UpDates

Susan Update

Susan is finally above her birth weight!!! She was weighed this afternoon and she is 8lbs 8ozs. She was 8lbs 4 ozs at birth. We are very grateful to finally be over that hump!

John Update

John heard back this morning from the one place that had him write a couple of small programs after the phone interview. They said he passed the second part of the interview process and will have him come in sometime next week when their interviewer is back from vacation.

This Week at Our House # 30

Arwen was terrified of her birthday candles

1. I was sure hoping John would hear back from the job that had him write a couple of programs, but no such luck! If there is something to be grateful in all this mess of a trial, it is nice to have John home and helping 24 hours a day. I will both rejoice and really miss John when he again has the opportunity to leave home each day to support our family.
2. Pretty much all of my time has been spent feeding Susan and hoping she gains weight. As of Wednesday, she was still only 8 pounds. She will be weighed again tomorrow. It took me 10 babies to have breast feeding and infant weight gaining problems. This is much harder to deal with than I imagined, so I am counting my lucky stars that I have only had this once.
3. Ruth, hmmm, I hardly remember this week as I basically spent all week feeding Susan. Ruth has been my biggest help. I look forward to the day that she has a baby or two and I can go and help her and clean her house and make her food. We went to Gramma's house twice this week and Ruth had tons of fun with her cousin Emma. John took the older kids to the local water park with his brother's family, so Ruth's week wasn't too bad.
4. Kate is a big help, and she had lots of fun with her cousins too. Kate is bonding with Susan by walking her around to keep her happy when I am busy. I did that a lot with Kate when she was a baby.
5. Johnny got to hike Mt. Timpanogos with his Uncle Jeremy, Grandpa, Adam, Aunt Amy, and cousins Mariah and Aubrey. This is one of the harder hikes on the Wasatch front. Jeremy only had good things to say about Johnny. I am sure it was a great experience for him.Johnny also had a lot of fun playing games with the couple of boy cousins that were visiting from Wyoming.
6. Adam's favorite cousin Mariah was visiting from Arizona. He hiked Mt. Timp with her and from what I hear did a really good job. 
7. Rachel hurt herself a couple of times this week. She got her fingers smushed in the hinge side of the van door, and she jumped up into some exercise equipment, bashed her head and bled all over. But she managed to spend tons of time swimming in Gramma's pool, playing at a water park, and spending hours outdoors playing with her cousins. She also made a cute headband and wrote up a cute 'Happy Birthday' song for Arwen's birthday.
8. Anya played and played and played. She loved going to Gramma's and to the water park and playing games and toys with all of her siblings. She did a good job of keeping busy and staying off of the computers and TV while I spent so much time focusing on the baby.
9. Joseph  had a good week too. He is getting a lot better at just doing what I ask him to do. This morning, I told him to stop kicking the piano and he immediately moved away and said, "Okay,mom." That was huge. Maybe he will be okay when kindergarten starts next month.
10. Joshua is being a little stinker. He is having a hard time with the addition of Susan to our family, me spending the majority of time feeding the baby, and just plain old being three and pushing the boundaries.
11. Arwen turned 2 today!! She has been the sweetest, cutest baby! She's always calm, the way she plays and interacts has been so fun to watch. John and I took her out to Walmart to pick out birthday presents. She was such a doll. We would hand her things and most of the time, she would put them back on the shelf and say, "put it back." Occasionally, she would bat it with her hand and say, "no," and rarely she would hug it to her chest and smile. She is such a joy. We have been very blessed to be this little angel's parents.
12. Susan is a rough baby. She has been much calmer, since I stopped eating dairy. I took her to a pediatrician on Wednesday for the thrush. Our pediatrician retired two weeks ago and the clinic would not move her in to a new doctor without having a well baby check first, so my midwife gave me a name of a couple of pediatricians and I got her in and got a prescription for thrush. Now I will have to switch all of our records over from one office to the next. Susan's mouth is much, much better now, although not 100% clear. Hopefully, she is gaining weight. I know she is getting taller. She is a very long, thin little baby.

This Week's Pictures

This Week at Our House # 29

1. Near the end of the week, John got contacted from the place who gave him a phone interview the previous Monday. The emailed said he passed the phone interview and asked him to write a few small programs. I guess we will see if he passes phase 2. The job is in Orem, UT.
2. It was an eventful week. Ruth and Kate left for girl's camp early Monday morning. Later that day, I finally had Susan's 2 week check up with the midwife. Susan was 3.5 weeks and had not regained her birth weight. In fact, she had only gained 2 ounces since she was 4 days old. I had already decided to try going off dairy to see if she would calm down some as she has been very fussy. So we decided to continue that and my midwife showed me some ways of getting the hind milk which is fattier. Then on Tuesday, I realized the pain I had during nursing was thrush. After some research and contacting the midwife, I decided to try gentian violet which makes a big purple mess everywhere. Susan has had a blue mouth, blue lips, and sometimes a blue face. It seems to be working slowly. Susan really didn't sleep all week. I have been in a tired haze and have spent so much time breast feeding and taking care of Susan that Josh and Arwen are having quite the difficult time. I am trying to figure out this no dairy diet and that has been a bit of challenge too. Needless to say,  it's been a hard week. I am grateful it is summer vacation, though. As hard as it is now, it would be 10x harder if I had to get up early to get kids to school and then get homework done afterwards. I hope we have everything working well before another month is out because school starts in 30 more days.
3. Ruth went to girl's camp and had a fabulous time. She saw all sorts of wildlife including a bear. She came home Friday around noon very happy with lots of fun stories to tell.
4. Kate had a fabulous time at girl's camp too. Kate saw the bear first and alerted Bonnie and Ruth to it. They were good and backed away and ran and told everyone. When Kate got home, she grabbed a couple of books and spent the rest of the weekend reading.
5. Johnny was the oldest kid at home all week. He spent two of those evenings helping a neighbor clean house and earning money for scout camp. Johnny played with the younger kids all week which helped a ton. 
6. Adam seemed pretty happy on the whole. He played with Johnny and made up lots of crazy games with the younger kids.
7. Rachel loves to chat and took the time to sit with me as I fed the baby. She has been working on her Legacy Prep summer reading and is doing a great job. Legacy Prep is a year ahead of Foxboro where Rachel was attending school and I was worried that the summer work would be too hard for her, but she is doing pretty well.
8. Anya lost her summer reading worksheets. She had been working hard on it all summer and was almost finished. I know she will be pretty sad if she does not have her papers to turn into her first grade teacher, so I will have to go to the school and get a new packet and she will just have to work really hard to finish it on time. This is too bad, because I do have an organized and easy way for them to keep their school work, but if they leave it out, someone is likely to toss it. 
9. Joseph had his 5th birthday yesterday! I can't believe he is 5 already! He was pretty cute about the whole thing. He said that he wanted his cousin Sammy and his family for his birthday and for it to be at Gramma's house so he could play outside there. He wanted an ice cream cake and bbq chicken for dinner. He got all of those wishes, except that it ended up being a big family event because a lot of family was in from out of town.
10. I took Joshua with me to the mother's room to nurse the baby during Sacrament meeting yesterday. He was pretty hyper climbing the sink and playing with the changing table. I told him not to play with the changing table because it had poop on it. (Which I know it gets on it.) Well after that a lady came in to change her baby's diaper. She laid her blanket over the changing table and Joshua yelled, "Don't put your blanket on there. There is poop!" The woman was like what? I explained that I told him that to get him to stop playing on it. Josh continued, though. He kept saying. That is disgusting there is poop there and now it is on your blanket. When she laid her baby down, he yelled out. "Oh no, there is poop on that! Now there is poop on your blanket and on your baby's head. Take it off of there. It is disgusting. There is poop on it! Your baby has poop on her head! My mom said take that blanket off of there. It has poop!" When the woman finished changing her baby, she laid the blanket on the floor and left to throw away the diaper. When she came back, Josh said, "Now there is poop on your blanket! This is disgusting! This is an emergency!" I have no idea what this woman was thinking, but she told Josh he is cute. I wish Josh would be disgusted enough by his own poop and use the toilet without a reminder.
11. Arwen, poor baby, is having such a hard time with all of the time I am spending with Susan. She is pretty grumpy and being a bit naughty. I am trying to be sure to hold her and compliment her whenever I can. She seems to have joined forces with Joshua and together they are climbing things and making messes and then laughing hysterically together. I am glad they are forming a team. It will be nice for them when school starts next month.
12. My midwife stopped by Thursday to check Susan's weight. She had gained back up to 8 pounds or 2 ounces since Monday so the hind milk and my getting off dairy is helping. She is also a lot calmer. She still has a bit of thrush, though I am feeling better. Hopefully, we can kick this soon and get her and I healthy and normal. Susan is a very, very wakeful baby. If I do not eat enough, Susan does not sleep at all. I have to be careful to get enough of the right calories, which takes work too. Blah :(

This Week's Pictures

loves these beauties!

these are his favorite toys right now

Great Grandma came to visit. We are so happy her hip healed and she can still travel

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa, they are 94!