Happy Birthday, Daniel!

We had a great day celebrating Daniel’s 4th birthday today. Uncle Adrian's sister Tash and her family were here too (all the way from England), and it was wonderful to see them. Everyone had fun in the pool!

Daniel's cake was actually a set of cupcakes frosted to look like a (Dora the Explorer) cake -- a cool idea! All the kids got a turn blowing out the candles. (James was especially excited about that, and Mattie was delighted with his cupcake!)

After the cake we had a pinata, which was one of the high points for Daniel -- he's been talking about it for days, and even afterwards, asked everyone over and over again, "Did you like what came out of my pinata?" The pinata had ribbons to pull to break it (the kids took a turn pulling a ribbon until one opened the bottom of the pinata -- appropriately, Daniel was the one to pick the magic ribbon). This seemed like a much better idea than letting them swing at it with a stick! There was plenty of candy for all the kids. (James enjoyed collecting it, even though he didn't want to eat any!)

The girls were great playing with the boys -- Izzy, Daniel's older cousin (age 8), was especially sweet with them. She spent quite a while drawing pictures with Mattie (which is to say she drew nice pictures, and Mattie added a lot of orange scribbles), and then she read him some stories.

The girls also adored the dogs -- when it came time for them to leave, the dogs got the most enthusiastic goodbyes! :)

Daniel was so nice – he let James and Matthew help him open his presents. (James loves opening presents!)

Airborne

High flyers at the pool today!

Splashdown

The fun continues at Grandma and Grandpa's house: the boys have enjoyed playing (and knocking down) the marble run, spent a long time this afternoon playing "sack of potatoes" (where Auntie Nora picks one of them up like a sack of potatoes and the others run around like crazy), and of course, they love being airborne in the pool (James most of all).  Daniel jumped into the pool on "two" instead of "three" and Adrian commented on it, and after that Mattie gleefully insisted on "jumping on two!" over and over again. :)  

Swimming

The boys had a great time in the pool.  Matthew liked his floatie, and James loved "swimming" by himself with his life jacket on, and was fearless about jumping off the steps into the deeper water, and off the side to have Mike catch him. 

Yo, Adrian

The boys are still crazy about Uncle Adrian -- he can't even get any peace, because they'll run around the house looking for him!

Arrived

It was a long day in the car, but we arrived safe and sound at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  (Daniel is here too, but was already in bed when we arrived -- he started his day in England!) 

Underdose

James had a peds GI appointment the other day, and they adjusted the dose of his medicine that's supposed to be an appetite enhancer. Well, there must have been some miscommunication somewhere earlier (I think probably when the prescription was renewed by our peds office instead of the GI office), so it turned out James was getting only 1/5th of the dose that they're now recommending! (No wonder we didn't see much of an effect!)

Preschool Beach Day

Here are some photos that one of the other moms took at the preschool Beach Day a couple months ago -- there are some nice ones of Mattie!

(Mattie saw these pictures up on the computer, and asked what they were -- when I told him, he said, "I had an orange popsicle."  I guess that made a big impression on him!)

Band on the Run

Jamesie was having fun running Daddy around in circles!

Nice Brother

James did not want to go to his doctor's appointments yesterday morning. (I don't blame him -- it seems like we've just had appointment after appointment recently.)  He was unhappy and protested getting dressed. (He was fine once the car started moving, but getting him there was a difficult process!)

 Mattie was so sweet trying to cheer James up. "You'll probably get a sticker, James!" And then he brought James a stuffed animal (the bear that has a g-tube like James's): "Here's your special teddy bear, James!" And when Jamesie didn't want to wear any of the shirts I suggested, Mattie offered, "You can wear my orange Gator shirt, James!" (Alas, none of it worked, but it was nice of Mattie to try!)

On the Charts!!

We had a pediatric surgery visit today, and James is now on the growth charts (between 3rd and 5th percentile).  He was 26.8 lbs. Woo-hoo!!  I think they said his BMI (body mass index) is 15-20th percentile.  

Their goal was for him to be gaining 10-20 grams a day, and he's averaging about 11/day since his last visit, so he's at the bottom of that range, but they're still happy with it.  Nice to have some good news!

We hadn't planned on this appointment, but James's feeding tube had come detached from his button (the part that's in his body) three times this past week overnight -- what this means is that the formula that's supposed to be going into his tummy goes onto the crib instead, which makes a huge mess, not to mention wasting the formula.  It's a big pain (for us -- he either sleeps through it or wakes up cranky because his crib is all wet), and it normally happens very rarely. So we figured that maybe something was wrong with the button itself, and we went in to have them replace it (which is very simple -- takes less than a minute to swap it out).  Hopefully that will do the trick.  

We also had a feeding therapy session today, and he ate about six ounces and then threw up again, just like last time.  So she now thinks he maybe just can't handle large volumes of food, but there are some medicines they use that can help improve that.  We're seeing peds GI next week, so maybe we'll get some more info or recommendations then.    

So, the weight gain is still a work in progress, but it's awesome that he's now at least on the charts for his age -- hopefully he can stay there!

Rocking Gator

 (Mattie is wearing long pants because the mosquitos have finally arrived -- ugh.)