We finally convinced Justin and Marie to move back to Tucson. :) Marie and the girls came out at the beginning of the month and have been staying at my parents house while Justin keeps working out in Georgia the rest of the month. In October he'll drive out here and they'll move into their apartment. We're just excited for the kids to have cousins close by. Now I get to be the favorite aunt, since with kids this age the favorite is the last one they saw. :)
Whenever Peyton sees me, she comes right over and says "up!"
McKenzie likes me most of the time.
We went to Lakeside Park to feed the ducks today, but before heading down to the lake the kids had to take some turns on the slide.
Annie's fearlessness at the expense of her own safety is tempered by slides, I guess, where she refuses to go down by herself these days.
Annie and Kenzie have become friends somewhat (as much as 2-year-olds or almost 2-year-olds can), and they have fun running around together.
Cutie:
Peyton didn't want to leave the slide once she'd tried it. She kept climbing back up again and again.
Finally we decided to go down and find some ducks to feed.
Here's everyone throwing bread into the water. Yes, not to the ducks, just into the water. Apparently the ducks were full or didn't like the wind or something. The few that were out on the lake wouldn't come near us for anything.
So we continued our walk along the path around the little lake. The girls had fun running and chasing each other. And McKenzie rather enjoyed pushing Ryan in the stroller when she wasn't running with the girls.
It was a beautiful morning, if a bit windy, but we all enjoyed our little outing to the park. So nice to be out of the 100 degree heat, at least for a while.
Ryan can army crawl now. Unfortunately, this means we have to keep a closer watch on him. He seems to enjoy tasting the tile floor whenever he can get to it.
Rachel is a technically savvy 4 year old. These photos were taken with Apple's Photo Booth application that came installed on our MacBook. Colette didn't witness this impromptu photo shoot -- she believes she was putting Ryan to bed at the time. These shots were quite a surprise when we discovered them and we both laughed at their quintessential "Rachelness". Enjoy!
I especially like this last shot. Rachel is a funny, cute, little girl.
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.
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!
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...
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....
