Bitter-Sweet...

I think we have found an answer to WHY Alyssa has been demonstrating colic behavior, so it's good news, but bad at the same time. After taking her to the doctor twice (two differant pediatricians) I was told to try her on some Enfamil Nutragimen formula (that sells for $25/can) to see if she might be allergic to the protein in my breast milk (the formula is made for babies with protein allergy). Well, that stuff STUNK real bad and Alyssa hated it, but it worked and I noticed a difference that same night. Alyssa was a completely different baby. She slept, was happy and much more like my other babies. But, again, she hated it. So I went to the store and bought some Enfamil Gentlease with proteins that are partially broken down, thus easier to digest...this worked as well, and it smelled much better (like normal formula) and she drank it fine. So, it appears that she has a very hard time digesting milk proteins and my breast milk has been very hard on her causing her a lot of gas and pain. So, that's the sad part. I have had a very hard time with the idea of formula feeding her; it breaks my heart, and I have shed many tears this week. She is my last baby and I really hope I can continue to feed her myself, plus, it's what she likes as well. So I have been hard at working to eliminate ALL dairy from my diet (the sourse of protein in my milk). Not much I can eat now, but I am determined to do this!!! It's been a rough week , but at least we seem to have some answers and can now figure out the solution...

I feel like a walking zombie!

Well, Alyssa is definently a blessing to our family and we love her dearly...but she makes sure she is not over-looked! I have never had a baby who cried...never. Not only does Miss Alyssa cry, but she screams. At least we know she has a good set of lungs on her. She HATES her baths and screams like mad when I give her one--the other kids have always LOVED their baths. And boy does she like to eat. Lets see, up every TWO (2) hours at night to feed...oh my goodness. This is all new to me. She doesn't even eat that much in the day. She can usually go three hours between feedings in the day. So, yeah, I am beat. Yesterday (or Monday, I think) I actually ran a red light. I was on my way home from Frys and I stopped at the light, as it was red. For some C-R-A-Z-Y reason I thought the light had turned green, so I went from a complete stop to moving through the light, only to hear a ***beep, beep***...well, I look up, as I'm midway through the intersection and realize that the darn light was still RED!!! Uggg...I need sleep. Thankfully no one was hurt and NO big fat TICKET! She is such a cutie though...I just can't wait to get past this "baby" stage...

Alyssa Marie has arrived!!!

Well, at last our daughter has arrived! Alyssa Marie Frenette was born Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 2:34pm. She is my smallest baby weighing 7lbs 6oz and 18.5 in at birth. She is adorable and has tons of thick, black hair. We all love her enormously and she fits into our family perfectly.

The kids all love her...especially Kaylee who loves her, perhaps, a bit too much. Always gotta keep an eye on her when she's near the baby as she loves to be a little mommy.

She is such a good little girl, but needless to say we are all so exhausted over here. I went into labor Saturday night, and though the contractions were tolerable, I wasn't able to sleep a moment because of the discomfort. I finnally told Eddie we needed to go to the hospital at about 4am Sunday morning as the contractions were starting to get more intense and I wanted to make sure to get there with plenty of time for the good ol' epideral. I was checked in at triage and was told I was dilated to 5 cm, and since my contractions weren't regular my OB wanted me to walk an hour and go from there. The following hour Eddie and I walked the halls of Good Sam and even found a staircase that I ran up and down many times. Oddly enough, in this process my contractions were slowly diminishing, and I was getting very frusterated at the thought of being sent home.

So I went back to triage at the end of the hour and I was now dilated to a 5 (or) 6 and 90% effaced, so I was admitted because of the progress I had made. Well, I laid for the next 4 hours in L&D with virtually NO contractions at all, and it showed as my cervix had remained the same at my next check. The OB came in and gave me 2 options: 1) She felt comfortable with allowing me to go home and allow labor to start on it's own if that's what I wanted or 2) She could start pitocin and get the contractions going again.

I'm not crazy, though I may look it...but there was NO WAY I was being sent home at 6cm dilated, especially since I am GBS+ and require antibiotics (which take 4.5 hours to administer PRIOR to baby's birth). I got the pitocin added to my IV at 11:40am and less than 3 hours later Miss Alyssa was in my arms.

Again, no sleep that night, as the hospial beds are always soooo uncomfortable. But Alyssa was perfectly behaved. We were anxious to arrive monday and got here in the evening. Eddie, was concerned that Alyssa wasn't getting enough to eat, as my milk has yet to come in, so he offered her a bottle of formula. BIG MISTAKE. My perfect baby was up the whole night (from 9:30pm until 3:00am) screaming because her tummy was hurting. She was so gassy the whole night, and it wasn't until she through up and had a horrible diaper at 3am that she finally was able to sleep--and I was able to as well. So, I've had maybe 4-6 hours of sleep the past 3 nights. Hopefully tonight will be better.


All and all we are so excited to have Alyssa a part of our family. It's a big adjustment going from 3 to 4 but feel so blessed.

Kaylee is 2!!!

Two years ago, today, Kaylee was born! She was born at 39weeks 1day gestation via induction. She weighed 8lbs 8oz; my biggest baby! She is such a cutie!!! She is a handful, but her smiles and hugs outweigh her craziness.

She has been looking forward to her birthday for the past week and a half; since Eddie's birthday. She got plenty of practice blowing out the candles on his cake, so tonight she was a pro. We had to re-light the candles because she blew them out as soon as we lit them (perhaps hoping she wouldn't have to hear us all sing?!)

I'm learning how different the gifts are for boys and girls. Before Kaylee was born we had 5 years of just trucks, cars, guns, swords, etc. Tonight we were over-run by princess stuff. She got a frog pool, but aside from that EVERYTHING was Disneys' Princess themed, and she loved every minute of it. (At least we know her brothers will leave her toys alone).

She had a blast tonight!

Kool 94.5

This past weekend my parents invited the entire family (me and my 5 siblings) to join them at the Radisson Fort McDowell Hotel. The local radio station that they listen to (Kool 94.5) puts on a "summer splash" weekend every year and they have enjoyed it in the past. So we kind of had a mini family reunion. There were a total of 10 grand-kids (all 7 years and younger) and they just had a blast with one another.

At the pool there was a karaoke stand and people (adults) were singing songs all day long. At about 4 in the afternoon Ryan came up to me and asked if anyone could sing. I told him yes and asked him what he wanted to sing--"Twinkle Twinkle" was his answer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP3pEdH67hU

He was soooo cute! You can hear me in the background trying to guide him a bit...I was trying sooo hard not to cry (high-pitched, squeeky voice of mine).

Anyway, all in all it was a fun weekend we all had. It was nice to visit with family who we don't get to see much.

4th of July Weekend...

Our fouth of July weekend was very eventful. For us it it actually started on Thurday. Eddie took Thursday off from work and his mom flew in at about midnight the night before. We had to be at St. Josephs hospital by 6:30am for Jacob's surgery. He had a cyst on the back of his ear removed. It was actually surgery # 2 for the same thing...he first had one removed last February (2007), but it decided to grow back--not fun! Here's a short video clip of the original cyst.

And here is a picture of it (as he plays the Wii) today...not very clear, but it was the best image I could get. It has 3 stitches to be removed on Wednesday.

And to continue our eventful weekend both Kaylee and Ryan came down with some sort of stomache bug, so I was washing clothes and sheets full of throw up all weekend long, not to mention the numerous baths they each got.

But it wasn't all bad...we were able to go watch some fireworks. We just went behind the business buildings in Tolleson and had front row seats to the show...the fireworks were literally being shot from the parking lot we we sitting next to.

And on Saturday we spent the afternoon up at my brothers house in Estrella Mountain Ranch. The kids had so much fun swimming in his pool and eating the yummy food. It's always fun to see grandparents; both grandmothers and their grandpa was there.

Here's Kaylee with her Aunt Leah

My Tomboy

I desperately wanted a girl, partly because I was tired of seeing the same old boy stuff...I got me a girl but that makes no difference. Kaylee's LOVES to take her pajama's off and she helps herself to some of her brother's PJs, dresses herself, and calls it a night. Here she is tonight...I'm not sure if she just likes their PJs or she's trying to be like them. Either way, I can't get her to keep her own cute little jammies on :(

Ahhhh, a SCORPIAN!!!

So sorry, but I have no pics to post of the lovely little critter that was discovered in our kitchen yesterday morning...after living in AZ for 7.5 years and NEVER once finding any scorpians in any of our 3 residences we became quite comfortable. That all changed yesterday!!! Eddie and the boys went on a scorpian hunt last night with a black light....they searched EVERY possible space in our home and (thankfully) did not come across any others...however, their search continued in our front and back yards. They found a bigger one underneath the stand of our basketball hoop (in the backyard) and 2 more were found inside our water meter in the front. UGGGGG!!! I now hate it here. I kept waking up through out the night last night thinking I felt something crawling on my legs, thankfully it was all in my head. I hope those are the last scorpians we find, but I'm not holing my breath.

I did it!!!

Wooo-hooo! I passed the NET (Nurse Entrance Test) test this morning! You have NOOOO idea what a relief that is. On Monday I will be turning in my application for the RN program. There is about a 2 year wait, but it works out well for me since I have this baby coming this fall. I am so excited about the nursing program, and the reality of it is starting to sink in, yeah!!!

Our Family

Eddie and I met back in 1999 via the internet. We are both from Northern California and met shortly after "finding" each other online. We were engaged 3 months later and married 3.5 months after that. Since then a lot has changed in our family. We moved from the expensive, impossible-to-live-in California (where we started our first 9 months of marriage living with Eddie's mom) to coming to Arizona with nothing to our name. We got our own apartment within a month of moving here and 6 months later we moved into our first home. So though the heat SUCKS, Arizona has definently been a blessing to our family.

We have 3 kids; Jacob, Ryan and Kaylee. Each one is such a blessing, yet posses such challenging personalities. Jacob is 7 1/2 and just finished 2nd grade. He is an amazing student and remained on the Principals honor roll all year even though he's amoung the youngest in his class (according to his birthday he should be a year behind in school). He loves to eat well, and is very concerned about his health. He is my fruit and veggie nut. In his spare time he loves playing on his PSP and with his Aunt on her Wii.

Ryan just turned 4 and is not much smaller than his brother. People always think he's older than he is because he's such a BIG kid (not fat, just thick and tall). He's extremely stubborn and lives on junk food. But he does have the sweetest heart on him. He loves to give me complements and tells me he loves me ALL the time. He's very protective of his sister and makes sure we never "forget" her. He's a good kid.

Kaylee. Wow. No one ever told me that little girls are so hard this young. She is 21 months old and keeps us going. She climbs EVERYTHING and is into everything as well. She has one determined head on her shoulders and she doesn't take "no" for an answer. Her smile keeps her safe, lol. She is VERY smart; her intellegence blows me away. She speaks better then my boys ever did. She counts and sings her ABC's and communicates like no other kid her age. But those smarts are a little too much for her good... along with all her other "stubborn-ness" she won't let me do her hair...and when I force a pony-tail, she's quick to pull it out. So yeah, she's a tough-y.

Oh, and one last thing. We are expecting our 4th child September 10. I am 25 weeks pregnant (5 1/2 months) and looking forward for the arrival of another beautiful baby girl. We are excited!