rain on tulips

We are coming to the end of the ‘3 months doctors followups’ with EK, and mixing in a generous helping of doctors for CC, and unfotunately GC is not tolerating it well. (She has resorted to throwing fits when she has to sit through one more appointment, and even asks if she can’t just stay home by herself, if she promises not to eat anything while we are gone! *sigh*)

So, today we did the three-month followup with the opthalmologist for EK, and, in spite of all the times we see her left eye ‘float’, the doctor was unable to artificially trigger the reaction. (In doctor speak, I guess that means that the problem doesn’t exist, or its just an illusion because of her distinctive eye shape*; she was the one who pointed it out to us at the last visit, but apparently we are the ones seeing things.) The doctor also noted that, while both of her upper lids sit low (though still not blocking her line of sight), the left one sits a tiny bit lower. Its worth watching, apparently, but right now there is still no need for treatment! So, come back in 3 months.

We saw the LC** as well, to check on CC’s weight gain, after our ‘marathon’ nursing the past couple of days. (Still trying to fit in the breast pump into our schedule, but… whole ‘nother story). On Monday of last week (20^th), he weighed 8lbs 4.9oz. On Tuesday of this week (20^th), he was only up to 8lbs 5.6oz.

Today?? He weighed in at 8lbs 9.6oz!! That’s about 4 ounces in 3 days! (OK, he peed right afterward, which shouldn’t have counted, but we’ll take anything we can get!)

And, they did a ‘feeding weight’ check: they weigh the baby, then, after nursing, they weigh the baby again, to get an accurate count of how much food they are getting. In about 20 or 25 minutes, he got right around 3oz of milk! (About what he needs to meet dietary requirements if he is fed 9 times in a day… not too bad!)

So, overall, the appointments today were all good news, and we are on a holding pattern for a while longer! (CC has to go back for another weight check toward the end of next week, but that’s all).

*wide epicanthal folds
**Lactation Consultant: Health professionals trained to specialize in education about and promotion of breastfeeding; may be certified as an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC)

My grandparents emailed, asking if I got the book they sent (I did, just never got out the ‘thank you’ email — sorry!), and letting me know they had been checking the blog to see updates on things… so I guess I should stick a few up here!

Thrush: still hanging on. CC’s is much better, mine is only ok. I’ve started treating it with Miconizole cream (eww!), and taking Acidophilus pills. (I’m afraid the antibiotics are making it worse, or at least preventing its getting better in any timely kind of way.

Mastitis: much better. Still tired, but at this point, I don’t know if its a result of the infection/fever, or just the lack of sleep! Still taking the antibiotics for another 5 or 6 days.

CC: is 4 weeks old today! Wow! He has an appointment this afternoon with the lactation consultants; we went in on Tuesday for an impromptu weight check, and he’s only gained 1/2 ounce in the past week (he should be gaining 1/2 ounce per day). The LC* set me up with an electric pump, and I’m trying to feed him as much as possible to increase his intake and my supply. If his weight is not significantly better by this afternoon, we are going to have to do something else (ie supplement with formula). I really don’t want to go there — its like starting down the same nightmare path we are on with EK, even though it really isn’t going to be the same. *sigh* He’s been nursing so much that I will be really surprised if he hasn’t gained at least an ounce or so by the time we get him weighed.

EK: passed the swallow study! Got off the tube officially (though we have had her off for the last week and a half anyway!)! She is pulling up on the furniture, and working on motor planning to figure out how to walk along the edge of the couch! And she wakes up every time the baby cries at night! Oops! She has an appointment this afternoon with the Ophthalmologist — I’m afriad we are about to start on that course next, since her left eye (that floats cross-eyed) has been getting worse, and her low-lids seem to be low for a higher percentage of the time! But maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I’m working on getting CC’s blessing outfit done — well, I bought the fabric last week just before I got sick, and really need to get started on it! I think we are going to try for the blessing on April 9^th. That is absolutely not set in stone. I am working on one of those knit diagonal afghans in two tones of blue stripes for Fuul. Its not going as fast as the smaller, baby-sized ones did, but more because I don’t have much free hands than the time to work on it! But, it will get finished. I need to decide really soon if I want to try and make Easter dresses for the girls, and if I want to tackle ties or something for the boys. Wow; one more than last year!

Hmm… what else do I need to update on? I’m not sure. Maybe if I come up with more, I’ll add it later! (Or, if I’ve forgotten something, feel free to ask about it in comments!)

*Lactation Consultant

Someone will always be smarter. Their house will be bigger. They will drive a better car. Their children will do better in school. And their partners will fix more things around the house. So let it go and love you and your circumstances. Think about it. The prettiest woman in the world can have hell in her heart. And the most highly favored woman on your job may be unable to have children. The richest woman you know - she’s got the car, the house, the clothes - might be heartbreakingly lonely. So, love you. Love who you are right now. Tell yourself, “I am too blessed to be stressed.”

-Anonymous

“Just One Thing.”

That’s what I’ve been telling Fuul for the past 2 years: “I’m waiting for Just One Thing to go right.”

And that isn’t to say that lots of things haven’t — in the big picture kind of way, at least.

But, sometimes, it seems as though we are just hit with one awful thing after another, and though we cope with them and push through them and just keep on moving forward, knowing that it can’t all be bad forever, sometimes you just get so desperate for that “Just One Thing” to finally show up.

Well, I guess I can’t complain forever, because today we got “Just One Thing”:

EK’s swallow study came back clear for all foods by mouth except thin liquids, and she has officially been released from the need for the N-G Tube!

That means that the only feeding adjustments we have to make for her for the near future is thickening milk and juice to ‘nectar’ consistency, which really isn’t much; and not feeding her crunchy/crumbly stuff, like corn chips. (But really, she doesn’t have enough teeth for those kinds of things yet, anyway!)

It hasn’t fixed all those other thousand things, but that one glimmer of hope sure is a wonderful thing!

We’re off to the follow-up Swallow Study and Pulmonology appointment this morning for EK — please keep us in your thoughts. (Her tube has been out for about a week, because she got a pretty bad cold/sinus infection, and we were tired of trying to fight it back in 3 times a day… hopefully it can stay out, and she hasn’t developed any problems as a result!)

Will post results later!

Fuul found me some really cool new shoes when we were shopping for camping stuff (yes, that was nearly 2 weeks ago… bear with me, I’m still playing ‘catch-up’!). They were normally $60, on clearance for $16! Woohoo!

The ‘best’ part, I suppose, is that they are brown and pink and match my current hair color rather well — though, to be honest, my hair has brighter pink than the shoes do, but c’est la vie!

Of course, the shoes did nothing to improve the look I was sporting yesterday at the ER: being fever-plagued, I (mistakenly) thought it wouldn’t matter if I went out in my pink and green polkadot Tinkerbell pajama pants, a nursing tshirt, my pink Seahawks hat, the cool converse shoes, wrapped head to toe in a purple and pink ballet-dancer quilt… I honestly didn’t care what I looked like as I was dragging my fevered self into the ER; the trip out, though? Oh, I was rather conscious of what I must have looked like. (I have pictures; they will not be leaving my computer any time soon).

But. The point here was how cool the new shoes are! (And I’ve finally almost gotten to where I can wear them without pain! Seems that, if you wear only thongs and slip-on shoes and mules for nine months, you don’t have any sort of callous on the backs of you heels, and the first time you don ‘real’ shoes after that, you will become painfully, blisterfully aware of that fact! Oops!)

Or at least on my way back from the land of the dead.

Seems I came down with a nice little case of mastitis on Friday, which worsened over Saturday and Sunday morning, and so I got to spend several hours today in the ER at the local hospital.

The good news? I got some good IV fluids and IV antibiotics and IV painkillers, and some Tylenol 3 for my 103 degree fever and tachycardia, and I’m feeling 1000 times better, though still not 100%.

So, now I’m sitting on the couch, waiting for the latest dose of T3 to kick in, and hoping that the ‘hit by a truck’ feeling subsides. Maybe I’ll take a nap??

Yesterday, EK ’said’ “Mom” for the first time — at least, for the first time where we are sure that that is what she meant!

And, no, it does not involve any ‘ma’ sounds from her mouth — in fact, she very clearly enunciates ‘DA’ when she ’says’ it, but, the meaning is clear!

She has absolutely got the sign down for “Mom” now, and its been such a long time coming! Yippee!

(I tried to get a picture of her signing this morning at the grocery store — she was signing and talking all the way through! — but I just missed it, and then realized that the aisle we were standing on has a nice beer display behind her anyway, so… maybe I’ll try to catch her again later!)

She is developing quite a little vocabulary, too… its a lot of fun, because she picks up the signs pretty quickly! So far, she has signs for: Dad, Mom, more, please, thank you, cheese, milk, bottle, eat, baby, book, sleep, hat, grandma, grandpa, play, dance, shoe, sock, bird, ball, music, thirsty, drink, want, dog, and cat/kitty; she is also quite adept at the ‘point and grunt or scream’ technique to get what she wants! Kind of funny!

We started off the day needing to be out the door early, because CC had a doctors appointment that he needed to be at by 8:15am — making it an absolute certainty that the keys to the truck would be misplaced, necessitating a frantic search of the living room at 8:10. (We did find them, and were not ‘late’, but we weren’t as early as we had planned to be. C’est la vie! So, CC had his appointment: his weight is up to 8lbs 5oz, they gave us some Nystatin for the thrush (but said we should feel free to continue treating with the Gentian Violet, as well), and he got his circumcision! (Poor baby! He’s been fine with it all day, but still…). We weighed EK while we were there, as well; she is up to 23lbs 6oz — up over 4 pounds just since January. Going to have to review that with a dietician, if they want us to keep her on all this high-calorie shake/formula stuff. (Poor baby’s turning into a chunk!)

The kids only had a half day of school, because of parent-teacher conferences, so they were home before noon, and, as we finally have some sunshine around here, we decided to take a trip to the zoo! We hadn’t been since the fall, when I was still more easily mobile, and before EK’s diagnosis, so I thought it was time to bite teh bullet and do it!

EK napped just til we got to the zoo, but was not instantly impressed with many of the animals — the ducks, which we could have seen anywhere at a park near our home, were the big hit for the first half hour! LOL We tried to show her the hippos, but it was hard to explain to her that the noses and ears poking out of the water were really big animals! (Ultimately, though, we found the Red Pandas, and they were wandering around right in front of the fences, nearly within reach, and she really fell in love with those!)

We did get a couple of cute shots of the kids, though, in front of the hippo pond and on the hippo statue near the enclosure. I even pulled CC out of the stroller, so he could have his ‘first trip to the zoo with all the kids’ picture with everyone! (Notice the poor kids having to shade their eyes from that insidious sunshine — perils of living in the cloudy Northwest!)

While we were over looking at the gorillas (tried to get pictures of the kids right next to the 37-year-old “Grandpa” gorilla, but they didn’t turn out too well), I flipped my camera to ultra-close-up mode, and got this nice shot of CC! He sure is a cutie!

And, just to prove that I was there, too… AE tried to take another picture for me, when we were near the herons and cranes, but it didn’t take… not certain what happened, though.

In the part of the zoo where they have the bug displays, they had set up these ‘bug stockades’, and the kids thought they were just the funniest thing! We even got EK in on the act… not that she really understood what was going on, but she sure liked peeking through the hole at GC while AE held her up there!

When we were walking out, we got near the entrance and, around the corner, were greeted by this peacock! (Ah, the beauty of springtime!)

He strutted around and around, like he was on a rotating pedestal, and he even squawked a couple of times! There is little (nothing?) of reference here in the picture, but that tail-fan was a good 8 or so feet across! It was pretty amazing to see!

So, welcome to Springtime! Hope your first day of the season was as fun-filled as ours was!

We celebrated DA’s 12^th birthday last night after he and Fuul got home from camping — yes, they got home, reeking of campfire smoke and soaked to the bone and pleased as punch with themselves! For dinner we had Porcupines, and for dessert there was Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and ice cream! He invited over his friend, D., and I think he had a pretty good time!

He made a pretty good haul — no huge things, but things that he likes! He got a new CD; a 25^th Anniversary Rubik’s Cube (with a silver side); a “50 Years of Space Exploration” DVD set; a Magnetix set; 2 silver dollars; a Star Wars messenger bag; 3 homemade cards from his siblings; plastic playing cards and chips; a handheld Tetris game; and an MP3 player (with file capabilities, and voice recorder). Good haul for 12, huh?

Today, DA was ordained by Fuul in church… I can’t believe we are already to that point! Honestly, it seems to be just yesterday that DA was just my little-ish baby, and he was just being blessed — and now, all of a sudden! — he’s out of primary, attending Young Men’s classes, and just growing up! The only thing I have going for me here is that he’s still shorter than me… and I don’t hold out much hope that that will last a lot longer!

When EK was a baby, I saw these Sleep Sacks advertised online, and thought they sounded like the coolest things: they keep a baby wrapped up in a blanket in spite of how much they might wiggle and squirm while they sleep. EK wound up with a pink fleece sleep sack, and I think it was one of the best investments we ever made!

Now, with CC here, I was reminded how hard it is to keep a wiggly baby covered up at night. Unfortunately, I don’t know where EK’s blanket is (in a box? likely!), and besides, its pink! I thought about going to buy a new one for CC, but getting out to the store (where I know they have them, and for a reasonable price) just was too much to try.

So, while Fuul was home to help out with the babies this week, and during naps, I pulled out fabrics from my stash of stuff (a cute blue and white stars flannel and a dinosaur print on blue cotton), and designed a pattern, and built a sleep sack for him myself! Its got a nice 100% cotton batting, so it will get softer/puckery after its first wash and dry, and the flannel should ‘fluff’ some, as well! Rather than a zipper front and velcro shoulders (like EK’s had), CC’s Dinosaur Sleep Sack has snaps for both the front opening and the shoulders. I was afraid it would be a lot of work to snap him in, but it hasn’t proven to be a problem.

My size estimate was off by a bit (I used the pattern from the bodice of a jumper to get the shoulder/necklines figured out, and I meant to cut on the 6month size, but wound up actually cutting closer to a 1year size), but he’ll grow! And this buys me a little more time before I need to figure out what else to do to keep him warm at night!

My next project (possibly with this same sleep sack) will involve getting a ‘button hole’ on the back to pass the buckle of his carseat through… its always so hard to get a baby into and out of a cold carseat when you want to keep them warm. I had crocheted buntings for GC and EK, but they (again) are pink/yellows, and just not very boyish colors. Ah well! At least it gives me an excuse to do more quilt-like projects, on a rather smaller scale!

(Maybe I’ll make one for Z&M’s baby, when they find out if its a boy or a girl? Or, I could do a generic, if they decide to be surprised! Let me know!!)

Fuul and DA left at 4 this afternoon to go on an overnight scout camping trip… and I am here at home with 6 kids on my own!

OK, so being alone with six kids really isn’t a new thing, but when you factor in that my two biggest helpers are the ones camping, and one of the six has been replaced by an infant… well, lets just say that the dynamics have changed a bit!

The good things:

• Both babies are asleep right now
• EK has discovered and become infatuated with The Wiggles
• Fuul called and they have already reached their campsite
• Fuul has a cell signal at the campsite
• Dinner is cooked, and we are all eating
• Its only 17 hours, 28 minutes until they are due home… not that I’m counting, mind you

So, wish me luck!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! And a happy, happy 12^th birthday to my little leprechaun, DA!! I can’t believe its been 12 years ago today that he joined our (then) little family!

His was my one long labor (12 hours), mostly because he was turned around backward from where he should have been — can’t say he’s looked at anything frontways since! LOL Sure wouldn’t trade that wonderful point of view for anything!

He was so excited to get a brother for his birthday — I told him CC would never make it to his birthday, since we have never gone a full 40 weeks with any of them, but he decided that sharing the same birth month is good too! (They are the only ones of our 7 kids who do share a birth month — Fuul and EK share, but they aren’t siblings!)

So! Happy Holiday! Happy Birthday! Have a good time — and don’t forget to wear your green today!!

EK had her first Oreo today… and I got a couple of pictures… just couldn’t pass up the oppotunity!!

Got a call from my dad the other night, and he said that he has accepted a job back at home with my Mom, to start later this month! (He’s been working a contract job in New Mexico for the past 6-ish months, while Mom and my brothers stayed at their home up closer to us, and they have only been able to see each other a handful of times in that stretch.)

So, good news! No more split households, and he will be back home before my parent’s 30th wedding anniversary in April! Yeah!