Brain and Camera Dump

It's been an interesting few days. Here's a couple of shots of our 4th. We went to the beach, BBQ'd then did fireworks. I love the "ghost" shot there.I killed my very favorite coffee mug. Whhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaa. That was an awesome mess to clean up, let me tell you. Ain't nuthin' I lurve better than cleanin' up coffee/hot chocolate stickiness off the tile.

Turns out that our little milkweed just wasn't enough for our growing caterpillars. These guys are worse than teenage boys...not that I would know. I'm just sayin'. Anyway, I went and bought a huge milkweed for our seven little huge caterpillars. Some of them must be about to pupate because we've had them for about two weeks and they've gone through five instars so any second now.... I could sit and watch them all day. This biology experiment is turning out to be very fun. I like having caterpillars as pets. You get to let them go.


Here's the second biggest guy. He's about two inches long. The girls have named him mittens because he's got white spots on his "feet"...seems to me that they ALL have white spots on their feet, but that's just me. Of course they did name another one "socks".
Caterpillars poop a lot. I mean...A LOT!!!

Ella. See those lovely brown eyes. Aren't they beautiful. Well on Monday (or somewhere thereabouts) those eyes will be covered with glasses. Turns out that Ella is farsighted and her young eyes have been adjusting for the blurriness and taxing her muscles. She has complained of headaches but not so often that I thought anything of it. Who knew. We got her and me a pair of matching glasses. She was upset at first, but with our matching glasses and all the excitement that we are showing and Anna Beth, our neighbor's daughter, is showing, she is now excited and cant' wait to get them.
Sarah. There is nothing the matter with her. The eye doc was very interested to see her as she was very surprised at how strong Ella's prescription was (+4.75), but her eyes are fine. She lost another tooth. Thankfully she's as healthy as can be, because the next kid is where it starts getting complicated.

Rachel.

Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. For a long time I've though Rachel was the cutest of all our kids. She's just got the most lovely eyes and pouty lips and chubby cheeks and she knows how to work 'em, too. All our kids are the most beautiful (sorry folks, it's true) but there was just something about Rachel.

She bugged me though with learning. She was horrible at colors. It took her far longer to grasp colors than it took her two older sisters. I could never tell whether she was actually having trouble, like something was wrong with her eyes, or if she was just vying for extra special attention. Well, she finally got the colors. Now she's having trouble with letters. She's to start reading this next school year, so we got a jump on it this year with teaching some letter and sounds but the only one she can really grasp is "R" and that's because it's "her" letter. And it took her a long time to get that one.

Every once in a while I'd be talking with Rachel and think to myself that there was something strange about her eyes. I just shrugged it off though, because it was so fleeting and they'd just go back to their normal beautiful eye-selves. One day last week my Grandma came over and said that she thought that something was wrong with Rachel's eye, "It doesn't go right", I think were her words. It's like her one eye is lazy.

Coincidence? I think not.

We took her to the doctor yesterday and she agrees that Rachel has an issue with her eyes. I've read up on it and it's possible that she has amblyopia, or lazy eye. She has an appointment with a pediatric opthamologist on July 28th.

Treatment for lazy eye is patching of the good eye and a couple of other alternatives. I already have plans to sew her up some cute eye patches to go with her clothes and get her a doll that she can patch herself. It's my guess, if my research is at all good, that her one eye is healthy (like 20/20 vision) and her lazy eye has bad vision (20/200 or whatever) and she'll need glasses.

They say that "it's estimated" 1 in 20 children has amblyopia.

This is an interesting turn of events. I love being tested by God.

Lily. Is very skinny, just like Ella was. The docs did all sorts of testing on Ella as a 1-year-old because she was something like 16 or 17 pounds. But she was fine, just very thin. Lily is just like that. She's nearly 2 and weighs a mere 21.8 pounds. Other than that bit of info, Lily is doing fine.

Anna. We finally have a big, fat, lazy baby!! At not quite 6 months, she weighs 16.5 pounds and is at the 75th percentile on the "average" scale the docs use. A first for us. All our babies have been between 0-25%. She's a voracious eater. I'm going to introduce solids soon. She's had a taste of mashed potatoes and a taste of ice cream. Isn't she cute, sporting her two teeth! She is NOT ROLLING OVER. Lazy baby! She can mostly sit up on her own, but no rolling over. All her sisters were crawling by 6 months. Anna is determined to do things her own way I guess.

So that's my news.