New Pictures

Inna made these awesome pierogie-like items which I don't know how to spell, but they were wonderful.  She made over 100 so we have many many in the freezer. mmmmm.  not sure what happened to the pictures of Inna though--I'll try to update with those when I can.

Ryan's "mugshot"
Ryan's favorite toy:

Nora's bathtime....I never took one of her first bath, so here's my do-over on that:



Duelling exersaucers:

Ryan got a tooth today

I didn't even know he was teething. He was just chewing on my hand and I felt a little razor and..sure enough! just one.  lower right/middle.  you can barely see it.

just wanted to log that for when i do his baby book :)

(still no hair though)

Halloween - part 2: Saturday Oct 31

Snow White with a Bumble Bee, Eve.

Caitlin spent  most of the evening playing all the little games.  She was shy for a minute then ran around from game to game without reservation.  She had a blast. I just ran around after her with the camera.  Daddy stayed home with the babies.



Inna and Caitlin

Had to snap a picture of Ocean in his "Soccer Robot" costume.  Iris was a cow.  

Caitlin and Eliza were mesmerized by the "balloon buffoon"  - later, Caitlin got a super cool giraffe balloon.

She gets her golf skills from her mama.

Halloween - part 1 on Friday, Oct 30

We started the day on Friday trick-or-treating in downtown Ann Arbor with the Bott's.  It was great fun.  Here we have Roo, Kanga and Snow White.

Later, on Friday, Eliza and Caitlin went trick-or-treating in downtown Belleville and we had a big spaghetti dinner at our place.  Then John and I went back to the Botts for some Euchre.  It was a fun day.

Nora's first bites

so i'm doing this for the sake of her baby calendar which has been sitting along with Ryan's in the laundry room for the past 6 months or so...I haven't taken it out of the plastic.  with Caitlin, i had it out all the time and updated it daily with milestones or whatever i felt needed to be noted.  you can tell I'm no longer a first time mom.  So, once I get around to getting those calendars opened, i'll be going backwards thru the blog and logging everything.  

So, Nora got her first solids on 11-3-09.  peas. I figured she's approximately 6 months old adjusted for when she was supposed to be born, so let's go.... she actually did great, despite the look of horror she has in these pictures.  She opened up and ate each bite.  I only gave her about 1-2 tsp of peas since it was her first, but the next day, she ate way more and I just let her eat till she wasn't interested.  I have a feeling she'll be a happy eater like the other 2 kids.

Crazy.

So I took Ryan in for a weight check today.  He gained another pound in the past 2 weeks--17 pounds 11 ounces.  I'd sort of suspected he'd have great weight gain, because my back is hurting.  I got a call from the ChIRP clinic dietician shortly thereafter....she said 

"his weight gain is excessive." 

seriously.  I could never have imagined we'd be at the point that we are overfeeding him. amazing.  a miracle.  thanks, God.

So, we have been asked to decrease his caloric intake significantly.  This is overwhelmingly awesome.  Ryan currently gets  just over 30% of his calories by bottle and the rest go in thru his G-tube.  It will now be about 50-50 as we can shut off the g-tube pump for abou thalf of the night.  Now we begin the process of growing less dependent on the g-tube. wow.  when people ask me how long Ryan will need the gtube, I always say something like  "years, but it's not really a big deal." This is because as long as that IV was off and Ryan's liver wasn't being poisoned by the IV nutrition, I didn't care about much else.  And, truthfully, I didn't think it was possible to wean Ryan off the gtube.  I figured he'd always be dependent on getting a ton of calories overnight via the gtube--maybe I've been conditioned to be a pessimist due to the feedback we were given while Ryan was in the NICU.  Well, today, I have new hope.  Something I couldn't have even prayed for b/c I just never even thought of it.

Anyway...I'm rambling, but I'm just overwhelmed with thanks for this miracle. our God is amazing.