October

October!  My favorite month.  Just kidding.  I don't think I have a favorite month anymore.  It's my birthday month and I'm partial toward it but I'm not sure I have a favorite.  Anyways....  My mom and sister flew out from Boston to come and cook for me and clean my house and see baby sister!  It's funny because I would consider myself a 'go go go' type of person who is really focused but not while entertaining.  Ironically my mom and sister are exactly like me in this reguard (must have a plan and execute) but I don't like doing that when they are visiting.  I'd rather sit and chat and just enjoy them. They both are begging for more stuff to do.  It's pretty funny.  By the end we had a good rhythm going and then of course....they left. *sigh*

Lib's youngest came too as it was right before his 2nd birthday.  He's so cute!

Libby and my mom hand made a large baby quilt and a doll sized one for Lily.  Here is the doll sized one on sister.

Anytime my birthday falls on a Sunday, it's also general conference.  As I kid I loved it because I didn't have to get ready for church, but I now love it because I get to be spiritually fed by my church leaders... and I still don't have to get ready for church. heh.  Our family was still gluten and dairy free so we made a pumpkin spice roll with coconut creme filling that was divine.

Lily (and the other kids too) have taken to stealing my phone and loading it up with photos.  Most of them are blurry or 90 pictures of the same object.  Occasionally, though, I'll get a few cute and funny ones.  The latest ones are comprised mostly of baby sister.  This is a cute selfie that I hope they recreate in 15 years.

Here are the boys recreating civil war scenes with lincoln logs and union and confederate figurines.  Alex is just telling Elliott what to do and say (what's new...).  I do love seeing them being creative, and in this case, trying to be historically accurate.

I guess we should note that baby sister is one month old.  Everyone wants to pose with this girl.  She is so loved.

Sister was blessed on October 14th at our Sachse Ward.  We have a recording of her blessing, which I need to transcribe.  I can't remember the details now (as it's April...).  Our Father in Heaven has always given our children lovely blessings and attributes that will help them on their mortal journey. Claire's was no different.

It was also nice that Claire got to wear the dress that I made for Lily, all those years ago.  I'm glad I did it, because I don't have the time now like I did then.

The booties are so precious!

 She is too!

I wanted to get a picture of her with the dress spread out, but she wasn't very happy that I set her down.  This is the only non-screaming photo.

This is Lily stealing my phone again.

I don't know what gets me about this photo but I love it.  Maybe the tiny smile, the lanky body, or the tuft of hair on top.  Who knows.  She's just so cute.

Alex loves holding baby sister.  Honestly he's really good at it.  Alex has also taken to browsing google earth. I love how curious Alex is about the world.  It's sparked many interesting conversations.

Lily paparazzi moment.  Here I was making hamburgers and chatting with Alex through the window.

Lily loving on baby.  She's such a good big sister.  Always snuggling and chatting with her.  It's so tender.

You can almost see Lily's lips saying 'oooo baby'

Look at those squishy, must-be-kissed cheeks!

Here's Luke doing what he does best: find rocks.  I know it's a stim, but I'm not sure what type of stim it is.  Then again, why does any kid stim.  Moving on.  Lots has happened concerning Luke.  Adam and I met with the MAPS Doctor, Dr. Amber Brooks, to discuss treatment for Luke.  This was a big deal because we had to pay for her services up front.  I felt like I was guided/inspired to find her and her practice.  I had good feelings from the start that this was the place we needed to be to get answers for Luke and what was going on in his body.  Adam was more skeptical.  We both needed to be on board before we went and paid this woman.  When we arrived at the appointment, Adam still hadn't decided but I prayed in my heart that he might have the same confirmation that I did. I even asked a group of women in my church congregation via Marco Polo app to pray for Adam and I to know if this was right, or to have the courage to walk away. After sitting down with Dr Brooks and discussing all that the next 6 months would entail (diet adherence, collecting lab samples, taking supplements and carrying out various medical protocols if needed ), she left the room so Adam and I could discuss what we wanted to do.  Adam looked at me and said that he felt, while we were there, that this was the right course of action.  I felt so much relief that we were united in our decision.  We left her office with several lab collection kits and our first bottle of supplements.

That first week collecting samples was a bear!  Trying to collect a stool sample from a kid who wears diapers sounds easy enough, except the stool cannot touch any urine.  That resulted in me changing Luke's diaper 20 or so times in a day with the hope that he would poop and not have pee in the diaper at the same time.  Now you have to do that two days in a row. LOL (bitterly)  Collecting a urine sample from the first morning pee was no cake walk either.  The icing on the cake was taking Luke to Quest Diagnostics Lab to have his blood drawn.  He had 15 vials taken over 2 days (yes we had to drive to a specific location 50 minutes away early in the morning because he had to be fasting).  I stayed strong during the visits, but I hated every moment of it. I kept telling myself that we're doing this for answers.

 Once we mailed off all the various lab samples, Luke started on his first supplements.  These were to all be taken in a small cup of orange juice.  Speak fish oil (by lifetrients), Biofizz+C powder, Intolerance complex digestive enzymes, a multivitamin after breakfast and lunch and Klaire Labs Therbiotic at night.  The fish oil always smelled awful.  Luke was a good sport and would take his cocktail without much of a fuss. After taking his supplements for 2 weeks he was saying more words again.  Hooray!

 During all this, we celebrated Luke's birthday.  It was bittersweet really.  We love every ounce of Luke and are so happy that he's three, and yet painfully aware of where we wish he was in terms of development. He got many educational, electronic toys.  Things that say numbers, letters, colors, names of objects and the like.

Luke's gluten free, dairy free cupcake with coconut cream with cinnamon frosting.  (these are not sugar free *wink wink*

Now why am I posting this random picture?  Well, it's not so random. Claire started having some of the same nursing peculiarities that Luke did: preferring one side, not a terrible latch, but not a great one either.  She frequently came off and wouldn't take any kind of pacifier.  She also had a weird stridor while nursing.  I went with my hunch to go see Michale Chatham to confirm if she was tongue tied like Luke.  Sure enough, she was.  We had the surgery toward the end of October.  The tongue muscle is actually quite large and it connects in several places in the neck and head.  It can feel like whiplash when you have the procedure done.  He she is helping claire to properly stretch and massage areas on her head and neck.  We had to go back 4 more times to make sure she was properly stretched out.  She healed beautifully.  I'm glad we could use something from Luke's experience to help her.

I saw these Harry Potter sets show up in the stores and got all nostalgic.  My kids love Legos, but they aren't into HP....yet.  I've actually been biding my time to truly dive into it with them. *sigh*

Lily excited to wear her gnome sweater dress and wanted me to do her hair (which she normally doesn't want).  I had to document it.

We can't finish this post without saying something about Halloween.  This was the most fun carving pumpkins to date.  Normally Adam and I do everything because the kids get too tired or frustrated.  The kids mostly cleaned out the pumpkins, drew their own designs AND cut them out themselves.  I played cliche Halloween songs in the background (monster mash, thriller and the like).

I really loved elliotts pumpkins teeth.

Here they are in all their pumpkin-y glory.  Elliott's in front, Alex's in the middle and Lily's in back.

This year we made our kids pick between our church's trunk or treat, or to go trick or treating on Halloween.  I was tired of having so much candy so I made them pick.  They opted for the real thing, going door to do.  I was proud of their choice.  Elliott was Captain Hook, Lily was a witch, Alex was Ulysses S. Grant from the civil war and Luke was Sully from Monsters Inc.

This little munchkin wore this darling outfit from the Kings.  It's something I always think is cute in the store, but can never justify buying since they wear it once.  I was grateful she got to have something fun like this.

I decided to be a cat.  Wear black, put on some ears and eye liner on my face.  Done.

Luke helped me hand out smarties.  

He's the cutest

As a side note: This year I told my kids they could eat as much candy as they wanted, anytime they wanted, for 3 days, and then whatever was left would be thrown away.  Not even 24 hours later (the next evening) my kids voluntarily handed over 70% of their candy as they said they didn't want it anymore.  They all felt sick. The rest of their candy disappeared the following day. It was the best outcome for this experiment.  We will be doing this every year from now on.