Over Due Update!

The kids spent the night at grandma and papa's last night and I'm enjoying the quiet this morning (I did start this this morning but am just now getting it finished while the kids eat dinner!)

We've been enjoying summer! 

We went on vacation the week of July 4th to Ponca State Park with Grandma and Papa.  The weather was unseasonably cool.  Great for pregnant mama but not so great for kids who were looking forward to swimming all week.  They only got about an hour of swimming on Monday.  Too cold the rest of the week! 

 

Fourth of July we went to grandma and papa's to bbq and watch fireworks!  Jared decided to buy a few fireworks this year too.  He hadn't done that since we had kids.  Cole was not a big fan of the noise and Caitlyn didn't last long after dark either.  We went to the park for awhile after dinner before the fireworks show...probably the kids favorite part!!! 

 

We also celebrated Harrison's birthday by going to the zoo and the Pizza Machine July 18th.  It was a long but really fun day!  And at the Pizza Machine they made Caitlyn a whole pizza with no cheese on it.  She was so excited and I was super grateful!  At his party on Saturday it was windy so the kids chased balloons at the splash park!  I can't believe he's 4!!!! 

Two weeks ago Caitlyn had an upper endoscopy with biopsy.  Everything came back clean.  For now we are using an allergy med that is supposed to help with abdominal pain and we started a probiotic.  We'll go see the gi doc again in a month and reassess.  Here's a picture of her at the hospital.  She hated the pajama's because they were blue and "boy" pajama's!  But over all our experience at Boys Town was awesome! 

 

 

We also had church service and pizza at the park last weekend.  The kids loved it!!!  Love our church and all the things they do for us! 

 

 

Picture overload! 

 

9th Anniversary

3 years dating.  1 year engaged.  13 years together.  9 years married.  3 years infertility.  1 miscarriage.  3 babies.  2 homes.  3 cats.  1 dog.  3 job changes for me.  4 job changes for Jared.  1 colicky baby girl.  1 strong willed boy.  1 Kung Fu baby still in the tummy.  Numerous sleepless nights. 1 super chef (Jared).  More love than I ever imagined. 

(These pictures are not the best quality as we didn't get digital copies so I'm taking pictures of pictures)

 

I love this man.  I can’t imagine living life with anyone else.  I feel so blessed to have found him and fallen in love with him. 

He is the perfect man to lead our family and I can’t wait to see what the next 9 years and more bring! 

 

 

Cole Update

So I’ve had a lot of posts about Caitlyn lately because she’s had a lot going on but wanted to update where Cole is right now too! 

He is my strong willed child.  I’m told that someday when he’s older this will be a good trait.  Right now he gives mommy and daddy a run for their money!  He has his ideas of how things should be, what he wants to do and when he wants to do it.  He can throw a fit that lasts for hours. 

On the other hand he can be super sweet.  He loves to cuddle.  He’ll snuggle up on the couch with you and just lay there sweet as can be.  His laugh is infectious.  He loves Caitlyn and follows her around like a lost puppy (and thankfully Caitlyn is a patient big sister and most of the time allows this without complaint).  He worries when someone else is upset and wants to make things better. 

 

He just started sleeping through the night around the end of last year at 2 years 3 months.  It was a long 2 years of broken sleep!  He is a picky eater and wants nothing to do with vegetables and very few fruits.  He’d be happy with chicken nuggets or mac & cheese with applesauce for every meal!  Carbs are his friend and everything else is yucky.  Meal times are a struggle and I try really hard to just let it go.  He eats what we make for dinner and if he doesn’t want it he doesn’t have to eat but he doesn’t get anything else. 

 

He recently moved from the toddler one room to toddler 2 at daycare.  He’s had a few successful potty attempts while at school but has yet to actually go on the potty at home.  He’ll sit on the potty (on his terms) and he’ll really try (it’s coming momma, it’s coming) but nothing has happened yet.  We’re going to have 4 days at home over 4^th of July weekend and I’m hoping to make some progress during that time.  He’ll be moving to the preschool room in September if we get him potty trained by his 3^rd birthday.  Fingers crossed it won’t be as hard and I’m anticipating. 

He is definitely all boy.  He likes to climb, get dirty, wrestle with daddy, fall down, get back up, give mischievous looks when getting into trouble, and he LOVES trains! 

 

He currently wants you to repeat everything he says so he knows you understand.  Most of the time this isn't a problem but there are still times that we can't understand him and it takes awhile for us to figure it out.  He is relentless! 

 

He is an awesome part of our family and we love him to the moon and back! 

Adventureland!!!

We decided to take a trip to Des Moines for Adventureland last week.  We went with Beth, Josh and Harrison and took our last roadtrip all in one car before the new babies come this fall!  We left Friday afternoon so we could have dinner at one of my (and Beth's) favorite restaurants, Ohana's.  It's a Japanese steakhouse.  It was amazing!  Cole was freaked out with them cooking in front of us.  It was loud and he didn't enjoy it, but the rest of us did!  They were also very accommodating to Caitlyn's dairy allergy.  So much fun! 

We stayed at Adventureland Inn.  The first night in the hotel room was rough.  Cole didn't want to sleep.  He started out on the floor and then ended p in bed with me and I kicked Jared out to sleep with Caitlyn.  We maybe got about 3 hours sleep (except Caitlyn who slept fine). 

We took the Trolley over to Adventureland and got to the park before it opened.  The weather was great although a little cold for the waterpark even later in the afternoon. 

 

 

They had so much fun on all the rides.  Caitlyn is my thrill seeker.  Every time I started getting tired or overwhelmed she'd run up to me excited stating a ride was awesome or she was having so much fun and it made it all totally worth it!  I may be big and pregnant but I want the kids to have a great summer and I don't want to stay around home doing nothing.  They deserve better than that. 

 

The second night in the hotel was better.  I had requested a crib which they put in the room but he didn't want anything to do with that.  His choice was the crib or sleep with Caitlyn.  He chose to sleep with Caitlyn.  He did get up at 5 asking to be covered up.  He was quiet until 6 and then got up for the day.  We watched Shrek Forever After because that's all that was on that early. 

 

Sunday morning we went to the hotel pools.  They had 3 pools, one infant pool with a frog slide, a pool with a swim up bar and then another with 2 bigger slides.  The kids had a blast.  It took Cole a little while to warm up to the water but once he was used to it he loved it!  And had no fear.  He was going down the big slide and Jared was catching him.  There were a couple of times that he went to fast and Jared didn't get him before he went under but he didn't seem to care, just kept going! 

 

We had lunch at Great China before heading out of town.  They have the BEST crab Rangoon.  We did the buffet and I had 5 of them!  They are triangles instead of folded up.  So creamy and yummy!  I should have taken some food pictures this weekend! 

We were all exhausted after such a fun weekend but this little guy is the only one that actually slept on the way home! 

 

Dairy Allergy

Towards the end of last year Caitlyn started complaining about her tummy hurting.  At the time she was constantly saying something hurt (arm, leg, foot, head, tummy) so I didn’t pay much attention.  In January it was becoming pretty consistant so I decided to take her in to the pediatrician to make sure there wasn’t something seriously wrong.  She has dealt with reflux on and off since she was an infant so I was thinking maybe that was rearing its ugly head again.  The pediatrician agreed that the symptoms (upset tummy, reflux, diarrhea and accidents because she couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough, and a rash on her bottom) seemed like they could be reflux again so she gave us 6 weeks of Prevacid samples and said we’d see if that helped.  It seemed to help a little bit but didn’t totally cure what was happening. 

At her Kindergarten physical she decided to do some blood testing to see if we could get to the bottom of the issue.  She told me she was testing for gluten allergy (Grandma Barb and Aunt Shanna both have Celiac disease) and for a stomach virus that can pose these symptoms.  We didn’t discuss dairy allergy at the time but she ran that one as well.  A week later the nurse called to say that she had a dairy allergy and possibly a gluten allergy.  They wanted us to eliminate dairy right away but wanted us to see a GI doctor at Children’s before doing anything about the gluten.  Thankfully she does not have the gluten allergy to deal with. 

 

Eliminating dairy from a diet is HARD!  There is dairy in everything.  And even when we are being super careful and reading labels we still miss it sometimes.  Caitlyn has been such a trooper though and is very aware of her allergy and will constantly question if she can have what is being offered.  She feels so much better and the times that we have missed something she has immediate symptoms that are no fun.  We’ve gotten pretty good at finding alternatives to some of her favorite things.  We substitute with soy milk after trying almond milk which I prefer.  We haven’t found a yogurt or cheese substitute that she likes yet but she seems ok with that most of the time.  We go out for frozen yogurt instead of ice cream and they usually have 2 options for her to choose from.  She wasn’t a big chocolate fan and preferred gummy type candies so that wasn’t so hard on her.  We have bread options that are dairy free but she actually prefers tortilla’s for sandwich’s instead of bread anyway. 

The biggest challenge has been cake/frosting and desserts.  Almost all have some sort of dairy and I can find substitutes but they aren’t as good as the original.  This is a problem at friends birthday parties especially.  I’ve had a few friends who have been awesome and ordered special pizza (usually thin crust) with no cheese so she could have what everyone else was having and dairy free cupcakes in addition to the regular birthday cake.  I’m so thankful for friends and family who care enough about Caitlyn to make these changes and take on the extra work and expense.   And when we’re at a friend’s party who I don’t know the parents we just bring a sandwich and special treat (usually a couple of oreo’s) for her to eat while everyone else has pizza and cake.  And surprisingly she’s usually ok with this. 

 

She truly is a blessing and I hate that she has to go through this.   Our prayer is that she does outgrow the allergy.  They say if they are going to outgrow a food allergy it usually happens by the age of 10, so we have a few more years for this to occur.  We had a slip up Memorial Day Weekend and ever since then she’s been reverting back to old symptoms on and off.  We have a follow up visit with a new GI Dr. in July (I wasn’t impressed with our appointment in April and decided to switch).  Hoping that it’s not another allergy and just something that we’ve missed in excluding from her diet.  More to come on this.  I just want to document as much as possible as we go along this journey. 

 

Adventureland post coming soon...we had a blast!!!