Guess who's sick now?

In a previous post I mentioned that Eve was sick-ish. Well she actually slept well last night and woke up in a great mood. I thought "Great. We don't have to go to the doctor after all." That is until I felt how warm Kylie was and realized she had a fever. My girls have been so lucky not to have had much illness so far in their lives. Between the two of them, I have only once had to treat their sickness with something other than tylenol and that was the time Kylie had an ear infection at 6 months (Yes, I know that I've given her lots of medicine for her eczema, but that's something she will always have. I'm talking about sickness incidents). I mean they've had colds and congestion, but never anything more. So Kylie has just been lazing around on the couch all day, sleeping off and on. She loves that couch. I don't blame her, I liked sleeping on it when I was pregnant. So we decided that we should let her spend the night on the couch, so that if either girl wakes up feeling sick, they don't wake the other one up. So tonight is Kylie's first night to ever sleep on a couch. A couple things:

1. That stuffed pig in her picture is her "night night pig." She sleeps with him every night.
2. Since she's been sleeping out in the living room where we can hear her, we've noticed that she's been sleep talking. The last thing she said was: "I need coffee mommy and daddy. Need coffee." Silly girl. We fill her little teacup up with water or milk in the mornings and she has "coffee" with us.
   

Eczema, vomiting and cow's milk (now with a happy ending!)

If that picture is painful to look at, I'm sorry. It's the reason I don't like to discuss Kylie's eczema... because it's too painful. And I haven't even snapped any pictures when it's out of control. Sometimes the red marks cover her whole body (excluding her face, thank goodness). That's too much for me, I don't want a picture of her skin when it reaches that point.

I finally decided to post just in case someone who reads this has some different options, opinions, suggestions or even questions. I know there are lots of kids who have this skin condition. It's not an unusual thing, so someone who reads this could possibly either help me out, ask me questions or just simply relate.

Kylie's been diagnosed with it ever since her two month doctor's appointment, so long before we stopped breastfeeding. My sister Rachel had it and STILL has it pretty bad, and she was breastfed for a year, so that helps me cope with the guilt that Kylie has it and wasn't breastfed for a whole year. She was breastfed up until 7 months when she refused to do it anymore. I have a feeling it was because I was one month pregnant with Eve and it didn't taste the same anymore. Besides, it's genetic and Jason and I both have a family member who has a severe case of eczema. For him, it's a cousin and for me, it's my sister. So that helps me deal with the guilt of not breastfeeding for a whole year.

Sigh.

There's a reason why I haven't wanted to make this post. It just makes me so sad to see her red marks that sometimes cover her entire body; to hear her make that terrible scratching sound even when her nails are cut short; to feel her sand papery like skin when I'm putting lotion or medicine all over her body. I remember hearing that same scratching sound every night growing up, since I shared a room with my sister who scratched her eczema every night before she could fall asleep. Eczema is not rare, so I would imagine most people know someone who has it to some degree. But for those of you who it, the scratching sound I'm describing is almost like a paper tearing sound. Or maybe imagine the sound it would make if you would run your fingernails hard against a piece of sandpaper. It just sounds painful.

Kylie thinks that people's wrists are called "owies" because she always has scratch marks on hers. If I tell her they are called "wrists," she just corrects me and says: "no mommy, they're owies." I especially can't stand it when I catch her whimpering and I ask what's wrong and her reply is: "My owies hurt. I need medicine." Yep, the word medicine has been part of her vocabulary for quite some time. We are constantly putting prescribed steroid cream on her. There is no cure for eczema, but it can be kept under control. Something else we have tried is bleach baths. We have heard about it from several different reliable sources and looked up the research on it before trying it. It is a very diluted bleach bath; the water is similar to pool water. Since it's so diluted, it's safe if the child drinks the water and safe if they get it in their eyes. It works because Eczema scratches can become infected with a type of staph bacteria, so the diluted bleach bath kill the germs to keep it from becoming infected. It's much better than keeping your child on antibiotics. Our doctor prescribed antibiotics for Kylie once because she was covered neck down in eczema wounds. It cleared up immediately, but everyone knows the danger of using antibiotics too often. Well, the bleach baths helped a lot at first. We were so happy. But once Winter came and the heaters were turned on, her skin became terrible looking again.

So now, we do Aveeno's oatmeal baths every once in a while. It does seem to soothe her skin a lot. The only problem is that the label says not to get the water in your child's eyes and to contact poison control if swallowed. So having Eve (who drinks bath water like it's kool-aid) in the oatmeal bath is out of the question. Eve loves baths and she would throw a fit if she saw her sister Kylie in the bath and she wasn't allowed to join her. So I can only give Kylie these types of baths when Eve is sleeping.

Those of you who have experience with eczema know that certain allergies "trigger" it. We haven't discovered any food, soap or fabric allergies that seem to make it worse. Our doctor finally gave us a recommendation to see a specialist at Children's Mercy, but the appointment isn't until mid-April. Hopefully we can find out more at that time. I do know that cow's milk allergy is pretty commonly associated with this skin condition. An interesting thing happened this week that made me wonder even more about the possibility of milk: Kylie started throwing up this week. She hasn't thrown up since she was literally 2 days old. She hasn't had a fever and she seems to be doing fine. Jason noticed that she was only throwing up when we were giving her milk to drink. I didn't believe him (I thought if milk was the problem, we would have noticed long before her second birthday) so I gave her some chocolate milk as a treat when we visited the Crown Center yesterday. Jason was not happy about that decision, but I thought that since it had been over 36 hours since she had thrown up, that she was over whatever it was. Well, I regretted my decision really quickly. We were shopping in the Crayola store when she lost her marbles all over the floor. Gross. She was so embarrassed, poor girl. I was embarrassed too, and those of you who know me know that it takes A LOT for that to happen. But it made me realize that maybe it was milk that was bothering her. So I did some more online research and I found out that she could be allergic to milk, which could have been triggering her eczema AND was causing her to start throwing up when it was in her system. So I'm taking her off milk, just to see what happens.

I'm very anxious to see that specialist in April. I have lots of questions.

EDIT/UPDATE: So Kylie is five now, and I'm doing a quick update on this post in case anyone is reading this later: The BEST thing we found out from the dermatologist at Children's Mercy hospital was... (drum roll please!)... vaseline! Just regular old petroleum jelly. Slather is on, especially after bathtime and it works. Seriously. Kylie's skin is so much better. Also we learned not to put any lotion on her, it will dry out her skin. The gel/oily stuff is the way to go because it locks in the moisture. We are now battling mostly with redness around her eyes, but the vaseline even helps that to some extent. They also put her on benadryl daily which helped a ton because it cut down on her itching, but I wasn't too fond of her being constantly on benadryl, so I've weaned her off and she now only takes it when she is really itchy. So I hope that helps someone out there with a similar problem! Also, she drinks milk all the time, I don't think it triggers anything. It really didn't do anything different when we took her off milk.

WWTS (What Would Tyra Say?)

She looked so cute all dressed up to go to her best friend's Josey 3rd birthday party. She had been asking about Josey all week, begging to go "play Josey's house." Every time we got in the car she asked: "Go see Josey? Please mommy?" Finally, it really was time to go see Josey. She helped pick out her dress and didn't complain as I pulled her hair back. She wanted to look "pretty to go see Josey." I told her how adorable she looked, so why didn't we take some pictures before we left? She was really excited by the idea, so she posed next to her favorite "picture taking wall." I snapped this little beauty...
... and was thinking what a great little mini photo session we were about to have.... until I realized that Kylie was in the mood for a SPEED photo session. She would pose really quickly, then run away quickly to another location where she would once again pose and run away: Besides running photos like the one above, I also got lots of shots of walls because once I adjusted my camera settings to a new location, she was gone. I won't post any wall pictures. I'm sure you can imagine what it would look like :).

There was ONE pose however, which she felt it was worth waiting for me to get ready. Here it is:

Just in case you didn't quite "get" it, here's the same photo, just zoomed in on her face with everything else cropped out:

Yep, she sure is special!

Oh and she also felt that I needed to get some pictures of her jumping. She made sure I was getting this on camera too. Little Miss Bossy Pants told me: "Take picture me jumping mommy!"

Yes, I need to clean that carpet. Her room was a little messy that day. She found a piece of paper on the floor and ran to the couch for me to take a picture of her "big teeth":

Then she decided it was more appropriate as a "mustache" (A word she learned from playing with her Mr. Potato head.)

How can you not laugh when you are around this silly girl!

Oh and I found another "modeling" photo that I took back in December:

I think Tyra would have been proud of that last one: interesting body pose, nice angles, intense eyes that aren't "mean", good connection with the camera... She did lose her neck, however. Oh well, hopefully Tyra wouldn't be too hard on her. She's only two years old.

Lots of Reras!

Kylie's 2nd birthday party was lots of fun. We decided to have a small party since her first birthday party was pretty big. For those of you that don't remember we combined our graduation party with her first birthday party last year since we both graduated from Kansas State that same day. The option of having a park birthday (which would have been fun and easy) was not feasible since Kylie has a December birthday. I really wanted to keep the party in our home... only we just have a two bedroom apartment, so that limited us too. So Jason and I decided to invite immediate family only. Since none of my sisters have any children (and what's a 2 year old birthday party without children to play with?) we decided that Kylie could invite one friend. It was an easy choice, since Kylie is always asking to "go play with Josey." Josey is one of 4 kids, so she ended up having more than one friend at her party, but somehow we all fit comfortably in the apartment.

Here are all the birthday party kiddos:


Of course, Kylie's party was Dora themed, or as Kylie calls her "Rera." When she saw the party decorations (table cloth, streamers, wall hangings...) she said: "Look! Lots of Reras! I like Rera and Boots!" (Boots is Rera's sidekick for those of you who don't watch the show.)

And what's a Rera party without a Rera cake?

Oh yeah, it was Jason's 27th birthday, so I made him a cheesecake.

Eve was just as excited about the party as her older sister. In just 3 months she'll have her very own birthday party! How crazy is that thought?

Kylie and Josey... how sweet!

Just one random shot of Kylie opening presents. It was funny because last time she opened a present was a year ago for Christmas. She had just turned one. So she didn't remember that the present was supposed to be unwrapped. Of course, it was not hard to teach her what to do, but it was just funny that we had to show her.

If anyone wants to see a whole lot more pictures, click here and you will be able to see all the ones I posted on facebook.

Mr. Potato Head

The title of this blog post really says it all. It's what Kylie has been obsessed with ever since she received a couple "mister tato heads" (as she calls them) for her birthday. She and Daddy have played so many times together with this toy, I'm not sure which one of them loves their 'tato heads more. Regardless, I love to watch them having fun and spending some quality father/daughter bonding time. I know it requires a lot of patience because she is never satisfied with a final poduct of Mr. Potato Head, she continuously wants to change every little body part. It just makes me fall in love with Jason even more as I notice how well he takes care of our children. Such a great feeling.

This crazy lady potato head got arrested and handcuffed. I don't remember this toy having so many accessories!

Two years ago

Kylie one hour old

Kylie 2 years old

On December 15th 2007, 6 days past my due date, I was pouting. Jason was the one going to see the doctor, and not me. Turns out he had a hairline fracture on his foot. I was so jealous, why couldn't it have been me who was seeing a doctor to deliver my baby? Little did I know that later on in the day, I would be getting my wish. I remember everything else so vividly from that day:

• My grandma's house filled with family from the area who didn't have any electricity due to the ice storm that happened 4 days prior.





• The chili I made for all those people, made extra spicy in hopes it would cause some contractions.





• Letting my sister Kelly play with my stomach as I got contractions. She was fascinated with how hard my tummy got! I had been having contractions for weeks, so it didn't strike anyone as odd that we were 'playing' with my contractions. They were painless at this point.





• Walking the dogs with my mom on the icy roads.





• Driving to Walmart with my mom to find special shoes for Jason's broken foot





• The guy in Walmart who took one look at my big belly and said: "Woah! Congratulations!"





• Timing my contractions as we shopped, and when we noticed they were 2 minutes apart, I said: "We must be doing it wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm not in labor."





• Having some serious painful contractions in line at Walmart and trying to figure out if I should tell the people in front of me that I needed to go ahead of them since I was pretty sure I was now in labor. [I decided not to say anything, I didn't want to look crazy for purchasing shoes, chapstick and toilet paper while in labor. But boy was it hard not to cry out in pain while standing in line!]





• Calling Jason from Walmart to tell him to meet me at the hospital, but to tell everyone at my grandma's house that he was just bringing my mom and I our 'forgotten' wallets. [I didn't want anyone to know when I was in labor. I wanted it to be a surprise. Even to my mom, but she was the one who ended up driving me to the hospital.]





• Arriving at the hospital in the most pain I have ever felt in my life, and getting an epidural right away.





• One hour later being told it was time to push, and being shocked by how quickly it all happened.





• Telling myself that I didn't want my daughter to have a cone head, which motivated me to push as hard as I could.





• 5-10 minutes later, holding my daughter for the first time and checking immediately to see if she had my ears. She doesn't.





• Watching Jason hold Kylie for the first time as they stitched me up. [ouch]





• Falling in love with Jason all over again as I watched him pace the floor holding our girl and tell her how much he loved her and was so happy she was here.





• Telling Jason to sit down and get off that hurt foot!





• Waiting a little bit to call anyone, so we could enjoy a little bit more time alone with Kylie.





• Watching each one of my sisters and my parents fall in love with our little sweetheart as they came to visit.





• Being completely amazed by how this little darling girl was for Jason and I to 'keep'. It's a strange feeling and I really can't explain it. 'Keep' is not the word I want to use, but it's the only thing I can think that could hint at what I'm trying to say.





• Being disappointed that I still looked about 5 months pregnant.





• Taking as many pictures as I could. Before having Kylie, I never took such an excessive amount of pictures!

Really I can't describe how quickly I fell in love with my sweet little Kylie. I know that some people say that it can take a while to bond with your new baby, but that was not the case for me. I was so amazed about everything about her, from her thin sandy-colored hair to her "huge" [for baby standards] feet and long toes. What's really amazing is how, even though I loved her so much when I first met her, my love for her has grown right along with her! Now she is 2 years old, and I am still loving her as much as ever!

I will post pictures of her 2 year old birthday party later. I won't in this post because this post was supposed to be about how my life was changed so much 2 years ago! It was a wonderful day and I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Tiger outside and happy birthday with a hat

Kylie has been saying some pretty funny things lately. It's kind of fun because I can still say "She says so many things and she's not even two yet." I only have one more week that I can use that phrase, so I better take advantage. Here's a little conversation we had tonight as I was tucking her in bed:

Me: Kylie do you want me to go find your night night pig?

[We had cleaned her room earlier and she had put her stuffed pig in her toy box. She usually sleeps with him every night.]

Kylie: No mom. [She thinks for a minute.] I want the tiger!

[The problem is I don't think we have a stuffed tiger anywhere.]

Me: Sweetie, there is no tiger in the house.

Kylie: Yes! Tiger outside!

Me: Kylie...

Kylie: Roar [giggle] I want the tiger please.

Me: Let me go look in your toy box and see if we can find another animal for you to sleep with. No tiger, sorry.

Kylie: Ok [thinks for a minute] I want hat!

[There is a toy hat in the toy box. I'm pretty sure Kylie had that specific one in mind.]

Me: [surprised] You want to sleep with your hat?

Kylie: Yes, hat.

Me: Ok, honey. Here you go. [I hand her the hat.]

Kylie: [starts singing as she holds the hat on her head. It's a toy hat and so it doesn't stay on her head unless she's holding it.] Happy birthday you, happy birthday you...

[I really don't know where she heard the happy birthday song, but she's been singing it for about a month now. It's not as if she has had a birthday recently - she turns two next week remember?- and she hasn't been to any birthday parties that I know of. The first time I heard her sing that song was a month ago out of nowhere. Well actually it was when I gave her a small candle that was "kylie's" so she could only touch that one and not "mommy's". Not that I light them when she can get to them, it's just that she is obsessed with them, so I gave her one and her obsession with my bigger ones ended. How she knew that the happy birthday song goes with candles in a mystery to me, but now I've let myself get sidetracked.]

Below is a picture of the hat she is now cuddling in bed with. The picture is several months old, but you get the idea:

All about Kylie

Current Age: 22 months

Wow, I can't believe how much Kylie has grown up lately. I have to constantly remind myself that she is still only one year old (this helps especially when she is driving me NUTS :] ). She can now do so many things that I know I will not be able to put everything in this blog post. I'll do my best!

She has definitely reached her language explosion. There is no possible way for me to write down everything that she says now. She also puts words together in sentences and it's fun that we can have conversations. Besides common everyday vocabulary, here is a sampling of words/concepts she knows:
* She can count to eleven. Why stop at eleven? She gets it confused with seven so when she gets to eleven, she says eight next. So she gets stuck in a circle: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,8,9,10,11,8,9,10,11... You get the idea :) As we were driving to church once Jason and I could hear: "8,9,10,11,8,9,10,11" the whole entire drive there.
*She knows lots of animal sounds. It was so funny that she refused to say them for the longest time and then at 18 months, she all of a sudden knew all of them. I'm not going to list all the sounds she knows because she knows lots of random ones like fish and turkey. (I love hearing her version of gobble gobble).
*She knows the words for different colors but she doesn't identify them correctly yet. I wasn't even working on colors with her, so imagine my surprise when we looked at a magazine and she pointed at a car and said "yellow car mommy!" and then a different car and said "Look, blue car mommy!" I told Jason about it and he told me that he had been working on colors with her. I had no idea he was doing that. So ever since then, I've been working with her too but she thinks almost everything is "blue." It's kind of hard teaching her though because she hates to be corrected even if you do it with a positive voice. It's made her cry before when I've told her that something was really green, not blue. So, I'm not really working that hard on the color concept with her. She'll learn eventually, it's not worth making her upset.
*She calls herself "Kytie" which is weird because she used to be able to say her name correctly.
*She can sing lots of songs: The alphabet song is her absolute favorite and she has lately been singing each letter very clearly. When she sees words/letters anywhere (billboards, someone's shirt, books, store signs...) she says: "Look, ABCs!" And they are everywhere, so we hear that a lot. She can identify O and Q and the rest are all hit and miss although she thinks most of them are the letter "E." She also sings "Row row your boat", "Old MacDonald", "Jesus Loves Me", "I love you- Barney song" and "If you're happy and you know it" pretty well but none are as perfectly clear as the alphabet song.
*She tells me when she has a "stinky" but that's what she says also if she's just wet. It pretty much means that she wants a diaper change. I really haven't started potty training yet, I'm waiting to get some absorbable panties but she's really interested in the potty. She will ask to go sit on the potty but she just thinks it's fun to sit on her little potty chair. I always tell her when I'm going potty because I want her to come follow me so I can keep an eye on her (I don't always trust her being alone with Eve. She's usually sweet, but she has some moments) and she will usually reply: "I go potty too mommy!" and she will come sit on her potty. So I pretty much have no privacy!
*She has definitely learned the word "mine". Not only is she in a "mine" stage but she's also very interested in figuring out to whom everything belongs. For example if there are some shoes in the room, she will put mine together and say "mommy's shoes" and put Jason's together and say "daddy's shoes." What's funny is I love to drink my Coca Cola and whatever I'm drinking (even if it's coffee or something else) Kylie will point to and say "Mommy's coke". It's pretty embarrassing when we are in the grocery store and my one year old is yelling "coke! coke! coke!" in the pop aisle. I hope people don't think I'm giving her any soda drinks!
*I have also heard many times the infamous phrase "Look at me mommy!" The first time I heard it, Kylie had dragged one of the chairs from the kitchen into the living room and was climbing up, standing up and jumping off. We have a little dare devil on our hands.
* Every time she sees a big book, she calls it a "bubble" meaning "bible."
She learns so many new words every day and she has become an expert at repeating things, so I think I will stop here before I get carried away :). On to other things besides language.

She is a pretty good dancer and can copy different dance moves which is lots of fun. Sometimes she doesn't want an audience and will stop if we are watching her, so Jason and I will put music on the computer or TV and sneak around the corner to spy on her dancing. There are sometimes, however, that she enjoys being the center of attention. She's so funny. If ever we have extra income I will sign her up for toddler dance class. I think that if she had one talent it would involve music or dancing. I have had nursery workers tell me how impressed they are with the way she copies music. She really does copy tunes very easily. We will see if this continues to be a trend as she grows up. I am NOT musically talented at all, in fact I am quite the opposite. I didn't have any interest in it either growing up, so I know that I'm not forcing Kylie to follow some childhood dream of mine if I get her involved in music/dancing, because it was never a dream of mine in the first place. I just see that she really enjoys it, so I would like to keep her interested as long as she continues to enjoy it.

Last time I posted about her favorite TV show it was Barney (gag!). Well now it has changed. She absolutely LOVES Dora the Explorer, or "Rera and Boots" as she calls it. I don't even know when she first saw it, she never watched it before. I think I must have left the TV on once when it came on. I was surprised when she asked me one day to watch "Rera and Boots". I didn't even know what she was talking about until she added "Map" and "Backpack." In fact right now the only reason I'm able to write this blog post is because we DVRed the new Dora movie that was on yesterday and I'm showing it to Kylie now (and Eve is taking a nap.) She loves it, she interacts with it too. She will repeat the things the map tells and answer the questions Dora asks. Jason even bought her a real Dora backpack toy. It's kind of annoying because if anything else is on TV, she will whine "Rera... Boots...". Seriously, she's crazy if she thinks that all we are going to do is watch it all day. She can dream all she wants.

It's a good thing Kylie also loves books or I would be worried by how much she is obsessed with a TV show. I remember last year, I was worried because she didn't enjoy sitting for more than a minute to look at a book. But that was just her personality, she was enjoying exploring and being mobile and now she is finally content to sit and read books for long periods of time. She is also pretending to read books herself with lots of babbling as she flips through the pages. Her new favorite thing to do is to bring me a book for me to read outloud while she sits next to me "reading" another book outloud. She gets mad at me if I'm not reading mine outloud, what a weirdo :).

My little Kylie Bear is such a fun little girl! She does throw some tantrums and has earned some time outs when she decides to hit her sister, but overall she is a very obedient and loveable sweetheart. I also think she is starting to look more like me when I was her age. She still looks a lot like Jason but now she is also resembling me as well, finally! I will post some pictures when we get the charger to our other computer. I never thought I would have a blonde and blue eyed daughter, that is definitely not the part that looks like me :) I think she might have my facial structure though. Well whoever she got her looks from, she is absolutely a doll baby. The only thing is that she is not very photogenic and I think I take more "blooper" pictures of her than normal ones. Those bloopers are pretty funny though...

My little problem solver

For some strange reason, Kylie wants to use eating utensils instead of her fingers in most situations. There are some times she enjoys using her fingers, but she definitely loves her fork and spoon. A fork is just kind of hard to use when you are eating straight pretzels:
The solution: Just stuff your fork and pretzel in your mouth at the same time.

Spelling Bee

My Grandma Ginny was visiting last weekend. She and I were sitting around the dinner table eating and chatting. Kylie was also eating with us in her highchair. I was asking my Grandma if she would want to help me give baths to the girls after dinner. Jason was working, and I always enjoy extra help when it comes to bath time. Plus, my grandma loves anything that has to do with taking care of her great grandchildren. I was spelling out the word "bath" since Kylie would have refused to eat anymore and would have begged for a bath instead. Grandma started spelling words like "water" because she doesn't know which words Kylie gets excited about. Kylie was listening to us and heard us spell out all these words. She recognized that they were letters because she loves the alphabet song and even sings it with about 50% of the correct letters. Well, she didn't want to be left out because she looked at us and said in a normal conversation voice: E. I. E. I. O. as in from the "Old McDonald" song. So funny.

Isn't she cute?

There are probably about 10 pianos scattered throughout our church. Kylie LOVES playing them. I never even had to teach her not to bang on the keys. She just knew to push the keys individually.

My parents made me take piano lessons as a child, I was NOT talented. So if she grows up to be a musician, she didn't inherit those genes from me. :)

Drama Queen

She wanted to go into my room and I wouldn't let her. So she tried some of her magic on me:

Thankfully, I'm now immuned to her "magic", so I was able to calm her down without giving in. Here she is five minutes later, telling me a story:

Someone please tell me that the terrible twos aren't going to be too much worse. I don't know how much more I can handle. It's a good thing I am completely in love with my drama queen.