Peanut Allergy

I read this blog the other day about a mother with a child with a peanut allergy. It explains perfectly all I wish I could share about my life.



http://rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/shannon/2008/10/what-id-like--4.html

Spelling

Abbie spells like her mother


For those of you who haven't seen Savannah in awhile, here is one of her!

Random Thought Wednesday

(I'm copying this idea from my brilliant sister-in-law's blog. I think - at least in her case it gives pretty good snap shot at life. I however am just learning the genre.)

I think it would be worth it to give birth to a one year old. The labor would be awful but they would come sleeping better at night and with an organized nap schedule.

Can anyone say "Type A" personality?

Lately Abbie has being saying, "Cachou! That's what McQueen says!" As much as I hate to buy into commercialism, it is so stinking' cute!

I love when the leaves change in the fall.

The Book Thief is one amazing read. If you can handle heavy it is well worth your time.

Savannah has the most adorable smile. It lights up her whole body. I can't stay mad at being up in the night when she does it.

Thankfully she does it a lot.

Abbie loves to give Savannah hugs. She lays on her whole body and breathes right in her face.

It is out of love, so I hope Savannah gets used to it, because I've found it impossible to stop.

ER Embarrassments

There is a doctor at my pediatrician's office that I don't like. I've only seen him one or two times when my pediatrician wasn't available and we needed someone. Unfortunately neither time went well. This doctor made me feel like I was over-reacting when Abbie broke her arm - as he was convinced there was no problem. He also made my sister-in-law cry when he said her son was malnourished. (The boy is related to Russ - enough said.) Anyway after my second bad experience I've just tried to avoid him. I figure that even if he is right about things - I don't trust him so I would question what he said, want to talk to someone else, and waste the visit.

(That is the background.)

So when I was in the ER with Abbie (see below for details) the nurse practitioner came in and was asking the normal background questions,

"Age, weight, pediatrician..."

When I told her who my pediatrician was, she acted like she knew her so I asked if she did.

She replied, "Well do you know (insert the name of the doctor I don't like.)?"

"Yes," I replied, "but I haven't had the greatest experiences with him." (Why oh, why did I need to say it??)

(Long awkward pause.)

"Well, he is my husband."

Oh. (Insert foot.)

What are the chances??????

I immediately tried to backpedal taking all of the blame on myself for any bad experiences I might or might not have had taking my daughter to her husband, said I'm sure he is a great doctor, and mentally pled that her anger at me for insulting her husband would not affect her professional judgment in getting said daughter to breathe as soon as possible.

Thankfully she was wonderfully professional with Abbie, very caring and fun, and helped us a great deal. The only major problem that I had was every time she walked in the room the big "JERK" label on my forehead seemed to light up.

Asthma Attacks!

For all of you who have a child with asthma I want to first apologize for ever - if only in my head - minimizing the terror that is seeing your child unable to breathe effectively. Honestly I had no idea how scary it could be.

This week Abbie had a minor cold - runny nose - not green. (Isn't it purely disgusting how mothers seem to have no problem discussing gross bodily fluids in their children? Probably because we deal with them All.The.Time.) But I digress. Thursday morning she had a slight cough and I barely decided to skip play group and hoped we wouldn't infect anyone. That night after my class, Russ told me the cough had gotten a little worse and started to sound croupy.

At 4:00 A.M. when he went in to check on her (Yes Russ is wonderful. He takes Abbie at night and I take Savannah.) he said that her breathing sounded labored and fast. We pulled out the baby book, called the poor pediatrician on call and ended up giving her an albuteral dose in the nebulizer - then back to bed.

At 8:00 A.M. her breathing had increased to 60 breaths a minute (For those of you who that means something to. Before Friday it would have meant nothing to me.) It didn't change after another nebulizer dose and the nurse told us to forgo the doctor's and head straight to the emergency room. Twelve hours later and after being admitted to the hospital - her breathing finally slowed slightly and sixteen hours after that we were home with a bag full of drugs for every occasion - we have daily drugs, hourly drugs, and drugs in case of an emergency.You would think we were either a pharmacy or a Colombian drug cartel.

We are still figuring out when things are good, okay, and desperate. We have several extra pages to add to Abbie's already detailed list of things to be aware of when watching her. Poor kid.

Motherhood

Whoever thought that the work day could be completed in eight hours didn't understand the work of a mother.

Hair Drama Mama

I know I am a baby when it comes to my hair. I very rarely change styles and when I do it is usually a dramatic/traumatic experience. I think it is because I'm not such a fan of my hair anyway (thin, stringy) and so any change just causes me to adjust from a look that I had just learned to tolerate - not necessarily enjoy - to something new (Yes, yes...I am an Ebert). My sister and all of my sister-in-laws (on both sides of the family) have been blessed with wonderfully beautiful thick hair. It really only serves to undermine any effort I have to improve my style as I see that whatever any of them do - it looks perfect, and I just can't keep up!

Unfortunately my paranoia (there really should be a support group for people like me) has trickled down to how I deal with Abbie's hair. For the longest time she has needed something done with her hair. She - at age two - had never had it cut. The ends were stringy and it looked unkempt whenever it was in anything other then some version of a pony tail. Yet...until Friday I couldn't bring myself to do anything about it. I'm the mom - I could scar her for life with a bad haircut. She could turn out to be like me - unable to do anything but the most minor changes with style, convinced that I have dramatically changed my appearance. (Seriously - I can't tell you the number of times I thought that I had gotten a dramatic new do only to have no one notice the difference. Russ of course has now been instructed to always notice. Poor guy.)

This Friday I gave in. I don't want an image-obsessed daughter. (I repeat over and over as we drive to my friend who cuts hair) How bad can it be? Hair grows right? Of course Abbie loved the whole process from beginning to end, behaved beautifully and if you ask her about it she will say, "I got my hair cut....so pretty!" What was I worried about?

The pictures above are before and down at the bottom after. You can't really tell from the pictures but I think it turned out pretty darn cute. (But you probably can't even tell the difference.)

Smile!!

Getting our children to smile on cue has been somewhat of a challenge for us.
Now when we ask Abbie she gets this tight cheesed-out smile that can only be blamed on her Ebert genes.



Savannah however has a better time...it only takes her a minute.




Abbie can, however, get the dinosaur to smile.