Tired and busy

I forgot how exhausting it can be having a newborn in the house. Brewer is 11 weeks old today and I think I'm finally starting to crash. But there is no 'sleep while the baby sleeps' when there are 3 kids in the house! But I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Mike gets home from work, helps with dinner, cleans the kitchen while I feed Brewer and then puts Connor and Harris to bed. In between all of that we squeeze in a family walk or game or storytime. So, he is exhausted also! But before we know it Brewer will be bigger and not need to eat as frequently and we will settle into our 'new normal.' In the meantime, the house will be a mess but who cares at this point!

This means we won't be updating the blog as frequently...not that we were getting around to it much anyway. But I will still post pictures. I just started a photography course and each week we have a homework assingment. So, you will get to see the kids growing through the homework. Probably not a whole lot of words to go along with them for a little bit. Here are the most recent pics of these beauties!

Birthday Boy!

Harris turned ONE at the begining of August! Of course, he loved cake. Not much that boy doesn't eat!

Baby Romeo is here!

Baby Romeo has arrived! Brewer Alexander joined us on 7/30 weighing 7lbs 5oz and 19.5 inches long. He was our longest cooked baby at 38 wks and also our shortest baby! Already he fits in well...napping on the couch with Daddy.

How about this face! The first time Connor heard Brewer cry he said 'he squeaks.' And so now Connor calls him Little Squeaker! Connor is also working on teaching Brewer how to rub noses!

Leaving the hospital!

Biggest one, littlest one!

G6pD update

In April, Connor got croup - bad. Poor guy swallowed a dime one day and the next day had croup. But he recovered very nicely. And what a sweetheart he was by trying hard to stay away from Harris in hopes that he didn't get sick. Well, keeping their germs separate is just impossible no matter how hard we try (these boys can't get enough of each other!)

Harris started feeling sick in the morning and by the end of the day his fever was 104.3! We managed to get things under control but after a few days of being sick, he stopped eating, got cranky, and started to look pale. A trip to the children's hospital for blood work showed that his hemoglobin had dropped to 6.2 - very low even for Harris who mostly stays between 8.7 and 9.7 The drop was triggered by the infection and fever. So our little vampire got a blood transfusion.

We were lucky enough to be able to have the procedure be outpatient but that meant that we were in a room with recliners full of other children receiving transfusions or chemotherapy. Harris needed to sleep so a nice nurse found us a room off to the side and Mike managed to get Harris to sleep through most of the transfusion which took about 2.5 hours. (100CCs of O).

Harris had blood work several times over the next few weeks and his levels climbed and have remained strong. Last test he was at 9.7. He had a check-up with the hematologist recently and while his spleen is enlarged, it is within the limits that are healthy for a G6pD patient.

We are so blessed to have a baby with G6pD and realize this every time we visit the children's hospital. On one trip we met a sweet 2 year old with cancer who could name all of her doctors. I can't imagine the emotions those parents must have.

So, HarBar is doing fabulously well. He is army crawling his way around the house and is slowly starting to climb (uh oh!). I'm pretty sure he hasn't turned down any food yet - seems to like everything! And we are learning how to survive in a legume-free home. Well, I guess I'm learning to survive. No one else seems to be an addict quite like me!