SO much to update...

Ike
Wow, we made it! We were right in the eye of the storm, and we ended up hunkering down in the walk-in closet under the stairs. It really worked out great. Fortunately, the eye of the storm with the strongest winds hit after the kids went to bed very, very early in the morning. It sounded scary at times, but I was more afraid of and waiting to hear a tree fall on our house. There are thousands of trees in our city and about 15 trees that are between 40 feet and 60 feet tall next to and around our immediate house. After all was said and done, 4 of those trees fell down and THANK GOODNESS none of them hit our house! We were SOOOO lucky.

We ended up being without power for 4 days and our phone landline (not digital) died for a couple of days. Thank goodness after that first full day without air conditioning the weather became absolutely gorgeous. That first day was horrible though with the heat and humidity!

We spent a lot of time with a few of our neighbors, playdates, chit chatting, etc. You know, life without TV, internet, etc., is really not so bad. With the exception of air conditioning, fridge/freezer, and just some light at night to see, we really did well without power for those days. Even since the power came back on, our TV and other electronic usage has cut back dramatically, and we are still hanging out with our neighbors more. It was really nice seeing many on our street come out and just hang out together every day.

Baby H
Fortunately Dr. B's office reopened today after having their trees that fell cut back. They only suffered external damage to the building and water damage in the lobby (the carpet was pulled out today.). He did an 8-week check on Baby H, and she is looking great and right on target. She even weighs 9 lb 15 oz already - the 25th percentile! Even better news? Her platelets were at 120,000!!!! They are going up on their own! Normal is 150,000 to 350,000, and we are SOOO close to getting to the low end of normal. We still have to meet with the hematologist downtown next week (we confirmed they are open) to find out WHY her spleen is still enlarged and to start coming up with a gameplan.

But she is doing great. She is really good at lifting her neck up and keeping it up for quite a while now, minutes at a time. She is working on pushing up to, and I think that is her favorite position. She is awake and more alert now and for much more often. We are going through a feeding crazy phase today where she wants to eat every 90 minutes to 2-1/2 hours instead of every three hours. Last night though she did this right before bed, and she slept 5 hours straight! That was the longest she has ever slept at night.

Little Girl A
She has been having some major attitude and attention-getting issues at preschool. So much so, we had to have a "meeting" with the director of the preschool and her two teachers the Tuesday before Ike hit. It is obvious she is going through a transition issue, but she has been REALLY bad in class -- not listening, ruining other kid's projects, hitting, pushing, etc. DH and I decided that I really need to spend some more one-on-one time with her, and that Wednesday before Ike hit, she and I spent the afternoon together after I picked her up from preschool early. We had a Mommy and Little Girl A playdate -- she loved it, and I actually did too. It was fun. The next day at preschool, her teachers told me how wonderful she had actually been so far. She even got a special sticker for being so good. So, I know I have to work on that after the kids go back on Monday.

Big Boy E
He's funny. He is a very intelligent boy, gifted for sure. I got an email from his new 2nd grade teacher saying that she has recognized this and has started giving him more challenging projects to work on when the other kids are working and he has nothing to do. I'm so glad that she took his first grade teacher's advice on that! Though he DID get an incident notice that last day of school for talking too much in class.

More
There is just so much more going on, but for now, we are just trying to get back into a routine after Ike swept through. I'll share more later!