Getting ready

I have been in the kitchen all day. LITERALLY! I have been trying to cook ahead to make things easier for when I am with Jedidiah in the hospital and the week afterwards. So I made a bunch of waffles, 4 large pizza crusts, about 14 or so mini pizza crusts, a ton of garlic bread sticks, 2 dozen blueberry muffins, 4 french bread baguettes, a bunch of pita bread, and 3 loaves of bread (which I still have in the oven rising). I think that is it. I made up the grocery list for the first two weeks of Sept. I made sure to make things simple. I plan on making two of a few things to make the later dinners easier. So a lot of work up front, but it will pay big time later :-)

I have only cleaning to do now. My sister thinks that they will be able to come down still. They were having truck issues and it looks like things are ok. Please pray for their safe travel and that all the kiddos will be good.

Ok, I am tuckered out. I need to get the girls into bed. Jerry took BOTH feedings last night. That really made a big difference in how I felt today. I am sure that is why I was able to get so much done. Now he's all tired! So I am taking the 3 AM feeding. Which has been made worse since we went back to Alimentum. He kept throwing up on the soy formula. We are SSSOOOOO bummed about that for a few reasons. Number one, the soy formula is thinner and will go down quicker and the second, soy costs a lot less than the Alimentum. Oh well. I will need to put into practice some of the more extreme frugal practices :-) Like making my own laundry detergent, maybe hanging our clothes out when it isn't like 98% humidity, cut a bit back on AC, try using more beans and rice in our dinners, things like that. They are not really extreme, but they are being added to some of the things I do already.

Good night all. I will have to tell you later about my experience of juice fasting. I am in the middle of a two week juice fast. Nothing too exciting, but something I have wanted to do for a few years now. But you can't if you are nursing or pregnant. And I have been either/or AND sometimes both for over ten and a half consecutive years! I am doing neither at the moment so I saw this as my chance.

Talk to you all later.

A crafty week

Some bloggers have what's called "Sew Crafty Friday". It's Saturday, but......well ok, so I'm late. A couple of weeks ago I felt the need to make something, so I pulled out my stash of yarn. I got a whole bunch of them at Walmart that they had on clarence. It was too good a price to skip out on (like 25 cents a piece!). I didn't know what I would do with it at the time. But here it all is, made into a cute little blanket. I don't have the dimensoins of it. It;s not big enough for an adult to use for covering up, but it works great for the kids.

The countdown is on for Jed's surgery. I am trying to make meals ahead of time to make things easier. The bummer is that we will be home on friday and Jerry will get paid on Saturday. I only buy groceries for the two week pay period, and then everything runs out and we need to go shopping come pay day. So I need to add on my to do list to make up a grocery list. That way Jerry will be able to do the shopping come that Saturday. It will all work out, but it's just bad timing. My sister is still hoping to come down. They have had some issues with their vehicle that may prevent them from doing so. Right now we will wait till the weekend is over to see how their truck is doing. I am sure there is other stuff going on right now, but I need to get going and get some stuff done. Hopefully I will write later.

Ten Years Ago Today.....

I gave birth to our first blessing! We can hardly believe that Isabella turned ten today! We called her the 'double digit girl'. She thought that was pretty cool. I will hopefully put up some pictures of the day. I still need to take one of her next to her birthday sign. I forgot to get one of Moira on her birthday. We went out to eat and she got to get her favorite meal. Then we went home and had cake. She designed the cake herself, and with the help of a few hands she made it herself as well. It is pretty impressive. It is an apron cake. It was very delicious. Tomorrow we will stop by the art store for her to get some scrap booking supplies as her gift. She is looking forward to it.

We had Jedidiah's MRI the other day. It went ok, except that they had to stick him too many times to get the IV in. I have to get the kiddos bathed and ready for church tomorrow so I don't have time to go into detail. We called today for the results and the on call doctor said that everything was normal. So that's good. We have a date for his g-tube. It will be on the 30th of this month. It works out perfectly for my sister to be here!! Yeah!!! Joe already had off a few days around that date so it will work out perfectly for them to be here for the 29th till the morning of the 1st. I won't be able to spend much time with them. But we will make that for another time. I am just so happy that they will be able to be here. The girls are so excited. I know they have been worried about us going into the hospital again. Although it is only an overnight stay, I think it brings back bad memories of his hospital stay in Feb. So they seem more relaxed about it as they have something to look forward to. Well let me get those pictures up. I have to say I am apprehensive about the g-tube, it seems to be a lot more work to take care of. Although it will make the actual feeding easier to deal with. And I am really looking forward to just looking into my little boys face with no tape on it! He's a tube taped to his face almost half of his life! I know there are MUCH worse things out there, don't get me wrong. But I am looking forward to seeing his glorious smile unimpeded by a tube and it's trappings.

The birthday girl and her birthday sign.

A picture of Isa with her cake (sideways) and the paper next to it is her planning sheet for the cake design.

All of us, minus Daddy as he was taking the picture. Poor Isabella had cut her thumb while cutting the Twizzler candies. Not a great thing to happen on your birthday.

She was very excited to receive this book!! She is only a 'little' obsessed with dogs, yeah just a little (the previous statement would win the understatement of the year award!).

When looking for a box to use as a base for the cake to rest on the girls brought down this HUGE box. That was a bit too big! So they played in it! Jedidiah thought this was great fun.

Just being a cutie pie. I have to figure out how to get videos on my blog. He looks so cute crawling. I need to get a video of him before he gets the crawling thing down pat.

Jedidiah is crawling!!!! And.....his neuro appt.

It finally happened! Jerry and I were sitting on opposite couches talking. I had put Jedidiah on the floor with his box of toys. He will usually find himself in different spots from all his scooting and pushing himself backwards across the floor while on his tummy. But as of yet he did not go forward. So we are chatting when we both see him out of the corner of our eyes move forward. We both stopped talking and asked if he just crawled? We thought he did, but weren't sure. So we put a tempting object in front of him and he crawled!!!!! I was so happy I started crying. I know, silly Mommy. It was just soooooo neat.

In other news we had his one year neurology appointment. I figured it would be a quick in and out, he's doing great, ,see you in six months kind of appointment. But not so. When you first come in they take his vitals, measure and weigh him and check his head circumference. Then off you go to the examining room, where you wait for the doctor to come. I knew something was up when another nurse came in and said she just needed to measure his head again.....hmmmmm... and why would that be? Oh, just to double check our numbers she replied. Oh, great, that can't be good. And it wasn't. Nothing too terrible, but his head is continuing to climb up the growth chart, as in climb up in percentile numbers. She said that she was concerned about the disparity between his head size and body size. His body size curve is the same shape as the other curves, just that his his way below all the other curves. Jedidiah has his own curve :-) So his body is growing, but his head is growing more so. So she called in another doctor, who was surprised he was so alert and active. (?????) He kept asking me if I was sure that Jedidiah hadn't lost any development or skills. I assured him he hadn't. So I wasn't sure what the doctor was thinking. He then asks if I can stay for them to get a urine sample. Come to find out that during his hospital stay months ago he had an abnormal result come back on his proteins, or something like that. So they wanted to recheck. Supposedly that could cause a road block of sorts and if it was happening in his head, could be the reason for his large head. Although he followed that up with the fact that he was surprised he was so alert and active. So I am assuming that a child with this protein problem would be exhibiting more symptoms than just a large head. And to be sure to cover their bases he will have another MRI tomorrow. So we get to do the no eating thing, and sedation and waiting for him to come to tomorrow. The actual MRI takes less than 10 minutes, it's everything else that takes so long. I am praying for favorable results. We are waiting to be scheduled for the g-tube. They need to coordinate with both GI doctors first. So it may be a few weeks.

Must be going, I need to make a bunch of stuff today. Pancakes, waffles, small pizza crusts, granola bars and blueberry muffins. I want to freeze most of it so that on our busy doctor visit days I have something to just pull out and warm up.

Some new do's

Ok, I have a minute. Well sort of. We started a new routine and I actually didn't put computer time on it! Yikes, what was I thinking :-) Anyways I thought I would show you the before and after pics of Isa and Moira. And tell you just a bit about Jed. As a side note we don't actually call our children by their abbreviated names. It is just easier for me to write them that way.



Ok, here are the girls before we got their hair cut:

And now how they look after. This was right after they got it cut and so it took another day for their hair to 'settle'.

They love their new styles. And let me just tell you it has been wonderful for Moira as it was always a screaming fest around here come hair brushing time! Now she can brush her hair herself in a minute.

Now for a bit of an update on Jed. We went to see a kineseologist about two weeks ago. She also does chiropractic care as well. We have come to the end of our rope as far as getting answers for Jed. So we decided to seek alternative medicine. Well after one visit there was a huge change in Jed! He was a boy who wouldn't eat any real food (except pureed baby food). He wouldn't even put it in his mouth. He didn't put his hands or toys in his mouth except on a rare occasion. He was very quiet and didn't "talk" much. Well he had his first visit. Afterwards we went to get a snack and I was about to eat a granola bar. Jed reached out and grabbed it from my hand and stuffed it in his mouth!! Now he doesn't know how to chew, but he mouthed that thing and licked it and sucked on it for a long time. I was in total shock! Did you know that babies learn to chew by all the mouthing they do of their toys and hands? That is why Jed doesn't know what to do with food once it's in his mouth. Anyways after that he needed to be wiped off. HE always freaks out when you wipe him off with a wet cloth. So I was prepared for it, except it didn't happen, he actually started licking the wipe!! Unreal! Since then he has been putting all sorts of food in his mouth. And he is much more vocal! He is really telling us what he likes or doesnt' like. So that is it in a nutshell. We will continue to see the kinesiologist as she is the only one who has made a difference for Jed. We will still be going through with the g-tube. We are hoping he will be able to get it by the end of August. I am not looking forward for him being in the hospital (only an over night stay), or him being in pain for a week, but I am looking forward to our lives becoming more normal. It will be nice to not have everything we do revolve around his feedings :-)

Ok, gotta go wake up some kiddos.