Teeth

There have been some comings and goings of teeth of late. Rachel was eating an apple last week and came running in to tell me excitedly that she has a loose tooth!

 

Apparently that means she's growing up, so the next day she was super helpful and obedient doing everything I asked and more, and being super polite, all because she had a loose tooth and was therefore more mature, I guess. Unfortunately that only lasted that one day and I guess she used up all her politeness for the week because the next day was total meltdown day all day long. 

She's been wiggling the tooth for the last week, and last night when we went to brush her teeth it was so loose she let me pull it out. Quick and easy. 

Now we have a toothless little girl. She was so excited for the tooth fairy to come, of course. She was up at 6am, bright-eyed and excited to find that the tooth fairy had left her some quarters and a whole dollar bill. Looks like she's growing up.

In other teeth news, Ryan got his first tooth a couple of weeks ago, just under a week before he turned 5 months old. His second tooth broke through on Monday. Bye bye gummy grin!

 

As far as Ryan goes, the new news is that it may not be Celiac Disease after all. A week after his weight check where he had gained 6 oz. in that gluten-free week I took him to a pediatric gastrointerologist and it turns out that he had lost 3 ounces in the second week of me being gluten-free. So who knows what's going on. We're trying to add a bunch of extra calories into his diet, so in addition to breastfeeding he's having formula with 25% more powder than normal, so it's more concentrated, and with his solids we're mixing in Duocal, which adds calories by way of extra carbs and fats. I'll be taking him in for a weight check probably this Friday to see if this is doing anything. If not, I may try going GF again, as I'm not completely convinced that's not playing in to this a little bit. Ryan has been more fussy than normal the last few days, and it's made me wonder if trying to shove food in his mouth at every turn is giving him a tummy ache, or if it might be related to gluten that is giving him a tummy ache. Who knows. If only he could talk and tell us why he's crying more. Still, he is a very happy baby most all the time. And a super wiggly baby. I will not be surprised if he does have a higher caloric need than most babies because he is always on the move. He started army crawling a few times yesterday (rather than just scooting like he has been doing). 

And a few random pictures. Grandpa brought this umbrella over a few weeks ago and Rachel loves it, naturally. It's a bit large for our house so most of the time it has to stay outside, but Rachel took advantage of me letting her have it inside by setting up a relaxing afternoon reading her new Friend Magazine that had just come in the mail.

And here's Rachel's monkey face, mostly rubbed off, which she got at preschool on the "J is for Jungle" day. 

She's enjoying herself at preschool and was bummed that she couldn't go yesterday because of a fever she's had off and on the last 3 days. So far so good today. Hopefully she's over it.

My favorite husband

I was in a meeting today where the Stake President suggested we read this article on lds.org called Today's Family: Love Your Wife. So tonight as I sit in air conditioned comfort I read this great description of Jacob, while he is at our steamy hot sauna of a house, getting ready for bed,  opening windows, circulating air, and trying to make it comfortable enough for us to not die as we hang out at home tomorrow while our new A/C unit is being installed. Just about the epitome of the husband being described by our church leaders as one who puts my interests above his own. He's also great at "keeping alive the spirit of romance" and shows his love in word and deed. He lifts my burdens so often, I don't know that I could do this motherhood thing without his support. With him taking the kids on a walk when I need a little quiet time, being my third and fourth arm when I can't juggle it all, and being my masseuse when lifting kids all day makes my back sore, I really appreciate all he does. I really don't know how single moms do it, and they have my total admiration for all they manage to do, but I'm fairly certain I would end up in a mental health facility some days if I didn't have my hubby around to lift my burdens and share the load. I'm thankful for a good man to be my husband and my kids dad.
As I often say, Jake, you're the best hubby I've ever had! (And the fact that you're the only hubby I've ever had doen't make it any less true.) Love you! Thanks for being awesome!

The kiddos

It has been a stinkin' hot August. We've had some really good monsoons, but there was a week or two of no rain and no relief from the 105-110 temperatures. We are thankful for air conditioning. Particularly this weekend because we don't have it in our house. We got a new unit last year in March and in July the compressor had to be replaced, and now the coil is busted and leaking any freon you put in all the way out within half a day. Fortunately it's all under warranty, so completely free. But it has made for some hot days. But we are lucky enough to have my parents close by, so we just crash their house when it gets too hot at our place. Yesterday we got the news that because the coil in this model has been going out all over the place because of a manufacturer's defect it would be 2 weeks before it could be fixed. So our repair guy worked his magic arts of persuasion on the higher ups in the company and today we got the news that we're getting a completely new A/C unit on Monday so we don't have to wait 2 weeks to be cool again. Thank goodness. So yeah, we're thankful for air conditioning.

Anyway, back to our August. With all the heat here, we usually stay inside most of the day, except for those lovely occasions when the temperature drops 20 degrees in an hour thanks to a storm moving in, which needs to happen a few more times before monsoon season calls it quits.

Rachel spends quite a bit of her time during the day in her pajamas. She likes them a little too much sometimes. Even her fuzzy warm winter PJs are fair game for her. She often tells me "I don't care the weather," which I guess means she has no internal temperature gauge.

Last Saturday it was pleasant enough (ie. not quite blisteringly hot) to spend a little time outside. The girls had some popsicles.

Then the real fun began.

This little garden plot had peas in the spring (which the heat had long ago killed) and sunflowers, which died, and the seedlings we keep planting to replace them keep getting eaten. So for now it's fair game for playing in. I showed the girls how to use dirt, water, and a bucket to make a sand castle--something they had never done in their apparently deprived childhoods.

Just the fact that they had access to the hose to fill their play watering cans over and over and over made for some happy kids.

It also made for some very messy kids, as is to be expected when water and dirt (and therefore mud) are involved. I also had to show them how to make mud pies.

Eventually Annie got tired of her dripping wet clothes. "Osss!" (Off!) And so they came off.

Then we had to hose them down before baths. Which may have been the funnest part of the whole adventure.

Then when everyone was clean and dressed, we had some fun together:
Watching funny videos on the computer:

Taking turns holding Ryan:

I love how the girls love Ryan and like holding him and making him smile. And they love how much Ryan responds to them these days. Especially when they put their faces within his reach and he tries to gouge out their eyes or rip out their hair. I don't know why they think it's so funny when Ryan does it, but if they pull each other's hair, it's the end of the world and they cry and scream. Baby magic, I guess.

The last picture is Annie's favorite activity: mess making.

I'm not sure if this is the second or third full box of rice cereal that she has emptied completely. You'd think we would learn not to leave it within reach. And maybe one day we will...

Videos

I rarely post videos on our blog these days because 1. they take forever to upload-like 2 or 3 minutes (I guess I've successfully forgotten the dialup connection days) and 2. they don't convert to book form all that easily, and since the main reason I post most of the pictures I post is to have them in our blog book we make every year as our family journal. But we take videos pretty often, and this month we have videos of all 3 kids with their new milestones they've been reaching lately. So we have not just 1, but 4 videos to share today.

Annie is talking more and more clearly every day. It's a lot of fun to see her working on her enunciation and she's so pleased with herself now that she's able to communicate what she wants a lot better. We have some longer videos with more words, but like I said, I'm not all that patient waiting for a 40 second video to upload, so I don't even try with the 2+ minute videos.


Rachel has become Miss SuperReader. She can read just about anything she feels like reading (though if she doesn't feel like reading you can't get her to sound out CAT). At preschool a few weeks ago they had Dr. Seuss day and when she got home I found her laying on her bed with her Cat in the Hat hat she'd made at preschool reading Green Eggs and Ham.

I love her commentary at the end. We got that on video so now anytime she doesn't want to try a new food we can just play her own words back at her.

Last week Ryan got up on his hands and knees for the first time, in preparation for crawling. We got the camera and this is that first night when he was figuring it out. He caught on pretty fast. Heaven help us because if he keeps going as he is we'll have a crawler on our hands in no time.


And the last video is of Ryan laughing. Nothing's more fun than a baby laughing.
At Ryan's 4 month check up he had dropped down to the 5th percentile for weight, having gained just a pound and a half since he was 2 months old when he was in the 30th percentile, down from the 40th percentile when he was 1 month old. With that drastic of a drop the doctor wanted me to see if solids would help him gain weight, so we started feeding him 2 or sometimes 3 times a day, then brought him in a month later for a weight check around his 5 month mark, which was last week. He had gained only 4 ounces in those 4 weeks, dropping completely off the charts. Hmmm. Since Jake has Celiac Disease, which has a genetic component to it, that was my first thought, so the doc and I agreed that I should try going gluten-free since the only way he could be getting gluten would be through breastmilk. After a week of being gluten-free I went in on Wednesday and he had another weight check and, lo and behold, he gained 6 ounces in one week. That's more than he'd gained the entire month previous. Since the main symptom of CD in infants is failure to thrive and going GF obviously made a big difference we're under the assumption now that Ryan has Celiac Disease. We have an appointment next week with a pediatric GI doctor, but from what I've read there are no reliable tests for kids this young, besides just try the GF diet and see if it helps, which we've already done with obvious success.

I have some very mixed feelings about it all. I am very happy that the little guy is gaining weight (and he seems to be spitting up a lot less these days, too). And I'm thankful that we knew what to look for so it didn't have to go undiagnosed for months or years with all the damage and malnutrition that would hae resulted from it. The doc said how rare it was to be able to catch it so early, so I am thankful for that. But when I think ahead I start to dread what it will mean for him (and me) when he starts to be out of my control where I can comtrol what he can or cannot eat (nursery, preschool, elementary school...). And I'm not particularly looking forward to all the extra cooking this will mean for me since half the GF substitutes for bread, etc. are reminiscent of cardboard, and cost 4x what their gluten-containing counterpart costs.

But I am very thankful to have had 2 years to learn how to do gluten-free with Jacob before I have to do it for a kid. It makes the idea of our house becoming a total GF house less intimidating than it would have been had Ryan been the first one diagnosed in our family. And that is my plan: to get rid of all gluten in our house, except for snacks that will be eaten out of the house (like granola bars Rachel can take to preschool for her snack), at least until Ryan is old enough to understand why he can't eat everything his sisters can.

And thus the adventure begins.... Or continues, I guess....

iPad pictures

I got the pictures off our iPad for the first time since we bought it last November. We don't take a ton of pictures with it because is not great quality, but sometimes it's all we have with us. So here are some of the pictures from the last 9 months or so that we'll want to remember one day...

Ice cream after shots at the doctor.

At the hospital ready to go home:

Annie gets this red blotchiness around her mouth whenever she eats the cucumber ranch dressing my parents have (maybe we shouldn't let her eat it). Yesterday was the worst I've seen it, so I snapped some pictures to show the doctor. This is when the redness had started to fade, but you can still see several blotches around her mouth.

Now if I can figure out how to get the pictures off my cheap-o phone, I can be all caught up...

Sibling love

Annie has been really loving to Ryan lately. It is so cute. She asks to hold him and gives him hugs and brings him toys. And only hits him with the toys she's trying to share with him sometimes. And only half smothers him, instead of completely laying on him like she used to. And he loves his sisters. He gets a big smile a lot of the time when one of them comes close to him, especially to talk to him.

Aren't they cute?

Rachel and Annie got out some hats so they could head outside where it was so bright (and hot). And of course they love modeling for the camera.

 

 

Saturday morning Ryan woke up first, around 6am, and while I was in the middle of changing him and getting him dressed I heard Annie calling out, so I ran in to get her out of bed before she could wake Rachel up. It turns out Annie's diaper had leaked, but I didn't want to go back in to get her new clothes and risk waking Rachel, so she stayed in her clean diaper until Rachel woke up. She thought it was pretty funny to copy Ryan and laid down her blanket to lay on, just like he was doing.

One of Annie's favorite things when she wakes up from a nap is to have Ryan join her in her crib until she's ready to get out. We've been trying to enforce the binky staying in the crib more often lately, so often when she wakes up she's not quite ready to give it up and get out. She thinks it's the funniest thing to have Ryan lay on her pillow.

She even shares her beloved blankie with Ryan occasionally.

 Laundry day:

 

While Rachel was at preschool the other day Annie woke up from her morning nap and I soon found her like this:

Backpack on, "reading" a book, apparently having driven to her own version of preschool on her little car.

At Ryan's 4 month doctor's appointment, which was almost a month ago, Ryan weighed in at just 12 pounds. That's just a pound and a half weight gain in 2 months, and dropped him from 30/40th percentile down to 5th percentile. He stayed in the 60th percentile for height, so he's just a real skinny boy. Not a huge concern, but the doctor does want us to go in for a weight check next week at 5 months. And she prescribed food for the hungry little boy. We started him on solids twice a day, and apparently it's finally helping him to not be such a hungry little guy because this week he FINALLY slept 3 nights in a row some good long stretches (like 8 hours) instead of waking up every 3ish hours to eat (sometimes even every 2 hours, making my sleep very fragmented and making me a very tired mom). Wednesday night none of the other kids woke up, either, so I got probably 6+ continuous hours of sleep before I had to feed him at 5am, then got another hour and a half of sleep before everyone woke up for the day. I felt more rested yesterday than I have felt probably since Ryan was born. Unfortunately last night all 3 kids were up multiple times, so I can't say the same today. :/

Anyway, the point is, Ryan started eating "real" food and loves it. So here are some obligatory messy face pictures of the baby:

 

And one last picture until we're caught up. Annie wanted to dress up in Rachel's favorite princess dress the other day. It was Rachel's Princess Pea (from Super Why) costume from when she was 2 and 3 years old. Rachel still wears it all the time, though it just comes to her knees now. When Annie put it on I was reminded of how it is supposed to fit, like a floor-length dress. She makes a cute princess!

Annie has really been making leaps and bounds in her communication skills lately and it is so fun to have a cute little talker around. Rachel was super advanced, speaking in complete sentences and knowing her ABCs before she was even 18 months old (like around 15 months), so even though Annie is on par, or even a little ahead of "normal" in her language development, it has felt kind of slow. But she's putting words together now and expressing herself more and more and it's a lot of fun. Except when she expresses herself in tantrum form. Here come the terrible twos!