Nothing like reading a 1,000-ish page book last week to put most other extra-curricular activities on hold!  And although I already have checked out the next book in the series, I'm going to try and catch up on some things before I dive into it. 

Brian had a "black" weekend in early February - 24 hour call shifts on Friday and Sunday.  Yuck!  So we took the opportunity to invite Gran to come with us to Grandmother and Granddaddy's house for the weekend! 

Of course, the four generations picture!  Nathan was a champ at trying to get Sarah to smile and/or look at the camera, but she didn't seem to be in the picture taking mood that afternoon.

Then Nathan decided it was his turn to take a picture of the family.  He's actually getting pretty good at getting faces in the pictures these days!


Per usual, I didn't take as many pictures as I had hoped with Grandmother and Granddaddy.  But I did pull out the camera again Monday morning before we hit the road.  The kids and I got the car packed and then were enjoying a mild day outside while we were waiting on Gran and Grandmother to return from an early morning appointment.

Sarah was having a lot of fun throwing the rocks from the path behind the house.  I think she's going to be a sporty little girl, just like her mama!

Looking for sea shells in the rocks.

Nathan was thrilled when Grandmother shortened her walking stick so Nathan could use it! 

He also was proud to show off the artwork that he had worked on in the car.


I tried to take some self-portraits with both kids, but could not manage to get Nathan's whole face in the frame!

My sweet girl!

Then Nathan took over the camera for a while and got these two nice shots!


And, of course, one with my buddy!

Following in her brother's footsteps, Sarah is still relying mostly on signs, pointing, body language and grunts to communicate.  Here are the signs that she knows and uses these days:

• Help
• Eat
• Drink
• Milk
• All done
• More
• Yes
• No (shaking her head)
• Hat
• Read a book
• Tissue (she holds her hand in front of her nose and blows)
• Thank you
• Please (just started working on this one with her)
• Swing 
• Bath

One of the challenges we face, though, is that she wants to communicate mainly using "yes".  And the way her little hand pumps up and down so emphatically, all I can hear in my head is "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"
     "Sarah, do you want something to eat or to drink?"  "Yes, yes, yes yes..."
     "Sarah, do you want cheerios or kix for snack?" "Yes, yes, yes, yes..."
     "Sarah, no more prunes or there will be disastrous consequences!"  "Yes, yes, yes, yes ..."
     "Sarah, that is Mommy's special chocolate and is not for you!"  "Yes, yes, yes, yes ..."
(Hmmm, all my examples are food related... but who's surprised?)

In the past two weeks she's almost doubled her vocabulary by adding two new words.  She still loves to say "Dada" way more then she says "Mama" and she also has been saying "hiiiiieeee" (hi) for a while.  Her first new word is "uh oh", which quickly became her most favorite thing to say.  (Especially in the middle of church, with Daddy encouraging her and Mommy trying desperately to reassure her/divert her attention!)  With Gran's encouragement she now says "uuuhhhhhh!!" (up) as she squats down and tries to jump up (her previous way of communicating up).

Now I can't wait to see what's going to come next!

I didn't make any formal New Year's Resolutions this year, but one thing that I wanted to do was be more deliberate about was reading with Nathan.  And not the same book from our home library over and over and over...  Instead I wanted us to get back in the routine of going to the library every week, checking out good books (I love reserving online when I come across a book recommendation on a blog), and then actually READING the books once we got home.  I've been really happy with how well this has been going the past few months!  I guess I actually started before Christmas by reserving some Christmassy books for us to read.   Sometimes we'll start reading a book and half way through he'll tell me its too long (ie. he's bored) and try to close the book without finishing.  Other times, though, we'll find one that really piques his interest and we'll read it over and over and over...  until its time to take it back to the library.

"John Sonneman", officially titled "The Legend of the Candy Cane" became a favorite during December.

"The Gingerbread Boy" may be one of my all time favorites, just because of Nathan's reaction the first time I read him the story.  The gingerbread boy has run away from the little old woman, the little old man, the cow, the horse, the threshers and the mowers, then rode across the river on the back of the fox, when *snip* *snap* *snip* the fox ate him all gone!  At this point Nathan turned to me with a horrified expression: "He ATE him?!?!"  "Nathan, he's a cookie!" I explained.  It took a minuete for Nathan to absorb the idea, but I loved that  it showed me how much he does pay attention and comprehend even the first time we read book!  We made "gingerbread boy" cookies a few days later so that Nathan could have the experience of eating him all gone as well.  This past week while we were at the library, Nathan requested that we check out this book again!

"Beep, Beep, Vroom, Vroom" has become another favorite, and I love it because it introduced him to patterns.  And when he's not interested in naming the patterns for me, he asks me "will you count with me?" and we'll practice counting to 20 while he points at the cars in the book.  This book is written by Stuart J Murphy, who has written a variety of books based on math themes (matching, even & odd numbers, etc.) and we are working through some of his other titles, but none (so far) have been as popular as "Beep, Beep, Vroom, Vroom."

"Alphabeep" I like as an ABC book because it shows both the upper and lower case for each letter.  Nathan also has enjoyed reading this one, though not as much as the others I've mentioned. 

Nathan has been asking questions about what happens to his food, so we checked out a few books about his digestive system.  He also has discovered and is super interested in his ribs (although he usually mistakenly calls them his "hips"), so I checked out two books about his bones and the skeleton.  Now he likes to talk about his esophagus a lot!

I also checked out a new board book for Sarah that I really like (and she does too until we get to the last three pages) called "Where's the Green Sheep?"

Nana came through with a big hit last week with "Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons".  One of our new favorites (also about math).  When I got home I realized that I had put some other Pete the Cat books on hold at the library, so we are eager to read more in the series!

Mama was on bath duty, but I wasn't paying attention to what was going on in the tub. Nathan squirted at least half of his shaving cream into the bath tub.  He was pretty pleased with himself, but *yuck*!

I tried to do a little photo shoot with Sarah while Nathan was at preschool one morning.  Not many good ones, but this one made me smile!

Things that Sarah loves: Princess, sitting near (or on) Princess and necklaces.  This is about perfect in her book!

Another favorite?  Reading books on her ladybug pillow.  With necklace, of course.

Mommy's scarf is even bigger then a necklace so it must be even better!

This is my new go-to activity for Sarah during her fussy pre-dinner time: putting straws, pom-poms and pipe cleaners in this can.  I'm so thankful again about the busy bag swap I did with friends when Nathan was young!

One of Nathan's new favorite activities is doing puzzles.  This floor puzzle has been a big hit!

This is an art project Nathan did in Sunday school, which is not so noteworthy in and of itself, but it just made me laugh because Nathan always loves to stack his stickers in a pile.  Usually the piles are not this high, of course!

Sarah sometimes likes to wear her apron to match Mama.

Sarah is now almost as crazy about milk as Nathan is.  Usually they both have the same color tops to their cups due to Nathan's love for matching with his sister!  (His other favorite is when they are both wearing their black shoes, giving lots of extra wear time to his black Sunday penny loafers!)

Princess loves to sit in boxes, so Sarah decided to try it as well.

Grand Dad uses his comb to help him get his shoes on, so now Nathan likes to use the same trick!  (Note the aforementioned black loafers!)

This is some game that Nathan made up where he and Sarah both sit in the tubs and throw around pieces of "mail".  Bonus: getting Princess involved in the fun!

It was Wednesday afternoon, a balmy 60ish degree day, windy but so pleasant compared to the ice less then a week earlier. The kids and I were scooter-ing and playing on our across-the-street neighbor's driveway when Juanita, our favorite elderly neighbor, drove by and pulled into her carport. Nathan was ecstatic to see her and raced over to say "hi" to her. She always has dum-dum suckers to give him when we visit, so it wasn't long before Nathan asked her if he could have a sucker. She took his order (green) and went inside to get it. He needed to spit his gum out, so I asked him to go through her garden and spit his gum out by the fence. As I watched (too far away to do anything), he tripped over the plastic garden-border-thing and crashed head first into a concrete statue of a squirrel.

The next thing I knew he was in my arms and there was quite a bit of blood on his forehead. I grabbed him up and started running back to the house, so thankful that Brian was home that afternoon. I glanced back at Sarah when I was about halfway through Juanita's yard, and she was just staring at me - I assume she was stunned by the sight of me running away with her brother in my arms. When we reached our own yard, I glanced back to see that Juanita had come back outside and was talking to Sarah.

Brian heard Nathan's cries as we neared the house and met us at the door. I dumped Nathan into Brian's arms with a quick synopsis of what had happened, then I ran back to grab Sarah and our toys and booked it back to the house. Inside Brian was cleaning the wound, which was small but deep in the middle of Nathan's left eyebrow. After getting it cleaned up Brian said that it would need stitches, so he packed him up and took him to the hospital.



Almost two hours later they returned home with a dermabond "band-aid" over the eyebrow.  The original plan had been to stitch it up, so the ED physicians applied some numbing medicine to the area.  By the time they came back around an hour and a half later, the medicine had of course worn off, so they and Brian decided to just use the dermabond.  Thankfully during the long wait Nathan was entranced by the shows on TV, so that part wasn't too hard on the guys.   Daddy said that Nathan was very brave at the hospital, but did NOT enjoy his wound being cleaned without saline (or water as Nathan says).

I have an "after" picture that Daddy took in the ED, but it is just too pitifully sad to post. Instead I took this one yesterday, with Nathan "smiling" for the camera and showing off his "band-aid."


The plan now is to leave the bandage on for another week-ish, and then Daddy's going to try and get the dermabond off with acetone so that we don't have to cut/shave it off his eyebrow.

I had planned on doing an interview with Nathan about his hospital experience before I finished this blog post, but forgot to do it on Thursday.  So I had great intentions on Friday morning, but then this happened:



Friday morning I gave Sarah a piece of my peanut butter and honey toast for breakfast.  I usually make Sarah her own piece of cinnamon toast, but forgot to that morning, so when she asked for a piece of my toast (with her typical point-and-grunt method of communicating), I gave her a few small pieces.  I wasn't worried about it at all since I had given her peanut butter before in food before (like some homemade Laurabars I had made two weeks earlier).

About 10 minutes later I had gotten out of the shower and was taking Sarah into her room to change her diaper and get her dressed when I noticed that around her eyes were red and she was rubbing them.  I glanced at the clock and seeing that it was only 8:08 I thought it was odd for her to be so tired so early.  Then I realized that her face was red around her mouth as well.  Then I looked closer at her eyes and it looked like one was a little bit swollen.  I hurriedly dressed her while yelling for Nathan to quickly get dressed as well.  I called Brian and we video chatted so he could look at her face (thankfully he was available), and we agreed I should bring her to the emergency room right away.  I threw on some clothes and my sopping wet hair into a bun (it was about 20 degrees out that morning!).  Then I noticed some flesh colored bumps on her face, and tried to pick up more speed (bumps which I later realized were hives, but I was too panicked in the moment to realize what they were.)  Then Brian called back and reminded me to give her some Benedryl, which I did.  I rushed everyone into the car and tried to drive quickly but safely to the hospital, thanking God that we lived so close!

Thankfully by the time we got to the emergency room and checked in with the front desk, I could tell that the Benadryl was working and the hives and swelling were going down some.  This is also when I had a moment to take the above pictures.  Thankfully Sarah never had any respiratory distress during the worst of the reaction. 

We got called back and Brian almost immediately came down from the OR to be with us.  By the time the ED physicians came in, the hives were gone and the swelling was drastically reduced.  We had a chat with both the resident and attending physicians and since by that time it had been an hour since I administered the Benadryl, they gave us a script for Epi-pens and instructions to redose with Benadryl that day, and were sent home.  But not before Nathan informed us that he didn't put underwear on that morning!

As Sarah was taking a nap after we got home, I was finally able to sit down with Nathan and get his perspective as to what had happened with both hospital visits. 



Its been a few days now since all the excitement occurred and I'm finally forcing myself to sit down and finish this post. I've come to realize that I'm in a little bit of denial about Sarah's allergy. I (illogically) feel like if I don't post this on the internet for all the world to see, it won't be true. I'm already checking labels and collecting food items that can't be in the house anymore, but another part of me feels like the whole experience was just a bad dream, that I can just pretend that her reaction was just a fluke, never to be repeated. That I may go through the motions of what I "should do", but its not REALLY necessary because she's not REALLY allergic to peanuts.

I also haven't reached out to my cousin and another good mom friend who both have daughters with peanut allergies. Because that will really be admitting that our family is now in a similar boat as theirs. I don't want to have to worry about reading every label of every food item that I buy now (I have to get rid of the brand of chocolate chips I usually buy because they are processed with peanuts). I don't want to have to worry about snacks when she goes to church or school or over to a friend's house. I don't want to have to worry about her TOUCHING something/someone that has touched peanuts and have a reaction.

For a few days I told myself that her allergy is "mild" because she didn't have any respiratory distress during her first reaction, but then I realize that I she probably didn't eat any of the toast, her reaction was (I think) purely topical from rubbing peanut butter on her hands and face. I don't ever want to have to administer the Epi-pen because my baby girl is having trouble breathing because of an exposure to peanuts. I don't want this to be her life!

Of course, on the flip side, I realize that we are pretty fortunate that peanut allergies are so common now. We are fortunate it's in the public eye, that food manufacturers label for it, that I've heard of many schools that are going "peanut free". We are SO fortunate to be living in this country where I am 100% confident that she can have access to medical care when we need it. We are SO SO fortunate that we don't live in another time or place where this or another "reaction" could place her life in jeopardy.

I keep thinking about a post I read on my friend Brittany's blog this past week. She is pregnant with her first child and the cancer that she had battled as a child has returned. So not the same situation at all, however I remembered these words that she wrote and they resonate with me so much right now:

As we talked about our lives, there was a resounding theme of transition and uncertainty. One person remarked that there is sometimes a need to mourn what you are leaving behind as you push ahead into the newness. Another conversation revealed this same sentiment- a friend said that in order to truly embrace your new reality that you have to mourn the loss of the life you expected to have, but will not get to experience. Even if the life you are entering is wonderful, it does not exclude the need to recognize that your life is going in a different direction than your previous dreams.

I think the mourning stage is where I am right now.