

Southern Peaches Farm

Life on the farm.....well our "farm" is a bit on the unusual side. Here we have cowhand Flannery riding on Australian Stock Horse Isabella:

Then there's cute farmer Jed:

We even have our farm patroled, ya gotta watch out for them thar squirrles:

And then some of farm hands learning the ropes:

I need to get a picture of Isabella doing her new found "hobby"....archery. No I am not joking. she took the bag that the folding lawn chair came in (it is tube shaped), found some sticks that have "y" notches on one end and put them in the bag. Tha bag goes over her shoulder. Than she found a large stick, tied a bunch of rubber bands together and attatched them to the ends of the large stick for her bow. It really shoots! She has been setting up all sorts of targets. She also has planned a camp for kids and families to come and make their own bows and arrows. At the end of the camp they will go hunting with their bows and arrows. She's got it all planned out on paper. So much for princess stuff!!! I have consoled myself with saying she's a Princess Warrior. I've got to do what I've got to do to have hope :-) Gotta go feed Farmer Jed. By the way he looks great with no tube in him in the above pic. However it was just short lived. We were waiting for Jerry to come and help us put the tube back in. We;ve had problems with them not staying in place.

PS...click on the pic of Jedidiah and check out his hair color!!!! I think we have another red head!!

A quick update

I finally am able to get on here. But not for long! The kids are getting dressed to go outside to play, and we are losing daylight to do that.....I will try to write more later on tonight, but I have baths to give and meals to prepare....so we'll see. Everyone is doing well. Jedidiah is gaining. He's been a bit fussy lately. I think it may be the new tube I put in him. I really can't put my finger on it, but am probably going to put a new tube in anyways to ease my mind. The tube has been in for about 5 days and after 5 days of fussing I'm thinking it has to do with the tube as his fussing started then. We have switched him from a 3 hour routine to a 4 hour routine. That has been really good for his naps, but he is having to adjust to the food intake difference. He is taking in more at one feeding. He is also taking in solid foods on a regular basis.

Some great news is that we qualify to receive therapy for him without us having to pay for it! There is a program that is for children birth to three years old. The idea is to catch problems in these early years and intervene if there are problems so that when they get to school age those problems have been dealt with already and the kids are not trying to learn skills that they need for school during the school year, putting them behind.

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Ok, I wrote that yesterday and I never posted it. We had a wonderful Easter. Nanna and Grandpa came to celebrate the day. The kids had an egg hunt and then put on a reading show. They love to put on a play or read something they have written. It was a bit chilly out, but it warmed up enough for the egg hunt.

I am reading a book called LEAN Kids. We need a bit of help in this area. I know what to do for an adult who needs help with their weight, but not with kids. I know that children are not supposed to lose weight, but grow into their bodies. I have gotten some good ideas and the needed encouragement to implement some changes. It will be a few days before I gather those thoughts into a workable plan though. We have a few errands to run today and school to accomplish.

I have been feeling a bit of a failure recently. It is normal for me to feel like a failure as a mother as it seems I can't act and do the very things I want to act like and do. I have been praying about that lately and the Lord has been good to help me see the baby steps I need to take to change that. And then it just kind of snowballed from there into feeling like I have failed in all that i have done. To be more acurate I haven't failed in what i "have"done (except in the mothering/wife department) but what I have "not" been doing. You see before we had kids I had "ideas" of how I wanted things to be. Some of my thoughts were: All natural foods, no sugar, open ended natural toys, gardening, lots of outside time, and other things......But the idea here is that I haven't stuck to my convictions. These are my non spiritual convictions, which are indeed secondary to the spiritual ones, but important non the less. I think seeing how big Isabella is now has had an impact on the feeling that time is slipping away. I know that I already have regrets. I would like to minimalize those if I can, because if not they are only going to grow bigger.

Ok, I best be going. We need to get some milk and other groceries and then take Jedidiah to his dysphasia appointment.

Have a great day! I'll try to get some pictures of the kids somtime soon.

Some other pictures

I thought I would put up some miscellaneous pictures. We had a very small quiet birthday party for Flannery (read: us only). Jerry had picked up some birthday things to celebrate with. And with an ice cream cake added to it, it was a hit.

Here are a couple of cute ones of Jedidiah trying out the excersaucer. I'm thinking he's wondering what the heck he's doing in there. At least that's what he looks like he's thinking in the first picture. His toes barely touch the bottom, so he only stayed in there for two minutes. Hopefully he'll grow longer soon so he can enjoy it.

And the last picture (well at least its supposed to be last, you can't actually place the pictures where you want them!) is of the girls playing in the woods. They dragged their tent out there and were pretending that it was on an island (the rock). You can see Moira trying to "save" Saoirse from the "sharks" in the "water". Pretty funny. We've been spending much more time outside as it has been so nice. We have to get our long playing days outdoors early in the spring as it will get too hot to play outside when summer hits.

That's all to share for now. Happy Spring!

Jedidiah's hit the 12 pound mark!

Sorry it has been awhile since my last post. Our internet blocker has blocked me out of my blog! They are still trying to resolve it, but just now the service went down, so I thought I would write really quick! We are getting more into the swing of things around here. Jedidiah has been going to the Pediatric Dysphasia clinic now each week. Here is a new pic of Jedidiah in his bouncy seat, with an old pic right below it. It was there that they figured out he has silent reflux! He has started on some Prilosec (spelling?). It has started to make a difference. He has taken to stage one bananas. He really likes them, and we are having to try to sneak in another food on the spoon with the bananas. We have been needing to use the tube less often. I wanted to take a picture of him today, with him being 12 pounds and .5 ounces. I will have to wait till he wakes up.

Along with eating better Jedidiah has been active in other areas as well. Like having an attitude :-) It is too funny. I mean he's 8 months old and ready to start telling us what he doesn't like, but he's still newborn size! I have to remember to treat him at his age, and not what he looks like. He does NOT like for us to take away something that he is holding. And if we do....oy! Jerry was holding him the other day in the kitchen and the sunlight was coming from behind him. The sun makes his hair look red, like Moira's. Well he looked like a split image of Moira as a baby! It was totally freaky. Moira was a butterball as a baby and now that Jedidiah is filling out he's looking just like her. Finally two siblings that look alike! It figures that one would be a girl and the other a boy. All four girls look nothing alike.

The weather has been wonderful and the girls have been enjoying playing out in the back with the dogs. I have had the sping cleaning bug hit me and I've been cleaning up a storm. The kiddos are getting over a cold so the outside time is doing their bodies good. And I am feeling good just getting the house cleaned :-) So we are all happy!

Jerry has interviewed for a new position at work. This was literally dropped in his lap. He's bumming as he really does not want to leave the position he is in. But there have been hints that his group is unstable right now and they are not sure if they will be there much longer. So it may be a blessing that this is happening now and not after he gets layed off! But at the same time this change has been unexpected and it's made Jerry uneasy as to how to proceed. It sounds like he is a shoe in for the job though, so I'll let you all know how it goes.

WE'RE HOME!!!!

We are finally home! I can not tell you how excited I am to be home. It was a very long two weeks in the hospital. We would have been home a day earlier but they needed to run one more test, and the results did not get back by the end of the day so we had to stay an extra night. I was non too pleased. It has been a bit trying to continue his feeding regimen at home. Not as bad as I thought, but still a lot of work. The first night we were home he did awesome, taking in all his calories from me. But it's been down hill from there. He did come down with the tummy bug the night before we left. and knowing how it has effected all of us, it is possible his lack of appetite is from feeling yucky. I know I felt yucky on and off for a week. He still does not want the bottle, making it take longer for his feeding. I need to give him a try with the bottle at each feeding. But he of course refuses and then I need to set up his tube feeding. Then when that is cleaned up I have to pump as I need to keep my supply up for when he finally realizes he's hungry and needs to be eating a lot more than he has been. It does seem like we will never reach that point. But non the less we persist. I have a few pics to share of the hospital stay. I have a before photo of him when he first got the feeding tube. Then an after pic of him at home, two weeks later of tube feedings. I am not sure if you can tell a difference, it is more noticeable in person. But he is getting just a hint of some cheeks :-) Notice his hand mitts in the before picture. He had to wear them until he stopped pulling on the tube. He managed to pull off the mitts (we didn't' put the tape on them) one night and pulled out the tube.

There were a ton of things that happened at the hospital, too numerous to count. One funny though...The doctors had come in to assess him and asked if he could roll over from his tummy to his back. As they were saying that they were putting him on his tummy. So there on the bed lies Jedidiah with his big heavy head on the bed. I told them that he wasn't even capable of lifting his head off the floor, let alone roll over. The VERY second I said that Jedidiah raised his head high (as if he's been doing it for months) and rolls right over!!! We were all laughing. It was totally unbelievable. The same thing happened when the speech therapist asked if he was making any consonant sounds. I told her no, he just coos. This time it took him till the end of the session and he was babbling on and on with the "b" and "m' sounds! I figured, hey maybe if I say he can't walk, he'll just up and start walking. No such luck though. So here is the before and after photos. I couldn't put them next to each other. The one with him in the lighter outfit is the before, and in the darker outfit, after.

Jedidiah in the cage, er I mean the hospital crib (it looks like a big blue cage though).

A better view of the cage, oops I meant to say crib :-)

Ok, I look dorky, but this is Jedidiah purposely hitting my hand with his foot, IV and and all. It was a little game he decided to play. He started doing all sorts of new things while we were in the hospital.

Here is Moira's doll all doctored up with some stuff I brought home from the hospital. They have been watching me do Jedidiah's tube feedings and were setting up the doll for tube feedings as well (you can see the syringe and tube that leads to the baby doll bottle). Plus the baby has a few splints on as well. They had to put a splint on Jedidiah so that he wouldn't pull out his IV that he had in his hand. They had us on contact isolation at one point. They had brought these extra splints in and couldn't' take them out of the room, since we were in isolation, so now my girls are playing with them.

Update on Jedidiah

wow it's been a while. I hope my blog works the same way. They had an upgrade that I really was not interested in trying at this time, but it wouldn't let me in to my old account and I had to make a new one. Ugh.

So I have a lot to fill you all in on since my last post. I don't have the time, nor energy right now to go into great detail. Jedidiah has been in the hospital now for 11 days! I have been here with him this whole time. Talk about hard. The longest time I have ever been away from my girls was about 8 hours! I did get to see them finally yesterday. We were trying to keep them from getting sick. However Jerry just called me this morning to say they are now sick! I am glad I got to see them when I did. It does look like we may be able to come home on tuesday. But that will depend on Jedidiah gaining some weight. The past few days hasn't been too impressive for weight gain. So they are going to fortify his tube feeding with extra calories. This child is NOT interested in eating. He is refusing the bottle. LONG story there, but it has to do with his fasting while waiting for his MRI. He took the bottle before, but wouldn't ever since. I have a lot of work to do to get this boy his food. First I have to weigh him, then I nurse him, then weigh him again. That gives us the number of milliltters he took from me. He is supposed to be taking in 120ml at each feeding. Sometimes he does, but more often he doesn't. So then I have to make up the left over mls in a tube feeding. He has a small tube that runs through his nose to his stomach. I do that and then I have to pump! We are trying to build up my supply. Since he has not demanded the milk from me we have to artificially stimulate the milk to build up. He has to be fed every three hours (the time starts from the start of one feeding till the next). the regimine takes me 1 to 1 1/2 hours to do! That leaves me with only 1 1/2 to 2 hours before the next feeding. And I have to do this in the night as well.

All of his tests have come back normal. And I assure you he has had a ton of tests! CT scan, MRI, arterial blood draw (multiple attempts), a half dozen heel sticks, a spinal tap, whole body x-rays and even an eye exam. We've seen neurologists, eye doctors, nutritionists, speech therapist, physical therapy, occupational therapy and a lactation consultant! It has been a VERY LOOOONNNNNGGGGG 11 days. I want to go home. Jedidiah has been such a trooper through all of this. He is such a happy baby. It is sad though to see that he is hesitant now to give someone a smile. That really breaks my heart. He was always giving everyone he met big happy smiles. He smiled ALL the time. But now he doesn't. I hope that changes once we get him home. He came into the hospital weighing 10 lb 8 oz. And today he was 11 pounds even. That's only an 8 oz gain.

Ok, I am worn out. The nurse will be in here in a few minutes to teach me to put in a feeding tube, as Jedidiah will have to have one for a while. And they won't feel comfortable sending us home until I can do it. Then we start the feeding process :-)

Prayers are needed!!!!

Ok, it is late and I have written a few emails about this already and am too tired to write it all out again. So I copied something i wrote earlier and put it below. It is the bare minimals on the situation. I will try to update tomorrow if I can.




This has been a long road, and it seems it is going to get bumpy here for a bit. I have had to write a few emails about this and am tired right now, so I may not get all the info here, but enough for you to know what is going on and what to pray for. As many of you know Jedidiah had started out small (he is 7 months now!) and was growing along his own little growth curve about the 1 %tile. Then he started falling off the curve. I fixed a latch on problem and he gained weight, but no height. So the doctor said to come back in a month for a weight check. Well that was this past thursday. He didn't gain any weight, nor had he grown taller! So we did some blood tests and urine/bm tests. The good news is that it is not a milk supply issue--otherwise we would have seen evidence of that in some of the tests. The bad news is we still don't know what is going on. He had three readings that were off on his blood test. One the doctor feels is just off because a baby's reading would be higher and they probably have the norms set for an older child/person. Then he had one of his liver readings off a bit (not a whole lot) that could be totally fine, maybe an indication of an allergy even, so nothing that points to a specific problem. Then he had one of his thyroid readings off. *they only got two of the four thyroid readings done as they couldnt' get enough blood from him. It indicates a low thyroid. Our doctor is stumped and has us seeing someone else tomorrow. My sister (who is a nurse) thinks that it may be his growth hormones. If it were a thyroid problem she thinks that all his thyroid readings would be off. But growth hormones are from the pituitary glands and they could be effecting his thyroid, which is why only one of them is off. She has done a bunch of reading up on this for me, and the fact that his head keeps growing (it's the normal 50% for a 7 month old) but his weight and height are not are a strong implication of a problem with growth hormones. But obviously we are probably going to have to go through more testing. it has been stressful, so please pray for our peace, and wisdom for the doctors. Please pray for Jedidiah's health (to not get sick as he is so small). And pray for just the logistics of arranging child care for the other kiddos. We have a great church who are really helping us, but a lot of this will be last minute needs. We found out the results today and had to get an appointment with another doctor and then needed to call around to get a babysitter on short notice....

A quiz for you....

OK, can you all tell me what these are?--------



















Well, if you answered "markers" you would be only partially correct. I know you are wondering what I mean. Let me put it this way:

Kids + markers = lightsabers

Here are some pictures to show what I mean:




















Here is Yoda with his red saber. I think that he is ridng one of those ton-tons (or whatever they are called).
























Here is a Jedi knight on another animal. In real life that would be a pink stuffed elephant. So I suppose I need another equation.

Kids + stuffed animals = Star Wars action figures

Hey, its called being creative and frugal! Nothing like killing two birds with one stone. It's frugal because we already have a ton of stuffed animals here in the house, so there is no need to go and buy the actual plastic action figures. Below you can see the very beautiful Princess Leah:






















You can see that the Princess has her own huge stash of lightsabers or herself.

have a great day!