Okay, well, it's been oh, just a short 2 YEARS since I last wrote on this blog. Where has time gone? How have I let that much time pass by?

A lot has happened during that time. For one, the kids are, at the time of this writing, 10, 8, 5, and 2. Wow!

And then Lillian. Oh mercy. She has had quite a road. So it looks like where I left off on the blog, she was no longer wearing her harness for her hip dysplasia, and it also looks like she was back on the charts with her weight. Well, that didn't last long. Her weight plummeted off the charts so that at a year, she was wearing 3-6 month clothes only for length. She went from saying sounds and attempting "mama" to not saying anything. She would throw up every time we fed her certain foods. The doctor we were with told me nothing was wrong, so we went back to our old pediatrician. She immediately knew something was wrong and referred us to several doctors. She was taken aback at how tiny Lillian was and diagnosed her as failure to thrive. This picture was taken at about that time, when Lillian was 14 months. This is a 3-6 month onesie, and it was huge on her.

A long road of dr's appointments, food trials, and difficulty finding a diagnosis followed. We have since learned that she has FPIES--Food Protein Induced Entercolitis Syndrome. This means that her body has difficulty digesting the proteins of certain foods. Once this was diagnosed I had to stop nursing her, and we had to put her on special elemental formula. It was a life saver! She went from this picture to a healthy toddler. She went from not being able to talk to a little girl who doesn't stop talking! At nearly 3 she has around 20 foods she can eat, including seasonings--we have to trial everything we give her. She still cannot have any animal proteins, grains, or several fruits and veggies, but she is thriving.

In the homeschool front, we took some time for different curricula, but we're now back to HOD for our main curriculum, with Five in a Row for Emma Cate for Kindergarten, and we also have some influences from Montessori and Waldorf. Caroline is finishing up Preparing (we did take an EXTREMELY long break--we started her with it WAY too early) and Dalton is working on Beyond Little Hearts. I will try to update what we've done for school each week.

I'm still tutoring and supervising for an online tutoring company, and I have started (attempting to) sell knitted (and needle felted and crocheted) items at craft shows. I also have 6 awesome piano students right now in addition to my own kiddos. So, I think we're pretty much caught up! I hope to update frequently, if nothing else, just to keep a record of my sweet babies as they grow.