Egg & Nuts

On Tuesday I took Lilah to the doctors office for the results of her blood test. It came back that she has a moderate to severe allergy to both eggs and nuts. Most of you know that I want to raise the children vegetarian/vegan so it's not been too much of a problem with them being lactose intolerant and staying away from egg if we have to, but it's a little scary now that it's gone from something I choose to not feed them to something that can seriously harm her if she eats it. Also nuts are a great way for vegetarians to get protein so that's a little disheartening to know that she may not ever have that protein source as an option. From all the reading I have done it seems like she'll eventually grow out of the egg allergy, and I'm so happy about that as then she can have that as a source of protein. Our doctor said that we shouldn't carry an epi pin right now because she's so little that the pin can be more harmful that helpful if she truly didn't need it and we had given it to her. He says it's best to call an ambulance and let them administer one. I think it's wise to get a second opinion so next week I think I'll book her into a different clinic and see what they say about it. She was given a prescription of the antihistamine Redipred and that can be given to her at the first signs of a reaction or given before a trip on an airplane in case the peanut dust effects her any.

When I really stop and think about it I can't believe how lucky I was when I was little to never have to worry about things like this. I'll be able to do all the worrying for her and make sure all the things in the house are safe, but you never know what can accidentally happen outside of the house. We just have to be prepared to act fast and not panic.

Pathology

Yesterday we took Lilah to pathology to have her blood taken. My sister stayed home with Emmy and my mother in law, Jan, came up to help with Lilah at the hospital. I was nervous about them sticking her with a needle over and over trying to find a vein big enough, but I didn't need to worry at all because the nurse pricked her finger and milked it into the vile. It took a good solid 5 min's and three grown women to get it done. I had her on my lap holding her head to my chest and also her legs. Jan helped to hold her arm still while the nurse struggled to keep hold of her little bloody thumb. She screamed the whole time, and I felt bad for her, but I knew that she wasn't being stuck over and over by a needle and she wasn't in terrible pain. I was so glad when it was over and I know she was too. She passed out in the car about a minute after we left the parking lot and we only live down the road 2-3 minutes. Once I got her into her bed she slept for a solid 2 - 2 1/2 hours. I really took alot out of her. We have an appointment for Jan 19th to receive the results. From there we will discuss any other allergies and epi pens. Cross your fingers that we won't need to!

Victor Harbor

We went down to Victor Harbor on Saturday to meet up with our friends Wayne and Amy. Check out the view from their vacation condo. I had packed all of our beach stuff but it turned out to be much cooler than I had expected so we didn't end up going swimming. How sad!! But we did get to enjoy a nice walk down by the beach then up through the town. We stopped and had lunch at a really neat seafood restaurant and Abby was really excited that she got to try shark (flathead), but she really didn't like it! haha It did taste a tad bit fishy....eew!

The boys took the girls on camel rides on the beach. How cute!!

I think she loves her daddy!

Emmy's first time on a ride!!

Hi Ashlee :)

I totally caught this picture at just the wrong moment and Emmy is behind the pole in the orange truck. She loved the ride and didn't hesitate for one minute when her dad popped her into the truck and shut the door. Once it started she was 'driving' her steering wheel and waving to us when she passed by. Abby and I were cracking up at her because she kept on waving like a beauty queen as she passed by all the parents. Too funny! Once the ride was over and Kim went to get her out she was so mad and threw a fit, but it didn't last too long. We thought it might be fun to have her ride the Scrambler with her dad, but we didn't think she'd meet the height requirement. Also I'd hate to make her scared; especially since she did so well on her first kiddie ride! I can't wait to take her to Indiana Beach on our next trip home to visit my family. It'll be so fun seeing her do all the things I loved doing as a kid.

A quick update about Lilah...

I took Lilah to our GP today to discuss her allergic reaction she had over the weekend and he feels it would be in our best interest to do blood allergy test to confirm any other problems she may have. He seemed concerned about nuts, so I really hope she doesn't have that one. I'll be happy to get the results back and know for sure what she can or can not have, but it'll be so hard tomorrow watching them take her blood. Our doctor said it's much harder to draw blood from a tiny vein. I might have to take some ear plugs along because she can have a scream so loud it nearly blows your brains out. My poor little girl. I'll let you all know how it goes tomorrow.

ER Trip #2

Today I had to run Lilah up to the ER. She was cranky all morning because of her teething, so her crying wasn't unusual. I scooped her up and went to go change her diaper and clothes and saw a few hive welts on her tummy and that her ears were very red on the inside. I went to go show Kim and thought we should take her up right away and I agreed. In the time it took me to change my clothes super fast, grab my purse and get her a water bottle she had double the amount of redness and welts. By the time we got to the ER which is just a 2 min drive from here it had doubled again. Her poor little ears where completely red and double their size; also her face was swelling and she stopped looking like herself. This is when I started to get scared and freaked out. I couldn't believe how fast it was happening. They took us back straight away and started asking questions. She had breast milk, banana, teething gel and pain medicine that morning. They figured something must have bitten her. I gave Kim a call to update him and he mentioned that he had given her a bite of Emmy's egg. I had forgotten all about it. She had a bite of Emmy's egg before that as well. Egg is a known allergen and is not recommend to children under 1. The doctor told us that the next time she has a reaction it will more than likely be worse and happen faster since this reaction was so bad. We'll have to carry some allergy medicine with us at all times in case she has an reaction. He also stressed that we should stay away from nuts with her until at least age two. In the reading I've done today I have not come across any correlation between egg and nut allergy, but I don't want to see her have a reaction like this again so we'll be staying away from them! They gave her an oral steroid which started to work pretty soon after and I was so happy to see the welts starting to go away. Next they gave her some non-drowsy antihistamene and two hours after we had got to the hospital they let us go home to monitor her there. By the 4 hour mark most of her swelling was gone and once she woke up from her nap another 2 hours later she looked 100% normal. Poor little girl! Can you believe it. No Milk. No Egg. I sure hope we don't find out No Nuts!

10 Months Old

She's weighing in at a tiny 8.2 kg or 17 lbs 10 oz! Lilah is a super fast crawler now and is always on the move trying to follow me around the house. She also loves to crawl over to Emmy when she's laying down watching TV or drinking her milk and she'll try and get on top of her haha. Emmy usually gets annoyed with her and tells her "no! get down" but she doesn't listen lol! She also tries to bear crawl as Abby calls it. She'll stand up on both feet while her hands are on the floor and she'll try to walk/crawl that way. So far she can only take one step, but it won't be long before she'll be doing it with ease.

She can also pull herself up whenever she wants to a standing position and I've also seen her hold on to the couch and turn her self around, so not really holding on to side step, but stepping in circles. She loves to say dad and even yelled it when Kim came home last night and started crawling as fast as she could to the back door. Yay cute!!

She's been teething alot lately and two popped through at once the last week of December. First was her 3rd tooth on her bottom right. Strange that she got a third bottom tooth before her two top teeth. I'm not sure how common/uncommon that is. A few days later her top left tooth made it's appearance. She still doesn't handle pain well so it's been kinda rough on everyone involved.

She's also starting to try and get back behind the chair to my house plant. Emmy finally pays it no attention and here we go with round 2!! Hopefully she won't be as head strong as Emmy was about digging in it. When she is doing something she shouldn't be I'll correct her by saying "AH AH AH" and she'll look at me with a blank look and then about 15 seconds in she'll start to get a frown... then a pucker...followed by a full blown cry. It just breaks her heart. She's so sensitive. There is not one tough bone in her body.


She is still a huge Mommy's girl, but she really loves her daddy too. She's difficult to babysit still for Grandma or her Aunties but for her Dad she's a very good girl now. I can tell how happy and proud this makes him :) She's also still breastfeeding and some days I think she's starting to loose interest in her day time feeds and other days it's the only thing she wants for food. Her night feeds will definitely not be stopping anytime soon but I would like her to drop down to just one during the night rather than the 2-4 she has (they are usually not big ones when she's leaning towards the 4 a night.... it's more of a comfort and settling thing for her). She's has a really bad and painful habit of scratching and clawing me on the back of my arm or side while she's feeding and it's driving me crazy. I have taken her off the boob and told her "no" and that it hurts mommy, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on her other than making her upset. On the bright side she didn't bite me while she was teething this time around. I was pretty worried about that, but she obviously knows that it a no no and doesn't do it anymore! Yay for me!!

Christmas fishing...

We packed up and went fishing at the Parra Reservoir (I think that's what it's called) . It's a really pretty spot about 15 min's drive from our house so it's quick and inexpensive fun! We threw out 2 yabby nets and then Kim got four poles set up and in the water. Because we had the girls with us it mostly consisted of set up, running after Emmy, bouncing a cranky Lilah, and then packing up haha (and no fish caught!) We went back the next morning to pull up our nets and do a little more fishing; this time without the kids. We did get several nibbles but we never did catch a fish, but I was really excited to see we pulled up a net full of yabbies! Kim cooked them up and prepared them for me. YUM! They tasted so good and way better than lobster! I can't wait to go out there with our nets again!!

Our Christmas Morning

Lilah woke up first on Christmas morning so I got up with her to get things ready and to let Emmy and Kim sleep in. Abby was up and had been for an hour, haha so I guess technique she was the first one awake.... but she was so quiet we didn't know. The sleepy heads stayed in bed so long that I had time to get breakfast for Lilah and I plus change her and do her hair. I called my mom on skype and pointed the webcam at the Christmas tree and she got to spend Christmas morning with us! You can't have Christmas without Grandma!! Finally Emmy woke up so I grabbed the camera and told Kim to bring her on out. I guess it's not what she had in mind because you can tell from the picture below that she was not impressed. Once she found the candy in her stocking her attitude changed, lol. All she wanted to do though was eat the candy, so I had to confiscate that so she'd unwrap the presents. After about hour and half of unwrapping we took a break for some hot cakes (kim made a breakfast run to McDonald's) meanwhile I told my mom goodbye and called up Grandma & Grandpa Byers. Two hours later the unwrapping was finally done and in the end I think Abby opened a few of Lilah's presents to get it over with. It was hard to get them to open presents since they wanted to play with everything. It's kind of a dumb concept I guess....it's like "here open this....WOW, isn't that soo cool....now give that back to me and open this one" they are too young to understand, but I'm sure it won't be long and we'll have a Christmas where they'll mow through everything and then tell me they want to unwrap more! We chatted with Grandma & Grandpa for a while longer then we said our goodbyes. I was so happy that they got to see the girls opening their presents. Children are the best part about Christmas :)

Since this was the kids 2nd day of getting lots of presents they were not overly concerned with playing and it was gorgeous weather outside so we decided to go fishing (also I wanted to run away from the mess.... it was too much to clean up in one day!). That will be in a separate post to come!

This grump didn't want to get out of bed. Such a sour puss!

Lilah was the first one awake :)

Stockings are always the first to be opened!

Hi Dad!

Emmy's baby is as big as Lilah hahaha

Aww putting her baby to bed!

Smile Grandma Betsy!

Hiya Grandma & Grandpa Byers!

Australia Day BBQ

Here's the pictures I promised to post. It was a little overwhelming for Emmy to first get somewhere and be plopped down with a bunch of little girls but it didn't take her long to warm up to the idea and really start playing and enjoying herself!

Ashlee is giving Emmy the look of "Fool, what you cry'n bout?"

I'm not sure what was going on that had there attention but they soon came back to play :)

Standing up is Mahalia, Emmy, Ashlee is squatting, and Lacy sitting in the front.

Dad requested that she have a different hair style than the normal one pony on top so piggy tails it was!

too funny

This is so true hahahha and Emmy is such a couch potato already! It's only educational programing...... does that make it any better? lol

Australia Day 2009

While her daddy was at the cricket we went up to Nuriootpa (click on Nuriootpa to read about it) to visit with her grandparents at the caravan park. It was a hot one too... 96 F and what a lucky girl Emmy was......she got to go naked in the pool and stay cool! Yesterday we went to an Australia Day BBQ and she got to play with her little girl friends but I forgot to bring my camera so as soon as I get some pictures off of our friend I'll post them up. It was very cute seeing Emmy get to play with 3 other girls around her age!



She wasn't into getting her picture taken today and I didn't capture a smile, but I did get a good picture of the new top tooth! This is for you Grandma Betsy and Great Grandma Martene!

play cafe

Yesterday was filled with fun! Kim and Lia's cousin Jess came up to Gawler to have lunch with the girls at a play cafe near our house called Snakes and Ladders. The kids totally loved running and crawling around and actually it made eating with 3 under 2 a manageable feat! Thanks for the fun lunch Jess!! xoxo

Jade & Emmy hanging out with Jess

Emmy & Jess playing in the little kid area.

Enjoying a play with a wall toy.

She would lift her leg as if she could actually climb into the big ball pit... I had to help her out some!!

Bethany & Emmy playing in her Fisher Price ball pit before we headed down to the cafe.

I can't see the TV!

Here's the video that goes along with the pictures of catching her digging and eating the dirt out of my house palm. She totally didn't care that was I surveying the damage and she was trying to see around me to watch her TV program. Such a naughty girl!

dancing to the Care Bears

I'm trying to catch up on some video uploads so here's the first of hopefully a few. This was taken 1 1/2 weeks ago while she's dressed up in her princess dress and she decided she'd rather play than have her picture taken. She's trying to keep the Care Bear songs going but wants to dance too. Pretty cute I thought!

independent girl

As of last night Emmy stood up independent of holding onto anything and then proceeded to balance herself for a long time. She did it on 3 or 4 different occasions last night and was very proud of herself once she saw the attention we gave her for it. She's also doing well with a walking assistant toy that we recently moved from her carpeted room to the hardwood in the living room and she can keep up with it and will make up to 4 laps around the living room / dinning room area. I'll have to post a video soon!

tooth number 3

I meant to post this the other day. Last week Emmy cut her upper left butter tooth (upper incisor)! She had a couple nights were she woke up crying and I didn't know what was wrong but now I suspect it must have been teething pain. I feel pretty bad that I wasn't able to give her any pain medicine, but it must have not been hard on her because she settled down when offered a bottle and cuddles and during the day she didn't have any symptoms.

I got out my baby book and she has followed my teething pattern. I got both my bottom teeth a week apart the same time she did. My mom wrote in that I cut my 3rd tooth Jan 28th 1983 and she cut hers on Jan 15th but the difference between our birthdays is about a week, so she got her 3rd tooth the same as me almost to the day.. just 27 years apart lol. I got my 4th tooth a week after the 3rd so I'm keeping my eye out for number four. I don't see anything yet but I'll keep you posted!

waiting, waiting, more waiting

Yesterdays doctor appointment was enough to drive anyone crazy, especially if you have a 10 month old that is more interested in investigating her surroundings and enjoys the high range of her newly found vocal screams. My appointment was for 12:30 and I got to see the doctor at 1:45, the irritating part is this visit and the last I was put with a new doctor. The secretary doesn't know why this is but I have had it corrected for the next visit and I guess I'll just have to make double sure I'm with the correct one from here on out.

Anyways... the ultrasound she ordered that I had the day before was guaranteed to me to be at the doctors office by noon and now it's nearly 2 pm and no films. I'm asked if I mind waiting longer in the waiting room for them to come, "their being sent over now", and then we'll finish our visit. Of course I can wait I said with a smile on my face.... at 2:20 we're done looking at the results and everything seems good and we'll repeat the scan in 2 weeks. They have been watching the fluid around Lilah since it's on the low end of normal, but from last week the fluid has increased so all is looking great. I had to wait an additional 10 mins for the secretary to return to book my next appointment and then I was able to take the elevator downstairs and book my next scan and then we got the heck out of there.

While all of this waiting was going on Emmy didn't really want to wait. She wanted down so bad to crawl around and do what she wanted to do. After about 40 mins I was forced to go outside of the waiting room to the carpeted hallway where there's a couch and let her try and walk off some steam but after one lap of me helping her walk she decided NO WALKING by screaming until I let her crawl it off. Cruel thing is.... she never seemed to run out of energy. She wouldn't take her bottle and wouldn't take the nap she was over due fore. Nightmare. I look forward to my next appointment with my correct doctor and I know my waiting time is never more than 15 mins and he knows what's going on with me and my history.



Here are two pictures from the scan 2 days ago. They are kinda of crappy, but once the babies get so big it's hard for them to get a good picture because it's basically like someone sticking a camera right in your face and trying to have it focused and it just doesn't work. The first picture is the scary full on front shot and the second is a profile. She's right on for her weight and length for her gestational age and is very active. She has been kicking me in my ribs for several weeks now and if you are listening to me miss... you can stop doing that at any point and I'd be very grateful!!

dress up

We played dress up last night after bath time. She really liked seeing herself in the mirror in her pretty fairy dress! The bath time letters idea I stole from Morgan ....thanks for the inspiration! She's good at walking now while hanging on to things and will get interested in what she's doing and let go but once she realizes she's not hanging on she'll either grab back on or sit down slowly. When I look at her now I see such a big kid. She's not our little itty bitty baby anymore.