update...

Stella feels on top of the world today considering I accidentally left her to roam in the house while I walked the kids over to my in-law's house. You know what this means, right? It means she made a bee line for Isaac's room and was all like, "Score! Dirty diapers in the trashcan! Let me carry them one by one to the living-room and shred them all over the place and then eat as much as possible!" Wow, she's a smart one.

I finally took the plunge and dyed my hair blonde. Don't worry, I didn't do it on my own, but that would probably make for interesting blog post. Anyway, my new hair color didn't go over very well with my children. Isabella saw me and said, "Ew". And then Isaac saw me and started crying and scooting away from me (hmmm, maybe that's what I need to do, disguise my appearance so that Isaac's doesn't need to cling to my hip) and then when I picked him up he started crying even more and reached for Sarah to hold him instead. It took a few minutes of convincing, but he finally accepted the fact that I was who I claimed to be. Then, Isabella started crying in the car because she didn't like my hair and wanted it to be curly again, because her "mommy is supposed to have curly hair." I assured her that I could wash it and make it curly again, which seemed to make her happier, but after we got home she told me she was really glad that I was really her mommy because she thought I was going to take her to the wrong house! Walter says he likes it, but wouldn't want it this way forever. Hmmmm...

A quick run down about Isaac: he loves tube feeding. He even hands the port to me when I'm ready to hook him up. I'm pretty sure he would be quite content with this feeding system for a very long time. Walter and I joke about how we have to take his pants off for him to eat and also the fact that he likes to eat anything now, from prune juice to breast milk, he'll get whatever he can take. Because I'm working with Andrew Jordan more often, the tube feeding relieves the stress of Walter having to force feed Isaac and I'm also not worrying about whether or not Isaac is being fed while I'm gone all day at a wedding.

Because we do want Isaac to eventually enjoy eating by mouth, we've started working with a new feeding clinic. Their approach is quite different than the other feeding clinic, so for now, we're working on getting Isaac comfortable with just touching food, and then later we can work on bringing food to his mouth. At the moment, we're trying to remove the "scare" factor out of eating. I think it will take a while, but I'm sure that one day, he will eat, and we won't have to take his pants off for him to do so.

Last week we went to a new endocrinologist. I wasn't too crazy about the last guy whose main form of getting Isaac's attention was to snap his fingers in front of Isaac's face. He may be small, but he's not dumb. Anyway, during his next surgery, in December, we're going to re-test his growth hormones to see if he actually has a growth hormone deficiency because apparently, the test may have been skewed since he was so underweight for the first test. And Grandma H., you'll be happy to know that we're finally going to get a scan of that pituitary gland. After I wait on hold for ten days and see ten more doctors, then we'll get the MRI done. Speaking of that, you'd think scheduling a sleep study with Rainbow Babies was like scheduling an appointment with the President. The sleep doctor is heavily guarded by several secretaries and they are all annoying me and seem to have a personal vendetta against me. If only I could reach through the phone and strangle someone, I mean, schedule our own appointment.

Moving on...

This is a nest, and they are both birds...

First of all, I can't take a good "swing" picture to save my life, but I'm pretty happy with this attempt. Secondly, miss matched socks are cool. So if you want to be cool, don't wear matching socks.

I walked into the living-room to find Isaac sitting on top of the toy bin. Apparently he's better at climbing than we thought!

A few pictures left over from vacation...