A few days ago, Willow, a girl a few years older than Julia that lives on our block, decided to start her own business with the kids. Julia and Jonathan and other kids were hired for the job. A few kids quit...some were fired. Julia and Jonathan made the cut.
The retail industry is tough, but the kids scrounged up enough old toys and actually sold a few to some of the other kids on the block. Julia was so excited about it that night and the next morning. At the end of the next day they received their first paycheck for all of their hard work...$2 each.
I've spent a lot of time and effort this summer in the backyard. We moved in just as Spring started, so I decided early on that this year would be a good time to focus on cleaning up the outside of our new house. Although the yard had been professionally landscaped several years ago, the prior owners didn't keep up with nature, so things had gradually deteriorated into a giant mess of weeds, rocks and wood chips.
I've finished everything that needed (or that I wanted) changing, except for painting the fence. I painted the light fixtures, I cleaned up and removed countless bags of wood chips that had been blown all over the place and/or been washed along the side of the house and mixed with rocks. I brought in new rock for the drainage area, new rock for the window wells, and brought in a couple truck loads of gorilla hair mulch. I obviously trimmed all the bushes and weeded the property, restored the lawn back to its pre-dog phase, ripped out two trees and planted a new maple...and FINALLY, decided to end the summer with putting in a paver patio over the concrete that had been stained by fertilizer rust.
If that seems like a lot of work, it was. The hardest project was the patio. It took five trips in my truck to unload and load 900 pavers. The entire project took me five solid days to complete; four of them when I was on vacation. The first four days I was able to get the pattern down and 99% of the bricks glued down over the existing concrete slab. Yesterday it took me an entire day to cut the bricks around the edges and pillars. I did all of the cutting with my miter saw and a blade from Home Depot. It was the same cost as renting a saw for a day, but now I have my own blade should I need to cut something else in the future.
The rest of the summer I'll just keep up with the maintenance part of the yard and turn my attention to the inside of the house. We haven't even put up a single picture inside, since I've been so focused on the exterior. The other say at the dinner table Julia complimented me and said, "you're so much more talented than all the other Dads around". Yesterday, just for saying that to me, I let Julia put down the last brick...
Here area several photos of the kids from the last month or so this summer. I've been collecting them on my phone as I take them or receive them. Usually they don't warrant an individual post, but they do tell the general story of what we've been up to lately.
On July 4th the neighborhood had a mini parade over to the community center. There were food trucks and some activities for the kids, like an overcrowded bouncy house, games, face painting (although I think that was DIY), etc. It was fun to see what people had done to decorate their bikes, strollers, etc.
On the one months anniversary of Jonathan eating on his own, he opened a fortune cookie and was told that "business and health matters will improve around you". It was very interesting timing, and since it comes from the source of all truth, it must mean we're on the right track. I also included a picture of what I call "summer legs". It's not as noticeable here, but I woke up one morning and noticed that both of the kids' legs were really battered and bruised. If you need a visual on how active they've been in the summer, this picture says it all.
Julia and I spent some time together one Saturday morning. We ended up buying her a few things at Old Navy and Bed, Bath, and Beyond. That is, after we had fun playing with the merchandise. Jonathan wanted to borrow Stacey's glasses to practice his audition for a part in Jerry MacGuire. The human head weighs eight pounds. Finally, here are some shots of the kids' pride in some of their new school supplies. This is Jonathan's first backpack (he starts school this year) and Julia's lunch containers (she starts full day first grade this year).
The kids are really enjoying their car this summer. In fact, it's usually the focal point of playtime outside with the other kids, since almost everyone seems to have them. In this shot they are usually the helmets from Michelle to play a game (police man and race car driver - or something like that related to racing). They also have enjoyed their new goggles and arms floaty things from Michelle. If one thing sums up the summer, it's Julia's "THE Painting of Nature"...
Distance - 11.25 miles
Elevation Gain - 5,600 feet
Time - 9 hours
It had been almost a year to the week since I had last climbed a 14er. Coincidentally enough, I said the same thing a year ago when making a post about my hike up Quandary Peak. This trip was a little bit different though, since I had taken the week prior off from work. Since I had a free night in a hotel to burn, I decided to drive down on Friday for some extra down time prior to the hike.
Things were a little touch and go with the weather forecast for Saturday, but I decided to drive down to Salida anyway. It wouldn't be the first time that the weather forecast was wrong, and sometimes you just don't know until you get there and wake up early the morning of the hike.
I woke up in my hotel room at 4 a.m. and was on the trail hiking by 5:15. Although it had poured the night before, the skies were clear at the trail head. I also wasn't the only one hitting the trail at that time. There were probably a dozen cars in the parking lot getting ready to go at the same time I was.
As you can see in the pictures, the weather was great. In fact, the weather made for some really cool fast moving cloud formations that made their way in and around the mountains around the hike. Although the hike was long in distance, it actually was a lot of fun and went by fast because of the great people I met along the way.
I had tried to hike Mount Shavano in the winter several years ago with Josh and Mark Rockefeller, but we were turned around by gale force winds. The hike up to Mount Shavano comes first, with Tabeguache Peak only a small saddle and ridge a mile farther along the route. Out and back from Shavano to Tabeguache, then back down to the trail head the same route you came up Shavano.
These two peaks put me over the 1/3 mark of 14ers climbed (18 total)...not too shabby.
Morning shot at treeline, summer coated goat, a look back at the trail in the morning
A look at the route up Shavano, a look back down the same route, a rocky few more feet to Shavano
From the summit of Shavano, some cool cloud shots and proof I actually climbed it
Some shots at the summit of Tabeguache
Borrowing a previous hiker's sign, coming back down and seeing trees again, a look back at Shavano driving away
Handstand at the top of Shavano, the fog that came and went, and the stream following a portion of the lower trail
Today is the one month mark of Jonathan eating entirely on his own! It's been 30 days since we last fed him through his g-tube. He's been doing great so far and we hope it never stops. This time it looks like the beginning of the end - we've never had more than a day or two of regular eating in the past, let alone a solid month. I don't see any reason things will change between now and the time his tube can be removed, the way things have been going. We've come a long way over the past couple of years!
It's been two and a half weeks since we last fed Jonathan through his g-tube. It feels like this long road is almost over. His pediatrician suggested that we try it again at his four year check up. He thought Jonathan might pick it up and do better if he was given a break overnight like we all normally get. We had gradually stopped feeding during the day and all that was left were the night feeds.
We noticed that Jonathan seemed more alert and less lethargic after we stopped the night feeds. He definitely started drinking and eating more than usual. We also talked to him about it a couple times, so he knew what was going on and that he was to pick up the slack. I think the fact that he's older and more mature has something to do with the good results this time.
Not only is he doing a good job of eating on his own, but he's maintaining his weight too. We recently took him into see his doctor and she was very happy to hear both of those things. The tube can come out for good if we can go three months without using it and he keeps progressing. The nurse said that when the three months is up we can deflate the tube ourselves and take it out, no surgery required. The area will close and heal on its own.
Last weekend we went out to eat and something interesting happened. He was doing fine and then tasted some marinara sauce. He instantly got that look on his face like his insides were doing cartwheels and he wanted to throw up. In the past he would have probably lost it, but that day he kept it until control and then kept eating a little bit. I think what happened was the marinara sauce caused him some significant heartburn or acid reflux. I still think something like this was contributing or complicating to his issues in the past. This isn't the first time he's expressed this in some fashion related to tomato based sauces. We went a few months with no sauce on his pizza, for example. So, there will still be things like this to manage in the future, but it's relatively manageable compared to where we started.
If you need a reminder, where we started was Jonathan him not eating at all and only able to keep down formula from the pump at a drip rate so slow that his feedings would take over an hour to complete, several times a day. On really bad days we would have to back it off even more and have him connected to the pump all day long. He was vomiting once, if not twice, a day for over a year, so much so that we just stopped going out much in public since he was likely to throw up at unannounced. He had no interest in food at all.
Going the distance with eating and removing his tube is our next step. His GI doctor is still recommending we go through with a more extensive motility study in August, but otherwise have canceled or postponed other things at this point. As long as he's following a growth curve, albeit the one percentile growth curve, and eating, there isn't much cause for concern if he's eating on his own and completely normal in every other way. Our hopes is that once he starts eating on his own completely, that we'll start to see more gains that we've seen in the past.
It's possible though that we won't see big gains compared to the past. It's possible that even though we stopped the g-tube feedings, the extra food he's eating now really just makes up for what we were giving him at night. In other words, he may have been self-regulating even with the night feeds and just eating less, and this is just the way he was made. We'll obviously be watching things closely, in case there are any signs of other issues going on. For now, this is really good news considering he's starting part time school this fall. Although progress seems slow, it really isn't when you look back over the past year or two. If you look at the entire picture, we're definitely making progress all the time and headed in the right direction.
