Benefits of Living in Oregon

How often do you see a double rainbow? (BTW, the outer rainbow had faded considerably by the time I got the camera out.) I can live with the rain if it will leave a few of these babies every time it dumps on us!

On a completely unrelated note, I need to change my hairstyle. I haven't cut it for literally a year and it needs something done. Recommendations?

Sicky

You know Luke is sick when you find him passed out on the floor. The boy has a cold and an ear infection but is on the mend and back to his destructo ways. Hooray!!!

Sew Crafty

Ha! Such a clever title, I'm proud of myself. Here's what I've been spending my time on lately:

I made this for my friend Annie, who is giving it to her little girl for her birthday. It will match the curtains in the play kitchen she's making her. Annie gets all the design credit. Of course, Lydia wants one as well so I let her pick out the fabric for hers today. It's a hot pink leopard print--it's going to look fabulous, at least to Lydia!

I saw a tutorial for a little girl's dress made from a mens dress shirt, so I gave it a try. Lydia was asleep when I finished it so I put it on Luke to test the length, because it looked pretty short to me. You can see how happy he was about it.

Obviously I measured wrong at some point, because it's more like a long shirt/tunic on Lydia, but it will still work with leggings. The white ribbon is in place of the red waistband that has yet to be applied to the shirt/dress.

I love those rosy cheeks!

At the prompting of my friend Gemia, I made a Peeps bunny ribbon garland thingy for Easter. I decided I hate cutting anything out of felt.

More baby wraps for friends having babies.

Yes, that is a cabbage patch doll. I learned after the picture below that Luke is way too heavy for a stretchy wrap.

Happy crafting everyone!

Allergy Testing

Wednesday morning I took Luke in to the allergist to get tested because of his reaction to peanut butter. Luckily for the docs, he freezes in a doctor's office so he was actually quite well-behaved.
This is about five minutes after they started skin-testing.
This is fifteen minutes later. The red spot on the left is histamine (just a control to make sure his skin would react to an allergen.) The top red spot on the right is eggs, and the one below it is peanuts. They had to mark the borders of the biggest hive with pen, because there were so many tiny hives all around it it was hard to measure.
I have to take him in Monday to have blood drawn to double-check the skin testing results and see to what degree he's allergic to both substances. I'm curious to see what the egg test says, because the only time I've ever notice him have problems with eggs is if he's had they straight, like scrambled eggs or hard-boiled. His eyes get all red and itchy and a little swollen, but no trouble breathing or swelling like with peanuts. I feed him eggs all the time in other food, like bread, baked goods, etc, and I've never noticed it to be a problem. There seems to be evidence that a lot of kids outgrow egg allergies by age 5, so that may be the case.

With the peanuts, based on the size of the hive he is 100% for sure allergic to them and I have to carry and Epi-pen and Benadryl all the time. The good news is because he doesn't seem to have asthma, his chances of dying from a ingestion of peanuts is less than if he did have asthma. So, we've got that going for us! He tested negative for the other nuts (tree nuts) but they still say you should avoid them, because there is an increased risk of developing allergies to them in childhood.

Wish me luck on Monday. I've already checked his veins--he's got a few that should be pretty easy to hit, as long as he doesn't kick and scream too much. I don't mind pinning other kids down for shots or IVs, but it's not as fun when it's your own kid you have to hold down.

The Goob

Meet Luke, otherwise known as Goober, Goob, Tub-a-bub, Lukey-Dukey, Lukester, etc. He loves to make messes any time I turn my back (or in this case, I was on the computer.) Lotion, soap, and water are his personal favorites to use to make messes.

(Note that although you can't see it, his shirt says champion mess-maker.) This was what he decided to do Monday morning while I was sending emails for my Church calling. After this was taken, we went to clogging, where he and two other little ones just older than him overflowed the sink in the bathroom adjacent to the nursery, took dump trucks and buses from the nursery and filled them with the water, and drove them out into the middle of the nursery room and dumped the water out. It was very un-awesome.
The next morning I stopped doing laundry when my toast popped up, and as I was buttering it I could hear Luke laughing, then Lydia. This is what I found. I'm sure I thoroughly confused them by laughing and taking a picture, and then having a talk with them about how they can't ever do it again because they could get stuck in there or break the dryer door.
This was this morning, rearranging the silverware while I was getting Lydia dressed.

The little guy is full of energy and spunk, which is one of the reasons I love him, but he sure does challenge me sometimes! He is starting to speak more, which is fun to hear. His favorite thing to say seems to be to yell Mom repeatedly at top volume. He spoke his first real sentence this week, which was "I nee ep peese" (I need help please.) Pretty cute. Hopefully he stays that polite. I sure love this little guy and all his antics!

Update: As I was posting this, the little man himself ran in to say hi:

I went to see what else he had colored with blue marker. I found the following:

(There was also some on one of the dining room chairs, but I didn't take a picture.)
Apparently when he was done he ate the tip of the marker--hiding the evidence, I guess? Luckily Crayola makes water-soluble, non-toxic markers. This is why I can't blog while my children are awake!