I had promised the girls that on Friday night they could have a Pajama Party.  Which they were so excited about, so as we drove to Wal-Mart to pick up snacks and a cheap movie I asked Gena how her day at school was.  She responds with “Mom, it was terrible.” Gena is so hard to get information from usually.  She’s the type of kid that you ask her how her day was and it’s always, “fine”. Ask her what she did at school, “stuff”. If you push her she gets upset and feels like she’s being interrogated,  but when I asked her what happened she just started spilling the details.

At recess, she was playing a monster game with some of the kids.  They had dug out a hole in the woodchips and they were trying to get the eggs from the monster who was a boy in Gena’s grade. This boy apparently turned on Gena without any provocation and began to repeatedly punch her in the stomach. I asked her why she didn’t run away and she told me that he kept pushing her to the ground and then started punching her again over and over. I asked her if she told him to stop and she said she did and told him that he was hurting her.  She doesn’t know the boy’s name. She knows her classmates who saw the whole thing though. I asked her if she went and told a teacher on the playground but she told me that the bell rang to line up so she did to. When she went inside she told her teacher who dismissed her and told her not to play the game or with that boy again. She went to the bathroom after that with a friend because she didn’t want to cry in front of her classmates and her tummy hurt.

Needless to say, we left a message with the school and I will be going in on Monday to talk to them about this.  For 5 hours aftwards she was complaining about how her stomach still hurt and she couldn’t bend over. I am, of course, livid. Even more so when one of Gena’s friends tells her that this same boy has pushed her down before and started laughing at her. Obviously, this kid is a problem. Gena does not want to go to school on Monday, she’s afraid to see this boy. I am just hoping that I don’t go mother bear on whatever poor soul at the school listens to this story on Monday as I think of my little 7 year old girl getting punched repeatedly in the stomach and pushed to the ground. She did the right thing, the thing we TELL our kids to do when something like this happens: don’t fight back, go tell an adult. Then she was ignored by her Teacher. I’ll let you all know on Monday how this turns out.

That night though, in conjunction with the PJ party we also let the girls do a “camp out” in there room in their little tents.  They love that. It was pitch black in their room but I got the picture below:

The past 2 weeks the girls and I have been doing a lot of arts & crafts that I had to share. First up are Daniel’s birthday presents that the girls were so excited to paint and do. Daniel was so excited to get them and see the effort the girls put into them:

Adessa assembled and painted the birdhouse and Gena helped mix and mold and painted the stepping stone

Next up are the school projects Gena needed to do so I got Adessa in on it as well:

We dyed the soap and then poured it into the molds. Gena mixed together Orange and Adessa did the purple.

We did these T-shirts with fabric paint. Gena did the left one tracing the dog and bone with a template. And I did the outline of the flowers while Adessa colored them in.

These are the suckers we did.  I wasn’t able to grab a picture of the red vanilla ones Adessa did, but Gena choose to do Peanut Butter.

More on the egg allergy front, it seems that Caden is really truly highly allergic to eggs.  I just spoke with his doctor because last night, when my parents were watching the kids while I took Daniel out for a birthday celebration, they gave him his dinner (egg free) and some fruit.  The rest of the family had some hot dog buns (contains egg) and a fruit salad with mayonaisse (contains egg) and my mom mentioned that Caden’s face looked more red and he had the watery eyes again.  This morning even his face was still red, he had watery eyes, runny nose and more.  So I called up his pediatrician and her first words were “doesn’t surprise me, he tested really high for it.”  We have to keep even anyone that’s cooked or touched eggs away from Caden and they have to wash their hands and face before they can kiss him, touch him, etc.  She even recommended that Caden not be in the same room if I prepare something with eggs.  Wowww. Food allergies are serious business.  It would be rare for eggs to cause an anaphylaxis reaction, but the more exposure he gets to eggs the worse his allergic reaction will get.

Found interesting information that kids with egg allergy can become egg tolerant, but the rate that children are developing tolerance to eggs is slower than in the past when it was thought that most children outgrew egg allergy by age 5 or 6. An egg allergy study published in December 2007 stated:

• 4% of children outgrew egg allergy by age 4
• 12% of children outgrew egg allergy by age 6
• 37% of children outgrew egg allergy by age 10
• 68% of children outgrew egg allergy by age 16

They found that a kid was less likely to outgrow the allergy if they had high IgE antibodies when blood tested for egg allergy (strike 1 for Caden), if they had other atopic disease like eczema or asthma (strike 2), or if they had other food allergies (we’re good here). So we might be in this for the long haul or be lucky!

Dr. Lantz, Caden’s pediatrician, called me last night around 8pm with the results of the allergry test.  Turns out Caden is highly allergic to eggs.  Which could explain his eczema, his constant runny nose, his watery eyes and more. So for the next few months we have to take out eggs entirely, which includes so many foods!  We went through our cupboard and 1/2 of his food has eggs in it.  Most pastas, any cookies or cakes, some breads and crackers, most of your breakfast foods such as waffles, french toast, anything breaded like chicken nuggets, pretzels, muffins, salad dressings, some soups, the flu shot and more.  So this will be quite a new experience. His doctor is going to be sending me some information but she told me to check on the web in the meantime and I found a great article on Kidshealth.org: Egg Allergy including a handy little print out to keep in your wallet/purse with the ingredients he should avoid. There’s even entire products dedicated to egg allergies such as t-shirts, magnets, luggage tags, and stickers.

Today is Daniel’s birthday!  Happy Birthday hun’. He’s not here with us, he left for Illinois on Tuesday and was able to surprise his family.  Which was very exciting and they took him out for a birthday dinner. Then he went straight from there to Ohio on job interviews. The poor guy gets to spend about 6 hours on a plane on his birthday with layovers and the like.  WAHOO! I thought that Wile E. Coyote kind of captured how Daniel must feel right now, so it was perfect for this blog post. 

We have weekend plans though for his birthday so hopefully that will make up for today! Happy 38th birthday babe.

WE MISS YOU!!

Bring us home souvenirs <— Gena, Adessa and Caden

I’m so blessed to have such a great husband and just had to express that here on Valentine’s Day. I’ve never met a man who respects women more. Who will listen to my ideas, my rants, my questions, my passionate discussions… my voice. He encourages me, supports me and gives me the space I crave to grow and just be myself.  Through all the hard times I can rely on him as a friend and a companion to lean on and work together with. His perseverance is such an example.

I’ve never had someone who make me laugh as hard as he does, who makes me feel safe as much as he does, who makes me look forward to the future. I love our relationship, our quirks.  That we can argue and yell one moment then forgive and chuckle the next. That we can take any difficult situation and look at it honestly together, that we can make our decisions as a team. That we can never stay mad at each other and can go at most, 2 minutes, with giving each other the silent treatment. His fantastic ability to communicate and talk to me is one of the things that made me fall in love with him. We can talk for hours and never run out of things to say, we can tell each other’s thoughts at a glance. That even after all these years I want to hang out with him, I want to know more about him, I want to become closer to him.

I love that he loves being a father. That he adores his 2 little girls, that he cherishes his little boy. That he accepts life as it happens and that he knows the best laid plans for the future change, evolve and transform. That he loves to spend time with the kids, whether it’s homework, playing or taking them to the store.

I love that he’s always working and progressing himself, no matter what lay-offs we’ve been through he’s always had a couple of side projects. I love that he’s a dreamer and a romantic. That he loves football and writes poetry. That he’s so incredibly intelligent and brilliant at science and math and compassionate and sensitive.  He’s a contradiction and it fits him so well! I love the fact that we have not only this life but an eternity together.

I LOVE YOU!

Both my girls were in bed by 7:30 PM tonight!  We couldn’t find Gena and there she was dead asleep in bed.  And Adessa came and asked to go to bed. Gena’s got some allergies or a cold because she has the sniffles and is, clearly, tired and doesn’t feel well. Having them want to go to bed so early was a nice surprise though.

Caden’s Early Intervention evaluation was today as well, they do it yearly. Let’s give Caden’s developmental age in months below:

Gross Motor (crawling, walking, etc.) - 12 months

Fine Motor (pincer grasp, picking up small objects, etc.) - 12 months

Cognitive (responds to name, imitates) - 10 months

Language (speech) - 6 months

Self-Help (feeding self, pulling socks off) - 15 months

Social/Emotional (smiling, separation anxiety) - 10 months

So he has an average developmental age of about 10.8 months old. Not unexpected, he was right where I thought he would be in all areas.

Very exciting news though, Caden is starting to do sign language!  Daniel and I are ecstatic about this because he’s finally starting to communicate.  So far he can do ‘more’, ‘eat’, and we believe ‘Daddy’ and ‘all done’. This is huge, it’s the first sign that he’s beginning to comprehend and understand.  It’s completely amazing to see a child that can not say a single word actually tell you something he needs. Needless to say, Daniel and I are really pushing for more sign language and even Gena and Adessa are learning and helping him. We have some kid videos and they watch some on the internet to learn. They think it’s cool too that Caden is interacting with them and they have a “secret” language, as Adessa put it.

In regards to his upcoming appointments, his Geneticist appointment is 8 months off.  Apparently the first opening they have isn’t until Oct. 17th! It’s really not something we need to rush though so I’m not concerned. I couldn’t get his Swallow Study appointment in today, waited on the line for almost a 1/2 hour, so I’ll have to try again tomorrow.

All right, 18 month appointment today was… ahem… eventful.  No shots!  But he still got poked. Let’s just start from the top and head south.

Head - Gray hair.  What’s that you say?  Yes, gray hair.  Caden has so little hair anyways it’s really hard to tell a color. This morning Adessa commented on how Caden’s hair is gray.  I, the ever polite and educational mommy told her, “no honey, that’s blonde hair”.  Didn’t think anything of it.  Go to the Pediatrician and hear the Dr. say, “he has gray hair!”.  What the…. I don’t even know what that means but I’m sticking with ash blonde and no one can convince me otherwise.

Skin - Eczema.  It’s bad, we are going to start him on Zyrtec for the itching.  This is where the poke above comes in.  Doctor drew blood for an allergy test. As a fact for you, preemies are hard to get blood from.  Apparently there’s a lot of scarring on the veins and it makes them thick but Dr. Lantz is a pro.

Mouth - Swallow study. Got our referral from our Dr. to get this done. Caden also hasn’t gained any weight in like… 4 months, still 22 lbs.  But he moves around a lot more now.  I’m sticking to that story as well.

Heart - Murmur. This could just be the small L>R shunt he has since we haven’t heard it in a while, no idea.  Cardiologist appointment moved from 3 year old to 2 year’s old.

Thumbs - X-rays. Got a referral to get some x-rays to check out Caden’s lil’ thumbs.  See what’s going on there with the deformed one.  Check bone structure, etc.

Whole Body- Geniticist. We got a referral to get Caden checked out by a geneticist for all his little oddities. They call them congenital malformations… oddities is better. 

M-Chat Test - Bogus. It’s a bunch of yes/no questions.  It’s to test for Autism and it’s pretty new but gaining widespread use in pediatrician’s offices.  I never had to fill one out for Gena and Adessa.   Nurse was very concerned about Caden and his… I don’t know, failure at the test?  Though it’s not really a pass or fail test.  I just smiled at the nurse.  When his doctor came in we both kind of chuckled.  I should note that the test itself is not bogus by the way, only in Caden’s case. It’s not really a test Caden can do right now or something I would expect him to do.  Questions range from “Does your child walk?” to “Does your child ever pretend, for example, to talk on the phone or take care of a doll or pretend other things?” You can see all the questions for the M-Chat here if you are curious.  How to score results are here. They use it to test children at their 18 month visit and their 2 year old visit now. Caden is behind but has great people skills, great eye contact, great interactive skills.  So we’ll look again at 2 years old but his Dr. and I are keeping an open mind with even that depending on what the next 6 months will hold.

Follow-up - In 3 months. Dr. decided that with all the tests and Caden being Caden we should do a 21 month appointment instead of waiting until 2 years old.  I agreed.

So this week will be filled with the job I know so well… appointment setter!  We got our tax return back, having such huge medical deductions results in a nice one by the way.  So we’ll use that money and invest it right back into, you guessed it, medical! I’ll keep ya’ll updated.

Happy

34th

Birthday

to my

Big

Brother

Ryan!!

Hope you have fun.