Category: Kids & Parenting

So Worth It

Published by dee on February 16, 2009

Tonight I sat down to do one of my least favorite tasks – paying bills. It didn’t used to be so bad. I sat down, sorted through the bills, paid what was due, and that was that. These days I have to juggle numbers and figure out what I can pay and what I have to push back until payday. The money just never stretches far enough. By the time we pay day care and buy groceries there just isn’t enough left over to pay everything else. The whole thing just depresses me.

Then I look at the beautiful faces of my kids and the depression all washes away. No matter what, the struggle is worth it. Everything I do is for them and they pay me back with smiles, laughs, hugs, kisses, and unconditional love. That’s worth more than all the money in the world.

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A Weekend At Home

Published by dee on January 26, 2009

This weekend my family did something that I can’t recall doing in a very long time – we stayed home. I honestly cannot remember the last time that we stayed home for an entire weekend and now that we’ve done it I hope to make it a priority a little more often. We did leave for about an hour to go to church on Sunday and Hubby had to go to work for a couple hours, but that was it. No errands, no restaurants, nothing. We spent time as a family at home.

During our weekend at home, we cooked every meal (if you count making PBJ’s as cooking!). This is quite an accomplishment as we generally eat out (or order in) at least twice on the weekends. Friday night we usually go out for a nice family meal, then end up grabbing fast food as we’re running errands or on our way somewhere on Saturday or Sunday. Even when my mom tried to tempt me with Mexican food and margarita’s I held onto my reserve. Not only did we eat every meal at home, but I also made cupcakes (requested by Zach) and brownies (requested by Hubby) from scratch. This was in part due to the new budget I’m trying to get us on and in part due to my goal of cleaning out the pantry. It is amazing how much food I have horded in there!

On Saturday I spent some time cleaning and organizing the kitchen, putting laundry away, and just general tidying up so that I had the evening free. I spent lots of time loving on my kids and I gave my blog a fresh new look for the second time in as many days. I hated the first version but so far still like this one. (If you’re in a feed reader you might want to click over and take a look!)

As I mentioned above, on Sunday we went to church. We’re currently on the search for a new church (we still haven’t really found one since my dad moved away in June) so we decided to try out a small church in our neighborhood. I’m still a little on the fence about the church we went to. I didn’t just love it, but I didn’t hate it either. I think we need to go a few more times before I can decide. Zach, on the other hand, was asking if we could come back again before we were even out of the building, so there’s that.

Zach really enjoyed playing with the other kids at church, which brings up a question. Do you keep your kids with you during the church service or send them to a nursery/children’s church? I have struggled with this ever since Zach was a baby. I prefer to have my kids in church with me. They make a little noise, but I think that if you want them to learn how to behave in church, they have to be in church. When we first arrived at the church on Sunday we were told there was a nursery available. I thanked the lady and told her that I prefer to keep the kids with me. Then part way through the service the children came up (from the nursery) to assist with a “noisy offering”. The same lady came by and asked Zach to join them which he did happily. Then when it was all over she asked him if he would like to go back downstairs with them. Of course he said “Yes!” so she told me that he was going with them.

I didn’t really mind him going, but I was a little unhappy that the lady totally disregarded the fact that I wanted him to stay in church. I certainly didn’t want to cause a scene by saying he coulnd’t go so I let him go with her and the other kids. If he was acting up or being noisy I would have taken him down there myself, but he was being very well-behaved. I wanted him to stay in church where he might learn something rather than go downstairs where he could run around and play with cars and blocks. I don’t really think that making the child sit still for one hour out of the entire weekend is really that torturous.

Whew, I got off on a bit of a tangent there!

Anyway, after church we headed back home and spent the rest of the day relaxing. I finally got Evie’s Tinkerbell Fleece Tie Blanket finished (that was supposed to be a Christmas gift!) and made her a couple more hair bows, though the electricity went out for a while forcing me to stop that project before I was finished. While the electricity was out, Hubby got called to work and the kids and I spent some time reading books together. Once we had power again we watched some movies and I worked a bit on knitting the “never ending scarf” that I still owe my mom from her last birthday.

I got a little off track, but the whole point of this entry was that we had a really great weekend together at home with very little distraction from the outside world. I wish I could say that we didn’t spend any money, but I did order Evie a few clearanced clothing items online because she’s suddenly outgrowing all of her 12 month sized clothes. It was really nice to slow down for a change and just enjoy being together.

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Allergies and Skin Sensitivity – A 10-month Journey With No Answers

Published by dee on January 15, 2009

I think it took nearly two months for my daughter’s newborn rashy skin to go away. I asked the doctor about it a couple of times but wasn’t overly concerned. I know that babies don’t always come out with that perfectly flawless soft baby skin that we all associate with newborns.

I changed from using all the nicely scented baby soaps and lotions to the unscented ones. After her doctor recommended using Aveeno products, I discovered that something about the oatmeal was making her break out. I had used two different oatmeal based lotions on her, one scented (Johnson’s vanilla oatmeal) and one unscented (Aveeno) and both increased the rashiness. We switched to Johnson’s Head-to-Toe baby wash (hypoallergenic and dye free) and Johnson’s Aloe baby lotion and things seemed to improve for a while. She was exclusively breastfeeding at the time and I tried to watch what I was eating pretty carefully but never found any correlations between my food and her rashes.

We started introducing solid foods to her at around five months. I was a little wary of this because of the oatmeal reaction, but she seemed to do just fine. I even fed her oatmeal cereal and it didn’t seem to bother her at all. She was still getting rashes occasionally, but I felt like it was pretty well under control. The other factor was that during floor time she was starting to move off of her blankets and onto the carpet where she was exposed to more potential allergens so determining the exact cause of any rash she had was nearly impossible.

In August we took a last-minute trip to Texas to visit family. While I tried my hardest to pack absolutely everything we could possibly need for the trip, I did forget one thing – towels for Evie. I thought ahead for everything else that might possibly touch her skin or mouth, but didn’t think to bring towels for bath time. While we were there, we also spent quite a bit of time in the pool. The day we left, she started breaking out and ended up with a horrible rash. It was the worst I had seen it (so far) and it drove me crazy trying to figure out what had caused it. Heat seemed to aggravate it even more and you can’t exactly escape heat in August.

At her next check-up, I discussed it with her doctor again and she said that it most likely was Eczema, or Atopic Dermatitis. She simply has very sensitive skin and any little thing can make the Eczema flare up. We talked a little bit about how to treat it when she had a break out and that was that. This wasn’t surprising as I have very sensitive skin myself (and have had bouts with Eczema). The poor girl was just going to have to live with it.

One day early in September, Evie’s day care provider called to tell me that she was breaking out around her neck and that it was worse than she had seen it before. It was nearly time for me to leave anyway, so I just told her I’d take a look at it when I picked her up. When I got there, she was bright red from her chin down her neck. It looked more like an allergic reaction to something than a skin sensitivity rash so I was a little concerned. It was better by the next morning but I took some photos to show the doctor the next time we were in.

A couple months after that incident, Evie decided that she was ready to start feeding herself. She was doing great with baby foods so I started giving her some soft chunky foods that she could pick up and feed herself. One of the first foods I gave her was bananas. They were soft enough that she could easily smash them with her gums and she loved them. One day while she was eating some banana I noticed a red rash starting around her mouth. By the time she finished eating it was all the way around her mouth and down her neck. When I was cleaning her up, I lifted her arm and found a piece of banana under it. Where the banana had touched there was a red spot with a welt in the middle of it. After she was cleaned up from her meal, the rash mostly went away. The next day I gave her banana again just to be sure that was the cause. Same reaction. Then we tried baby food with bananas in it. She turned red anywhere that the baby food touched her face.

At her 9-month check-up the doctor recommended we see an Allergist to have some testing done. While waiting for that appointment she had another food reaction to macaroni and cheese. I could not wait to get the testing done and finally get some answers as to what might be triggering her rashes.

When we finally saw the Allergist, it was recommended that we change all soaps, shampoos, lotions, etc., bathe her daily (we were doing every other day), and cover her within three minutes of her bath with a moisturizer (Aquaphor or Vanicream). This was supposed to help with the sensitive skin. They did a blood draw to test for allergies and suggested that we might need to put her on a daily allergy medication.

It took a week to get the test results. When the nurse finally called me she said that the Atopic Dermatitis test was negative. Since the rash hadn’t cleared up in over a week, the Dr. recommended putting her on a daily dose of Zyrtec and continuing with the bathing/moisturizing recommendations. She said nothing about the food allergies or whether those had come up negative or not but she did say to feed her a regular diet and not withhold any food other than peanuts and shellfish. when I asked for more clarification, she said she would have to check with the doctor and get back to me.

Fortunately, the Doctor himself called me the next morning to clarify things a bit. He said that Evie tested clean on everything. In fact, he said that she had one of the cleanest tests he has ever seen. She showed no allergy to bananas, milk, or oats which were my three biggest concerns. She showed no reaction to anything. He did say that she could be having a reaction to acids in her foods that could cause the redness around her mouth but that wasn’t necessarily an allergy. Supposedly, the Zyrtec should help reduce that as well as the mild rashes she gets on her tummy and hands.

So, for now, that’s where we’re at. I have answers, but I still don’t feel like I have any answers. I still don’t know what is causing her skin to constantly break out. I’m still afraid to feed her any new foods because they may turn her face all red. I still hate to let her crawl on the floor because I know that she’ll be rashy wherever she contacts it with her skin.

We started the Zyrtec two days ago and have been continuing the recommended bathing routine. I haven’t seen any improvement at all yet, but I know it may take some time. I really hope that it makes a difference because right now I’m really frustrated with the whole thing.

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8 Months

Published by dee on November 18, 2008

Dear Evie,

I can’t believe that it is already time to write you another monthly letter. You are eight months old now. Month seven came and went and I never could find the time I needed to sit and reflect on the month before so I’m going to try to cram both months into this one. I hate doing that because if I don’t get it written down right away I forget some of the details and I’m afraid I’ve already lost some of the memories I wanted to hold on to. Some day when you are a sleep-deprived mom you’ll understand how the time and details can slip away.

You have been a very busy little girl over the last two months. Your weight gain has slowed down a little bit now, but at your six month check-up you were 19 pounds, 1 ounce and 28 1/4 inches tall. The last time you were weighed (just shy of 8 months) you were 20 pounds, 2 ounces. You have pretty much caught up with Caitlin and you are almost exactly the same size as Mikayla, who are both several months older than you.

Just after you turned six months old you started sleeping through the night. You made it about five nights straight and then you started waking up again. I’m not sure what happened, but I was very grateful for those five nights of sleep. Anytime you want to resume that sleeping thing would be just fine with me. I’m hoping that the night waking is due to teething and all of the rapid developments you’ve been going through recently but if it isn’t, we need to have a little talk. Mama needs her sleep – preferably before she loses her mind.

Speaking of rapid developments, you can now sit up by yourself, crawl (although you still prefer the army crawl most of the time), stand up on your own, and you love to clap (especially when you hear music). We had to set baby gates up in the living room because you kept getting away from us when we weren’t watching. You are starting to pull yourself up on everything and get really mad when I make you lay down to change your diaper. You grab and my shirt the whole time I’m changing you and try to stand up. Apparently I need to start practicing the standing diaper change again. I haven’t had to do that one for a while.

Your official first word(s) were spoken clearly on October 10th and just like your brother you chose “dada” over “mama”. You actually combined it with “hi” and we’ve been hearing “hi dada!” ever since. I think I’ve caught “bubba” a few times and you’ve also started saying “mama”. The first time I heard a clear “mama” you were in the floor crying. You wanted me to pick you up but I was trying to finish up something. Once you screamed out “MAMA!” I could no longer resist and scooped you up right away.

Over the last week or so you have decided that you don’t want baby food anymore. Anything that you can pick up with your hands and put in your mouth yourself is just fine, but if you see a spoon headed your way you turn away from it. I assume it is because you have finally mastered the pincer grasp, but this does complicate things just a bit. Even though you have four teeth now, you still can’t do a whole lot of chewing which greatly limits what I can feed you. Your favorite things to eat are the Gerber fruit puffs and cheese puffs (that look like mini cheetos!) but somehow I think you need a little more nutrition that what those can offer you. You did seem to like your brother’s Spagettios that I let you try though, so I guess that’s a start.

I’ve started trying to get you to drink out of a sippy cup for a while now but you aren’t really taking to it like I thought you would. You will drink out of it now and then, but most of the time you just prefer to chew on it. I was really hoping you would like it because you have started refusing to take a bottle from anyone other than Miss Paula. Since I do have to leave you with someone else on occasion, it would be nice if you would drink something when I’m not around. I know you would rather have me around to breastfeed you whenever you get a little thirsty but that isn’t always an option. I have a feeling we won’t be weaning anytime soon though.

Along with all of the other developments, your personality has really popped out over the last couple of months. You don’t hesitate to let us know when you don’t like something. You laugh like crazy when your brother does something silly – and he’ll do nearly anything to make you laugh. You also have figured out a couple of ways to make us laugh. You scrunch your face up into the cutest smile I’ve ever seen and you love to make funny noises with your tongue.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve started calling you my “little monkey” because of the way you latch onto me when you want to cuddle. You wrap your arms and legs around me and squeeze tight like you are giving me a hug. It is nearly impossible to put you down when you’re in one of these moods and if I do you’ll scream until I pick you back up. You have also started giving kisses which is the cutest thing ever. You turn your head toward the targeted person and then push your whole face up against them. I love it when I am the lucky recipient.

You have had a lot of first experiences over the last couple of months too. You had your very first ride in a park swing, which you loved. Then we celebrated your very first Halloween. You were absolutely adorable dressed up as Tinkerbell. We took you out trick-or-treating with the boys (Zach and your cousins) but you were much more interested in the flashlight I was trying to carry. For the next two days you carried that thing around and it was the only thing that would make you stop crying.

About two weeks ago you got sick for the first time. At first I thought you had Strep, but after two doctor’s visits we figured out it was Roseola instead. I missed almost an entire week of work and spent most of that time holding you and trying to keep your fever down so you weren’t so uncomfortable. I hated it that you were so sick, but at the same time realized just how lucky you were to make it 7 1/2 months without really being sick at all.

You recovered from you ill
ness just in time for us to pack up and make a second trip to Texas. You got to meet several family members that you didn’t meet the last time around, including your Uncle Tut, Aunt Luli, and cousin Mikayla. I loved finally getting to see you and Mikayla together. Even though the two of you are nearly the same size, she has an age advantage of four months and it was very evident. It reminded me of just how fast things change and what I have to look forward to in the next few months (no rush though!).

As usual, I feel like I have left so much out of this. Just as there is truly no way to tell you how much I love you, there is no way to recap an entire two months of your life in one letter. I can’t capture all of the smiles and snuggles and warmth that you have brought into my life in words. I only hope that some day when you read these words that they will bring the smiles and warmth back to you and you will know just how much you are loved.

Love always,
Mama

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My Girl

Published by dee on October 2, 2008

Last weekend, while Hubby and my brother-in-law went to the Chiefs game my sister and I took all of the kids to the park to play for a while. Evie tried the swings out for the first time and absolutely loved them. The girl was smiling and laughing the whole time. I think she would have been happy to have stayed there all day if it weren’t for the fact that she got tired of sitting up.

I commented to a friend the other day that I never realized just how much I would enjoy having a daughter. I love Zachary just as much as Evie, but I enjoy them in completely different ways. Evie brings out the girly girl in me while Zach has always fit right in with my childish tomboy self. Having a daughter is a whole new world – one that I’m so glad I have the opportunity to experience.

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5, 4, 3, 2, 1…Blast off!

Published by dee on September 30, 2008

Every time I think things are getting better with Zach, he seems to want to prove me wrong. He went through a very rough patch just after Evie was born, but with a day care change and the passing of time he seemed to be getting better. He has his good and bad days, but overall things have been better.

We still occasionally have days where he refuses to get dressed, but I can usually convince him without too much of a fight. He still throws tantrums when he doesn’t get his way, but they are less frequent. And he still has the occasional night where he doesn’t sleep well but they are few and far between these days.

The last week or so has been a bit more challenging. I’ve woken up several times hearing him crying in his sleep. Sometimes he wakes up. Other times he stays asleep and the crying eventually stops. I know kids have bad dreams, but I hate not being able to know what is scaring him or making him cry. When it happens I have flashbacks of the months of night terrors we went through and I spend the rest of the night hoping and praying that they aren’t starting again.

Just after I stepped out of the shower this morning I heard him crying. He was still in bed so I rushed in to see what was wrong. He immediately reached up to give me a hug like he does when he’s been in trouble for something. It just didn’t seem right. When I asked him what was wrong he said, “You were in the rocket ship and you blasted off without me because I wasn’t in my seat.” I asked why he wasn’t in his seat and he said, “Because I wasn’t listening and you blasted off without me.” He was crying because I left without him.

And then it hit me. I couldn’t tell you how many times I have told him I was leaving him at home if he didn’t get in the car during one of his morning tantrums. I felt awful.

We had a talk about dreams and how they weren’t real. I reassured him that I would never leave him because he wasn’t in his seat. We hugged and snuggled and made up, but I still feel just horrible.

Why in the world would I ever say something like that to him? Why did I feel the need to use fear to get him to behave? That is not at all the kind of parent I thought I would be. Why should he have to hurt because I am frustrated? Yes, a child needs to behave but not because he is terrified of what will happen if he doesn’t.

I need to do a better job of keeping myself in check. Seeing my son wake up in tears and thinking he was in trouble was horrible. I never want to have to do that again. I know I’ll never be the perfect parent I want to be, but I am going to strive to be better from now on.

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