So Many Pictures

     Summer has come and gone and I have not done a blog post. I was kind of hoping that nobody would notice.   It has been a fun and BUSY summer or at least it felt that way.

     I have enjoyed having Riley home during the day more. We got a chance to spend more time together and it is nice to have my big helper around. This summer, the Ames Police Department did an event, pretty often, called donuts in the park. It was fun to take the kids to go talk to the police officers, eat a donut and play for a while. It was always in a different location each time but with the same officers running it. My kids loved it! Sorry, no pictures, we were too busy having fun. The PD provided donuts, wipes(very thoughtful), chalk, bubbles and had a police car with the lights turned on.

    Keenan and Jon spent a very rough 9 days destroying then completely re-doing the bathroom in our house! The kids and I went to stay with Grandma for the week in Marion. I think I had the better end of the deal. We had a great time visiting! The kids got to swim, when the water was warm enough, it was a strangely cool week. We had a picnic at Palisade's State Park then they played on the beach for a bit. Movie nights at Grandmas are extra special too! When I came back, the bathroom was finished and beautiful, almost if by magic.  The rest of the house was trashed though and took some time to clean up. Oh well, too much project for too little time. Thank you to Jon and Sheryl for all of your help. I love it and I think I am over the shock of feeling like I am walking into someone elses house when I walk into the bathroom.

    




My garden has been doing well this year. I planted pole beans, cucumbers, slicing tomatoes, orange cherry tomatoes, little eggplants and cherry peppers. I also planted some kale but the zinnias that Riley planted went crazy and are almost as tall as me. They are beautiful, she is so proud! She received the seeds as a part of her birthday gift from both Mom and Diane.  All of the kids like to help but Riley is the biggest help with picking. The state says she has to go back to school so I am short of help now.

    I have also had a number of Dr. appointments for both Riley and August this summer. Riley came back positive for a blood test for celiac disease at her 6 year well check and we were referred to a Dr. in Des Moines for an endoscopy and further education.  August's eczema has been really bad this year so I have been bouncing around to appointments to discuss it and then to the store to buy all of the creams and unscented soap.

     Meet Fuzzy, the bear.  Riley received him as a gift when we went for her endoscopy in July. She has been in love with him ever since. She did really well and the nurses loved her because she was so friendly, chatty and happy. They are more accustomed to kids freaking out as soon as the parent leaves them in a strange environment. She was happy to leave me, especially when she was getting pulled away in a wagon while getting to play a spelling game on a tablet!  After speaking to our doctor right after the procedure was over(really fast by the way) she seemed uncertain. I had to wait until our follow up appointment at the end of July to find out more. 

    Our appointment arrived and sure enough the doctor confirmed the suspicion. The tissue samples were, without a question, celiac when viewed under a microscope. The villi lining the small intestine were very blunted. I supposed I should circle back to why she had a blood test in the first place. Riley is very short when compared to a group of her peers and she had dropped off of her own growth curve for height.  She can catch up because they also did an x ray to look at the growth plates in her leg and she has the bone structure of a 5 year old.  A person with celiac can eat a very healthy diet but as long as they are eating any foods that contain wheat, rye, barley or oats (unless certified gluten free) they can be malnourished. Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder where a persons own immune system attacks the small intestine after consuming gluten and damages the villi inhibiting nutrient absorption.  There is no cure and someone does not outgrow it but it can be managed with a gluten free diet.

     I was sent home and told to follow a strict gluten free diet.  I want to have a safe zone for Riley and cross contamination is a big issue so I have cleaned up our kitchen and removed most of the products containing gluten. I have stopped baking things with gluten and just buy some bread for myself and clean up well after getting it out. All of our main meals are completely gluten free. This is what I am comfortable with at this time. There is a wide enough variety of food that is naturally gluten free so I am in the transition of retaining my reflexes when it comes to cooking, coming up with a new set of favorites and modifying others if I can.

   I am currently working with an allergist on improving August's skin. I am trying to figure out which products make it worse, sadly just a lot of trial and error as there are a lot of moving parts. He is also going to have a few more allergy panels done to see if there are any other issues that may be causing his skin to overreact. He is going to tested for other obvious allergens(wheat, soy, etc) and for environmental allergens. The doctor said that most people never find out what is causing the eczema.  It doesn't make me feel very positive but at least I am trying and I have been seeing some improvement with our current routine.

1st Grade
Riley had her first day of 1st grade on Thursday! She came home excited and in a great mood!

Other Silliness - a few of the things that we have been up to
    Keenan made a mock up of our house for a chart for paying off the house and printed some for Riley to color. She had a lot of fun coloring it and took great care doing so.

   

Riley is making a cupcake shop out blocks and displaying them in a pretend case. She also had prices and let me buy one.




She made a map in the picture below, I love it!

 The above picture says, Mom I love snuggling with you

This drawing Riley made of our house looks like a castle.




Beauty And The Beast Play

  


Riley received tickets to go to the play from the Munsons for her birthday. Before the play we went to Chick-Fil-A together. She loved it! The actors were really fun and did a great job. She got to go up and meet them when it was over. She wore her Belle costume also, just a little extra fun!

Keenan's Birthday was June 19th

Silliness Continued...

Make the fun
Be the fun

Just some dress up fun!

Nora had a great time painting!

 Riley was busy at making her art creations on the back deck. I was noticing a trend in most of her portraits being goofy! I guess that is where we are right now and that is fine with me.

 Riley's Art Store
 This is a funny one. One day Riley said she wanted an art store so I said okay and set out a bunch of materials and she worked on this ALL day. She painted and colored and glued.  Then...she wanted to sell her art and was really mad when I told her that we were not going to set up a stand like a lemonade stand to sell her art. She later set it all out in the driveway while I was harvesting things from the garden and she started hollering, "art for sale" at the top of her lungs. This didn't go on very long but it was really funny. I couldn't help but laugh. She followed me back in when I was done picking vegetables.

August is helping make dinner by crunching up tortilla chips to put on chicken

This is how a 1 year old picks up cereal, by eating most of it

It was dark in the room so instead of turning on the light to eat her yogurt she used a headlamp

                         Until the next peek into the Gehman house. Bye!

The Last Day Of Kindergarten

Riley's Last Day As A Kindergartner: May 31, 2018

She is really excited for Summer break but says that she will miss her teacher. I got a few pictures of her in the garden this morning.  She has really grown and learned a lot this year. She is a great friend and big sister. She loves to read, cook and make art out of anything she can find. We love this girl!

This is Riley on her first day of Kindergarten

Tea party

Riley had been asking to have a tea party for a while so we put one together quickly for a nice lunch. Riley set the table with plates, cups, and a tablecloth.  I made some pink lemonade and put it in a little tea pot for them to have fun pouring out for themselves. I used a three tiered tray that I had and put simple sandwiches cut into triangles on the bottom, the middle had sliced veggies and fruit, and the top had some mini muffins that I had in the freezer. This was really very easy and the kids had a lot of fun eating lunch, I think we will do this again!  I felt bad for Keenan who was the one out cleaning and sanding the deck to get it ready to stain, the new portion looks really nice by the way.  He had a sandwich too.

Stone Soup 

This activity is both really cute and really gross. My kids like to re-enact the story from stone soup by collecting things from the backyard and putting them into the water table and stirring it all up with sticks. It is a really great story and they play really well together but the concoction is pretty yucky looking. 

Riley's Creations
There is no doubt about it. Riley is a maker of things! She loves to create houses for her toys, jewelry, drawings, paintings, etc.  These are some of her latest. She made a purse out of paper, tape and a ribbon for the handle. She also has some art related to getting to watch some chickens hatch at school. She has been making so many drawings of her swimming in Grandma and Papa's pool.  I think I know what is on her mind. SUMMER!!

I had lunch with Riley at school while my Mom was visiting. She was over the moon about it and made this card for me.

 

This is the purse she made

May 2018

Spring is Finally Here!!
    
   These daffodils started blooming right after Riley's party. They were so late this year. Now we have irises blooming and the alliums and peonies are almost ready.  I have the vegetable garden all planted and the green beans, peas and cucumbers are already a few inches tall! I bought hot peppers, tomatoes and eggplant as starts and they are growing well. I am excited for the basil to grow so I can put it on everything.

   Riley got some seed packets for her birthday and planted those in the front of the house. They have also sprouted and she is really excited. She did all the digging and planting herself this year. After she was done she complained that her legs hurt and said it was really hard work. 

The Popsicle dress that Nora is wearing is the first dress that I ever made for Riley and it took me so long that she only wore it once or twice. It feels nice to know that I have improved enough to make a few things really quickly now. 

Making Oatmeal Cookies

     Nora always pulls up a chair to when it is time to make something. She has been making some really fun faces for the camera lately! She wanted to get down because the stirring was all done, guess she had enough. The pictures were from making oatmeal cookies a few weeks ago.

I like to get the kids in the kitchen whenever I can. It always amounts to a lot more cleaning but they really enjoy it. This week we were making some mini blueberry muffins to pack in Riley's lunches and I was so tired that when Nora went to pull up a chair I almost told her no. Then I thought about it and if she were Riley at the same age I would not have said no. I changed my attitude and let her help. She had a lot of fun dumping the flour into the bowl and stirring it up. She likes to get her hands in everything. August has been practicing cracking eggs and has gotten really good at pouring. He didn't spill any of the milk or oil! He looked so proud.

Riley is officially 6! May 3, 2018

     I always put of streamers around her door to walk out through in the morning.  She got special funfetti pancakes with frosting drizzle for breakfast. She was also excited to take a special snack to school, mini muffins. It was a weekday so we didn't do anything too crazy we just spent extra time together so I had the whole dinner prepped while she was at school. She wanted macaroni, carrots and grapes for dinner then we went to Culvers for some custard for dessert.

 Riley got to open her presents after dinner. This year she received a puzzle with underwater scene and some plants and planter to make her own garden. She carefully planted them then has been putting special rocks and seashells in it. She is a nurturer and has loved taking care of it.


Riley's art

 Her birthday cake and a chick hatching out of an egg. They had some baby chicks at school recently.

The daffodils in front of our house

They are crazy sometimes. I can't seem to take many pictures of August were he is not roaring. Is roar a language?  He thought his potato head was funny and asked me to take his picture!

Not playing hide and seek. It is just fun to shut yourself in the cupboard. She also likes to go into my closet and shut the door.

more roaring

August Health Update

     On Friday, May 11, I noticed that August's breathing seemed strained and he was just sitting on the couch. That is unusual for our kids. They can have a really high fever and just keep playing on the floor like nothing is wrong, a little more grumpy though. I called the pediatrician and got a 10:15 appointment.  I cancelled another appointment that I had and was planning to re-schedule for later in the day. 
     Once we got in the appointment and they listened to his breathing and checked his oxygen levels they were immediately concerned. They then proceeded to do an albuteral treatment. This didn't open his airways up or help his oxygen levels much so they admitted him and wheeled us upstairs immediately. I guess I was shocked, I thought that once again I was exaggerating this in my mind and we would be in and out and on our way. 
     Now on the pediatric floor of the hospital we were greeted with more wonderful people. They listened to his lungs and again described his lungs as being really tight. The airways in his lungs were reacting to something and were closed up. This was making his breathing very fast and strained. His heartbeat was fast and his chest sank in as he tried to get air. One person got him started on another breathing treatment and asked questions. Another helped me by getting some diapers for Nora as I came unprepared to be admitted.  Riley was at school and would need to be picked up but I wasn't leaving August so Keenan was staying in close proximity to his phone. After 2 more 10 minute albuteral treatments, a dose of oral steroids and an x-ray to rule out infection he hadn't improved much. They then said that he was a more serious case and they were going to start him on a 4 hour treatment. 4 hours with a mask on is a long time for anyone much less a 3 year old but whatever it takes. We ordered some lunch first and I tried to get Nora to nap but I ended up putting her in the crib bed with toys so I could focus on August. August enjoyed the novelty of eating in bed and watching tv then fell asleep on me.  Keenan picked up Nora and went to get Riley and came back shortly after his long treatment was over. He had improved some but they still said his lungs were really tight and he was going to have to stay overnight to have more little treatments throughout the night. Keenan stayed overnight with him and I took the girls home for a movie night and some popcorn for dinner, Nora had cereal. I was worn out and a little concerned about August.   
    The next day his airways were opened up and he was doing much better. He got to come home before noon. They don't know what caused this but prescribed some things to help keep his airways from getting too irritated. 
   I met with his regular pediatrician on Monday and we made a maintenance plan to keep him from getting too bad. They concluded that he has seasonal allergies and asthma. She said that this is common in patients with his history of a peanut allergy and eczema. I like knowing what to look out for and that I can do something to help and when to just bring him in immediately. She said that I won't want to wait to long to bring him in if his breathing is bad and that my threshold should be lower now. If he is struggling just bring him in right away.
   He had been looking really bad for about a month but he had been sick and I just thought he was getting sick again. I guess the circles around his eyes and the increased scratching was from the seasonal allergies and not the eczema. I guess I know now. He looks so much better now and his skin is starting to heal! It is nice to see him feeling better, he seemed really tired before.