Blended diet, pizza party, and life....

It's finally spring!!!!!
I have really been getting into using my blender and making Laynie all sorts of new recipes for her blended diet. She is doing horrible with eating by mouth and no longer even wants to put much in her mouth. I have no clue what happened, but I'm a little bummed about it:(
I am hoping one day it will click and she will decide she wants to try to eat. I was thinking maybe when our new baby starts eating solids she MIGHT want to try to keep up?!?! Who knows! I have been trying to make a batch and freeze it every week so I have a little bit of a stock pile when this baby is born. I spend a lot of time making her food and it will be nice to have a bunch frozen.

I started with baby food and I continued using it for a long time because it was so easy, but now I just use all types of food. It really isn't that hard. If you think about it, why wouldn't we want to feed her the same stuff that any other three year old eats, rather than a can of formula and chemicals???? So that is what I do. I still use the formula as a base because it has a lot of vitamins and nutrients and that way I don't have to worry too much about getting all of those in with the other foods. Some of the stuff she has been getting is chicken, bread, peanut butter, avocado, banana, strawberries, applesauce, spinach, corn, beans, peas, carrots, cereal, ect... the list goes on and on!
The difference this diet makes for her is priceless. I used to watch her retch and vomit immediately after 90% of her meals. She would get all sweaty and look completely miserable. It was so hard to watch. She had already had a surgery to prevent her from vomiting, was on reflux medicine, and was on a specialized prescribed formula. Every test came back normal, she just couldn't tolerate her feedings. The next option was to turn her g-tube (gastrostomy tube) into a jg-tube. This would make her food go into her jejunum and she would be on a pump about 20 hours a day. It would be such a huge pain to have her hooked up to her pump constantly. I don't know why I decided to ramble on about this on my blog, but it has been such a huge blessing to all of us and it makes me sad to know that most dieticians and GI docs don't support this. We had to figure it out on our own (with the help from other CHARGE moms). Now I am just crossing my fingers that insurance will cover some blended diets that I can purchase so I can stop spending hours blending food, but it is sooooo worth it!

We had a beautiful day last week and took full advantage. It has been so windy lately. That is what I really hate about our spring in Idaho. We played with our neighbors and the kids had a ball, like always!!!!

Drake had a pizza party at preschool and Laynie and I got to go and help. It was fun seeing him in his class interacting with his buddies. I have helped at preschool before, but it is always on field trips and not in the classroom.

Dominoes pizza came and taught them how to make a pizza, they got to smell all sorts of toppings and decide if they smelled yummy or yucky, and got to eat pizza!

Drake smelling the anchovies......

Laynie thought she was the coolest person on earth since she got to go to school with her brother. Drake's whole class really liked her and gave her a lot of attention. It was pretty cute:)

She is pretending to eat her pizza and water! She will be in preschool next year and it makes me so nervous for her!!!

She was getting ready to get in the bath and she decided she wanted to do push-ups. She is a funny girlie with a really cute naked bum!!!

Movie night.... Watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. I wish they would stay like this for the whole movie, but it only lasts about 10 minutes!

It is officially spring break and this is what we woke up to! Looks like we should have planned a vacation to somewhere warm. So depressing... I am ready for some GOOD spring weather!!!!

This and that....

I walked out in the living room and found them like this. So sweet:)

We got a new car seat for the new little one and Laynie was a little excited about it. She thinks it's hers and she might be a little disappointed when she finds out it's not for her but someone else;)
We are getting closer to having this baby. I have now entered my 3rd trimester. We are excited to meet her!

Our poor, poor dogs.... She dumped water on him and used a whole Kleenex box to clean him off. The dogs are so patient with the kids!

I took this boy to kindergarten roundup last week. We went to the big school and he was really excited and a little nervous. It makes me so sad that he is going to kindergarten next year, but he is ready and will do great! He is turning into quite a smart boy- he impresses me all the time!

I hosted the Bachelor finale party with some of my girlfriends! We had fun and everyone even got a rose!

We wore green for St. Patrick's Day and didn't do anything else too exciting. We did enjoy some St. Patty's Day cookies though!!!

Laynie loved putting the frosting all over her face:)

Bear Lake

We spent a long weekend in Bear Lake last weekend. It is definitely their off season and there was not much to do, but we still really enjoyed ourselves! It was fun and relaxing and it's always great to get away for a few days! Our friends, the Denning's came also and we all had a great time together!
The weather was really nice... The kids enjoyed some time outside! We also spent a lot of time swimming!

We drove into Logan one day and went to lunch and to a fun place. We took the kids bowling for their first time and we played arcade games. It was really fun:)

The dads and all their kiddos...

 

Family Fun Weekend

My aunt (Diane) and cousins (Janae and Jolene) came from Washington, and Afton and her family came from Utah to celebrate my Grandma's 80th Birthday weekend!!! We all had such a great weekend:)
We had a girl's day where we went to lunch and got pedicures! We had family dinners, went bowling, played at Leo's Place, and had a great time visiting!

Drake was in heaven playing with his cousins all weekend, especially Jaxon. He tells me everyday that he misses Jaxon! Laynie had a blast trying to keep up with all the kids, but she was somewhat of a nightmare to deal with at my moms. The stairs are a big problem for her and we helped her up and down the stairs probably 50 times a night! She had a lot of fun though. She works SOOOO hard to try to keep up with everyone!

Trevor went cosmic bowling and I stayed home with the kids because they were sleeping and the next day Trevor stayed home from Leo's with Laynie because we didn't want to bring her there and expose her to tons of germs. We all had fun playing laser tag at Leo's!

Trevor, me, Ross, Afton, Breanne, and her boyfriend Josh

Me, my mom, Laynie and my Grandma! Happy 80th Birthday Grandma! We love you so much!!!

Nothing new.... just random happenings

Oh this time of year seems to just drag on and on and on.... We have been good, but just having some major cabin fever. I am looking forward to the weather warming up so I actually want to leave my house again.
It seems like this month was awareness month for everything. It seems like everything on my facebook feed was all about some sort of awareness week. We were wearing red in the picture for wear red day for heart disease awareness and it was also congentital heart defect awareness week, which Laynie had 3 heart defects and many of her CHARGE friends have very severe heart defects. This is something we are very grateful for that Laynie's heart defects have been mild and have not affected her in major ways and we hope it stays that way. It was also feeding tube awareness week and it is rare disease day or week coming up. It seems like since Laynie is sooooo complicated and affected by so many medical conditions we need to support a lot of causes:)

Most of these pictures were shared on my instagram, but I like to put them on here also because I print out my blog for our family journal/scrapbook.
Laynie was soooooo sad that her blankies were getting washed. I usually sneak them in the washer, but she caught me putting them in the dryer. It is so hard being 3 sometimes!!!

This was one wild playgroup!!! Drake has such GOOD friends. I love it! It is so fun watching and listening to them play. He also has a HUGE crush on a girl at school. It is pretty funny to watch him blush when we ask him about her. I heard he even tries to hold her hand at school. Oh boy, girl crazy already!!!!

I really don't like selfie pregnancy photos, but I swear I don't hardly have any of me pregnant with Laynie and it bothers me that I don't have anything to compare or look back on. So this was me a week ago at 23 weeks.

Daddy and Laynie kisses. Melts my heart!!! She is pretty sweet about giving us kisses!

Laynie insisted on getting her hair done too! I just put some foils in her hair and she thought she was hot stuff!!!

I feel so sorry for my dogs. My kids love them way too much!!!

Valentine's Day 2014

Me and my Valentine went out to dinner the night before to Texas Roadhouse. I didn't get any pictures, but I sure love my Valentine!!!

Here are my Valentine's all ready for my 3 favorite people...

She was as cute as can be in her Valentine outfit!!!

Drake had a party at school and came home with a whole bunch of goodies. He brought oreos and a Valentine straw and it said, "We go together like milk and cookies Valentine!" He was pretty excited about his Valentines! After opening up his Valentine gift from Trevor and I he said, "I love you mommy. Will you be my Valentine?" It was super sweet. He knows how to melt his mamma's heart!

We had a festive heart-shaped pizza for dinner

And made these beauties!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

Snow Day!!!

Little updates....

I went for an appointment to the maternal fetal medicine doctor yesterday and had a good long look at baby girl #3. She was sucking her fingers the whole time and was just a wiggly wild girl. You can see her sucking her fingers in the picture below, but it is sideways!!! It was so cute. I had a detailed ultrascan and modified fetal echocardiogram and everything looked good. The ultrasound tech had researched CHARGE syndrome and knew what to look for in the exam. I know that even if everything looks great on ultrasound that it cannot rule out CHARGE, but I am feeling pretty good that everything is just fine! I just enjoyed laying there watching her for over an hour kick, yawn, sqirm, suck, and be super cute!

We were ready for the Superbowl and cheering for Denver, but it was a very disappointing game. At least we enjoyed all the food:)

Drake is continuing to be a little pro at skiing. I am hoping I can go up next time and watch from the lodge. He loves it. Last weekend, they saw his preschool teacher and Trevor says Drake was trying to show off the whole time. They rode the main lift and went down face all night. Drake loved the snowboarding park!!! Trevor got a blister so they had to leave a little early and Drake was so sad!

Laynie has a MAJOR obsession. I have never seen anything like it. Her love for The Fresh Beat Band is soooooo intense. She uses the sign "dance" to ask for them. She will ask for them first thing in the morning.... before I can get her out of her crib. She would watch it all day if I would let her. When it was time to turn on the Superbowl she through the biggest fit I have ever seen because we wouldn't let her watch it. They have a live concert and I checked to see if they went to Salt Lake because it would be her dream come true, but sadly.... the closest place was California. Maybe next year!