I absolutely love the Junior K name :) It's now being adopted by us and I'll share it with his teacher as well. :) It really is just that in our mind. Olliesmom...too confident LOL Ya my little red headed stuborn monster with too much confidence....it's enough to scare me under the covers at night LOL If he gets cocky I'll start erasing his homework at night so he looks like a slacker to avoid any chance of a cocky red head heh heh I scoped out the other kids today and will finish on Friday at their end of the year party, but it seems that only one of the six will actually be going on to the same school as him. He thinks she's 16 so I don't think he'll notice they didn't go together (everyone taller than him is 16 now since I told him he could drive the car when he was 16) :) I was hoping they'd marry (we have a couple crush on her parents cuz they're old and fun like we think we are LOL). But maybe the stigma of dating a younger (and likely much shorter) man will wain before 2025 and they will still have a future ;) But the other kids are either going to public school or the other private school and two (brothers) will be moving after this year, so aside from the one little girl he's going to be with different kids in his real kindergarten anyhoo. He goes with the flow on stuff like that anyhoo so that's not a horrible worry. I think it would be harder to be at the preschool and then have his friends go into class and not get to go with them. TT it is kind of a luxurious safty net to have isn't it? Worst case, it's too much for him and we back off but he never knows there was an issue. Best case, it's a good prep or Jr. Kindergarten before he moves to the other school for K-8 the next year. It's kind of a unique opportunity to have and I'm grateful for that coming our way. Lyfia my son has selective IgG deficiency which is a rare complication of prematurity. But for preemies, immunoglobulin deficiencies aren't as uncommon as many expect, though it's more often A that's deficient (he also had that but has grown out of it). Typically if there is a feeding disorder it's the opposite of your problem. They associate food with pain from the beginning of their life if their problem is not recognized early enough (as was the case with our son) so they learn to control or disasociate themselves with hunger (but not with the grumpyness that accompanies hunger LOL). IgA is fairly common at something like 1 in 300 or so. Very common in preemies (they're just not done cooking yet ya know) but gastric issues in general are always worse for preemies, even the close to term ones. One of the issues with preemies (even near term) can be problems with the way their body processes foods. Jesse has a very slow gastric system. (delayed gastric emptying) so if he's full and you give him one more bite he bursts! (a nice way to say he vomits with wild enthusiam which sucks!) He really is "full". We have to be careful not to overfeed (since he will eat what we make him eat even if he's full because of his nazi like feeing program training). But the opposite problem can also be a preemie issue...their gastric systems process foods too fast so they don't ever get full. It's called Rapid Gastric Emptying Syndrome or "Dumping". Dumping is normally associated with adults who've had gastric surgery but they are finding some babies have it as well and most likely a preemie. It causes the food to go through the stomach too fast and "dump" into the lower intestine. Milk (in both our case and a rapid system) is a problem because the large fats are difficult to process anyhoo, and even more so for those with gastric issues. Jesse isn't "allergic" to milk...it's more like a poison in his body (or was...this is something he's growing out of). For him, in the early years it caused a low level bacteria to form and that was the cause of his diarrhea. He couldn't even have highly processed milks that are supposed to be ok for kids like this but we learned later that's partly an issue with the IgG problem (hind sight is a biotch!) Anyhoo, both gastric emptying issues are diagnosed with a couple of simple tests. One is a barrium swallow where they give the child a bottle or meal with barrium in it (Jesse loved it LOL...it was the only time he ever slept well in the first year...I asked if I could buy it by the ton heh heh). Then they do a series of xrays to watch the food travel from the mouth through the system until it comes out (yes it takes a while but they get breaks...it's not terrible...probably one of our easiest tests). Then the other thing they do is an ultrasound after feeding with something laced with a dye. That was less fun because they have to lay still for 45 mins to an hour...we had to drug him. But that one is used to track more in debth how the lower gastric (stomach on down where as the other is more focused on the top end) system is flowing. Both of these issues tend to be seen in fail to thrive babies...you rarely see a "fat" baby with the problem so if your little dear is retaining all of the calories and gaining weight they won't do the tests, they'll just be incredibly helpful (eyes rolling) and tell you not to feed her or some other nonsense. Both issues can be corrected surgically if I remember right, but then they might have to be uncorrected later (in our case) so we decided not to put him through it. The positive thing is that normally in a few years the system does grow stronger and starts to do it's thing correctly, some as early as the first year. But there are some steps you can take feeding wise to help them retain the calories they need to grow if you know what the problem is, and in many cases adjust how you feed (for us that means more meals more often than a normal child, but smaller meals overall). I didn't say in this thread, but one of the reason's we want him to go to this school another year is that he's developmentally fine everywhere except for feeding issues. He still does not have a normal appetite (does not recognize hunger well) and would rather starve than eat. He also didn't learn to eat at the right time so he has difficulty with the process (can't separate foods correctly in his mouth so can only eat one texture at a time). I don't know how big your little doll is, but if I had the knowledge that I have now I'd have known how to deal with his problem and he wouldn't have a feeding issue now :( That kills me as a mom. The school he's in understands his issues and works with him, so there's a benefit to him getting another year of "normal kid" eating to see if we can move him forward before he goes to the big school! I tell you this only because I am thinking your little one is still pretty little??? If they aren't testing her gastric system get her to a gastroenterologist and have the tests run. They're not hard on the child, and could answer some of your problems so you can address them now verses being stuck with a 4 1/2 year old who can only eat food the consistency of mashed potatoes :o( I don't want anyone in the world to go through what we did with our son. Yes part was because of his rare blood issue, but the other part....we tried soy milk when he was just a few weeks old. The gastroenterologist we were seeing didn't tell us to stay on it for at least ten days (important with formula changes) so when he continued to have issues we took him off the soy and moved onto the next formula. I would happily run that man over with a car if he walked in front of me in a parking lot...(don't tell) :oP Sorry if I bent your ear too much on that lyfia!!! After our little saga I just have this burning desire to fix all babies with tummy issues so their mommies won't suffer!

Thanks everybody. I really appreciate the feedback. Labrat, ThatÂs good to hear about Baron. Did they include the fittings (drains, returns, etc.) in your quote? I checked the mail on Friday, but didnÂt get a quote from Mirage yet. IÂll email them today. The guy from SGM told me he heard bad things about them though. DonÂt know how much merit to give that though. ----- A little updateÂI called Cruz plastering to ask some additional questions and get some referrals. I talked to a person by the name of Ivan, who is the one who came out and did the bid on our pool for Cruz. Anyway, he gave me the number to Splash Pools, who they must do a lot of pools for and he was going to call me back with some individuals as well. That was on Friday, but have not heard back from him yet. Why I was talking to him, he said that he talked to his Foreman and he was not too happy about doing our pool because of so many mosaics (I can understand that...The plaster crew that did my uncles pool broke some in the middle of the job and created a big headache) and trim tile. I don't know if he was just saying that because I was asking for references and maybe he thought he was doing me a favor...I don't know. Not sure where that left things, but I assume they would still be interested if I contract them; makes me a little more nervous however. Another thing I discovered which makes me even more nervous had to do with Ivan. He mentioned that he use to do like 30 jobs a week when he had his own company (Ivan Pool Plastering), but they (Cruz) only do about 6 a week. Out of curiosity, I did a CSLB search on Ivan Pool Plastering and discovered licensed was revoked for various reasons. I also did a BBB search and found a grade of "F" with several complaints all around the same time. They all had to do with people contracting, paid down payment, started job and never finished. Then it looks like the company went out of business. This doesn't really speak about the quality of their work. Maybe it was just a really bad time (Who doesn't have their bad times), but does make me feel a little more uncomfortable. I agree about the quality of work is the important thing. I really donÂt have a problem spending the extra $3000 + to go with authentic PebbleTec (pebblefina), but I just wish there were a couple more licensed companies to install it. It just seemed like if I was spending the extra money, the hassle should be less (i.e. finding someone to install mosaics, need to get fittings myself, etc.), and I didnÂt get that feeling from Baron.

I would not recommend it.. I went with the pebble fina grigio. the color looks great but the finish is VERY picky and hard to get right. unlike the other pebbletech finish, this finish is not acid washed following application. It is VERY depedent on having the perfect acidic water condition and constant brushing to get an even appearance. Even with constant brushing - unless your PB is hypervigilant about coming over immediately once the pool is filled to start the filters and add acid, the finish will end up very splotchy. We brushed constantly for 2 weeks; 4-5x/day... Our startup is handled by someone contracted by our PB. Our finish looks really uneven right now. We are trying to get them to agree to a drain and acid wash, maybe at the end of the summer... If I had to do it over, I would go with pebble sheen... from afar, the water looks great and sparkles beautifully... up close and in the shadows, you can see the many imperfections..

We are having our pool re-plastered and upgrading from the previous plaster to pebblesheen. We initially were looking at pebbletec and when we opted for sheen instead it was the same cost, no upgrade. I'm thinking you might want to check with a different company. There should not be an upsale cost between tec and sheen unless you are including additives that were not present in the tec.