A bittersweet symphony

Here are 40 random observations from the last week or so:

• When Evie was born, her right hand was next to her face. So, Gina unfortunately had to do a little extra work to get her out. Thank you epidural.

• Evie is pronounced ee-vee (just like saying the letters e and v together) and not ev-ee. We weren't expecting to need to clarify that when we chose it but in retrospect I can completely understand why it's been a bit confusing for everyone. We panicked a bit when everyone was mispronouncing it but we both still love it.

• Gina has said she is still in a fair amount of pain but looking at her you can't tell. She looks great! She's also been pretty sassy since just after Evie's birth which is definitely a good sign.

• Gina's labor was pretty interesting. I don't know when it officially started but on June 19th we spent the night at St. Joe's because she was contracting and things never really stopped from there. There were breaks where nothing was happening but then it would pick up again shortly thereafter. I think Gina plans to post about the days leading up to Evie's birth so I'll leave that story for her.

• We thought that Evie was constantly awake in Gina's stomach but it turns out that the girl is moving her hands and feet all the time, even when she is sleeping.

• The title of the blog simply refers to Evie being our last child. It's relieving yet very sad all at the same time. I hold her sometimes and think about how I'll never hold my two day old / three day old / etc. son or daughter ever again.

• Leaving St. Joe's was very difficult for both Gina and I to do. We have felt so loved there with the birth of all three girls. It's an amazing place to deliver a child. We were able to see many of the nurses that were involved in Natalie and Macie's first few days and were also able to make a couple of new connections, especially with Jessica. She was with us all day on Thursday (the 24th) and was absolutely wonderful.

• Evie will always be considered a preemie. It seems weird to say because she is doing fantastic. But, she was born at 36 weeks and six days (one day short of being considered full term).

• Preemie's need to have a number of extra tests done on them before leaving the hospital. All of the results came back very positive. The only thing they noticed was that she has extra red blood cells because her liver is premature. It is just something to note and not uncommon in preemies. It isn't anything to worry about.

• Evie was given the full ballard test because she was a preemie. Full term babies only have a partial test done. With the test, they do things like count the creases in the newborn’s foot to confirm that the due date of the child was correct. Sure enough, Evie's score came back placing Gina between 36 and 37 weeks along.

• Most of you who will read this post already know about how interesting this pregnancy was for Gina. It began with a subchorionic hemorrhage on December 21st and the discussion of potentially doing a DNC. But, as we all know now, Evie and Gina are both fighters and with a lot of love, prayers and support everything turned out just fine. We are grateful in so many ways.

• Because of everything Evie went through, our pastor has dubbed her "el milagro." It means the miracle.

• Furthering that point, Evie means life. While we already loved the name that definitely added to why we decided on it for her.

• In 2009, Evie was the 723rd most popular name for girls in the U.S. One in approximately every 5,000 girls were given that name last year. I don't expect for her to ever need to go by Evie S. because there are too many Evie's in her class. However, it surprisingly was the 10th most common girls name in the U.K. in 2008.

• We definitely considered the name Rory (both for a boy or girl) as a first name but in the end decided that it just didn't feel quite right. We also looked at possibly using it for a middle name instead.

• Where did the name Evie come from? Gina liked it more than I did originally. Most directly, it is Natalie Portman's character in V for Vendetta. In the movie she spells it Evey. I wasn't convinced it could stand on it's own as a first name until I saw the movie. After seeing it, I knew it was a strong enough name and began falling in love with it.

• For the first time, I had the final decision on the name. It was far more stressful than I thought it would be. I should have probably held my tongue with Gina and let her deal with that pressure (I joked about never having the final say even though I would have picked Natalie and Macie as well). You live and learn I guess.

• Evie's announcement was finished on Wednesday.

• Congratulations to Susan (a co-worker of Gina's) for winning the expectnet.com guessing game that 60 people participated in.

• Evie decided to buck a number of trends. All of the milestone dates in our life fall on another date of significance (generally tied to the Gina's side of the family). But, there is nothing on June 24th that we are aware of. Had she waited one more day she would have been born on my Grandpa S's birthday and my Grandma and Grandpa K's wedding anniversary.

• Evie was born on a Thursday. Both of the other girls were born on Tuesday.

• Evie was born in room 2528 (what use to be room 205). Both of the other girls were born in room 201.

• Sleeping or awake, Evie is constantly making sounds with her mouth. It is so funny to listen to.

• I think people at church were surprised to see us at the musical on June 27th (with Evie). We didn't want to miss it. Not only was it well written, but Natalie and Macie were absolutely adorable in it.

• The middle name of Marie is in honor of Gina (it is her middle name as well). It is also her mom and grandma's middle name too.

• Even though she was a preemie, Evie was born with a higher birth weight than Macie was. Evie was 6lbs 7ozs and Macie was 6lbs 3ozs (Natalie was 7lbs 12ozs). For those who are wondering, Natalie was three days late and Macie was one week early.

• Evie is on a very positive weigh path so far. She left the hospital at 6lbs 2ozs on Saturday, was 6lbs 1oz at her in home visit on Monday and 6lbs 4ozs at her doctor's appointment on Wednesday. Seeing her weight begin to increase already is a very good thing.

• If you want to see a crazy picture, click on the one below and check it out. It's pretty hard to dispute whether or not these three are sisters.

• We call Evie a treefrog because of how she curls up on your body when you hold her upright.

• Years later, JoAnn's prophecy that Gina would have three girls has been fulfilled.  Gina and I were laughing (and crying) when we figured out that we had yet another girl. We would have definitely enjoyed having a boy but we are pretty excited to be a family of girls.

• Thanks again to my mom (Wednesday and Thursday) and Molly (Friday) for taking care of the girls for us while we were at the hospital.

• Thank you to everyone who has visited us at the hospital (and at home). It's been great seeing all of you.

• Both Natalie and Macie have been so great with Evie. They are going to be amazing big sisters. Right now, they want to hold her and spend as much time around her as they can.

• It was pretty cute on Thursday night (the 24th), when Natalie was around Evie she couldn't stop giggling.

• At first, Macie kept asking "where's my baby?" after we got home from the hospital because she couldn't remember Evie's name. Natalie took a little while to remember it as well.

• Both girls love to push on Gina's belly and tell her that it is squishy now.

• We've had great doctors with all three of our children (and have been blessed that each of them have been there to deliver our babies). I must say though, Dr. Kelly was absolutely the perfect doctor for us this time. Since December, she has been exactly what Gina has needed. We are both so thankful for everything she (and the clinic) has done for us the last six months.

• We love Target. Well, we sort of do. We have been there almost every day since leaving the hospital. If it's not one thing it's another. It's great to have a one stop shop for things but we feel a little to dependent on the place right now.

• Speaking of Target, three and a half years is a bit longer than we thought between kids. We are going to be replacing a few more baby items (bottles for example) than we were planning on.

• The summer of the babies is underway...we are already looking forward to Carrie and Nick (due July 29), Matt and Morgan (August 22), and Becky and Eric (September 5) having babies in the near future as well!

Bison baseball

With NDSU making the NCAA tournamnet, it got me thinking that I should finally post a baseball picture I have from my playing days there.

Shakin' our tailfeathers

Natalie and I attended the annual daddy/daughter dance tonight put on by our community education program here in town.  We had friends (Brielle and Justin) who went as well, which was nice.  There were around 25 different groups of daddy/daughter's who attended. 
It took a while for Nattie to warm up to things but once she did we had a great time.  We were able to dance together quite a bit and she also did a lot of dancing on her own.  Here are a couple of pics (and a cute video of Nattie showing off her ballerina skills) from the event.

A nice little half day of work

Here are some pics from the Twins game Beno and I attended last Wednesday afternoon. We sat in the middle of the first row of section 117, which are very nice seats.

The pictures will help give you an idea of how close we were to the action as well. Unfortunately, the lighting in the dome is not that good so action shots didn't turn out too well.

Mauer didn't play so there are no pictures of him. I focused on Morneau (Gina's favorite), Nathan (my favorite) and Liriano. The game was great and it was nice to hang out with Ben for an afternoon.

Oddly, the most interesting part of the game came when I got home though. There was a voicemail for me from a friend of mine that I played college ball with at NDSU. He lives in Texas now and I happened to randomly run into him at the Twins/Rockies series at Coors Field in May. It was cool, as I hadn't seen him for about a decade. We exchanged numbers that day but hadn't spoken with each other since.

His voicemail talked about the Twins and how I needed to get Liriano going (who had to pitch out of jams most of the game). He also let me know that he noticed that I was playing hookie from work. I was confused how he knew and called him back because the game was not broadcast on FSN like it usually is.

He was watching the mlb.tv broadcast which was using the radio announcers with different cameras angles then you normally see on TV. In the seventh inning, Morneau made a catch against the wall about ten feet from us and he saw me at that point.
Small world I tell ya.

Some finality (on a handful of fronts)

Mixed Bag

Welcome to another episode of one of my mixed bag blog entries.  Seeing as I am so hot/cold when it comes to blogging I've accepted this method as a way to catch up instead of thinking about all the entries I haven't done and in turn digging a deeper hole to get out of then I can recover from. 

I also went back through my past entries and tagged all blogs like this one with "mixed bag" so that they are easily accessible (mainly for my sake). 

As usual, there's been a decent amount of updates to get everyone caught up on.

Daycare

After much deliberation, we have decided on our daycare provider for the fall.  We are very excited to have Amber taking the kids and it's a relief for the decision to finally be made.

Nattie/Macie

Seeing our girls play together is quite a site.  One minute, they can't get enough of each other.  Just moments later, one is screaming (generally Macie) for the other one to leave them alone. 

Looks like it's going to be a classic love/hate sibling relationship. 

In all seriousness though, they get along pretty well.  They have their own secret communication system and can still make eachother smile and laugh in ways that no one else can.  There's definitely moments, but we've been blessed with kids that like eachother (for the most part) so far.

Nattie

Celiac update
It's been six months since Natalie was diagnosed with Celiac.  It's hard to believe. 

It's standard practice to have blood drawn at this point to compare the results to what they were initially.  A couple of weeks ago, Morgan came over to stay with Macie so Gina could bring Nattie to Children's for the bloodwork to be done.  You'd be amazed at how much blood is actually needed to do all the tests they needed to do.

As a whole, the results were good.  Her three celiac panel numbers moved as expected (the tTG numbers went up and the Gliadin IgA and IgG numbers both came down quite a bit).

Her iron was low still though so we will need to supplement with a multivitamin to see if that helps.
The only real concern the doctor had was with her thyroid levels, which were in the inactive range.  We will be talking to our primary doctor soon to determine if we should go see an endocrinologist.  The good news is that since January, Natalie has grown a little over two inches so it may just be that her body is still adjusting to things and everything is alright.

We were also told that we could start introducing regular milk back into her diet.  She had been on soy since all this happened because dairy is hard to break down so it was just going to be one less thing for her stomach to deal with.  As long as she doesn't begin bloating again or have loose stools, we can make the switch permanent.

Pre-school in the fall
Natalie starts pre-school in the fall.  Two days a week for a couple of hours each day.  She's definitely ready and I think she is going to love it.

Pushing our buttons
As a three year old should, Nattie is very good at pushing our buttons.  Most of the time she is a sweetheart, but she also is trying to figure out how far she can push us with increased freqency these days.  Unfortunately for her, it's usually not as far as she'd like.  It's different now a days (i.e. on a whole different level).  She's doing things like saying no to us, getting out of bed when she is suppose to be falling asleep, etc.

The lifetime of cat and mouse games are definitely underway.

Question and answer
If you plan to hang out with Natalie for any length of time, be ready for a barrage of questions.  It's incredible how many things she can ask about in a day.  Most of the time it's great because she's learning by asking, but after the eighteenth time she has asked the same question over the course of a week it can get old too.  It can also get hard when she is asking about things you know she already knows the answer to. 

We've even had to implement "it's not question time" on occasion.

Macie

Walking
It's nothing new, but Macie took her sweet little time to start walking.  And as usual, she's gotten real good real fast when she decided to start doing it.  Since the video on Gina's blog, she has improved significantly. 
Some nights, her sole purpose in life is just to make circle after circle around our living room couch.  She rarely crawls now and never scoots.  She's a walking machine these days.

Talking
Macie also talks your ear off.  It's just that only a small percentage of what she says is decipherable.  Words we can definitely understand are mama, dada, dog, all done, thank you and natalie (sort of).  Most of what she says is still jibberish.  There are times though that she can use her sounds in a certain ways (and by pointing) where we can basically understand what she is trying to say.

She still is a very moody child and I think part of that is because she can't tell us what she wants to very easily.  Hopefully (cross your fingers) this will change when she's able to use her words more effectively.  I know it's a slippery slope but I'm personally up for that challenge if the change evens out her mood a bit.

Stair master
Last week Gina spent a day working with Macie on the stairs.  That's all it took.  She completely gets needing to slide down on her tummy when she is on them and wants to be climbing up and down them all day long. 

We are a ways from removing our gate yet, but we are definitely making progress towards that.

Gina

Next time you see Gina, ask about her current Deadliest Catch / Flipping Out addiction.

A handful, literally

It's hard to believe that Gina and I have been married five years already (as of the 26th).  It's been five wonderful years but it sure has gone quick.

Molly

Molly recently decided to make Gina an inspirational scrapbook to help her get through the days where she is struggling with motivation.  It turned out incredible.  It has a bunch of quotes in it and pictures of G with the four of us.  Mo kept it fairly simple, which in this case really adds to the impact of what she was trying to do.  Here is a sample page so you can see what I mean.

Casey

Casey got his teeth cleaned and some bloodwork done last week.  The total bill was a lot, but it included many different things.  He's six now and while some dogs never need it, it was definitely time for him.  His teeth look great and his breath is so much better.  They did a number of other things as well, including testing his poo, some bloodwork, etc.  All the labwork for those items came back looking great.
The one issue they found was a mass inside of his mouth.  They aren't all that worried about it but a portion of the bill was to send it off to a different lab to make sure that it's not anything serious.  We decided we'd rather pay the expense to know for sure.  The results of the biopsy will be back in another week or two.  Hopefully everything is alright with our little guy.

26

A mess of books
I never picked Prince Caspian back up.  Hopefully I will be motivated again sometime in the future.  Nor did I finish No Country for Old Men.  It was intense (which I liked) but was a little off topic of what I want to be reading at this time.  I also started The Golden Compass but it was too slow for me right now so I returned it to the library.

What I have read recently is Clive Cussler's Mediterranean Caper.  It's by no means a classic but I was definitely entertained with Dirk Pitt and his adventures.  I will likely us the series as fill in books when I need a break from what else I am reading. 

Next it's on to Digital Fortress (by Dan Brown), which I have checked out from the library already.  When I finish that I will read The Watchmen.  Carrie was kind enough to lend it to me.  Just based on her giddiness alone, I am excited to start reading it.  As a former comic book collecter, I can defintely see myself liking it.
From there, we'll see.  I haven't made any firm decisions yet.

Wisdom teeth decision
After much debate (internally mostly) and some good advice, I've decided to have all four wisdom teeth pulled.  I've got the referral from my dentist to have it done and all I need to do now is call the dentist office that will be doing it.  I hope to make the call to setup the appointment early next week sometime.  I'm not excited about this at all.

Rory

July 18
For Molly and I's birthday, we made the decision to go to see The Dark Knight on opening night at the MN Zoo IMAX theatre.  Some of the group (Amy, Joe, Lucas, Carrie, Jon, Heather) attended with us which was really nice.  The movie was significant on a number of fronts, especially because of Rory of course.  He was the one person I knew for certain I would have seen the movie with.  Having him not be there with me (physically at least) was hard to accept.

Fortunately, I was able to enjoy the movie still.  It would have been hard not to as it was one of the best movies I've ever seen.  Heath Ledger was even better then advertised (which is saying a lot) and all the rest of the main characters all did an admirable job as well.  To say the least, the movie was wildly entertaining and Rory would have loved it.

Afterwords, most of the attendees were able to come over to our place (as well as Matt & Morgan).  Molly, being the goof she is, bought me a baseball cup-cake (see pic to understand).

The humor in it all is that my birthday is not a big deal to me (which I've documented before) and Molly loves hers (as most people do).

I have enjoyed my birthday more in the recent past though, mainly because I'm able to watch Molly enjoy hers so much.  I want the day to be all about Mo.  Going forward though, Molly has stated that her mission is to make mine a big deal for me. 

Sounds like one of those "when an irresistible force meets an immovable object" situations for future birthdays.  Molly's cake won this year (in my defense she caught me off guard with it) but I now have over 300 days to scheme for July 18, 2009.  Stay tuned for round two next year.

On a side note, I went to IMDB.com to look at quotes/trivia/etc. about The Dark Knight this week to see if there was anything else worth mentioning here about the show.  I wasn't looking for anything in particular but what I found absolutely blew me away.  As we all know, films have working titles for a while before they are officially named to help out with filming locations, etc.  What do you think The Dark Knight's working title was?  I'll let the picture speak for itself.

Top Five Records

I had always planned to change my fantasy football team name this year but I was having a hard time coming up with a name.  All I knew is that I wanted it to reference music (partially for Rory).  I love the movie High Fidelity and in the past I have used Championship Vinyl (the name of Rob's store in the film) for various online games.  I liked the idea of referencing the movie still but I wanted to use something different.  I decided on Top Five Records (Rob's record label).  I even decided to design my own logo for it.

From ashes to ashes
Last week, we spread Rory's ashes in Paul and Karen's back yard (as Rory has asked them to do).  They chose to do it on the trail in between the trees and weeds that Rory and I had worn down between our yards over the years.  I love that trail and I was honored that they chose that spot to do it.  Paul said that it made sense to do it there because many of his happiest moments were spent going back and forth between our houses. 

The gathering was small and there was no formal ceremony of any sort, but it did feel significant at the same time.  It was something that needed to be done and I can personally say that I feel better now that we have released him, in a sense.  Paul and Karen kept some ashes as did Gina and I.  Everything else was left on the trail that night.

Matt and Morgan

Matt and Morgan moved back on the 11th of July.  It was bittersweet for them as they are definitely going to miss Chicago. 

I can already tell you though that it's been so nice seeing them more often now that they are here. 

Matt's transferring his job in Chicago to MN and is starting law school in a couple of weeks.  Morgan recently got a teaching job for the fall.  Things have fallen into place for the most part from that perspective.

Finding a home has not been as simple.  They are looking primarily in Edina (near 50th and France) and SW Minneapolis without much luck. 

Hopefully, they will be able to find something soon.

Mo vs Mo

Two people I interact with very frequently in my life are nicknamed Mo. But, Molly was Mo to me before Morgan was. Now that Morgan is in MN too, this is going to get interesting.

Kate M / Scott

Gina and I were able to get together with Kate M. recently, which was so nice considering it had been far to long since we had seen her. She's just as wonderful as she has always been.

I was also able to hang out with my buddy (and roommate for two years in Fargo) Scott. He is back in MN for the summer and will be returning in a couple of weeks to Kuwait (for the third year now) for the school year to teach.

Fane / Noah / Baby Pops / Baby Gully

A rash of babies have invaded our lives recently (which is always a good thing). 

Our friends Haylee (one of Gina's roommates in college and our friend Taylor's younger sister) and Jerry had a son named Fane in June.  He was unfortunately born a couple of months premature. He's doing great though and Haylee has done a nice job of keeping us all up to date on how things are going through Fane's caring bridge site.

Our good friends Matt and Leah also had their first child (Noah) on the 16th.  He came a couple of weeks early but hasn't had any issues.  Things are going well and they couldn't be happier.

We are also anxiously awaiting the arrival of Jeff and Megan's baby boy any day now.  That's right, you heard me say boy.  Earlier in the week Jeff had said it was OK to share the news.  I'm sure some of you have heard this already too.  We are so excited for them.

And a new baby for Bob and Elena next year..talk about cool!

Snork's Dinner

On July 12, my grandpa held his annual dinner for the family at Cherokee Sirloin Room that him and my grandma always had for us each year in June.  This year, we did it on grandma's birthday and most of us attended a mass together (which mentioned her) before we went to dinner.  It was a nice night and as part of it the family gave my grandpa a scrapbook in which everyone made their own page with grandma (pictures, stories about her, etc.).  My aunt Mary did all the coordinating and helped anyone who needed it.  It turned out really well.  It was hard for him to look at initially but you could tell that he very much appreciated it.

Otters everywhere

We went to the zoo last Friday with the Otters (the van came in very handy for that).  No, not those otters (though we did see three different otter exhibits as we made our way around the zoo).  The Sarah, Chris and Hailey variety.  They stayed with us Thursday - Saturday and we very much enjoyed having them around.  

Here's family pictures of each of us that we got during the zoo trip.

Russia's Grizzly Coast

If you get a chance, get to the zoo and check out their new exhibit that opened up last month.  It's fantastic.  The whole area (though a little short) is very well done. 

My favorite are the grizzly's.  There are three of them and they are very playful.  Every time I have been there they have been in the water wrestling just a couple of feet away from you.  Last week, I watched one of the bears go right up to the glass (no more then a foot away) and casually look at one of the kids sitting there watching him squarely in the eye for a couple of seconds.  It was pretty neat.  Here's a picture of one of the bears that Gina took one of the times she was there with the girls this summer.

2008 MLB Trade Deadline

As weird as it is to say, I'm happy that the Twins have not made any moves this week just because they are knee deep in the race for the AL Central crown.  I've loved watching them this year but they are not true contenders in '08.  I just don't want them to give up something now that would be useful in the future when they can be a bigger factor in the next couple of years.  The only way I'd be for a move is if they traded Livan Hernandez to open up a starting spot for Liriano or if they made a trade to acquire a power hitting third basemen (more for the future then for this year) who is fairly young with a reasonable track record.  Unfortunately, a third basemen like that does not exist (unless Garrett Atkins were to become available again) so there is nothing for them to do this year. 

There is a lot to be excited about with them though.  You can see how this team should be good next year and how they could be really good in 2010.  All they really need to do is shore up the left side of the infield.
I'm very excited for the future of this team.

As for the Red Sox, boy did they give up a lot for Jason Bay but I think it was the right move on their part considering the health of their clubhouse, etc.  I am a big fan of Bay and had hoped they would let Manny walk at the end of the year and make a play for him instead.  As for Manny, he deserves a lot of thanks for what he did for the team over the years but it was definitely time for everyone to move on.

#4
I personally would welcome Mr. Favre to the Vikes.  Much of my dislike for him in the past has been because of the team he played for, not because of him. 

Blue and yellow goodness

Last week I started reading Dan Brown's Angels & Demons on my way to and from work.  I must say, I have very much enjoyed the book and I don't want to put it down.  It has gotten me excited to read again.  I've been reading but it's felt more like a chore recently for whatever reason.

So, yesterday I did something that was long overdue.  I got myself a library card. 

The girls were with me and Nattie was in awe of the place.  I'm guessing with her love of books we will be there quite a bit in the future.

After I finish Angels & Demons this week, I want to start a book series and after some debate I decided that Clive Cussler's Pacific Vortex! will be what I request first.  Hopefully I will get into it and continue to follow Dirk Pitt on all his adventures.  I've been told the Vince Flynn books would work as well.

But, any suggestions on an adventure series that has some mystery/thriller to it would be welcomed. 
I want to read a series that I feel like I am learning something from.  The Cussler books are more about adventure and less about education.  In reality, the Flynn books would probably fall more in the category I'm looking for.

Impressions (for a lifetime)

How do you honor someone you never want to forget? 

There's a million answers to that question.  One of the ways Gina and I decided to honor Rory last week (on Gina's birthday) was with tattoos.  For years I've said I'd get one if anything ever happened to him.  I even told Rory about it during one of his healthier times.

Rory, Gina and I had a handful of conversations about tattoos over for years.  We all wanted to get one someday.  Our last conversation together on the topic was the deciding factor for Gina's tattoo.  Rory told us that if he got one he'd have the word "winter" tattooed across his back.  The main reference was to the Tori Amos' song (with the same title).  Gina decided to do the same tattoo on the front right side of her waistline.  While being fairly simple, it says so much at the same time.  

 

As I had assumed for years, my tattoo was of the batman symbol.  After much debate, I had it done on the top of my left foot.  It's the very first thing I think of when Rory comes to mind.  It was always how I had envisioned paying tribute to him if this day ever came.

In a way it almost seems morbid to me to have planned this out, in part, before his death.  The truth is that I think it was a coping mechanism for us and in the end I'm glad Rory knew about it.

I'm sharing this now basically so it's out there.  I don't want it feeling like it's something we are hiding.  Some people are going to think it is a really great thing and others will not.  Simply put, it's something we did for ourselves and we are both happy with the decision regardless.

I will admit though, having one takes a little getting use to. 

We're starting a revolution!

Before I start, I'd like to say that for more background on the situation, see Gina's last two posts: Puke-O-Rama! and Three Days and Counting.

A couple of tests are still pending, but it looks overwhelming like Natalie has celiac disease (pronounced sē′ lē ak′).

Never heard of it before? Me either. Though, I have read that up to 1% of the U.S. population has it (3 million) and that approximately 97% of those cases are undiagnosed.

What does this mean? Nattie has a gluten intolerance (which is found in all wheats, ryes, barleys and usually oats).

Her doctor has asked us to start her on a gluten free diet immediately.

After looking into things, I'd compare having a gluten intolerance to having a peanut allergy (but thankfully without the epi pen or 911 on speed dial). The attention to detail and investment in time to read labels and understand the background of companies making the products is critical.

Is celiac life altering? Absolutely. Is it life threatening? Not likely.

The main organ at risk is the small intestine. Over time, considerable damage can be done to it if the proper changes aren't made. The good news is that the small intestine does heal completely if a gluten free lifestyle is attained (and then continued).

The list of foods that she is no longer allowed the have is quite extensive. Around 75%+ of the food in our house is unavailable to her. Here's the list of ingredients she needs to avoid, etc.

Which of these items do you think contains (or may contain) gluten:

*most milks, aged cheeses, seafood, poultry, peanut butter, eggs, fruits, vegetables, butter, jello, tea, wines, black coffee, ketchup, salt, pepper, cinnamon, etc.

*yogurt, chocolate milk, hot dog, bologna, hamburger, salad dressings, mayonnaise, baked beans, pickles, chocolate, chewing gum, tomato sauce, maple syrup, flavored coffee, canned soups, any type of medicine, etc.

*beer, meatloaf, pizza, ravioli, bread, buns, most cereals, licorice, pasta, waffles/pancakes, mac 'n cheese, speghetti o's, pretzels, gravy, ice cream cones, etc.

The answer is that the first list does not contain gluten, the second may contain gluten (see label reading statement above) and the last list definitely contains gluten.

After doing some research, a gluten free diet is spendy but is much easier to deal with today then it was even a couple of years ago. Not only are there places like Trader Joe's which make gluten free food reasonably priced (though terribly inaccessible to a south metro resident), but it's even being put on labels of food now (though not FDA approved yet). We will be buying a breadmaker and will be making much of the food we eat from scratch. I am looking into what books we will be adding to our library as well. I've already decided that Shelley Case's Gluten Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide will be for sure.

Another interesting factor in this all is that either Gina or I passed the gene to her and it's possible Macie has the same condition.

Let's see, Gina has a good stomach and I definitely don't. Neither does my dad. His dad, bad stomach too. Who do you think is carrying the gene? Gina's family has some of the traits associated to this disease but they're not resigned specially to one side of her family making me think that it's not her.

Based on the list of symptoms, I'm fully expecting to be diagnosed with it as well and will need to follow the same guidelines as Nattie does.

If this holds true, I can't tell you how much it will break me heart to look at Nattie and know that I caused this.

Once we confirm who the carrier is we will need to go back through their family tree and suggest that those who may be at risk be tested.

We will also be seeing a nutritionist in early February to help us make the conversion as smooth as possible.
While all this is very unfortunate, it could be a lot worse. The first couple of months are going to be quite an adjustment but after that it will just be a way of life.

And...

I am glad that we potentially have answers to many of Nattie's recent issues.