I'm (now hold up four fingers on your hand)...for real

We got back a few days ago and I'm still not caught up on all that has happened in the blogosphere yet. Heck, I can hardly keep up when I'm home!

Here are some highlights from our trip. I'll probably post all the pictures and funny stories over the next few days.

Page has a theme these days. If the title of the post doesn't say it all, I don't know what to put. Every morning on our trip she would wake up and ask, "Am I four yet?" We would explain "Three more days...two more days...one more day" she would ask, "After this naptime?" Then, when the big day came, it took her a little while to wake up, but, once she did, she told everyone she came into contact with, four fingers raised proudly in the air, "I'm four", followed by a short pause. Then, in a high pitched squeal, "For real". Now everything Emma does is either "Too dangerous, too hard or too heavy...", get this, "because you're not four Emma."

Check out Page's four year picture. It came out great! She looks so grown up. Our friend Melody from church makes tutu's and she did this one for Page.

While at Will's mom's house we got sushi from a Chinese buffet one night. Page loves sushi and will stop eating just about anything to get a few pieces. Only, instead of calling it sushi, she calls it "sloo-she." She has called it slushi for months now. We forget to post about it but it's so funny.

Thanks to our family for helping us make it there and put up with our kids who make farm roosters look like slackers!

That reminds me. One of the first nights in Baton Rouge with Will's parents, his dad had to get up super-early (like 2am) to try and get everything done so he could spend time with the kids. Page and Emma had passed out in their bed. Shortly after he left Page woke up looking for him. She was up for the day. She proceeded to roam around the house from room to room waking people up to see who would get up with her.

Infections

Infections, that is the answer to the pain. Page has a horrible double ear infection. sinus infection and post nasal drip. How could I not know all of that was going on? She has not had fever or shown any indication of pain until last night. I guess she has a high threshold for pain! Poor baby. I feel even worse for her having to get on a plane tomorrow with a double ear infection. She is not going to like that.

Anyway, this will be my last post for about 2 weeks because we are leaving bright and early in the morning to a flight to New Orleans and will be visiting friends and family until the end of the month. Page will be turning 4 while on our trip, i can hardly believe it! She loves to tell people that she has a birthday with Jesus. So Merry Christmas to you all and remember that JESUS is the reason for the season!

ER

I am typing this as Will sits in the ER with Page. She woke up screaming and crying. It took quite a long time for us to get that her cheek bone and jaw on her left side were hurting. It is so hard to tell at this age what is drama and what is real, but she kept clutching her left side and telling us it hurt. Upon examination she screamed her head off the whole time so we stopped and called the ER. They suggested bringing her in since she had trauma to it. (She collided with another child at Mother's Day Out this morning.)

As far as Liam's appointment this morning. Not great news. He gained 5 ounces in 2 weeks. Our goal is 7 ounces every 2 weeks. Since he has been sick the last few days we are thinking that he would have made the weigh had he not been sick. We are also scheduling an appointment with an allergist to have some testing done. He has eczema on the back of his head and red bumps all over his body. I have taken out eggs, corn, soy, dairy, chocolate, coffee, tea and citrus from my diet. I am so ready to stop nursing but this stinker just won't take anything else! We go back in 2 weeks to check his weight AGAIN.

Happy 6 Months, Liam

Happy 6 months, Liam! It has been half a year already. We go to the doctor tomorrow to get a weight check again and get his shots. I will update then with all of the information.

When Mom's Away ...

The kids will play. Will let the girls paint while I was out grocery shopping Saturday morning. I returned to the girls in the bath tub and paint everywhere!

Roses In December

My poor rose bush is so confused by the crazy weather that it keeps producing roses!

So Much To Say

Wow! I have so much good news to share. First, this is our Christmas picture. We actually got all three kids to stay in the same position and no one was crying. What a feat!

Second, Liam saw the GI Dr. on Tuesday and had gained 8 ounces in 14 days so we did not have to do the feeding tube. Hooray!!! It is still a nightmare trying to get enough food in him to accomplish this, but at least it is working and we don't have to go to extreme measures to get weight on him.

Third, Will got a new job! We are so excited about this new opportunity. It is in Frisco, a little north of Dallas.

Lastly, we are going home for Christmas! Will's last day at his current job is Dec. 14 and he doesn't start his new job until Jan. 2 so we are able to spend the holidays with family this year. I am so excited.

Modified Barium Swallow

Liam had his Barium study today. He is such a little stinker. I told the speech therapist that he won't take a bottle so she set up the study with bottles and syringes. We have been trying for 2 months to get him to take a bottle! That little boy sucked down 2 ounces of barium from a bottle in no time. In fact, his suck was so strong that they had to switch the nipple to a slow flow one so that he wouldn't get so much in at one time. The study showed no aspiration from the liquidy Barium and only one aspiration from the thick barium which can be resolved by making him suck on my finger or a pacifier after meals. So the good news is that aspiration is not the cause for his not eating and I can continue to nurse. On the other hand we are back to square one. We don't know what is causing him to not eat. We see the GI again on Wednesday to evaluate where to go from here.

Our Thanksgiving, A Little Late ....

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with some friends and Will had a 4 day weekend! I didn't have to cook or clean and that was a welcome treat to my day. The girls had some kids to play with and had a great time too. Thanks Tammy and Roger for having us over, we really enjoyed our time with you and your family. Page kept saying that she was thankful for necklaces every time we brought up giving thanks. We went to Ikea on Friday and the girls had so much fun there. I had to keep carrying Emma through the store to get her to keep moving. All they wanted to do was play with everything! It was fun. We put up our Christmas tree this weekend too. Page was really into it this year, Emma just kept telling us to be quiet because she was trying to get her baby to sleep. She could have cared less about what we were doing.
Page is so in love with her little brother. She still wants to be around him whenever he is awake. We put him in his coat for church because it was so cold and she asked to take pictures with him. (It is so big on him!) Later that day she wanted to just play with him on the sofa so that she could make him smile :) They are so sweet together.
Emma has become completely obsessed with Jungle Book. More specifically with Baloo and the song "Bare Necessities." She wants to hear the song and to sing the song all day long. In fact, last night an hour after I put her in bed I heard her singing the song. I went back there to tell her to be quiet so that she didn't wake up her sister and she asked me "please momma, may you please sing bare cessities with me." It was so funny.
Here is the update on Liam. He has been eating 3 times a day. I am pureeing everything with olive oil instead of water to add calories and fat. He is nursing 4 times a day and then cluster feeding at night between 6 and 10. The good news is that he is sleeping for 5-6 hours after the last feeding around 10. He has dropped his mid day nap and is only taking a morning and late afternoon nap. We have an appointment on Wednesday to do a Barium swallow test and then Tuesday of next week we are seeing the GI Dr. again. If he hasn't gotten up to 7 pounds 9 ounces by December 4 we are going to have to tube feed him. Please be in prayer with us that he will gain the 7 ounces so that we don't have to do that! On a happier note, Liam has become quite the daddy's boy. If Will walks in the room Liam stops whatever he is doing and gives his daddy lots of smiles. If Will doesn't pay attention to him he will start talking to him and making sweet eyes to get his attention. I think Liam realizes that he is surrounded by females all day and looks forward to some boy time!

Happy 5 Months Liam!

I have just been too tired and sick to post lately; so I apologize to all of you faithful readers for making you look at those bears for so long:)Last week Page sliced her finger open with the sharpest knife we have. I was in my room nursing Liam, Emma was sleeping and Page was supposed to be picking out a book for me to read. She came back to my room with blood pouring out everywhere. She knew she had done something wrong so she wouldn't tell me what she had been doing. I found the knife on the floor when I went to get a dishtowel to wrap her finger in. (The picture is from the day after the cut.) Monday started at the pediatricians office for Page. She had a sinus infection and an ear infection so you can imagine how horrible she had been feeling the week before. On top of that Emma, Liam and I all caught what Page had and have been horribly sick all week. I started feeling better yesterday, but have a sinus headache that just won't go away.

We weighed Liam while there and he still hasn't gained any weight. He has been 12.5 lbs. for 2 months now! He turned 5 months old Saturday. I can hardly believe I have been functioning on 2 hours of sleep a night for that long! Yikes!! So, basically he is diagnosed as failure to thrive and we are seeing a GI Dr. every 2 weeks now to figure out what is going on. We were unable to do the barium swallow test he was scheduled for this week because we were all so sick. So maybe we will be able to get some answers after Thanksgiving. He has been eating lots of baby food since he won't nurse long or take a bottle. His favorite things are pears and butternut squash. So these days he eats about 2 jars of food a day and nurses about 5-6 times a day for 10 minutes. I don't even have a picture of him to post; I will take some this week.

I had the kids Christmas pictures taken on Friday. I will never do that by myself again. It was crazy!!! I wanted to do some with all the kids in white shirts and jeans and then some in their Christmas outfits. By the time we got to the wardrobe change, Liam was screaming for a nap and the girls were asking incessantly when they were going to get their candy. (Yes, I bribe my children.) So, Christmas pictures this year won't be the best, but at least I got all three of them to look at the camera at the same time, and that was no small feat. The other two pictures are of Emma cuddling with Paw Paw bear and a picture that Page took of herself the other day that i came out pretty well. She LOVES taking pictures! Maybe we have a budding photographer on our hands.

Build-A-Bear

The kids got a package in teh mail today. Emma got a PawPaw bear for her birthday (a little late), Page got an Ariel bear for her birthday (a little early) and Liam got a Maw Maw bear for Christmas (a little early). Page was so excited she just kept saying "it's Ariel, it's Ariel, yippy!" Thanks Maw Maw and Paw Paw, the kids love their new bears.

Tired Liam

Liam decided to boycott sleep on Saturday.He slept a total of 4 hours Saturday. (By Sunday morning I had only gotten 1 hour of sleep.) Here is what a sleep deprived baby looks like. You can imagine what I looked like!

Mrs. Pumpkin Head

Here is a fun project that I did with the girls this afternoon. I found this set at Target for $1.24! We made a pumpkin angel with it and it was so fun! The girls painted the pumpkin a couple of weeks ago while my parents were in town, so we just added the pieces to the blue/green/red/orange/yellow pumpkin instead of buying a new one. I think it is pretty darn cute. Thanks Target for such a cheap and fun project! (We can keep the pieces to reuse next year too!)

What A Weekend!

So much has happened in the past few days! Will's 31st birthday was Thursday, the 25th and his parents came in town to celebrate with us. I made all of his favorite foods that day starting with strawberry and cream cheese toaster strudel for breakfast. (I buy them once a year on his birthday, lol.) Lasagna and salad for dinner. I couldn't eat anything he wanted for his birthday as I survived on salad and eggs for my meals. Friday the girls and I went shopping with Nonna and Poppy and after nap time Poppy took the girls to the park. They were worn out Friday night! Saturday we went to an Art & Music Festival a few miles from the house and then some more shopping and finished the day off at our church's Country Carnival. Liam hardly slept and I was worn out by that night. Unfortunately we picked up a rotisserie chicken for dinner and I forgot to check the label before eating it. It had whey (a milk product) and Liam was up until 2:00 a.m. screaming his head off. He has been in pain all day today too, crying whenever he has been awake. Poor baby, I felt so bad. Poppy and Nonna left late last night and we had church and Awana today. We now need a weekend to recover from the weekend we had. It was wonderful, but we are all exhausted!

Lip Gloss Or Face Paint?

Page went to a birthday party this weekend and received some purple lip gloss in her goody bag. She was putting some on her lips and then around her mouth and so on and so on until it covered her entire face and hands. What I didn't think about was that when we tried to bathe her off was that it was oil based and now I have purple grease in my bath tub and her face still has a blue tinge to it. Luckily we caught things before Emma got carried away too, lol!

Fraud Alert

I don't know how many of you have heard about this yet, but since my youngest brother is still in college I got the information last night. If you applied for financial aid in college and graduated between 1998-present your social security number may have been stolen. Here is the information from the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance.

Notice of Breach of Security of Personal Information

Iron Mountain Incorporated has notified the Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance (LOSFA) that it lost back-up media belonging to LOSFA on September 19, 2007. Iron Mountain Incorporated, which is the State of Louisiana’s data storage contractor, began efforts to locate the media the same day after discovering the loss. LOSFA immediately reported the incident to appropriate state authorities and has begun its public notifications. To date, the media has not been found, and the investigations by state and local law enforcement are ongoing.

The lost media includes some personal information on individuals participating in, or considered for participation in, programs administered by LOSFA. The data is compressed and requires special software, specific computer equipment and sophisticated computer skills to access it.

LOSFA has no reason to believe that the information has been accessed or that it has been misused in any way, however, you are entitled to be informed of the risks associated with the loss of this media and of the steps that you can take to protect yourself.

LOSFA has contracted with a nationally recognized organization specializing in the field of identity theft to assist it in providing the best information available to you.
LOSFA urges anyone who falls into the following categories to use the web link at the bottom of this page to determine if your information was affected:

* Anyone who has a Louisiana College Savings account (START Saving Program).
* Any resident of the state of Louisiana who has completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
* Anyone who has completed a FAFSA and included a Louisiana postsecondary institution as an institution to which FAFSA data should be sent.
* Anyone who has applied for or received a Tuition Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS) Scholarship.
* Anyone who has applied for or who has received student financial aid in the State of Louisiana.

LOSFA is committed to ensuring data security for our clients, and is taking all steps necessary to help those who are affected. We will make ongoing efforts to safeguard your personal privacy. If you believe your information was part of this potential data exposure, please click on the following link to access a secure website to see if you were among those affected:

https://osfantweb.osfa.state.la.us/Notice.nsf/

Additional information, including a toll-free call center number will be provided to you once you have completed this on-line query.

Please understand you do not have to close any accounts. To our knowledge, there was no data in your LOSFA record that was financial in nature. No credit card account numbers were affected. However, do add a password to all your accounts if you wish to add an additional level of security.

At this time, we strongly suggest you take the following steps:

Contact the 3 credit reporting agencies listed below. These are all computerized systems which will require your Social Security Number (SSN). Please call all three. If you need help, please contact one of our representatives at 1-800-645-7990 to assist you.
CREDIT REPORTING AGENCIES
Equifax: Call (800) 525-6285
Experian: Call (888) 397-3742
TransUnion: Call (800) 680-7289

* Place a fraud alert with each Credit Reporting Agency (asking companies to contact you prior to issuing credit), and request your FREE copy of the credit report. It is free because your information was breached. If you are asked, respond that you are a potential victim of identity theft. You should do this for yourself and any family member whose Social Security Number was compromised. Please note: This alert is a temporary 90-day advisory statement and should be renewed every 90 days for a period of at least one year.

* When you get your credit reports, look them over carefully. If you see an account that is not yours, notify us immediately at 1 (800) 645-7990. Be aware, you may see errors on the report that were there before this information breach. If you need assistance reading these reports, our representatives are available at 1 (800) 645-7990 to help you understand them.

* It may take several weeks or months for fraudulently opened accounts to be reported. Therefore it is important for you to check your credit reports a second time in about 2-3 months. Use your free annual credit reports for this by calling 1 (877) 322-8228. For more information, please go to www.idtheftcenter.org and refer to Fact Sheet 124 - Credit Freezes and Fraud Alerts.

* If you wish to take additional preventative measures, you may want to consider placing a credit freeze on your credit reports. Louisiana allows all consumers to place a freeze on credit reports. Placing the credit freeze is free of charge if you are a victim of identity theft or age 62 or older. A nominal fee is charged otherwise. If you are a resident of another state, please go to http://www.idtheftcenter.org/map.html for a nationwide state resource map or www.idtheftcenter.org and refer to Fact Sheet 124 - Credit Freezes and Fraud Alerts for the information you will need.

* If you receive unsolicited calls, you should not provide any information of a personal nature or information related to your bank or investment accounts. In general, you need to be alert to suspicious activities regarding personal and financial information.

If you have any additional questions, you may contact 1 (800) 645-7990.

We would like to emphasize that no one knows if the breach will result in identity theft, but you need to be aware of this possibility and take proactive steps as necessary to protect yourself.

4 Months Old!

Liam is 4 months old today! We got some rather disappointing news at the pediatrician's office yesterday. He weighs 12 pounds 3 ounces and is in the 3rd % for weight. At his 3 month appointment he was 11 pounds 14 ounces. That's right, only a few ounces in the past month. We have been having a really hard time with nursing lately because he is so darn nosey and won't stay latched on for very long, he just wants to see what is going on around him. He pulls blankets off and there is really only so much I can do with 2 other kids in the house during feeding times to keep things quiet. I even bought a pump because he just won't drink very much at one time. I didn't think he was doing so poorly with eating that he would hardly gain any weight, but that is what has happened. He won't take a bottle or a pacifier so the pediatrician recommended giving him rice cereal now. I tried it last night and he cried when I put the cereal in his mouth. He kept turning his head and spitting out the cereal. I tried again tonight and he did a little better, but he cried for 2 hours straight shortly after he ate. I really don't know what to do, so I am asking for any suggestions any of you have. Will thinks that I should put the pumped milk in a syringe and inject it like medicine periodically throughout the day just to get extra calories in him. Our insurance won't cover a lactation consultant to help us and they are just too expensive for us to do on our own. He also woke up this morning with his first cold. Otherwise he is a strong, healthy boy and has reached most of the milestones of a 5 month old. The doctor was very impressed by him and kept telling me how strong he was and that she could tell that he was very intelligent by the way he was interacting with her. I am so proud of my little man. The girls are still completely obsessed with him. The minute he wakes up, before he can eat or get a new diaper he has to get smothered in kisses, hugs and songs from Page and Emma. It is so amazing to see how much they love him and how much he loves them back. He can hardly takes his eyes off of them and loves to watch them play, sing and dance around him. Life in the Steele household is so crazy, but so full of love that it takes my breath away sometimes! God has been so good to us!!

Happy Birthday, Nonna

In honor of Nonna's birthday today we are having "LSU Day" at our house. Here was my attempt at a group picture and then each of the kids wishing Nonna a happy birthday. Hope you have a great day, Nonna!

Daddy's Bubble Angels

Cucumber Boat

Last night I brought snacks for my ladies group at church. The girls were so enamored with it that it was easy to get them to eat some veggies for snack time today. I hallowed out the inside of a cucumber and filled it with cucumber ranch salad dressing (because it is dairy free!) and put baby carrots and sliced up some celery for them to dip in it. What a hit! I will be doing this again with lots of other veggies. It was so easy and such a hit with the kids.

Hard Work

Here is what 3 small kids can do to my dad!

October Visit

My parents are in visiting this weekend. The girls are having such a blast. They got to go to Target yesterday and then we all went to a yummy steak house last night called Saltgrass. Today we went to McDonald's (Emma's favorite place) and Sam's to pick up a few things. The girls made a gingerbread house with my mom this morning. Well, my mom made it while the girls ate the icing and candy.