I need to catch up!!

The last couple of months have somehow slipped away from me, so I will play a little catch up. Today I will start with Gabriel. Gabe is, as always, doing just fine. His good old report card came and was just as I expected. Straight 4's in anything math (which is an A now days), and 4's and a couple of 3's on the rest. His 3's are on handwriting and fluency. Can we say "boy". He is such a smart kid but could care less about his handwriting. So needless to say he makes me proud every day. No matter how hard I try to stop it, however, he just keeps getting older. Starting to talk about girls, and tell me swear words that he has heard at school. Yikes!

Not only is he such a good kid but I have recently found out he is tough too. A couple of weeks ago he had four teeth pulled by his dentist. 3 of which were NOT loose. He had to have 8 injections to numb his mouth enough so the dentist could do the work and he did all of this by him self, since I was not aloud in the room due to the nitrous. The dentist said he only flinched at one injection and after that he just watched his movie and let them yank at his teeth! HOLY COW!! Lets not forget that he is only 6. So he has now lost 13 teeth in a matter of about a year. (Needless to say he has a sweet smile right now.) But I will take every chance I can get to see his goofy smile!

Please excuse the old picture I have not yet figured out how to get my pictures off of my new camera.

!!WARNING!! This post is about poop.

So Cole has a poop problem. There is no nice way to say it so I will just get to the point. HE REFUSES TO POOP. Cole has had a sensitive stomach since birth, just days after he was born I started finding blood in his dirty diapers. We immediately took him in to his Dr. and were told to put him on a hypo-allergenic formula so his body didn't have to work as hard to digest his food. Well, lets just say the past year and a half since he has been off of formula has been a roller-coaster to say the least. We have fought with his diet on a daily basis to try and figure out what his stomach can handle. He has been on fat free diets (really fun for a one year old who wants to eat everything), he has been on high fiber diets (Benifiber, fiber bars, etc.). Well, needless to say nothing has worked so far. The problem is the poor kid poops about once a week and its pretty much something a full grown man shouldn't have coming out of his body. Well, this causes him so much pain that he now refuses to push his poop out, holding it for days and days.

So he was in so much pain last Saturday he literally wouldn't even walk, so off to the emergency room we went. Four hours and a huge mess later the Dr. was able to make him go with a "milk and molasses enema". (A torture you never want to see happen to anyone.) So we have now turned into horrible parents who tell our child "if you don't poop you will have to go back to the Dr." to try and convince our poor child to let it out. He has now been put on a daily laxative. The theory there being that maybe there isn't a problem with his diet, but maybe an actual problem with the amount of water his colon produces to naturally soften his stool. So here we go again! Another step (hopefully forward) in our journey to give our son a "regular" life.

The bad with the good!

The bad...

Ok, so I promise I will not bore you all with every little detail of this pregnancy. I am sure nobody cares to hear about every little pain, issue, or kick that me and the baby go through. However I had my first Dr. appointment last week and I just can't get over the torture they put us poor women through. I started off by lying and telling my Dr. that I have had an "exam" with-in the last year. Well, she totally called me on it and looked up my chart. Only I didn't think I was lying, I SWEAR I was there in July and had my yearly check-up. Well, she could tell that I was there in July but there was no record of an exam, so lets go ahead and do it again. So after the fun of being poked and prodded by my Dr. lets go ahead and drain your blood so we can check for every possible illness or issue there. But wait... before we let you go lets go ahead and inject you with a bit of swine flu so you don't really get it while you are pregnant and I know you want to go home with a dead arm.

The good...

On the up side she did do a little ultrasound so we got to leave with the memory of seeing the little blob on the screen and a little fluttering heart beat! This pregnancy has been different for me, I just haven't really wrapped my head around the thought that we are going to have another little baby around here. But seeing the heartbeat was kind of a kick in the butt for me. This is really happening.......holy smokes.......four kids......I'm like a grown up!

You did this to me.

I am hoping by now that the word has got around enough for me to make a post on my blog. Kwinton and I found out just after Christmas that we are expecting our fourth (and last) child. I didn't want anyone to have to find out via the internet so I hope the word has somehow spread. Anyhow, I will now present you all with our story (well, anyone who cares to read it that is).

I was actually pretty happy with our three lovely kids and things were great. Until that fateful day which always comes and Kwinton asks when we are going to have another one. It took me some time and some convincing and I agreed. After about 7 months and no luck I was the one doing the convincing. "Lets just wait......I think I am good with 3 kids.........lets plan a vacation" Well, it worked, Kwinton agreed to put off number four until I was a bit more ready. But what we always learn from these situations is that the decision is ultimately not ours to decide. Just as we began the process of prevention, alas, it was too late. So here we are 9 weeks of a baby in my tummy and feeling like blah. Hopefully the icky will pass quickly. But we couldn't be happier that we have been so lucky to have been given all of our children and now one more to COMPLETE the family. However as I move through these days of nausea and tiredness I reserve the right to say "You did this to me" whenever I want!

Christmas is Here!

I am just getting around plugging in my camera and pulling off the pictures from the Holidays so these are a little behind. Please forgive me for my next few post being out of order and weeks late. Christmas was a whole lot of crazy around here. We all had so much fun at all of the family parties and events. The kids made a good haul this year getting lots of fun toys and games. I guess Santa must have thought they were pretty darn good this year. Gabe came out with a Nintendo DSI, a scooter, and a few other little things. Cali also got a scooter and A TON of little horses and a stable, along with some other animals and games. Cole got some fun action figures, but his favorite for sure is the Elmo restaurant. I am so blessed to have such a sweet husband and kids that I get to enjoy the holidays with.

So excited for the book Cali got him!

Yeah, Christmas Rocks.

Cali was the slowest opener, I guess she is just

trying to enjoy the moment.

Cole got the hang of it pretty quick!

Basketball Star

Gabe just started playing Jr. Jazz this year and he is doing great. He is not the tallest kid on the team (nor will he ever be) but he tries harder than anyone out there. He gets so excited when he is out there playing he literally cant wipe the goofy grin off his face. He scored his first basket in his third game. Pretty good if you ask me, considering he has never played basketball before this. Here are some pictures of his action!

Good defense.

Team huddle, he's number 5.

Doing drills. (I don't know what the kid in

the middle is doing.)

Taking a break!

Update on life

I realize I haven't posted anything new and exciting for the past month. I really need to plug in my camera and get some blogging material off of there. But for now a short little update will do. The end of November was full of sick kids and yummy food. All three kids went through some sort of awful bug, Gabe, of course getting it the worst and missing a full week of school due to an asthma flair up. They were all feeling better just in time for Thanksgiving. We are always lucky enough to spend holidays with both mine and Kwintons families since our parents live on the same street. So we had double the yummy food and lots of fun. Here we are with December in full swing. I am almost ready for Christmas, just a few more things to pick up! The kids are growing more excited everyday as the holiday gets closer. Although if Cole has to see that scary Santa Clause one more time he might just hurt the old man. The thought of Santa coming into our house at night and leaving presents has got him scared as well. Such a funny kid!