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