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!