A year ago...

I've been so remiss in keeping up with this...

I'll try to do better!

A year ago this week, the little man was in the hospital for the first time having fallen back under eight pounds.

But this year...

Our little man isn't so little anymore! Praise God! At 15 months, he's finally nearing twenty pounds!

He was right at 13 pounds at a year and ended up hospitalized for four days in early August with that nasty gastrointestinal bug [*I* lost 10lbs in 4 days with it - he lost 11oz in 9 days to take him back under 12.5lbs]. We were already being sent to the CARE/Failure to Thrive Clinic at Children's Mercy Hospital in KC the next week and the consensus at the hospital and with the specialists was that he needed what we call the Michael Phelps diet. Two Pediasures a day plus all kinds of other high fat, high calorie foods. The Pediasure alone runs about $2.50 a day.

Thank God we were debt free [but the house and the student loans] as we took a big pay cut this fall [and will likely continue in the spring]. The special drink took a big percentage of our food budget but we were able to buy it no problem. It was what he needed which was all we really need to know. In that time, he's gained over seven pounds - more than he gained in the whole first year.

And last week, the specialists in KC released him from their care! They're moving him down to one Pediasure a day and down to none after he turns 18mo or so.

Check him out below. The picture on the left was at his first birthday party - after he got sick, before he was admitted. He was probably 12lbs 10-11oz then. The second picture was the birthday party for our two oldest girls in October. He was probably about 18.5lbs or so then, eleven weeks later.

Unfortunately, we just found out we're going to have to change doctors because of insurance reasons :(. We hate that because our docs are FABULOUS and the pediatrician we used to have in the other network isn't taking new patients. :(

But God is good.

All the time.

And something will work out :).

May update

Wow. Life has been crazy this spring. I had every intention of updating this often...

No time like the present!!!

Our little man is 10 months old and doing so well!! He's eating real food and everything! [Okay, real baby food - but that's a huge milestone for him.]

Financially, we're doing well ;). I'm going to update our totals over there on the side momentarily. We're not making our 10G May goal, but that's okay. We've put 2G into the car this year [we did receive a gift of $300 that helped with that]. Our mechanic said it's a great car and should be good to go for another 75K miles or more. We also used about 2200 to refinance the house. We have much better terms and interest rate as well as lower payments. If not for those two, we would have been there. And we're okay with that.

We put the radiator on the car - I posted about that. A few weeks later, the timing belt went out. We called AAA had it towed to a repair shop where Matt knows the owner and... had it fixed. That simple.

This past month, Matt noticed a dark spot of what we thought was oil on the driveway. The boot was toast. We ended up replacing the whole axle, the power steering pump and something else I'm forgetting. A friend who is a mechanic did that for us and we felt really good that, not only did we have the cash, but we were able to help a friend with it. We also had him fix the air conditioner. It's been out for a year and our mechanic friend said that the car - even though it's old enough to drive, a 1992 - is really in great shape.

So far, we've had a healthy year. Our emergency fund is up and our number of emergencies, overall, is down.

I promise... I'll post more! TVGirl... hold me to that!

Medical bills... Part 1

I'm still waiting on the itemized bills from the hospital but here's the early numbers for last year.

Total medical bills: 92,253.57

Most expensive: Christopher - current age, 6 months - 50763.51
2: Matt - 18,812.38
3: Carol - including labor and delivery and wisdom teeth - 15,573.23
4: Maggie - mostly an ER visit/12 hour hospital stay - age 6 - 5010.11
5: Abbie - 1003.67
Least expensive: Emily - age 2.5 - 305.00
[includes dental for everyone but Christopher and Emily]

Our total out of pocket [not including Rx or premiums]: 3291.11

That's .037% of the total.

God is good!!!

Just Fix It

Yesterday, on his way to work, Matt's radiator blew.

We've known since... oh, October or so that it was coming but all the health stuff and then the holidays and everything sort of put it on the back burner.

So what did we do?

Called around, found the best price [Republic Radiator], took it in and said "Fix it."

Do you know what it's like to have something go wrong on your car and just... fix it? We contemplated buying a radiator and Matt and probably his step-dad installing it, but to do so was only about $40 cheaper than having it done. It wasn't worth it. We had the money and just... fixed it.

And that was nice.

Our little guy is doing better still. He's still growing, albeit a little more slowly the last couple weeks. He still [easily] wears 0-3mo clothes, but he rolled back to front this week and about wiggled out of his bouncy seat so that he's now in his exersaucer [but his little feet barely touch the bottom even on the lowest level - literally - if he stretches, his toes just brush it]. Matt's fully recovered and the lithotripsy bill's already been paid for by the insurance.

We got our first call for this Spring's FPU class - that was exciting. We watched a couple of the preview clips last night and it's very exciting. Dave recorded all new DVDs last year with updated info and stats. Even if you've already taken it, I recommended checking it out. You won't need new kits, but new workbooks/CDs are available for a reasonable price. If you're in the area and interested, you can find more information about FPU in general here or our FPU class here.