Olympic gold

Bad pics, bad light, but done before the torch went out!
I will go back and add the accent stuff, but they need to be washed and blocked first. My knitting is just too uneven to embroider over. But I'm super happy with them. YAY!

To make up for the bad pictures, have a good one. Pop and Fannie came to visit this weekend, and Eleri finally warmed up to Fannie enough to ignore her to get to the crayons.

floor!

There's a lot more to getting ready to put it in than there is to actually putting it in.
We had to take out carpet, remove staples, sand, screw things down, this, that, that other thing...

Link to set of pictures on flickr.

We're only partway done, but it's going to be nice!

What happens when Mom gets stressed?

She goes a little bit crazy and rips up the carpet.

:)

The rest of it makes me sad, but this makes me happy.

Pixie update

Well, she gained 2oz since the last time we were there, and I thought that was pretty good since she only gained 2oz from 12-15 months, but apparently that's not good enough.
Since she's been okay with the yogurt and cheese in her diet (a little eczema, but not bad) the doc wants us to give her a can of pediasure every day. I also have to make an appointment with a nutritionist for dietary ideas and with an ENT for a swallowing evaluation to make sure there isn't some physical problem with her taking solid food.
The bloodwork came back good. No celiac or any other disorders. She is anemic and he has ordered iron drops for that, but the stuff he ordered wasn't covered by our insurance so I called them back and am waiting to hear if he'll call in something else. $75 a month is too much for something that should be covered!
Other than that, she has an ear infection. I hesitated bringing her in today because she obviously wasn't feeling well, but now I'm glad I did since we caught that early.
I'm just getting sick and tired of all the appointments. It reminds me of when Rowan was a baby and we were here there and everywhere with him - but at least there was a reason for it. Here it just feels like we have to jump through their hoops to prove there's nothing wrong with her and she'll grow in her own good time.

The Knitting Olympics

Yes, I *am* doing them again. Last time, 4 years ago, I worked on knitting the childhood sweater from knitty for Rowan.
This year I decided that my new skill would be learning stranded colorwork. There's a pair of mittens in The Knitter's Book of Yarn that I've been drooling over for quite some time now, but I've been afraid of them. Colorwork! Scary!
After Cece yelled at me for being afraid of knitting, I decided to take them on as my olympic challenge. So I've casted on, and I've already discovered that I've known how to make welts for a really long time - I've just been calling them elastic waistbands. ;)
But I won't be having a whole run of olympic knits this year like I did last time. This year the challenge is knitting these mittens while having 3 kids, 1 husband, a dog, and installing a laminate floor. We'll see who snaps first... me or my needles.

John and his Valentine

Yes, I know. I'm the real Valentine. But sometimes Loki needs to feel the love, too.

General update

So I know I haven't been updating here. I don't really have a reason.
Most of you who look at this already know that Eleri has been diagnosed with failure to thrive. I hate even typing that out. Our ped says that it's nothing to do with her development... it's just that she hasn't gained weight over the last 6 months and her weight has plateau'd. He'd be fine with it if she was following some sort of growth curve, even if it was below the charts. But she's not following any curve. She's just not gaining weight.
So they took blood and ran some tests, and he just called to let me know that they weren't able to run all the tests that they wanted to run. They ended up not having enough blood. So we're supposed to go to the hospital tomorrow to their big lab and they'll do another draw and run the metabolic tests that they weren't able to run before - they're testing for things like Celiac disease and other malabsorption problems.
I don't know how I feel about all this. I'm tired of worrying. I'm tired of fretting. I'm just plain tired. We go in next week for another weight check, and I hope that the addition of yogurt and cheese and the fact that I'm presenting her with food at every turn has put an ounce or two on her. I don't care what her growth curve looks like. I just want her to have one.

Niall is Niall. Full of mischief and attitude and spunk. He feels that waiting for kindergarten is taking entirely too long and doesn't like the fact that all the other kids are gone to school during the day so he doesn't have anyone to play with. Next year can't come fast enough for him.

Rowan is doing well. He's still on soft foods and isn't in PE at school, but other than that he's back to his old self. He's even wearing jeans again instead of elastic waisted pants. We see Dr. T. for another follow up on March 2nd.

I sold our stroller and saved up some knitting money and got flooring. It's here now, "acclimating" to the house. I hope to get the carpet out of here soon.