Catching Up...

Well, we haven't been around much to put everything that's been going on in the blog. So, I will try to catch everyone up without making this a novel...I hope!:)

Health wise the boys are doing great. They had a check up with CHAD's GI Pedi. and Ethan gained 1/2 lb. in a month and Joshua grew 1/2 cm in a month. Not exactly what you or I would call huge gains but they are gains none the less. Ethan has been placed on two medications...one is an appetite stimulant and the other is Pepcid to help with the indigestion he will have from gaining a larger appetite with a little stomach. The thought here is to help increase the size of his stomach so it can catch up to where it should be for a 3 1/2 yr. old. The doctor said sometimes they will gain up to 5 lb.'s in the first month...I'll believe it when I see it. Although I must say that he looks like he may be plumping out in the cheeks a little bit! Joshua just has to have Pediasure once a day mixed with Duocal, as well as adding the Duocal and some formula to anything we can for when he does eat. He is mostly on people food now, doesn't really care for that baby stuff anymore!

Speaking of which, we celebrated Joshua's very first birthday on July 4th. My little independant guy is now crawling, and pulling himself up everywhere. Usually it's too yell at me because I dared to leave the room, but nonetheless he is making progress towards his independance. This is a picture of Daddy and the Boys enjoying some pool time at Grammy and Grampy's house on the 4th. I have two little fishes. We usually have to drag them out with a fight because they think they could stay in there all day. It is my aunt's pool and the water temp is usually around 92 degrees! So, it's like a large bath...who wouldn't want to stay put??
This past weekend we were also quite busy with two family parties. The first one was for my husband's side of the family. We went to Wellington State Park on Newfound Lake this past Saturday. We got there around 10am, and more than 40 of his family memebers gathered there as well. Kids and grownups of all ages. Ethan went swimming in the lake, it was his first time, and again had to be dragged out because his lips were blue and he couldn't stop shivering. Josh and I stayed in the shade on a blanket munching on snacks and trying to keep him from eating pine needles. Tough to keep a crawling baby on a blanket when there are so many things around to put in his mouth...pine needles, sand, bugs, more pine needles etc. As you can tell from the picture however, he was thrilled just to be outside and not far from mommy's side.
For lunch everyone had to bring their own food, a fire pit was provided. So, we brought GF hot dogs, beans, chips, carrot sticks, fruit cups, juice boxes, etc. We had a little camping pan set to cook all of the food in so that we didn't have to worry about cross contamination. It worked out well. For dessert...M&M's!!
Ethan had such a great time. As we were packing up and decided it was time to "play" a little baseball with his cousins. Well, his idea of baseball was "vacuuming" the pine needles in the sand by pushing them around with the bat! Shortly after this picture was taken, he had a large meltdown because he was absolutely exhausted! Needless to say, both children slept in the car on the way to our next family party.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from this second party because my camera wasn't used. However, I'm sure that if any of the Ruffing's have some they'd like me to post here I will put some up in another blog if they email them to me.

Anyway, our extended family, The Ruffings are antoher large family that we've been "adopted" into. My husband has known them for over 20 years, and all of the kids are now growing up together as well. And Ethan knows each and everyone of them. It was another barbeque, followed by a giant game of whiffle ball. Then after everyone was satiated and ready to sit back and relax, we had the family picture. It will be interesting to see how they came out between babies not looking, toddlers roaming, and adults complaining because we had to take "one more picture"!

All and all it was a great time, and that night we had the pleasure of Dennis and Cheryl with two of their five children spend the night at our house. Ethan loves it when he can wake up in the morning with visitors.

So, on Sunday, after church all of the Ruffing's again got together but this time it was at a ballfield. We went to see the Manchester Fisher Cats play the Portland Sea Dogs at the Grappone.com ball field. We weren't sure how are chitlins were going to do and this was the first time we went to an event since being GF. Fortunately, between our friends Cheryl and Jeanine who both have GF diet issues in their families we were able to prepare accordingly. We fed Ethan before we went and packed a bunch of snacks not knowing what kind of food he might be able to eat. They didn't even check our bags so we didn't have a problem bringing in what we needed. Come to find out, they serve bagged peanuts and Craker Jacks! Both of these products are GF!! Ethan didn't care for the Craker Jacks, but my goodness, Joshua did. We lasted until the 8th inning surprisingly, but between the heat of the day, (our seats thankfully were in the shade...thank you Cheryl!) and the lack of a nap, our children were ready to head home.

As you can tell from these two pictures the boys had a great time anyway.
They both fell asleep on the way home, and shortly after that Dennis, Cheryl, Sam, Jack and the four of us all went out to dinner at Bugaboo Creek. Their GF menu is great with quite a few choices, and the food tasted wonderful. Ethan and Sam enjoyed the ambiance of the place, (talking moose head), and we enjoyed the fact that we didn't have to cook, and clean up.

It's been an amazing past couple of weeks. We've had to adjust to so many dietary limitations, that it was nice to get out among our friends and family and feel...mostly normal! We are Ouellette's you know...normal is hard for us to do!!

So, thank you to everyone who allowed us to share in food, folks and fun. The memories and pictures will last a lifetime!