Upper GI Results

I talked to Peanut's doc this morning about the upper GI he had done on Friday. The radiologist had already told me that his pylorus (the flap in the stomach) was spasming but I didn't want to talk about that until I'd talked to his doctor te get details. THANKFULLY it shouldn't need anything drastic and instead they are going to switch his medications. Oh I hope this is like a miracle for him. I can't tell you how awful it is to see him in such pain. And since things are getting worse, we will end up concerned about his rate of growth at some point.

Speaking of growth Peanut's 2 month check up is tomorrow morning. I think he's going to have gained A LOT of weight, esp thanks to all that rice cereal he gets.

Tornado!!!!!!!!!!

Holy Crap! We still can't believe it but according to the police officer that saw them, we survived our first tornado today. We assumed it HAD to be but the police officer confirmed he saw two funnels.

First of all, thankfully they weren't big and we don't have any damage on our property.

It's a rare moment that both boys are asleep at the same time and today they were so we were both sound asleep as well. Thinking I heard rain I asked Hubby if he heard it knowing full well he was going to want to put his motorcycle in the garage if it was raining. He checked and yes it was raining. In the brief moment that it took for him to walk to the garage and open it things got bad. The wind was howling & the rain & hail were coming down extremely hard and heavy. I took a peek out the back window and what I saw concerned me enough that I shouted, "Should I be in a bathroom with the boys?!" I got no answer so I went into the garage to investigate what he was up to and what was going on.

The rain was being blown over half way into the garage and the wind was unreal. When Hubby first stepped out into the garage a tree behind our fence snapped. Hubby described the car as looking like it wanted to just fall over! It only took a couple of minutes for things to calm down and once they did we realized that about 50ish feet down the fence line about 75 feet or more of fence had been knocked over. Several things had been rearranged but everything was in tact. No damage on our property.

Some branches took out some powerlines within eye shot of our house & we were without power off & on for a short time. There are some pretty big trees down in the area and lots and lots of debris up and down the streets. Here are a few pictures. They aren't great but you get the idea.

This is standing in our driveway looking south.

Same picture, zoomed in.

Our house is to the right in this picture.

Standing in our driveway looking north, that whiteish rectangle in the middle of the picture is our resident porta potty, on its side. Yes, the poor construction guys have to go SOMEWHERE, lol.

This tree & fence are along our driveway. That's how close it was!

This poor house is just down the street from us, they had some pretty big branches fall off their trees.

Wow! What a day!

The Numbers Are In!

Total cost for a 29 day NICU stay...$55K. That doesn't include any doctors charges, tests, etc. That is strictly to stay there. Although I'm pretty sure without looking over the details it does include his medications. All told this little adventure was well over $100K. Thank goodness for insurance! :)

Speaking of Peanut he's going to have an upper GI done on Friday. That doesn't particularly make either of us happy but his reflux is getting worse...not better. Little Man had one done and we felt so bad for him strapped to the board. Hopefully Peanut will just think he's being swaddled since he's so young.

I went ahead and attempted to take some pictures today. I can always upload it/them to multiple sites and buy a package instead of driving all the way to BFE to have pics done & then again to pick them up.

After I took some pictures of Peanut I remembered I had matching tops for the boys and figured I should go ahead and take pictures of them while I had things set up. I've been learning a program and tweaked a few of them with that. You'll have to let me know what you think of my first attempts here.

Here is his "official" 2 month picture...if you want to call it that.

And a few more:

It was really funny because Little Man is a bit funny about Peanut being ON him. He really doesn't know what to think of it and doesn't really like Peanut touching him. There was no way he was going to be able to hold Peanut up.

I'll be uploading these to the online photo album today or tomorrow (my head hurts) so that you can save them if you like. These are very low quality for the sake of posting them here.

Busy Week

Things have been pretty crazy. Actually, it's just mostly things with Peanut that are crazy. I feel SO bad for him. His reflux is getting worse, his episodes with the bad gas are getting worse & more frequent and I just feel for him. Thanks to all of this Hubby & I are going without a lot of sleep. Sleep is obviously a commodity in any household with a newborn but I'm really ready for him to settle into some sort of schedule. I'll take ANYTHING at this point, lol. This is where it's difficult to balance things. He might be 8 weeks old but corrected he's only a week old. He's acting more like the one week old would, lol.

Anyways, for Father's Day we went into town and went swimming!!! Gosh I love swimming! Here is a picture of Little Man hanging out in the pool.

Here's a really cute picture of Little Man with his cousins. We've been trying for 2 1/2 years to get a picture with all 3 of them looking in the same direction at the same time. Finally got it!

Yesterday & today we did yard work. We finally put something down to edge the flower beds in the front of the house. We think it came out pretty well.

Now if we could just get the grass to grow. Actually, we REALLY need some rain. I cannot even tell you the last time we had rain out here. It rains 15 miles south of us, 5 miles east of us, etc...but NOT here. So frustrating.

And finally, I'm going to have to put my creative hat on soon. Peanut will be 2 months old in a few days and I need to see about taking some pictures of him. We took Little Man every month for the first year and at least got the package deal and we want to make sure we do the same for Peanut. Unfortunately the nearest place for a photographer is 45 min. So instead I'm going to see what I can do myself.

This is one of Peanut's favorite places to snooze... propped up in the recliner.

Due Date

Today was my due date and as of yesterday, Peanut is 7 weeks old. It doesn't feel like he's almost 2 months old but I think that's because he's only been home for three weeks as of today.

Last night I took what is very possibly my favorite pictures of the boys as of yet. I'm sure that opinion will change over & over again too. But for now, they're my favorite. I'll be uploading the rest of them this afternoon/evening into the photo album. At one point Hubby told Little Man to show Peanut how to stick out his tongue. Instead Little Man licked his head!!! I actually have a picture of this and while it made us laugh extremely hard, it was also a bit disturbing on some level, lol.

Here are two of my favorites:

Little Man just didn't know what to think or do with his brother laying on him.

So tomorrow is Father's Day & we'd like to wish all you dad's a good one. We didn't have any plans ourselves for it until this morning. We'll be heading into Houston (yes, again) to hang out, swim & spend a few hours with friends & family. Anyways, my point is that I will have a fully charged camera with me this time for Little Man's pool experience! It turns out it might be easier for Hubby to talk me into a pool in our back yard than I thought. I've really missed swimming. But no...not going to put a pool in any time soon, there are more important expenses for now.

As for Peanut, he's doing great. We even got some much needed sleep last night, woohoo!! I can tell he's on the brink of drinking more & sleeping longer. YAY! Not bad, and I don't really expect much seeing as he was so early. It's truly a delicate balance. He may be doing some things right on track for a 7 week old and others he's not even close.

Little Man is talking more & more. He's saying his colors in English & Spanish and is trying to copy pretty much everything we say. We are loving his language explosion and it's just so cute to listen to him butcher his words.

It didn't go so well

Last night was supposed to be Peanut's first night in his own crib. It didn't go so well. The details are fuzzy from lack of sleep but an hour or less after I got him down & I was asleep, his monitor went off. It was the alarm for a missing lead, as though one had fallen off.

We spent over an hour trying to figure out why it just kept going off. We tried EVERYTHING. And I do mean WE b/c at that point we were both irritated, lol. The last time it went off, Hubby was standing there too and goes, "Wait...the battery light is on." OMG could we feel any dumber at that point?! Yeah neither of our sleep deprived selves were worried about feeling dumb, just ready to hop back in bed and go to sleep!!

That didn't last long. After messing with that for an hour+, he was awake. Oh and he is one of those kids that every time the pacifier falls out of his mouth he has a melt down. How did this happen?! LOL!!! So it was a VERY long sleepless night for me and somewhat for Hubby. I think he does his best sleeping from like 5am until mid morning. We've got to change that, lol.

And amazingly enough, Little Man didn't wake up for any of this nonsense last night.

Okay, a couple of really cute pics I took yesterday morning.

Remember how I said he freaks if he loses the pacifier? I took it out of his mouth so I could actually see his face and I got literally ONE shot. Then he did this:

LOL!! Definitely knows what he wants!

A Great Weekend

We really did have a great weekend.

Saturday we took the boys over to my parents house to swim with Diva. Of course we didn't put Peanut in the water, with his apnea monitor and all, lol. I have been DYING to get Little Man into a real pool and Saturday was his first time EVER. He absolutely loved it! And believe it or not, I didn't have my camera. I was beside myself when I realized I didn't have it. He still doesn't really care for getting his face all wet but he really had a great time and didn't want to leave the pool.

At least he's finally capable (& sometimes willing) to follow the command of, "Look at Mommy & say Cheese." Here are a couple of pics of the kids.

Then we asked them to give Peanut kisses, lol. So cute!

Peanut is doing great though, he's getting pretty good at holding his head up on his own and he's finally starting to spend longer than 5 minutes at a stretch awake. He's really finally starting to look at us and other things even though we wish he'd quit crossing his eyes to do so, lol.

The other day one woman asked us how many days old he was. Should have seen her face when I said he was six weeks old! And today another woman walked past us and goes, "Oh wow, that's a new one" with emphasis on the NEW. We giggled after she passed and said, "Not quite as new as she thinks, hahahaha." He's still wearing newborn clothes at this point but I'm thinking in the next week we'll probably get to lose most of the newborn clothes but we'll see.

Merry Christmas Little Man

Christmas came in April for Little Man - in the form of a new baby brother. Okay, okay so we wouldn't actually do that to our child but it sure is tempting in light of the medical bills, lol. We were misinformed when it came to the way things would be billed and it's going to cost us almost double what we originally planned on. Needless to say it hurts & it ain't pretty. He'll probably be in kindergarten by the time we get everyone paid off, lol.

On a brighter note, the little peanut is growing like a weed. We're still struggling some with getting him on the right formula/rice cereal combo but it's slowly coming together. The poor kid is just so dang gassy. The other answer is yes, he's still having his bradys. Had another one a couple of hours ago. The good news is that the monitor doesn't wake Little Man up. The bad news is that I'm beyond ready to throw that dang thing out the window, lol.

Here is something you'll find amusing. Little Man doesn't want to leave the house without his brother. Usually if Hubby runs up to the store or something, Little Man will go with him. He now throws such a fit in trying to get us to put Peanut in his carrier that he just doesn't go anymore. It's funny, but in the moment and you can't get Little Man to calm down - not so funny. LOL!

Okay, now for your daily dose of cuteness.

This and That

Things have been interesting lately.

Little Man is hilarious. He went to the store with his dad today and the whole time he just wanted his baby. He hit the door screaming "BABY BABY BABY!" as he ran up to Peanut when he got home. That was cute.

When we burp Peanut, Little Man always comes up to burp you. It's so funny. In fact, I was standing in the living room today after picking Peanut up out of the swing and was patting his back and I felt something strange on my leg - it was Little Man burping my leg. We'll definitely have to get this on video. He just grins real big and pats your back.

Peanut is really struggling with the gas. After talking to the doctor's office today we're switching him to a soy formula to give that a shot. This poor baby is on Reglan, Zantac, prescription anti-gas meds AND thickened formula and he's not getting ANY relief. If anything it appears to be getting worse. He just cries and cries until he gets a little relief. Then a short time later (usually like 20 min) he's at it again. He just gets stiff as a board and you can tell it's painful. And he is hard as Hell to burp!

Okay I know you came here looking for a picture *wink, wink* and here it is: I took this Saturday. Only the 2nd time we've let Little Man hold his brother and he just eats it up. It also happened to be one week home for Peanut.

On Saturday Hubby wanted to get some stuff from my parents so we headed on into town. While we were in town Peanut got to meet his great grandparents and Little Man had a ball playing ball with Papa (my grandfather).

Now a moment to gripe about that blasted apnea monitor. What a royal pain!!!!! I hate not being able to just snatch up my baby and walk around with him, or walk him outside or anything else. WHAT A PAIN!!! He hasn't had a brady in about 2 days and as always we're hoping it will stay that way. Hubby was shuffling things around at Target the other day while I was returning something and one of the leads came unplugged. We just stared at each other from across the way and laughed. That thing is obnoxiously loud, especially depending on the acoustics of the room you're in when it goes off. There is definitely no sleeping through it. Trust me, we know this.