Big Boys Don't Cry...

...they go to school.

First grade is not the same as kindergarten.

My pep talk?

Remember who you are.

Remember that you have a Heavenly Father that loves you and a mom and dad that are here for you.

You'll make new friends.

The first day always sucks.

I'm not sure if my children are just miniature, I mean I'm certainly not a "petite" girl, but Talin looks the same size as the kindergartners and the 1st graders all look like giants. I hope the boy can hold his own.
His nerves were getting the best of him. His new teacher looks like she's eighteen. None of his friends are in his new class. We're hoping for a miracle.
First day went okay, but he claims he was bored and has no friends. First day always sucks.
Today is the second day. It WILL get better.

Caleb in his cute church outfit that Aunt Amy gave him. The outfit fits in length, he's just still a little slim. I've never seen a baby with so little chub as this one.
My solution to cute little pants that won't hold up?
Wrap a belt around him twice.
It totally worked.
And it was totally ridiculous.
I'm not sure what I'll do when Caleb's constant entertainment goes to preschool in two weeks.
Met his teacher today. He will be the big man on campus. The oldest, and most likely the biggest in his class. Total opposite of what Talin is dealing with. Everything is opposite with those two.

What he lacks in brawn, he'll make up for in brains.
I think 1st grade is going to be wonderful for his little mind. He's constantly reading, creating and coming up with great ideas. He's going to do fabulous.

Now if only this little bit would drink a bottle on his own...

Good news:
Weight - 11 pounds 12 ounces

New surgery date - Nov. 25th

Yeah I know, he looks like the kid that gets beat up on the play ground everyday. It's a sad new device, and I'm starting to wonder where my baby is, with all the tape, tubing and now lovely khaki headband.

Here's the deal:

The ENT specialist out in Iowa City thinks that he has a working cochlea, and that his hearing loss is due to the structure of his ears, or I should say lack of structure. That because his ear is closed, not formed all the way and there is no ear canal, that he might have a working cochlea in there.

Solution:

A bone conductor hearing aide. It sits on the bone behind his ear and vibrates the sound through the bone, into his cochlea. Now if his cochlea is not damaged (fingers crossed), this would give him normal hearing, the way you and I hear, not the way a deaf person hears. If he were dealing with a damaged cochlea (deaf), then the hearing aide would only be able to magnify distorted sound for him. Kind of like Charlie Brown's teacher. Wa...wa...wa...wa...

So we go back to Iowa City on Sept. 10 & 11th.

The 10th:

Genetic testing

The 11th:

Neurological hearing test to see where the damage lies inside his ear.

Now if the bone conductor hearing aide is what he ends up with, don't worry, he'll only need to wear the head band for the first five years of his life. Then when his skull is thick enough, we'll drill it into his head behind his ear.

So there's the update!

Reality Check

Collin & Caleb
She's Gone! My sanity was dropped of at the airport yesterday at 6:30 in the morning.
Oh my goodness how I miss her!
It was so nice to have Cyndee around for a month. I'm just now realizing how much help she really was. For some reason the dishes keep piling up, the dishwasher has not been unloaded and no one has made the kids pancakes in two days.
We all REALLY miss her!

This is what we did her second to last day here. Stayed up till midnight on Saturday making this glorious five layered chocolate cake.
Caleb helped and shared in the bounty of chocolate.

And I shaved every blasted chocolate curl.

Update

So Caleb is doing better...a little. We went to the doctor and he was put on amoxicillan. It's so difficult, because we have no idea if it might be an ear infection or not because we can't see his eardrums, and we have no idea how his ears are formed on the inside and whether or not he has proper drainage. So...we're playing the guessing game and putting him on some drugs.


He also cut his first tooth this month, which could also be causing all the symptoms of congestion, vomiting, fever and cough. I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it eventually.

And better late than never, here are a few Fourth of July pics, a month late.

We did sparklers on the back porch, went to a ward barbecue and watched a really cool fireworks show late that night. The boys loved it.

On another note, Caleb is quite fascinated with being fed through his tube. He loves to sit and watch the milk go down, a little disturbing.

So this is my new discovery, or should I say, my copycat discovery.

I saw my cousin Diana's little boy in one on her blog and had to get it.

It's a bumbo and makes it really easy to sit Caleb up in it. He loves it and has a great view of the world.

This is not an unusual sight. Caleb on the table with his bumbo watching his brothers refuse to eat. It was peannuty noodles, my favorite, the recipe is found on Amy's food blog, so good!

This is what happens when we're in a rush. We sit the babies in front of the TV and let Collin and Talin take turns holding the tube to feed Caleb.

Comical.

And I decided to chop off my hair, kind of. It's not as short as what I originally planned on, but I still like it, I can just barely put it back into a freaky tiny ponytail, so that works.

The Latest

Caleb has become my tricky little gnome. I know, I shouldn't call my infant son a gnome, but he's such a compact little package that it's amusing. Or we could start calling him a hobbit, you see when I discovered that one of his many medications was causing him hair growth on his legs Tom shockingly proclaimed, "you gave birth to a hobbit!". The crazy mess of hair on this kid doesn't do much to dissuade you from the argument either.
Anyway, my tricky little gnome/hobbit managed Sunday evening to pull out his NG tube. There we were feeding him his bottle through the tubing when he sneakily slipped one tiny little finger under the tube and yanked. He didn't even squeal. I turned to see milk dripping all over Tom (who was holding him) and it seriously took my brain about three seconds to register what had happened.
There is nothing like sitting in the ER on a Sunday evening to have a NG tube reinserted for your baby. As usual Caleb has quite the charm in winning over the nurses with his cooing and giggling. It seriously makes you feel like crap when he hates you after the tube has been reinserted.
So Monday morning, we're home from the ER. Phone rings. Cyndee answers, I overhear her conversation with the ER rep following up for our last night visit. "Oh yes, everything is fine, he hasn't pulled his tube out again and everything is great..."
I head upstairs to check on Caleb in the crib sleeping. There he is, sound asleep with his tubing pulled out once again. Why??!?!
We are quite lucky though, we have a home nurse who comes Monday, Wednesday and Friday to check on Caleb. This way we don't have to head into the doctor's so often. She checks his weight, his breathing, his tube placement, and so forth. Well, Tanda (home nurse) was due to come at noon, so we decided to let her put the tubing in instead of making any inconvenient ER trips.
So there is Tanda, and she wants to teach me how to put in this NG tube to my beautiful smiling baby boy who is cooing at me. What???!! Yeah, so I decide to stop being a wimp and learn the trade, right? I mean I might as well suck it up and do it. So there I am, staring at the cutest little nose in the world and attempting to jab a long tub up into and down into his stomach.
Well...I failed. Not too shocking. As soon as I ran into any resistance I freaked out. Tanda took over and finished the job. I'm hoping that next time I might be a little less queasy about the whole thing and manage better.
On a good note, NG tubes really do work. He has reached the eleven pound marker. Woohoo!
On a bad note, he has been really sick. He has terrible congestion, which doesn't help with a nose tube, a bad cough and this morning he started running a fever and puking. So stressful. I'm waiting for the doctor to call me back for a plan of action.

He had a Bad Day

So much to catch up on.

Monday we saw Dr. Mooradian (Caleb's cardiologist). He determined Caleb to be way too small to undergo heart surgery on Wednesday, so he proposed postponing the surgery for 2-4 months.

Okay...I mean if your doctor is telling you he doesn't feel good about your child having heart surgery and saying things like, "let's give him a better chance with more weight on him" and stuff like that, you're going to agree.

So we did.
Surgery postponed.

Our new job is to fatten him up like a Thanksgiving turkey, the doctor's words once again. So on Friday we visited Dr. Boonstra (Caleb's pediatrician) and he set us up with the NG Tube.

My poor baby was quite upset.

After screaming and kicking and sobbing, he slept. And slept. And slept.

Grandma Cyndee has been our life safer. She spends a lot of time with Caleb getting him to eat. We try to feed him with the bottle first and get him to drink as much as possible. After a while he refuses.

So this is how we feed him.

Cutest boy in the world!

He's adjusting great to the tubing and hasn't pulled it out yet (finger's crossed!). We get a lot of interesting looks and double takes when we go out with him. And of course it's so sad to see him like this, but hopefully it won't be in for long. Hopefully our little man will decide to eat on his own!

Magical Talin

I asked Talin to hold a fussy Caleb while I vacuumed last night. By the time I was done he had managed to get Caleb to fall asleep by rubbing his face. So cute and sweet.
(And yes, this is what the summer attire looks like in our home, I don't pick out the outfits!)
And doesn't Caleb look chubby? He's putting on the rolls!

Caleb

Took Caleb to the pediatrician today for his weight check and he did great. He has gained four more ounces since Sunday. The doctor was pleased and said that she would go and call his cardiologist, who is Dr. Mooradian, and let him know, and also call his usual pediatrician, Dr. Boonstra, who is taking a week off this week to let him know.
After two hours in the doctor's office, it was with a sigh of relief that we went home, me smiling to myself that we've made it another week.

And I'm such a silly woman, I woke him up with my picture taking and now need to go remedy the situation!

These are pictures I took the other week. He's so cute and so quick to smile anymore.

Update

Caleb is doing well. We were released from the hospital Sunday afternoon, and sent home with instructions to bottle feed him with fortified breast milk every three hours, and then try to nurse afterwards, and then for me to pump after that to keep my breast milk up. It's quite a ridiculous routine I find myself repeating over and over several times a day.
People keep saying, "I don't know how you do it".
Well, me neither, it's frustrating but also worth it to sustain my little person. We go back to the doctor tomorrow to see how well I've been doing in getting him to grow. I'm not sure what happens if he's not doing well, another hospital stay? A feeding tube? Not sure, but at this point I don't care, whatever is best for Caleb. That seems to be my motto as of late. On a sour note, or a more sour note at least, my child being hospitalized has only managed to postpone my lovely talk giving in church. Yes, I'll be speaking this Sunday now. Not much of a reprieve. And I also had someone call me on Monday to teach relief society this Sunday. I politely declined.

And I think I'm going crazy. I didn't make my children lunch today and let them gorge themselves on movie theatre popcorn instead, and then bathing them this evening I found myself squirting out the entire bottle of bath foam over their heads. They were thoroughly amused, and I was just trying to rid myself of the bottles that have been in there since December rusting, yet never running out. It took a lot of spraying to empty just one bottle of foam, my fingers were sore afterwards.

And I finally did it. After being questioned by every nurse and doctor we saw over the weekend on whether or not I've had Caleb tested for genetic syndromes, I finally made the appointment to do so. I guess his heart and ear problems are very common in genetic disorders. So I busted up the courage to make the phone call and set the appointment. I guess I shouldn't have been so worried about doing it, I don't have to take him to the appointment until December 10th. Yeah, that's how long the wait is, how crazy is that?

Miniature Trouble

Yesterday Caleb was admitted to the hospital for observation. He doesn't seem to be gaining weight fast enough for them or for his impending surgery. So here we are hanging out. I've learned a few things while I've been here:
1. My child is capable of sleeping in a crib all by himself throughout the night.
2. Hot Rod is truly an awesome movie if it can keep me up giggling while I'm sitting in the hospital.
3. Having your child hospitalized is a great way to get out of speaking in church on Sunday.
4. You can take blood out of a vein in the side of a child's head.
5. Caleb does not like #4.

Better late than never

Talin & Baylee

I've been behind in posting, but here are pictures of when Jo and the girls were here a month ago (that long already!!) and we went out to the Omaha Zoo.

Andee, Madee, Collin, Talin, Baylee and JoDee @ the touch tank.


More touching of creepy sea creatures.


Caleb's first zoo trip, he was a good boy.

Baylee, Collin & Talin checking out the penguins.

We spent the ten dollars to rent the stroller to push around our large children that are no longer toddlers and can easily walk around the zoo on their own. Although we didn't quite realize it until we saw how huge and ridiculous they looked in the stroller. So we abandoned it. This is their sad goodbye, although I think Collin was confused.

Wild children.

I'm not so sure they're on the right side of the glass.

Andee, Collin, Madee, Baylee & Talin

My attempt at a group picture, I insisted.

JoDee and Andersyn

The only way to get a picture of these two is to do it secretly.

It was very hot and humid, so the kids found the water to be a welcome relief.

The boys had so much fun hanging out with Baylee, I'm glad JoDee decided to bring her, they rarely get one on one time together.

Madalyn, our always happy girl.

Talin, my spastic child.

Collin, trying to be mischievous and hide from me.

Baylee.

We aren't sure what the humidity was doing to her hair, but it was...interesting.

Overall the trip wasn't what we planned. We rushed through the exhibits because it was so crowded and we felt absolutely suffocated by the throng of people. Early in the afternoon Jo and I looked at each other and decided that we were both okay if we left and went home right then. The kids didn't seem to notice that we had only been at the zoo a little while. I think they were ready to go as well.

But it was so much fun to have JoDee and her girls here for a few days. I miss them terribly!

We Survived

1. We have survived the Iowa flooding this past week. Let's just say I'm not a fan of Iowa anymore; between the winter from hell, the storms that blow over full grown trees, the tornado sirens that go off at 10:30 in the evening and force my children and me to huddle in the basement, and now the insane flooding. I just can't believe the destruction the flood waters have caused. Gratefully it's starting to recede; hopefully we will have our downtown back soon, and please keep all the flood victims in your prayers. Our family is feeling very blessed that we have not been flooded out ourselves. The church of course has been amazing in sending out many semi trucks filled with supplies for flood victims, Tom went to help unload them last night and this morning during church. Crazy!!

2. Happy Father's Day to my awesome husband. His request this morning was to have "really thin pancakes" or in a normal person's world, crepes. So I bought him a crepe maker for Father's Day and made them this morning. They truly are delicious. But thinking that a crepe maker wasn't exactly what he really wanted, we went and got him some button up shirts and slacks for him to wear for his clinics. And my oh my, he looked quite delicious in a pale blue button up shirt and grey slacks this morning. And let me just add that he is the BEST dad ever. He loves his boys, spends time with them, is patient with them and is such a good dad. His little guys worship him, and he's always been so good with the baby stuff as well, which helps me out a ton! I'm a lucky girl to have him, and my boys are lucky to have him as their dad.

3. So after gorging myself on Father's day dinner and cheesecake, I've decided to embrace my new curvy figure that doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon. I can work out like mad, but honestly, my eating will never get much better with the stress and breastfeeding going on. So until then, I'm determined to be happy with the extra thirty pounds and bulging belly fat and deal with it after Caleb's surgery, or after I'm done breastfeeding, but it will be dealt with!

4. And I was asked to speak in church next Sunday, which I’m really not pleased with. I’ve been in the ward for just over two years and this will be my fourth time speaking, um hello! I thought I was off the hook for awhile since Caleb was born, I guess not. I just have no desire to get up in front of the ward wearing the same black skirt I wear every week, because it’s the only one that will fit, and speak. Hopefully I’ll have a change of attitude by next week.

5. Last but not least, a quick shout out to Cynthia who had her birthday earlier this week. It sucks not being able to be there and celebrate with her, but I know she has lots of people who lover her and took care of her on her birthday.