Outing to the Apple Barn

With nothing on the schedule for most of the day and temperatures in the 70s, Saturday was just begging for us to get out with the kids.

Every year, we make a trip out to Chatham to the Apple Barn and enjoy an apple cider slushie, pumpkin whoopie pie and a beautiful fall scene of pumpkins and mums. Of course, it's not a bad excuse for a photo shoot either :)

The rows and rows of pumpkins are our usual backdrop to our yearly photo shoots...starting from the time Connor was 3 weeks old...

 2009

 2010

2011

2012

This year, Brenna got in on the fun...

And then Connor realized we were taking pictures without him and hopped in.

This year, a gourd made it home along with our usual assortment of fall goodies.

My favorite photo from the day :)

So excited that fall has arrived!

For Me Friday: Blogs I Love

In 2007, I signed up for Google Reader...and quickly I was hooked. There were a few blogs I read back then on a regular basis, and now I could simply add them all to my reader and it would aggregate them for me so that I didn't have to go to each site separately - brilliant!

I currently have almost 100 blog subscriptions in my Reader...some are photography blogs, some are financial blogs, and others are written by friends or family members and not updated often, but I still like to keep up because I know them.

And then there are some that are written by people I've never met (and maybe never will) but whose story has captured my interest for one reason or another. They're well-written, updated often, sometimes really funny and sometimes make me tear up. If you're a blog-lover like myself, you'll definitely want to check out some of these!

Confessions of the Chromosomally Enhanced. I had to start with this one because I do actually know the author. I grew up across the street from Elizabeth and her sister Leanne, who has Down syndrome. When I was really young, I was a little scared of Leanne because she squeezed so hard when she gave me hugs :)

Elizabeth has two precious girls, Merryn and Josie. Elizabeth and her husband adopted Josie, who also has Down syndrome, thus the subtitle of the blog "the dual divas of Down syndrome." Elizabeth is hilarious and has such a positive outlook on life. She takes challenging situations and finds the humor in them, and it always puts me in a better mood to read about her family.

Blue-eyed Bride. I began reading Blue-eyed Bride on a suggestion from my friend Hallie back in 2008, and I think it was because Erin has a son so close to Connor's age that I was immediately interested. She also has phenomenal taste, and I love seeing the outfits she puts together and photos of her home. Erin helped me plan the decorations and theme for Connor's first birthday party, and somehow over the years we've kind of become "online friends" through Twitter. (Yes, Evan makes fun of me for having online friends :) ) She often causes me to remember not to wish away these years when my babies are little and to savor the chaos.

Enjoying the Small Things. This is a recent find, but I am so sucked in now. To read Kelle Hampton's bio, I feel like I am reading about myself - photographer with a carefree life, pregnant with second child and world turns upside down when her child is born (with Down syndrome.) Kelle's writing is incredibly powerful, and it causes me to evaluate my life and my emotions on a whole new level sometimes.

Bower Power. Hilarious. Katie Bower is absolutely hilarious. I actually found her blog from Blue-Eyed Bride, and I love all the DIY projects she and her husband are always undertaking, like this office makeover that I'm obsessed with. I sometimes wonder how she can be so witty in just about every single post; I am usually snickering out loud at least once while reading her entries.

Money Saving Mom. I've been reading Money Saving Mom since 2007, and she is the only "frugal mom" blog I still keep up with on a regular basis because I love her writing style and her entrepreneurial ambitions. Her blog motivates me to save money and to make money, and pushes me to be a better business person.

It's the Small Things. If you've ever been on Pinterest and seen a cute blond girl with adorable hairstyles and beautiful makeup, it's Kate. I have absolutely no fashion sense when it comes to hair and makeup, and Kate has the exact same coloring as me, so I go to her blog for all makeup and hair advice :) She has a really cute personality (online at least!), and she's just a fun read to get ideas for new hairstyles or makeup tutorials or outfit ideas.

Tune into Radio Carly. I've linked to Carly's blog before, but I would read it even if my daughter didn't have ichthyosis. Carly loves traveling like I do, and she blogs with such an openness and transparency about living with her condition. She inspires me to be an "appearance advocate" for Brenna, and she's been incredibly encouraging to our family through our blog and Twitter.


Happy reading, and if you all read any blogs that you think I'd like, please link up for me!

Thursday Thoughts, Vol. 8

1. We are having a fantastic week. With Brenna feeling great, I have a renewed interest in getting her on a better schedule and developing good sleep habits. My friend Courtney shared a great resource with me called Moms on Call - an online seminar about sleep training. I don't really like the word "training," but I found it had a lot of great information about getting babies to sleep through the night by setting up consistent bedtime and naptime routines so that they learn to fall asleep by themselves.

 In just 3 days of following most of the methods, Brenna has been taking two solid 1.5-2 hour naps each day and sleeping a lot better at night (still working on that!) I also feel like she's been in great moods each day too, and she goes right to sleep on her own - no rocking needed, just straight to bed! I'm a routine kinda girl, so I really like that we're getting into a more typical daily schedule - as much as possible anyway!

2. Along those lines, we've moved from continuous feedings to bigger feeds at a faster rate...which means Brenna is eating every three hours for about an hour and taking a big feeding at night before bed instead of running the pump all night. I really felt like the all-night feeding was contributing to her sleeplessness, and her dietitian said it was possible, because our GI systems slow way down at night and she could be feeling too full or possibly feeling the sensation of being fed. So anyway, we're finally getting back to a more typical schedule with eating too!

3. Brenna's latest weight is 10.9 pounds....so close to 11! Hope to see the big one-one next time we break out the scale!

We are really getting the hang of using her g-button...

4. There's a potty-trained three-year-old in my house, and I'm pretty excited about it.

5. After taking last semester off, Evan jumped back into classes for his MBA this fall. Fortunately he's able to take one online class and one blended course, which means he only has to go to campus about 7 times this semester. But still, between class and homework, he's pretty stretched thin right now. He'll graduate in the spring, and I can't wait for him to be done :)

6.  Speaking of school, my 10-year high school reunion was last weekend, and we had a great time. I chatted with so many classmates I hadn't seen in a long time, and everyone was so friendly. I loved high school, and I went to school with a lot of great people, so it was nice to get out and reconnect with them again.

7. Sometimes I think Brenna wishes she was a koala bear, so she could hang on me all day :) Good thing she likes her carrier so I can keep her close and still have some free hands!

Here's to a good week and hopefully a great weekend!

Phone photos unloaded

Some adorable iPhone photos that haven't made it to the blog just yet...

 "Is this my good side?"

Some of you have asked if I have help...Evan's aunt Jennifer spends some time with us a few days a week, watching Connor when Brenna has an appointment, helping around the house and occasionally even watching both kids so I can run errands. She is a God-send!!

Brenna loves to lounge on Aunt Jennifer

Recent date night out to Ross Isaac for dinner!

Cheering on the Illini!

Lots of play dates for Brenna Girl!

Connor is pleased as punch with his Cars slippers, Cars PJs and Cars pillow :)

 Trying to hold her more on my hip, to give me a free hand. She looks like a little koala bear :)

Happy Wednesday all!

Self-worth: teaching it by living it

My mom recently told me about an article she had read, describing the diaries of two young girls. The first girl was born in the late 1800s (I think), and her diary's pages were filled with desires to be a better person. She wrote about striving to be more patient and kind.

The diary of the second girl was from the 1970s. Her hopes were not about character-building, but instead about her looks. She lamented that she felt fat and ugly, and she wrote constantly about how she wanted to be prettier.

In our world today, from the time they are young, girls compare. They judge and compare and are jealous and just plain mean.

When I was in my early teens, I can remember my mom making the comment that "the boys check out the girls, and the girls check out the other girls." How do we learn this? From each other, from our moms, from society - it doesn't matter. What matters is that we then continue to do it and create a perpetual cycle for our daughters (and sons) to do it.

I want to stop.

I want to start admiring and appreciating and stop being envious. I want to start complimenting and stop critiquing. I want to start accepting and stop judging.

I want to stop looking at the outside and make the effort to know someone, truly know them...their character, their ideals, their dreams.

I am beginning to see how poisonous envious thoughts can be. It's so easy to see another attractive woman and before you can stop it, your mind is saying "Wow, I would LOVE to look like that!"

With those seemingly innocent thoughts comes the underlying message: "I'm not good enough. I don't like myself as I am, as God created me."

But I am good enough. I do like myself, and I believe that God created me just as I am, and I am happy with that.

And I want my children to believe that too. So I am going to live that... not just preach it, not just teach them with my words, but truly believe it and live it. We need to find value in ourselves by how we feel, the good that we contribute to this world and through the positive way we treat others.

I want to demonstrate to my daughter that she should strive to be a better person, not a prettier person. That how you make someone feel trumps how you look, every time.

If this is how we want our children to think and to feel, we can't just tell them. We need to show them. We need to live that way ourselves.

Who's with me?

Positive change

As I went to jot down Brenna's last feeding of the night, I flipped to the first page of my notebook and realized that I've been keeping records of her pump feedings for a whole month.

And it seems like all of our efforts over this last month are starting to show, as Brenna's weight is finally on the upward trend, with a bigger jump - 10.6 to 10.8 lbs over two days - at the latest weigh-in. While we know all too well that things can quickly change with her, we are starting to feel a little relief at how well her feedings are going.

I'm not sure that we will ever get the answers that we so desperately want about why Brenna began refusing to eat as well as she had in the beginning weeks of her life, but we do know that so many of her health problems over the past few months were compounding because of her poor nutrition.

Her face and then eventually her body grew very puffy because of protein loss and decrease in liver function, her pancreas function decreased as well, she lost zinc - which led to a host of skin issues - and of course her weight dropped off. Her GI doctor actually uses the term "malnourished" to describe the state she was in.

While the feeding pump and g-tube are not an ideal situation, to put it nicely, they are in fact keeping my daughter not only alive but thriving right now, and it gives me a lot of hope that she will begin to catch back up in both weight and developmental milestones sooner rather than later. It's not that I compare with other children her age - because I truly don't - but I want her to thrive and get to explore her world and eventually run around with her brother.

Right now, Brenna's skin looks fantastic, she's very close to sitting up unassisted again, and she's growing.

What a tremendous change from just a month ago, when she wasn't keeping milk down, when she had a big rash on her body (from low zinc), when she was unhappy and in pain.

Things are still far from normal and far from easy...but this positive change is worth a little celebration.

Sharing

I knew this day would come...

When she prefers his toys...

And he wants to play with her toys :)

Connor's 3rd birthday celebration

This birthday was the first that Connor actually knew what was going on and what a birthday means, and he was very excited for his big day.

His birthday celebration kicked off with a bang on his birthday eve, when a group of our best friends surprised him with a very special gift.

The surprise was parked out in the driveway...

The unveiling...

Not only his very own Power Wheels ride, but a LIGHTNING MCQUEEN one at that!

He was a little startled when it took off after pressing the gas pedal

Gettin' his cruise on

What wonderful and thoughtful friends we have!!

Priceless expression :)

Then, over the weekend, we held a small family party for Connor, with - what else? - a Cars theme!

It was a pretty casual affair with just pizza and ice cream and immediate family, especially compared to his first and second parties, which were much bigger and more elaborate. But I still did what I could with the little free time that I had to add some cute touches to the day.

Connor's favorite decoration - Mater made out of a Kleenex box :)

Luigi's Leaning Tower of Tires!

Birthday Boy! (in his "Connor" Lightning McQueen shirt, clutching his toy Lightning. The kid is so obsessed.)

Opening presents...which were, of course, very much centered around Cars. We're talking Cars cars, a Cars t-shirt, a Cars sleeping bag, a Cars toy camera and Cars PJs! We were joking that we can't let Connor watch any other movies, lest he forget about Cars and become interested in something else!

Brenna was busy having a heart-to-heart with Grandpa...

What a special third birthday our sweet boy had, thanks to our incredibly thoughtful family and friends.  He is one loved little guy, and we are so blessed to be his parents!

Brenna Helen Marie is NINE months old!

Beautiful Brenna,
 I have to admit that I didn't even realize it was your 9-month milestone until your Papa posted about it on Facebook! :) These months are really flying by, and I was especially excited about today because we got your bulky feeding tube changed out to a little g-button this afternoon, and I think this will make things a little easier on all of us.

Brenna, this month your smile and your spark returned, and I couldn't be happier about that! Your furrowed brow from your 8 month photos is no longer around, and your eyes are bright and dancing again.

You have two teeth, and you are appearing more interested in solid foods. So far, you've tried carrots, applesauce, rice cereal, corn and sweet potatoes, with the sweet potatoes playing a definitive favorite. You won't take a bottle by mouth at all right now, but you love your pacifier, and I am very hopeful that you will pick up on your oral feeding skills again very soon.

 "Hmmm I think I feel another tooth poking through..."

This age is a bit frustrating for you, as you want to explore and play so badly, but physically you just aren't able to yet. You are opening your hands and fingers more and more every day, and it's so fun to see the look of accomplishment on your face when you grasp a new toy. One of your latest tricks is to grab your binkie and pop it into your mouth all by yourself.

The relationship between you and your brother is really starting to flourish. I can't even explain it, but he acts like there was never a time without you in our family and he wants to include you in everything. If he's having fun jumping around, he wants me to "make Brenna jump too!" If we're playing hide and seek, he wants you to hide with us.

Connor is your favorite thing in the whole world to watch. You think he's SO interesting!

"that kid is HILARIOUS!"

Many times, Connor is very interested in trying to help out with all of your care. He'll pull his stool up to "help" when we're doing your Aquaphor or he'll bring us your binkie when you're crying or he'll dance around to distract you when you're fussing while I'm cleaning out your feeding pump. Today, he wanted in on all of the action of your 9-month photo shoot, both in front of the camera...

And behind it...

Brenna Girl, I am beginning to wonder if you will ever give us a rest :) Just when we thought you were going to be well for a while, you spiked a 103.6 fever the other night, which led to being at the ER for three hours...and now you're seemingly fine again. You always keep life exciting!

Happy Three Quarters of a Year, pretty girl! We love you!