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!

Playing in the Sunshine

The last several days have been sunny, which I'm LOVING. I put the kids outside while I was fixing dinner a few days ago and walked out a five minutes later to find this:

They were fully clothed before I sent them out there, I swear. A plastic bin with 2 inches of water is definitely enough to swim in according to my kids!

Today we went for a walk in Noble Woods, which is just a few blocks from our house. We collected sticks and pine cones on our walk and the kids threw them in the stream. If you look closely you can see a few teeny tiny baby pine cones in Lydia's hand--they were pretty adorable.

Despite Luke trying to dive in the stream a few times, we all arrived home dry, happy, and

fully clothed. It was a nice walk.

On a completely different topic, does anyone out there have dust mite allergies? Have you used the covers you put over the mattress and pillows to cut down on allergens? Are they worth the money or is it a big crock? Just wondering.

I'm Livin' the Good Life!!!

Lately I've found myself becoming very easily and quickly frustrated with a few things in life, namely my body's desire to recognize every microscopic particle floating in the Oregon air as an allergen, and Lydia's newest "developmental stage" (at least I hope it's a stage.) She seems bent on ignoring us or doing the exact opposite of whatever it is we ask her to do, and she has to do everything "all on my own," even if that involves lots of screaming and crying because she can't do it. Nothing major, but annoying nonetheless. Thinking about this today, I realized that I do have some great perks in my life that few others are able to enjoy on a regular basis.

Perk #1--My Personal Restroom Attendant

Yes, that's right folks, this Charlie Brown look-alike will come running when he hears the bathroom door open and stand with his hand on the lever, awaiting the okay to flush your waste away. While waiting for you to finish your business, he also will turn the water faucet on and adjust the temperature and flow, allowing you to get those hands clean even faster than you were ever able to before you had your own personal bathroom helper!

Perk #2--My English Language Efficiency/Inefficiency Expert
This lovely lady has coined a few key phrases in our house that are ingenious combinations of words. The two most commonly used are "sugarman"(cinnamon and sugar) as in "Mom, would you please prefer to get me some toast with butter and sugarman?", and "hanitizer" (hand sanitizer), as in "Mom, I want hanitizer instead of washing my hands."

On the flip side, sometimes she gets stuck on a phrase and repeats it 10-15 times, such as "Mom, I need....I need.....I need......um......I need......" you get the picture. However, tonight (right after the soon-to-follow pee story) I very much appreciated her repetitiveness when I put her to bed. I told her, as I do every night, that she is my favorite Lydia, to which she responded, "Mom, you are my favorite, and Dad is my favorite, and Luke is my favorite.....we are all my favorite."

So, in the grand scheme of things, who cares if I can't wear contacts or makeup for a few months, or if I have to clean up pee off the floor twice in one day because someone decided to hold it and cry/throw a fit when I set them on the potty. I've got two crazy kids who give me something to laugh about every day, and a husband who is pretty stinkin' awesome if I do say so myself. I get to stay home with my kids and do basically whatever we want to do, except my one night a week when I get to go to play Nurse Ashley in the ER and poke people's veins, which I love. Yep, when it all boils down I'm definitely livin' the good life.

Another random post...

First, a few pictures from Lydia's birthday celebrations, which have lasted for about two weeks....do you see a theme going on here?

No, I did not make the cake. I paid a girl in my ward to make it.

Second, a scenario for you all to consider: Last week while driving home from work at 2:30 am Thursday, I stopped at a red light and watched a young gentleman bike across the crosswalk in front of me. The bike he was riding still had the cardboard poster thingy in the front wheel and I could see a plastic sleeve with papers in it hung on the handlebar. Obviously this guy had just bought himself a brand-new bike.....except that it was 2:30 in the morning, and what sporting goods store is open at that time? I sat there debating if I should call the cops and report a (possibly) stolen bike or just let it go? I went with the third option: go home and put it in the capable hands of my little superhero!

Happy Third, Lydia!

What better place to celebrate a birthday than Red Robin?! Lydia must be a "big girl" now for sure. As soon as we sat down she looked up at the server and said, "Today is my birthday!" She soaked it all in, especially the ice cream with whipped cream and sprinkles. Now the challenge is to get her to realize it's a birth day not a birth week or birth month. She is most definitely our little princess!

Dumpster Diving

As you may recall, Luke has had a certain affinity for garbage cans from an early age. His new fetish is flushing the toilet/flushing things down the toilet. (I think he may have a future in waste management.) So when my keys turned up missing and I'd looked ALL OVER the house for them, I had a suspicion that they might be in one of those places. Since tonight is garbage night, we figured we better check the nastiness that is our garbage can before the trash man took it away for good.

Success!

I'm definitely keeping my keys out of his reach from now on.

The Haps and the Craps

The Haps first, then we'll move on to the more important and wildly exciting craps....My sister inspired me to make a Moby-type wrap for my friend's baby shower, so here's the picture of the finished product. Thank you Luke for modeling how it's used. (Well, at least one of the ways you can use it.) I have one extra one that's almost identical to this one, except it was my practice one, so the bottom edge of the paisley fabric has ribbon on it to cover up a mistake :) If you want it you can have it, just let me know!

If you want to make one of your own, all it takes is 5 or 6 yards of fabric, depending on how long you want the ties to be. You actually get two wraps out of one piece of material, because you cut the 5-6 yard piece down the center. I finished the edges of mine with a rolled hem on my serger and added the paisley fabric, but some materials you don't even have to sew at all. Voila, it's done! When I make one again I will use stretchier material--this one was good for a bigger baby because it had less give, but when they're teeny tiny I think it would be better to have more of a T-shirt, cotton jersey type of fabric so they're snuggled up really tight right next to you.

The Craps: LYDIA IS USING THE POTTY, HOORAY!!! I don't know what happened to change her mind, but we'd been having talks for a while about how when she was three she'd be a big girl and would be ready to use the potty. She would usually cry because "I'm not a big girl!" if you even suggested that she sit on the potty. Since she'll be three in about two weeks I suggested that we practice sitting on the potty to get ready to be a big girl. She resisted, until Wednesday. She voluntarily sat on the potty for 20 minutes trying to go, but couldn't. I suggested that she try after taking a bath, because that might help her pee-pee come out. She was in the tub, stood up and told me she had to pee-pee, so we sat on the potty and she did it! In her own words, "I felt the tickle and then I sat on the potty and my pee-pee just fell out!"

She's doing GREAT at peeing on the potty--even at night. She'll wake me up when she has to go, which is exciting to me even at 1:45 am. Our problem is pooping. She already has constipation problems, so going poop on the potty is going to be a big challenge. She hasn't really gone since Wednesday, despite me loading her up with fiber supplements and starting Miralax yesterday. Today she had to go a few times, but she can't really control the urge when she has to go so she ended up peeing and pooing just a tiny bit in her underwear. I put pull-ups on her this afternoon and told her to just poop in them and she could have any treat she wanted, but she's so focused on NOT going in her pants now that she won't do it. So, here we are--her with tons of poop in her bowels but refusing to go, and me pleading for her to poop in any way, shape, or form. Any ideas of how to get this cute underwear-clad lady to poop?

Luke, on the other hand, has no problem pooping and peeing his pants all day long. He is now fascinated with the toilet and loves to flush it. Yesterday as I was getting ready to go to the shower he managed to stuff half a roll of toilet paper and a block in the toilet and flushed it several times, causing it to overflow. It made me think of the book "Love You Forever" and I actually smiled when I first saw it. His new word is showcased in the following video. I sure love this goofy little guy!

Now you know what we've been up to for the last few weeks!

The Little Lady in My Life

My little bundle of sunshine has really been on a roll today. A small sampling of her quotes of the day:

*We've been putting Lydia and Luke to sleep in the same room for the last several nights, and it seems to be working out pretty well, although Luke always wakes up first. This morning I got him up when I heard him, and Lydia came down a while later. I asked her how she slept. "Well, apparently Luke woke up and was crying," she said with a furrowed brow (and she put a very special emphasis on the word apparently--long and drawn out with a pause afterward.) "I had to put my blanket over my head to keep him out!"

*I handed her her vitamins. She started scarfing them down and I said, "Say thank you, please." She looked at me for several seconds before saying, "Thank you please" with a smirk on her face.

*Tonight for Family Home Evening Tyler was reading from his journal about Lydia and Luke's births. Lydia was running around wildly not paying attention except to ask every few minutes when we were going to have our FHE treat. In Ty's journal entry about Lydia's birth he wrote about how her eyes were open when she came out and he wondered what she was thinking at that moment. "Lydia, do you remember what were you thinking about when you were born?" he asked. "Yes, I was thinking about our Family Home Evening treat."

She's such a sassy lady sometimes but I do love that little girl....I can't believe she's going to be three years old in a few weeks!

Merriest New Year!

Happy New Year! I have a New Year's resolution to contribute more to the blog. Nah, not really. But I guess since my recent contribution equals zero I've already met my goal with this post anyway. Very nice.

We had a wonderful Christmas break in Pendleton. Lydia has figured out the true meaning of Christmas - presents. It was fun to see her get so excited opening the presents. Though sometimes it seemed as though she was just feeding off of us as we were excited for her. She didn't want to let us down. Luke was a big fan of other people's presents. He picked up his cousin Tate's new dog toy, started playing with it and called it a "schweka." In fact, schweka became his word for a lot of things that week. Everything he pointed at was schweka. It must have been so frustrating for him that we couldn't figure out what he was talking about. It's so simple.

Just before New Year's we were hit with a beautiful snow storm. It came hard and fast and no one was expecting it. It was perfect timing. It started to stick to the roads just before rush hour. As I rode the Max home I watched as cars spun out, bumped into other cars and on highway 26 no one was moving. It was a good day to ride the Max.


By the time I got home Lydia and Luke had already built their snowman. Though Luke was more interested in eating the raisins that made up the snowman's mouth.


After the New Year celebrations were over (We watched a movie and fell asleep. We really like to party.) We went to the zoo to see the Zoo Lights. Very cool. Yes, they were just lights, but there were lots of them and they were pretty. Plus, we got to see some monkeys and that's always fun.



I also celebrated by not shaving. It started because I was lazy and didn't feel like shaving. Now I'm past the point of no return. I think I'll at least let it go a month.


And there you go. Hope everyone's having a wonderful start to 2010.