I need to write a post tonight about everything that’s happened this last week.  Tomorrow I have to post about Drew’s 12-mo appt.  So here goes:  my baby is 1 years old.  That makes me so incredibly sad.  I know it’s impossible, but I’d like to freeze time right now because he is so dreamy and adorable.  Everything about him is perfect, not saying that it won’t continue to be perfect, but I just love everything about him.  He is such a joy and a little cuddle-bug.  We had his birthday party on Saturday and I lost it when it came time for cake.  Then I cried the rest of the night.  He’s not a baby anymore, but he’s always going to be my baby.

Paige started hitting.  She’s not throwing punches, but she’s definitely testing the waters with her smacking.  Uughh.

Cole had a few more appts this past week to decide on this nagging tube issue.  We saw a very nice endocrinologist who said she didn’t believe that Cole had a hormone problem but there was a super slight chance because his torso is longer than his legs.  Personally, I think Eric has that problem too so it may be genetic.  But they ran some bloodwork on Cole just to rule it out.  We also went back to GI yesterday.  I would like to stop seeing GI.  I’ve been dissatisfied with them for a long time now and this last appt just pushed me over the top.  The NP saw in the chart that we had seen pulm and endocrin recently and they wanted to know why.  I told them our peed was coordinating whether or not to tube Cole and he wanted us to see these other docs.  She seemed sastified with that and then told me that she reviewed Cole’s growth the last two months and he is growing on his own growth curve.  His growth is “not too bad”.  I said “so Cole doesn’t need the tube?” and the answer was “well, that’s for you and your husband to decide”.  Huh?  Is it freaking medically necessary or not?  Why would we voluntarily give Cole an invasive surgery with possible chance of infection for the fun of it?  Don’t even get me started on this new vagueness about whether or not GI thinks he needs the tube.  Apparently he has been gaining weight at 6g/day and the goal for him is 7-10g/day.  So yeah, that doesn’t seem too shabby.  Then I asked a simple question about recovery time for the surgery and whether or not Cole would be able to go swimming with the tube or if there was a time period in which he would not be able to get wet and she told me to go the main hospital’s library to pick up a booklet to answer my questions.  Thanks lady.  I feel like she could have answered my question and also told me about the booklet in case I had further questions…but apparently they are busy people.  We have no follow-up scheduled with GI.  Our next step is to talk this over with our peed who is a great guy and make a decision.  I know what he’s going to say because he was against the tube from the start and based on GI’s new assessment…I don’t think we’ll be tubing after all. 

Other news:  my girl J is coming back to us this summer.  I couldn’t be more ecstatic.  We love her.  She’s going to do roughly 20 hours a week in the afternoons.  This is so ideal because summer in AZ is miserable.  You can’t go outside and that makes for very long days.  It’s also hard to drive anywhere because loading and unloading in the car can get pretty hectic when you’re leaving kids in the car with the engine running while leaving other kids in the sun while you’re locking others into their seats.  Anyways, my girl J will be with us for 10 glorious weeks.  We have three goals this summer:  1.  Get Mommy in shape.  I plan on taking advantage of her 1 hour a day so I can work out at the gym.  2.  Get the kids potty-trained so they can go to preschool in the fall.  3.  Have fun fun fun and belly laugh til we cry at least once a day.  Yippee!!

We started the local library storytime program this last week.  It was awesome.  The program was called the 1’s and 2’s so all three kids could be in the same class.  I think the minute we walked inside, Drew went in the front of the class right in the middle of the circle and never looked back at me the whole class.  Cole also was very outgoing and interested in the teacher’s materials and Paige spent the whole class looking over my shoulder.  This program was just as good as Kindermusik and it is FREE.  And all three kids can be there, where Kindermusik wouldn’t let Drew into P and C’s class.

We also are taking a free class at My Gym on Thursday.  We went on Monday to check it out and it looks pretty fantastic.  They were cleaning like crazy and the gym looked very kid friendly.  Not to mention the staff seemed very nice.  So the best news is that all three kids can be in the same class and this particular class is a sibling class so there is no adult to kid ratio.  We’ll see how it goes, but it looks very appealing.  We get two hours a week of fun.  It is kind of pricey, but I think it’s worth it to get out of the heat and be able to run around for a couple hours.

Well, that’s it.  I’ll update on our peed appt for Drew tomorrow as well as what our peed says about Cole.