no more moon pies

Last week Sam had his checkup with the friendly neighborhood allergist. The doctor got to hear my roaring tale of Our Vacation: Amoxicillin Reaction Blues. I also pointed out this funny little rash Sam had picked up over the past month. It has seemed like dry skin to me, so I have been slathering the Cetaphil on him whenever he would stop wiggling long enough. Sadly, not even the mighty Cetaphil has been able to buff away this sandpapery skin.

It was quickly determined that Sam was exhibiting a classic case of exzema. Well, I should’ve seen that coming. What really came out of left field, however, was another round of skin testing, since exzema can sometimes be a sign of an egg allergy. So Happy Sam was quickly transformed into an Infuriated Sam as his back was poked and written on with a barely-functioning ballpoint pen. He quickly calmed down as I carried him around the office so he could court all the nurses.

And sure as shootin’, there it was: an itchy little welt for eggs.

Along with some totally awesome creams (I’m so jealous) for Sam’s skin, we got marching orders: no egg, no mayonnaise, no meringue, no cakes, cookies, pancakes or waffles with egg in them, egg noodles, some macaroni products, many fried foods (Zaxby’s comes to mind), and for heaven’s sake, read the label.

It’s been a few days and Sam’s skin is already so much better. I’m still working out how to deal with him on the food end. It’s tough to completely eliminate eggs, especially from a growing boy who wants to and will eat ANYTHING. He is so unlike his sister. One would think this would be fairly easy for me to deal with since I have done so for most of my own life, but it’s one thing if you’re doing it for yourself, but a completely different situation when it’s for your kid. Especially one who doesn’t know what he can or can’t have. All he does know is THAT CUPCAKE LOOKS AWESOME AND I SHALL EAT IT.

Time to find a Sam-friendly cupcake recipe.

Heart of Dixie

The news was playing on the radio as I drove the children to daycare this morning when a story came on about the ongoing water resources battle between Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. The newscaster informed us of a federal court’s ruling in Georgia’s favor. I sighed audibly.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Lydia asked.

“Oh, Georgia’s trying to take our water.” I explained.

“No no, Georgia! You can’t have our water! That’s not nice!” Lydia scolded.

three year old taco

She’s what? Three? Really?? Time flies when you’re laughing with a little brother. Of course, she corrected me the other day. She told me she wants to be ten.

She has the attitude for it.

I don’t think I ever got around to mentioning it, but Lydia had her very first haircut this past year. In fact, she’s had two visits to the stylist and has done well both times. Trimming her ends doesn’t do much for her crazy cowlick in the front, but it does keep her from looking too shaggy, and she does seem to enjoy being primped.

Lydia is such a ball of energy. She never can walk anywhere — she has to run. She is always on the couch then off again, then in your lap, then on the floor, then in the chair, then in the kitchen, then back in your lap, then upside down. We have got to get her into some gymnastics or ballet class soon or else we’ll see more stitches like what happened last fall (which was a gymnastics event gone wrong).

Lydia is like a little mother to Sam. I find her mimicking my words and mannerisms when she is talking with him: “Here, Buddy; it’s okay, baby. Have a bottle.” She looks out for him, hands him toys, and loves to make him laugh. She invented a game with him in the car that we call “Hey DaDa.” She looks away from him while saying, “Heyyyyyyy . . .” then flips her head back around to him real fast while screaming, “Da Da!” It gets him every time. I need to get a video of it, but in the meantime, enjoy this one.



Lately, she has gotten more into baby dolls and the idea of ‘playing pretend.’ One day on the way home from daycare she began saying, “Look, Mommy, look! A bird! See the bird? The bird’s crying.” I asked her why the bird was crying, and she replied, “He’s crying ’cause he needs medicine.” Then she pretended to give her pretend bird some medicine, which made it all better. With her baby dolls, though, she usually pretends that they have poopy diapers. “Ewwww, poop!” she screams. She’s a bit obsessed with poop and how yucky it is. I must react too strongly to Sam’s diapers.

Speaking of poop — because, hey, who can’t get enough of poop? — Lydia is potty trained, for the most part. As long as she has her trusty Elmo Panties she’ll TT (teetee? tii tii!) in the potty all day. Mind you, they better literally be Elmo Panties with his smiling red face all over, and you can ONLY find Elmo Panties at SEARS. Unfortunately, we’re still working on the poop thing. There’s not much pooping in the potty, which means Mommy is making lots of out-of-the-way trips to SEARS to buy more Elmo Panties.

One night in April, I sat down with Lydia and told her we needed to talk. We talked about how proud Daddy and I were of her with how she was using the potty and how she was getting to be such a big girl. And big girls . . . well, they don’t need pacis. So we should throw them away since they’re old and dirty and if she does that then she’d get a special gift. So Lydia gathered up her pacis and threw them away. My big girl strapped on her new big girl shoes.

So life just flies on in the Land of Lydia. Every day there are new discoveries and there is always something to do. She likes to help us cook:

Waiting for cake takes forever:

And sometimes sharing can be hard:

But she has learned so much, more than just counting and her colors, she has learned the joy of making her brother laugh and the anticipation of a birthday party. She enjoys a good book and kisses before bedtime. We have conversations! We sing songs! And sometimes, she roams around the house and informs everyone that she’s a dinosaur.

no vacation goes unpunished

I try to be witty about these things sometimes. I try to be a good writer and spin a great tale, but I do my best if I start my stories at the beginning and just tell them out as they have happened. I’m a chronological writer. The problem with this story is there are a few intermingling ones that begin to spin up together, making up a perfect storm as they whirlpooled into Monday, so bear with me as we hammer all this stuff out together.

Also, the story’s not over yet.

Six weeks ago after Steven had put in many extra hours for a project at work we made a spontaneous decision to go on a vacation this summer. It would be the first time in four years (and two kids later) since we had embarked on any vacation. Vacation! Awesome! Yay! We made the plans and booked a condo for four nights in the middle of June, right in between the kids’ birthdays. We anticipated it with relish as the summer temperatures here in Birmingham quickly shot up into the upper 90s.

Birmingham wasn’t the only one whose temperature was rising. Last week, Sam began to run a fever and be rather ill, so off to the doctor we went, where he was diagnosed with an ear infection. We had danced this dance before, so Steven nor I thought much of it and began to dose Sam up with the prescribed antibiotic. We were just thankful that he had gotten sick the week before vacation instead while we were down there.

As Wednesday turned into Thursday and then Friday, Sam showed no signs of getting better at all. He was running a consistent fever between 101 and 102 degrees and he slept constantly, only getting up for a few hours each day to drink a bit of juice. On Saturday I made my way with a still feverish Sam back to the doctor’s office where we saw another pediatrician at the practice. Sam’s ears were still infected so this doctor changed up his medication to augmentin. Now, this doctor and I had a five minute conversation about how Sam cannot take amoxicillin — he has reacted to it before, this is noted on his chart, yet it always seems to throw doctors off. This doctor tells me that this medication is augmentin, not amoxicillin, and we’re good to go to the beach the next day. Huzzah.

The next day was Sunday and we left that morning to drive down to the beach. Now, you remember those hot summer temperatures I mentioned? We’ve been breaking some daily heat records in Birmingham during the last three weeks, so I tried not to get too concerned when it seemed like our air conditioning system in the house was having a bit of trouble keeping up with cooling the house. After all, 99 degrees day after day would suck for me too if I was an air conditioning unit. But as we made our final preparations on Sunday morning, it became obvious to Steven and I that the air conditioning unit just might have quit on us. We noticed the temperature climb to 79, then 80 and 81 as the kids and I climbed into the car. Last-minute plans were made for Steven’s parents to meet an HVAC specialist while we were out of town.

The part of the trip that I had dreaded the most — a six hour drive with two young kids — went just absolutely splendidly. Lydia amused herself with beeping toys and books Poor Sam, still slightly feverish, mainly slept. Though the GPS system tried to steer us toward Pensacola, we made fairly good time and found ourselves in our very lovely condo with enough time for Steven and Lydia to hit the beach that afternoon.

Lydia just continues to surprise me. I expected for her to be more of a sandcastles kind of girl this trip, but instead she had Steven out in the ocean pronto. When waves smacked her in the face, it didn’t faze her a bit. She wanted Steven to let go of her but sometimes she forgets she is still a little thing. I tried to get some pictures but they were only from the balcony, as Sam had crashed in the pack-n-play as soon as we arrived. He slept the rest of the night.

The next morning, the four of us journeyed down to the beach. Sam promptly conked out on Steven while I swam with Lydia out in the ocean, then in the pool. Poor Sam quickly began to break out in a rash all over his body so we got him back inside. We decided that going out on the beach was going to have to be a tag-team effort between us, taking turns between who was on the beach with Lydia and who was inside with Sam. Our strategy changed to rigorous man-on-man defensive parenting.

At lunchtime, we got a call from Steven’s parents, who had just finished meeting up with the HVAC people about our air conditioning. It was not pleasant news. They had got the unit to function again (the temperature in the house had climbed to 89), but said it was temporary and it could die within weeks. They said our unit, which is two months out of its five year warranty, is not big enough for the house and that is why it has worn out. So our options are to pay a lot of money to have the unit replaced with same, pay a hell of a lot of money to have the correctly-sized unit installed, or pay an astronomical amount of money to do it the most completely right way possible. So just how far would you like to bend over?

Here we are on the first full day of vacation; it’s the most money we’ve ever spent in one big chunk since I don’t know when, and suddenly we’re sitting down over a lunch of hamburgers with the waves crashing in the background discussing what kind of financing options we might be able to come up with for an air conditioning unit.

That evening, we decided to try our luck with eating out to dinner, hoping it would push the air conditioning business out of our mind. It’s a vacation, for heaven’s sake, we’re going to enjoy it! We gather up Sleepy Sam and Sandy Lydia to go for some seafood. Dinner itself went fairly well. Lydia ate some french fries and Sam saved his blowout diaper for the end of the meal. I got to partake of some crab claws.

As we’re heading back from dinner, Sam makes a little noise that all parents know. You know the noise — that wet, choke-like cough sound, the here-it-comes-I’m-about-to-barf-all-over-the-backseat noise. I quickly unbuckled my seatbelt and got to the backseat as Sam began to projectile vomit all over himself, his carseat, the backseat, and he even managed to hit the back of Lydia’s carseat. He began to cry as a second wave hit him. Lydia’s asking, “What’s wrong with Sam? What’s wrong with Sam?” while I’m trying to reassure them both and mop Sam up as best I can.

Thankfully the condo was not too far away and we poured out of vomity Elliott and worked our way inside, where Sam was to have two more rounds of barfing before he passed out asleep.

We knew it was the antibiotic. Between the throwing up and the rash and the horrible diarrhea, there was no other culprit but that. That night I was so wound up. I was completely livid at that doctor who was either willfully ignorant or thought I was one of those spastic mothers who thinks their kid is allergic to everything. LIVID. I did not sleep well that night and the next morning I left a strongly-worded message at our pediatrician’s nurses station.

By the time the nurse called me back, I had done some research into our travel insurance (hey, sometimes there are hurricanes in June) and found out we would not lose out on everything if we had to leave early due to sickness. So, though the nurse suggested we should give Sam one more day since stopping the amoxicillin would make everything better, we made the decision to come on home. Sam was miserable, which in turn made me miserable and extremely stressed out, so it was just time to call it.

So home we came.

Sam still is not feeling well but this afternoon I finally saw the first glimpses of a turnaround for him. He slept all day yesterday and most of the day today but this afternoon there were two intervals where he was up for two hours each. He also ate a ton of chicken nuggets. Compared to how he has been over the past week, this is HUGE. His rash is slowly ebbing away as well. I am more concerned about him than anything else; I am so very ready for Sam to be his old self again.

The air conditioning is functioning in a kinda sorta way. We’re not pushing it too hard so it was about 80 degrees in here during the day. We’ll see if we can push it down to 76 or so for tonight. We’re going to get another company out here for a second opinion since astronomical amounts of money is quite a chunk of change.

And of course, other things just keep piling up. Steven came up from the basement today to inform me his car is leaking transmission fluid. I’m just not even going to worry about that until, like, Saturday or something. You know, after we fix the water pressure regulator that has been giving us fits.

*title is a quote by Karl Hakkarainen

sputnik; twelve months in orbit (one earth year!)

And here we are, back to June again — let the birthdays commence!

First up is my little Samwise, who is finally one year old. I say ‘finally,’ but it really has gone by at warp speed. What a year, man; what a year.

Once I realized we had less than a month until Sam’s First Birthday I knew I had to get him rolling with real food, pronto. After all, I did want him to be able to have some cake when he turned one. So in defiance of what the allergist has said, we began a crash course in new foods. If it was food, we gave it to him, so long as it didn’t have rice in it. Cheese toast, baloney sandwiches, Moon Pies — Sam ate it all with relish. He realized he had been missing out.

Sam is much less picky about foods than Lydia was at this stage. I hope this means he’ll be my little meat-eater. I’m not used to a kid that will eat whatever you give him. He even ate barbecue and cayenne-seasoned sweet potatoes at his birthday party!

And of course, he was able to dig into some cake.

Sam added another tooth to his collection this past month, which helps even out his bottom set. In addition, this past Sunday I found two more had sprouted on top, which brings us to eight teeth! Sam’s getting ready for pork chops.

We went for the first swim of the season over Memorial Day weekend (it was certainly hot enough!), and after a few minutes of unsure fussing, Sam decided he was a Pool Fan. He splashed and giggled in everyone’s arms and eventually moved to the starfish float. After three years, Lydia has changed her mind about the pool and she is now also a Pool Fan. I’ve got two little fish!

Though Sam isn’t walking yet, he’s a superfast crawler, and he loves to be where his sister is. She still makes him laugh like no one else can. Soon, he will be running right along with her.

mr roboto

Though Sam has a few more days before he is officially one year old (Oh my god, it’s been a whole year?!), we had his First Birthday Party this past Saturday. Having it the week before helps push it just that much further from his sister’s party; plus, it’s a three-day weekend!

I will be the first to admit that I went a bit overboard with the whole party getup, but I had a lot of fun doing it. I’ve been perusing a party blog over the past year and every time a new post would come up I would think, “Hey, I can do that,” so once it was party time in our own house I had to put my money where my mouth was. Besides, I don’t want Sam to be The Second Child.

So . . . Robots.

Sam loved the Space Balls — he ate a whole cone!

He also got a ton of awesome gifts. The girls didn’t get too jealous about Sam getting all the gifts because they were outside running through a sprinkler.

After presents, Sam made good work of his cake.

After all that cake, Sam didn’t move much and was content to sit back and watch Lydia and Elizabeth run around like they’ve had sugar or something.

All in all, Sam greatly enjoyed his day, and I learned I can successfully bake a tiered cake. Sweet!

sam plus guacamole equals

While I’m driving somewhere with both kids in the car, Lydia will usually take it upon herself to provide commentary on her surroundings, be it the trees or cars outside or whatever it is Sam is doing.

“Look, Mommy — look! There’s trees! Look, Mommy — Sam’s sleeping! No, Sam’s awake! Sam dropped his toy! Sam’s laughing! Sam, Sam, hey SAM!”

As we were heading to their daycare the other day, Lydia began to provide her usual interpretation of the goings-on in the backseat.

“Sam, Sam, hey Sam! Sam’s laughing! Sam! Sam poop. Poop, Mommy. Poop. POOP! Mommy, Sam, poop. I see poop, Mommy. Mommy! Mommy, I see poop! POOP!”

I knew Sam had been busy back there because I heard his telltale grunting, so I was hoping beyond hope that Lydia had just gone a bit reactionary over Sam’s khaki shorts. When we pulled into the daycare parking lot I quickly got out, fingers crossed, to asses the situation in the back seat.

I first saw Sam’s little hand, which looked smeared in peanut butter frosting. “Poop!” Lydia exclaimed. Sam looked up at me and started to laugh. He was sitting, nay, surrounded by a nice squishy mess all in his carseat.

Well, I just busted out laughing. I think I would have cried otherwise. Sam laughed back at first until he sensed the touch of panic in my laugh which caused him to start crying. That made me shape up real quick and I began to tackle the problem. Amid Lydia’s cries of “poop!,” I got Sam out of his seat and the three of us headed into the daycare with me holding Sam out at arm’s length. Everyone gave me a wide berth.

We got into Sam’s room with Lydia leading the way. She announced to Sam’s teacher, “Sam pooped!” They graciously began to handle Sam while I quickly got Lydia tucked away then went back out to grab the carseat. Sam eventually got a little bath in the sink while I wrestled the cover off the carseat so it could be washed.

All that before 8:00 a.m.!

sputnik; eleven months in orbit

Yay, yay, the sputnik post is on time — wait . . . oh. Ha ha.

Yes, Sam turned 11 months old back on May 2nd; my 31st birthday. I happened to be home sick that day, then life just continued from there. I’ve been sick twice and Sam is sick right now. Lydia tried and failed to get sick.

FIrst things first, I did find my video recorder and uploaded the video of Sam starting to crawl. Here it is below for your enjoyment. Oh, and I was wrong about the music blasting — it was The Decemberists.

He is much, much, MUCH faster than this now.

His teeth-popping has slowed down some. After he sprouted that lower one the day after he passed the 10 month marker, there have been no more teeth. Right now he looks a bit off-balance with only three teeth on the bottom.

We continued with various flavors of baby foods. I tried a few more grains like wheat and corn which Sam had no problems with. He is also doing well with a bit of milk laced in with the remaining breastmilk I have stocked in the freezer. So far, Sam seems able to eat anything, so long as it’s not rice.

Sam pulls up on a few things, but his main passion right now is still crawling. He is one fast dude. One afternoon when I got home with the kids to find that Renton had barfed all around the living room. “Ewwww! Cat nasty!” Lydia exclaimed over and over again, while I tried to corral the kids away from the barf and begin to clean it up at the same time. As I was about to work on the biggest pile, Sam ran up behind me quicker than a jackrabbit and grabbed a handful of ‘cat nasty’ before I could blink an eye. Lydia’s ewww-ing while I washed Sam’s hand in the sink while he screamed, watching his prize being washed away. Like I said, he’s fast.

Of course, all that crawling and cat-nasty-grabbing and Lydia-toy-stealing can wear a boy out. He typically falls out between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m., sleeping through the night until I rustle him up around 6:30 the next morning. Ahh, such a pleasant change from about four months ago.

So less than one month ’till the big one. We’re in the gauntlet big-time now, with party-plannings and picture scheduling, haircuts (I’m thinking Sam is going to need one soon), cake baking, etc. And remember, this is for TWO birthdays with Lydia pushing three, plus Steven’s 30th is coming up. But I’ll pull a Scarlett and think about that tomorrow. We’ll do Sam’s birthday first then shower attention on the rest as they come. Woo, party time!