cindy's world

Allie’s second Thanksgiving was the day before her birthday this year. Knowing we would have a busy guest-filled weekend, we took Thanksgiving Thursday very, very easy. I’m grateful for that. Mr. W and I hung out at home with Allie, and had an early turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie lunch with the kid at Claim Jumper. I pulled off small pieces of the warm cottony sourdough bread for Allie, and she enjoyed that. She also had a few bites of plain mashed potato (altho I suspect it’s pretty butter-laden). She did not enjoy the pumpkie pie at all and made a face. She likes sweet fruit quite a bit, but does not seem to think much of dessert. I’m happy about that. She had a rare couple of days of frequent soft poopies last wek, which gave her a bad diaper rash complete with blisters, so we gave her stuff we used to avoid to solidify her poops a bit more. Banana, bread, applesauce. Her new favorite thing is now bananas. She loves it SO much that she immediately learned to say it, so that she could point and demand it. “BA-ya-ya! BA-ya!” she’d say every time she’s within sight of a banana, pointing.

Friday, Baby-Boo turned ONE! We entered her room in the morning and greeted her with the happy birthday song. She watched us politely, then pointed at the nursing recliner and said, “Mum mum mum.” (Food.)

Mr. W and I hit the grocery store for some last minute stuff and bought Allie her balloons. (“bbbloon, bbbbloon, bbbbloon!”)

While she napped, I made her personalized “smash cake” out of whole wheat flour, wheat germ, mashed ripe bananas, homemade applesauce, and soy milk. It’s oil-free, dairy-free, and healthy, which means it also ended up being more smash bread than smash cake. I also made her frosting the sugar-free way, by stirring pure apple juice concentrate into softened whipped cream cheese. That was her only dairy. I also dripped beet juice (Mr. W’s contribution, mashing a baked beet over wire mesh thingie and extracting the juice, which he had to do because I had a FIT that he dumped the beet juice I’d previously collected and had been saving for the frosting) into the frosting to give it a nice shade of pink, which I used to frost the mini bundt smash bread. Then I added more beet juice for a deeper pink in the remaining frosting to make accent frosting. Turns out frosting a cake with cream cheese is not easy! It did not spread very evenly. But heck, it was gonna get smashed, anyway. Nobody else has to eat it. It wasn’t until Mr. W shoved the giant candle on it that I realized I’d inadvertently matched the “theme colors” exactly.

In the late afternoon, Mr. W’s parents arrived from Vegas. They hadn’t seen her since we visited Vegas when she was about 8 months old, and all she was doing then was pulling up and cruising a few steps. Now she’s running…

…playing…

…”jumping” (really just squatting and then springing up to a stand very quickly), and new on her bday, she suddenly started walking a few steps backwards, laughing, and she’d turn in a circle looking down until she fell over dizzy, giggling. Grandma and grandpa enjoyed watching her dig around in her toy box, take out the toy she wants, run with it across the room and place it on the couch or the piano bench, and run back for another toy.

They also enjoyed watching her dance…

and make faces at them, such as the mock-upset expression when she runs into something or trips…

…basically being her usual clowny self.

Later, the stepdaughter and her boyfriend came over bringing a big Hello Kitty balloon and joined in the Allie fun.

Mr. W’s dad kept saying how amazing it is that she’s always happy, doesn’t fuss before or after her naps, and has high-energy and great focus during her awake times. He told me that he’s now a believer in my sleep-focused parenting style. Heh.

Mr. W upgraded the home desktop PC to Windows 8, which is supposed to be more of a touchscreen tablet interface than a desktop computer interface. Since the interface was just not doing much for us and we couldn’t figure out how to use it effectively, he decided, in the next day, to turn his home PC into a giant tablet. He kind of just appeared with a new giant touchscreen monitor. And then a couple of days later, he got a webcam.

“What the hell is THAT for?! I don’t want that!” I pointed at the webcam, appalled. I don’t want to put on makeup just to check my email! This is why I think Apple’s FaceTime feature is the scariest idea, ever. But he installed it anyway (cuz he’s trying to turn the PC into a giant iPad, I’m convinced), and did a test shot while I hid waaaay off-screen.

I guess I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into modern technology. *sigh*

Despite my nostalgia for what I consider the more user-friendly every-prior-version-of-Windows-including-DOS, I admit that the new app-run Win8 does have some fun perks. For example, hubby found a photo app and made these cool illustrations.

He showed me that one but I didn’t pay much attention because I was still unhappy that the computer user interface I’m familiar with is gone. So he tried again.

He knew that if he placed a cat anywhere on, in, or near an object (such as displayed on this monitor), the battle is almost won. Take TWO cute cats, and I grudgingly come and pay attention. The above photo actually has THREE cute cats in it. Knowing he got me, he told me to try a photo. So I directed while he touch-screened, and came up with this masterpiece:

Now I had to reluctantly agree that this is kind of neat. And I personally made this other one that I entitle, “MY MOTHER’S WORSE NIGHTMARE.” My mom gave me a lot of crap when she first got on the social networking site about the photos of Allie that I’ve posted. (Good thing she doesn’t know about this blog, huh?) It got annoying enough that I avoided hearing all her pestering by simply blocking her from seeing selected photo postings. Her, and anyone who may see it and mention it to her, so my dad, some of my mom’s friends, my mom’s friends’ children, my relatives, family friends, are all blocked from the same photos and postings. I asked her what all her beef about Allie’s photos being shared among my friends circle is about. She said that since she’s able to right-click on my posted photos and save the photo to her computer, that means other people are, too, which means that someone can steal Allie’s photo(s) and make fake I.D.s out of it. *blink blink* What, like this?

There you have it, people. My Mother’s Worst Nightmare. (I think it’s hilarious, but every time I mock her or scoff at her about something, I get a knee-jerk counterthought of, “I hope Allie never does this stuff to me.”)

Here’s something I did on the iPad, to compare old technology with new technology. My mom scanned and emailed me the photo on the left.

You know how on the last post, I’d talked about finally reviving my DSLR camera from the grave (okay, it wasn’t dead, just very, very neglected) and giving child photography a whirl? Here are some shots. I admit, the photo quality is much better than my old stand-by of my cameraphone, but man, was it hard chasing down a prancing toddler in a big living room. Oh, BTW, we finally got the replacement rug and put it in. Now Allie has a much bigger space in which to frolic.

Here, Allie demonstrates how she judges whether my photos have “measured up.”

“Hey mom, I saw on the piano bench that your DSLR camera bag is out. You’re kidding, right? You’re really gonna try to do this?”

Saturday was the UCLA-USC football game. We Bruins have not won a game against ‘SC since…like, when I was in college. Okay, maybe that not long, we may have won a game here or there when I wasn’t paying attention.
Anyway, Allie knew which side her bread’s buttered on, and dressed the part.

I also gave her a UCLA stuffed football bear and a USC stuffed football bear (gifts from Trojan buddy Eddie and his wife Michelle) and asked her to pick the loser.

Allie: “Hmm, the tag on the USC bear says ‘loser,’ so…”

The UCLA shirt is a gift from Auntie Flip Flop Girl. Her UCLA shoes is a gift from her daddy. The only UCLA thing I bought is the footsie bear…back in 1995.
Allie: “And you call yourself a Bruin?”

This is what Allie looked like when I told her we’d just WON this game.

All right, all right, in reality, this is what Allie looked like playing peek-a-boo with Daddy. And if you’re noticing a lot of teeth, let me tell you that her upper left molar and incisor cut last week. She now has 10 visible teeth, more coming very shortly.

Here is another gift from Auntie Flip Flop Girl (and Uncle Mike by proxy, and her pals Kyden and Sienna). A blankie that identifies the owner! Cool, huh?

“Daddy thinks he tackled me, but I’m about to fart on him.”

“Hey, wanna see my new levitating sippy cup trick?”

“Mmmrrrggghhhh!” *grunting in concentration*

Now you had fun with us, and you didn’t even have to break a sweat like I did bringing the fun to you! Yay.

I managed to snag some photos taken by a neighbor of the birthday party we attended last weekend. The backyard carnival fancy-smancy theme party for the 1-year-old.

Here is the birthday boy Hudson’s daddy at the hot dog stand.

In addition to the personalized hot dog stand, there was lots of personalized bottled water, too.

The face-painting booth.

(Allie did not know what to make of all the kids coming up to her with stripes and webs on their faces. “Ooh, a zebra!” I’d tell her. “Look, it’s Spiderman!” She would just stand and stare as the boys stared back. Then I’d realize she doesn’t know what a zebra or Spiderman looks like, so my explanation is moot.)
The dessert table with the popcorn-bucket cupcakes. The “popcorn” are miniature marshmallows, hand-twisted and placed on a layer of white frosting, and then the tops of the marshmallows are lightly misted with a diluted solution of yellow food coloring.

Some kids playing carnival games.

…and of course, the birthday boy with his own smash cake, in between his mom and dad.

The photo booth let us email the photos in addition to giving us printed ones. I don’t know why they came out as doubles, but here they are. Here is me with my little Allie Cat in a fancy black feathered boa.

And then we went back for a pic with Mr. W with our little bunny (her zodiac sign).

So turns out it’s not that easy to get a toddler to look at the camera, particularly when the camera isn’t as interesting as stuff on the outside of the booth, especially when she has to look at the camera long enough for it to go off and take the photo while she’s still looking. I tried tapping on the glass near the camera to get her to look, but mostly all that did was make me look at my own hand higher than the camera while clearly she lost interest already. Oh, well.

On Missy’s last afternoon with Allie in mid-October, she told us almost as a by-the-way before she left, “She knows her hair now. You can ask her where her hair is and she’ll put her hand on her head.” That ended up being a nice trick to charm Allie’s grandparents with. This video was taken last weekend when my parents were visiting. My dad’s holding her and my mom’s taking the video and it’s my mom’s voice you hear.

Allie caught on to most words pretty quickly, but had a little difficulty distinguishing “hair” from “ear” for about a week. They sounds similar, so it’s understandable. It’s funny what she remembers from past unintentional training. She was shown flowers a lot, in the garden, in a clipping at home in a vase, on her walks. We try to keep her from grabbing the flower as it’s usually a thorny rose, so we tell her, “No, you don’t TOUCH the flower, you SMELL the flower.” Then we’d demonstrate a sniff, then hold her hands down and put her face toward the flower and she’d sniff, too. So a few weeks ago, she was fingering a print of a flower on my shirt, and I said, “Flower.” Next thing I knew, she was ducking her face down and shoving her nose in my shirt. She inhaled loudly through her nose. The same thing happened when she was rubbing her index finger on a pattern of a flower on a quilt on our bed. “Flower,” I said. Nose down. Sniff. This age is really fun.

When I saw that our local polling place is just a few streets up in our neighborhood, I thought it’d be a cool idea to go to the voting booths this year with Allie to indoctrinate her into the democratic process. To cut down on line-waiting time, I decided last minute today to fill out my mail-in ballot and walk it in.

In my head, in my perfect scenario, I’m walking up to the table of poll workers with my patriotically-dressed baby girl. The senior citizen volunteers smile at her and maybe say a few “Aww”s, then Allie would hand over my signed sealed ballot. Maybe the poll worker would even let Allie drop it into the ballot box. Then they’d give me an “I Voted!” sticker, which I’d then stick on Allie’s shirt, and we’d take a picture of her in front of an American flag.

In reality, we walked up to the house where a line had already formed coming out of the garage where the voting was taking place. I stood uncertainly in line, telling Mr. W (who was holding my patriotically dressed baby girl) that I didn’t think I need to stand in line to just drop off my ballot. He said he thought I needed to stay in line to check in. The guy in front of us overheard and told me that they had just made an announcement shortly before we got there that anyone with mail-in ballots can just walk in and hand it to a guy by the ballot box. So I did. Mr. W did not walk Allie in with me, but stood nearby. I handed my ballot over to a guy who did not even so much as crack his lips into a smile or bother to part them to utter a greeting. I asked if I could hand this to him, he took my ballot (I’m not even sure he looked at me), handed it over his shoulder to another guy who examined it to make sure my signature and address were filled out correctly, and I said, “Are we good?”
“We’re good,” he said unceremoniously, dropping the ballot into the slot of the box, and proceeded to ignore me again.
I walked out and said, “I don’t get a sticker for coming in with a ballot?”
“I guess not,” Mr. W said. I wanted to go back in to ask for one, to at least score one part of my dream scenario and stick a sticker on Allie for a photo, but Mr. W told me to just forget about it. We walked a few feet down and tried to snap a picture of Allie by a small flag staked into the ground, but she wouldn’t stay still so all the photos were blurry and you can’t even see the cute little elephant holding a sparkler with its trunk embroidered on her top.
We walked home, fed her dinner, and she went to bed.

And here I want to quote Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse.” Most anticlimactic experience ever.

I hadn’t wanted to bother with Halloween this year because I figure Allie’s too young to understand the concept, too young to eat candy, too young to stay up after dark to go trick-or-treating, and spending money on a costume she’s only going to wear once for a few hours? No, thanks. The week of Halloween, however, I started seeing people’s adorable photos of their kids in a variety of costumes, and I thought, “She’s only going to be this size once. By this time next year, she’ll be a kid in a costume, not a toddler.” (She’s practically kid-sized already. BTW, did you know that girls reach half their adult height at approximately 20 months, and boys at 24 months? So however tall your toddler is at those respective ages, double it, and you’re looking at an approximate. Allie is probably already half my height at 11 months, so in another 9 months…she’ll probably already be taller than I am.) But I still didn’t want to go thru the trouble of costume shopping for a few hours’ worth of wear. And then it hit me.

Before Allie was born, my court reporter Louise’s daughter was working in Disney Tokyo and had bought a little outfit for Allie. It was for a toddler and not an infant, so I’d put it away for future wear. I dug it out, and it fits! So for Halloween this year, Allie was Japanese. 😀

She had no hair to put up, so Mr. W made do. (har.) We decided to take her to nearby Saddleback Church’s “Blocktober” family event after work, which is a fall-themed campus-wide shindig with toddler areas, kid areas, teen areas, food truck area, shows, trick-or-treating, photo ops, rock-climbing walls, rides, ziplines… but Allie’s favorite thing is something she spotted immediately and beelined for.

“Bbbloon, bbbloon, bbbbloon!” she said, rushing off, before I even saw the balloon arch myself.
There weren’t a lot of kiddie rides she could go on without slipping off (like the carousel horse or the suspended swing ride), so she only got to go on this one. At least it’s a character she’s familiar with, given the theme of her bedroom. She even imitated him!

There were a lot of photo ops for our little pumpkin.

Her big sister even joined in on one of them.

And you can’t be a good authentic Japanese maiden without a nice nature background with water and big rocks in your photo.

One of the children’s classrooms giving out toys to trick-or-treaters found an age-appropriate toy for Allie: a rubber ducky squirter in a tiara! Allie loved it and hung on to it the whole time without dropping it. She bathed with it the other night already.

Can you believe that dressed like that, someone STILL mistook her for a boy? “Whoa there, little guy!” as he patted her head.

We got her home in time for her normal bedtime, which we were pushing back a little each day anyway in preparation for the Daylight Savings “Fall Back” schedule. I considered taping a piece of paper over the doorbell so kids would knock instead of ring the bell while Allie’s sleeping, and college roommie Diana’s dad had a higher-tech solution along the same lines and he disconnected the wires to their doorbell so Alexis could sleep through Halloween, but Mr. W ended up doing the low-tech version: he sat outside the front door on the porch and played on his iPad and presumably ate candy from our giant punchbowl of chocolates while he waited for kids to walk up to our front door. We didn’t get a lot of trick-or-treaters this year at all, according to him. Maybe 10 kids. I tried to tell him not to buy candy from Costco. =P We probably have 8 pounds left over. Where was everyone this year?

Yup, UPS lost the rug. My dad’s theory is that the rug was so large that it doesn’t “fit” in their usual storage areas or in their normal trucks, so some UPS employee put it elsewhere temporarily, and no now one knows where that is. Mr. W called the rug company and told them about the situation, and they immediately said they’d investigate the issue with UPS themselves, and if they don’t get a satisfactory response from UPS in the next day, they’d refund our money. Mr. W said he’d really rather get another rug. Today, the rug company emailed that they haven’t gotten anywhere with UPS and will be cutting and sending another rug for us on Monday, via a different shipper. If this drags on any longer, Allie isn’t going to need a rug to break her falls. She’s flying through stages so quickly. She’s so fast she’s *almost* running now, and much more coordinated. But don’t tell that to the bruise on her knee.

Last Saturday, we thought we’d take Allie to a petting zoo in San Clemente that’s doing a pumpkin patch thing for Halloween. It isn’t big or fancy, and it smells like the ponies, zedonks, chickens, rabbits, etc. that it houses, but it was crowded with kids and Allie had fun. Pumpkins were super-cheap at $4 each, but Mr. W didn’t want to carry a giant pumpkin around with him all day. Too bad; Allie would’ve probably enjoyed eating mashed pumpkin for the next 4 months. The patch was western-themed, so there was lots of hay, a “ball pit” to jump around in with hard kernels of corn in lieu of plastic balls, a fenced-in train that goes in a small circle, old western town facade and a cardboard maze for the tiny tots.

Scary Halloween Allie Cat!

Save a horse, ride a…

…bale of hay? Allie: “Okay, you guys, stop messing with me.”

Fake fall foliage, pumpkins in 88-degree sunshine…yup, must be October in Southern California.

Allie is a chameleon.

Or a pumpkin saleswoman. Allie: “Pumpkins! Get your big, fresh pumpkins right here, $4 each!”

Allie: “You KNOW you want one of these for a jack-o-lantern. That’s why God invented Halloween.”

Allie: “If you buy a pumpkin from me, I’ll do a happy wiggle-wiggle dance for you.”

Allie: “Look at this one with the cool twisty stem. What a swell jack-o-lantern he’d make! Get a second one for a Jill-o-lantern.”

See, isn’t that worth $4 bucks? 😀

Allie taught me something that day about perspectives. There’s our way of seeing things, and then there’s a child’s way. Sometimes when a child leads us somewhere…

…it looks like there’s no purpose. She’s looking at nothing, we think, so we lose interest and move on.
Meanwhile, she’s still faithfully holding her post.

But if we give her time, we will see what she sees.

Look, a new friend!

Sometimes you have to look where others aren’t looking…

…have faith in a change of direction, even if it’s kind of uncomfortable at first…

…to look where others overlook…

…in order to find…

…that when you follow your heart…

…that there’s treasure everywhere.

When you find that treasure, you run to it…

…and you grab it and celebrate the wonders of life. Especially if the treasure is mommy’s and daddy’s bag of fresh bakery cookies.

May you live like a child this Halloween…but be as careful as a grownup. 🙂

Months, that is. Things are going well. Her ankles are looking much better. The skin still looks like the thin shiny skin of scar tissue, but no more redness (well, maybe a little pink), blistering, or swelling. I continue to apply the tea tree oil antiseptic lotion twice a day, which bottle Allie loves to take from me and shake. Most things that aren’t toys (paper advertisements, manuals, shoes, ziploc bags, ointment tubes…) make her happy and since she still complains when we put her on her back for diaper or clothing changes, I’m happy to hand her whatever brings that big open-mouthed smile to her face.

Thanks to an app I have, I know that on this day last year, I had my first Braxton-Hicks contraction. I was out on a walk and it took my breath away. I didn’t know then, of course, that we were exactly a month away from meeting Allie out in the world. I thought I was about 2 weeks away. I had really been hoping for a slightly early delivery, since she was getting big in there and I didn’t want labor to be too difficult. Well, she was 2 days late, she was big, but everything was wonderful. (We’ll just smear past the next few months of my head going to hormonal imbalance hell.)

She’s a pretty good walker these days, unless she isn’t paying attention and trips over an unflat surface, my feet, her feet, a toy, etc. She’s just starting to trot, and it looks like running’s around the corner. Because of this, Mr. W expects her to be a lot more accident-prone (altho she seems to be pretty careful generally) and has ordered a 21-foot by 12-foot carpet rug so that we can turn pretty much the ENTIRE downstairs area, and not just the living room area, into her play area. That rug is to be delivered sometime today. According to tracking information online, the “package” is 120 pounds. Yikes.

Allie still eats well, still no food reactions, altho I’m hesitant to try avocado again. That may have to be one of those things she tries when she’s a kid and I offer it from my plate.

She loves to watch (slightly) older children play. At parks, she could watch a soccer game for as long as we let her. Yesterday, she watched the neighbor’s kids play four-square with a kick ball. She’d point excitedly and say, “Bah!” (ball). She’d wave her little arms up and down, yelling “Haa!” (hi) and “Aaay!” (hey). She’d walk right up into their game and try to join them if we don’t run over and snatch her up. There’s something beautiful about how she just smiles excitedly and goes over to greet a kid, reaching out to him/her with a big smile and a “Haa!” It’s as if rejection has never occurred to her. (Well, who would reject this little face?)

Right?

For the most part, other kids are delighted to see her and would talk to her or just smile right back at her as she walks up and smiles up at them. Well, except for that stupid kid in the video and this one kid last weekend:

So far, she hasn’t yet realized that she could refuse something. There are things she dislikes now, such as brushing her teeth. Mr. W would hold her up on her bathroom counter, we’d tell her, “Aaaahhhh!” as I bring the toothbrush up, and she’d whimper and complain, but she would do it with her mouth open and a big sad frown, sometimes fussing her way through it, but always reopening her mouth as needed. When she sees holes anywhere, the finger automatically goes in, and this is problematic if the hole is, as it occasionally has been, an electrical outlet socket. We tell her a stern, “No!” and she’ll pause, look at us, complain, but stop anyway. She’ll walk away fussing, shaking her head, with a frustrated look on her face, but she’ll do as she’s told. It’s the same when we make her not put rocks, leaves, grass, envelopes, flowers in her mouth. She’s not happy about it, but she accepts it. I guess it’s wishful thinking that she’ll always stay that way. =P

I’m starting to enjoy the lack of hair thing. Her peach fuzz is getting longer, but it still doesn’t require much more than a pat-down. No brushing, no barrettes, no bows, no tangles. I’m not taking that for granted. I’m sure I’ll be singing a different tune if she’s ready to start school and still only has peach fuzz on her little head.

She loves little dogs now. She got to pet one a couple of weekends ago, a well-behaved shih-tzu-looking lap dog, and she was gentle and never closed her hand on the hair, never pulled. So now she can spot a dog half a block away and say, “DAW!,” point, and beeline toward it. That’s when I have to kill my back leaning over her to brace her around the waist, cuz that’s when she’s so focused on the Daw (and sometimes balloons [“bbbbloo! bbbloo!” with a vibrating “B” that I can’t do], which the other day she also spotted half a block away raced toward, as racingly as a toddler can manage) that she will trip over anything. The good thing is that she doesn’t cry unless she bangs her head on something in a fall, which rarely happens, and has never happened outdoors to my knowledge.

Oh, I think she’s also starting to wean herself. Nursings are now about 6 minutes or less a side in her hungry mornings, and 3-4 minutes a side in the middle of the day. At night, she dozes as she nurses, so that may go longer, but there’s been a few times now when she’s decided she’s done with nursing and still wide awake, so I’d put her to bed in her crib wide awake, and just let her settle down on her own. Sometimes it’s a nerve-wracking 45 minutes, and I think the best she’s done was 10 minutes, but so far it’s always been before 8pm. The most helpful thing Mr. W has ever said to me about that is, “She’s fine! She’s never NOT slept at night.” That being true, I remind myself of that every time she’s up kicking around and bear wrestling instead of being able to be put down asleep.

I’m still undecided about Halloween. Since it’s on Wednesday this year, I don’t think we’d have time to participate between coming home from work, feeding her dinner, and putting her down to bed by 7p. So I didn’t get her a costume. Well, she has two Halloween-themed outfits, one of which she wore on Saturday.

Allie: “You’re getting sleepy…verrrrry sleeeeeepy…When you awake, you will put on my shoes and take me out for breakfast.”

It worked! Mr. W took us to…wow, I can not for the life of me right now remember WHERE we went to breakfast, but I know we had! Maybe I was under Allie’s spell, too.

She likes soft furry textures. She loves her pink “A” blanket that Jordan got her (she has to nap with it daily), my Footsie UC bears, the fluffy lambwool rug, her fleece PJ fabrics, the big fuzzy bear that she still sleeps on in her crib. She will stop in her tracks when she comes across one of these things, and either pull it up to her cheek and lean her head on it with a big smile, or she’ll squat on the ground and lay her cheek onto it if it were on the floor. Doing this to the Footsie stuffed bear and to her fleece PJs is how she bonked her head on the bottom shelf of her low bookshelf once, and the travertine floor the other day when she pulled the new PJs out of the bag onto the floor. Yes, each of those led to a brief cry, seconds-long. I laughed involuntarily both times, so I’m glad she was unhurt.

Here’s a 30-second video clip my parents took when they visited on Saturday. They brought bubble necklaces to amuse Allie with. I think it’s funny how in the end, you can tell my mom (behind the camera) panicked.

I’ve been closely following Flip Flop Girl’s food allergy mystery involving her toddler, Sienna. Sienna’s about 5 months older than Allie, and has eczema flare-ups and other skin reactions to various foods, and Flip Flop Girl, along with their team of pediatricians, have been trying to isolate the specific food items that are causing the reactions. Good thing her 3-year-old son Kyden has been logging all this stuff down in his blog! 🙂 I’m learning a lot.

Yesterday evening, Mr. W and I took Allie to Claim Jumper restaurant for dinner, and while I always bring her containers of homemade babyfood with us to restaurants, she’s starting to eat some tablefoods, so when I saw the big bowl of mashed up hard-boiled egg at the salad bar, I thought, Hmm. I was holding off introduction of egg, as previous AAP recommendation is that egg white is allergenic so to avoid egg altogether for the first 10 months (I think), then only introduce egg yolk, and then after the first year, egg white as well. But Allie’s pediatrician had said that AAP recently changed their guidelines and introduction of the two together is now okay. Allie doesn’t seem to have had reactions to foods so far, and I know that college roommie Diana has started feeding her baby (2 weeks younger than Allie) hard-boiled egg yolk, so I thought I’d give it a try.
But I’d learned some stuff from Kyden’s blog.
So first, I rubbed a piece of rubbery hard-boiled egg white on Allie’s forearm. She was sitting in the high chair, self-feeding on some baby puffs, and she stopped what she was doing after I rubbed the egg on her, looked at me with the oddest concerned look on her face, sucking in her lower lip so that her mouth formed a straight line. She looked at her arm where traces of yellow egg yolk powder could be seen. Then she looked at me again. “What the heck did you do that for?” she seemed to think at me. Then she looked at her arm again.
There was no reaction whatsoever on her skin, so I put a few clumps of yellow yolk on her baby spoon and offered to her. She opened her mouth trustingly. There was no expression change as she seemed to mash the yolk on her tongue. I offered her the sippy cup, she sipped, pointed at me, grunted, “Uggh!” So I fed her some more yolk. She ate it as if she were eating any of her food. When we were out of egg yolk, she went back to her puffs. And nothing happened. So I guess she’s not allergic to eggs.

But she does seem to be reacting to SOMEthing. Pretty much since her first weeks out in the world, her ankle wrinkles have been red with occasional patches of dryness on it. The pediatrician said it was just dry because her foot’s always flexed, it’s not eczema or anything. He said to just put Aquaphor on it twice a day, as with her then-bumpy section on her neck rolls. The tiny bumps (it looked like heat reaction) on her neck rolls went away, and then her neck rolls went away altogether, and I’ve stopped using Aquaphor on her neck. However, the ankle thing stuck around. She doesn’t seem bothered by it, and when I touch it to apply the Aquaphor, she doesn’t draw her feet back or seem to think it’s itchy, and a second pediatrician said it was just dry skin, so I haven’t been concerned with it. I kept hoping she’d outgrow it once she started not flexing her foot, but she didn’t. And then 2 nights ago, the spots got ANGRY.

What the heck is that? Both ankles are red and patchy in blotches, and her left ankle actually grew stuff that looked like tiny blisters.

These photos are taken the morning after, when the ankles are much better, but the blisters are still present. Simultaneously, she got a rare case of diaper rash. So the 2 nights her ankles were worst, were the same nights we saw a widespread diaper rash. She still didn’t react much to contact with the affected areas; we applied Desitin to the diaper rash, and Aquaphor to the ankles. Anytime she seems to have a flare-up of something (which we normally discover when we change her as we prepare to put her down to bed for the night), it clears by up morning, altho it may recur by the next evening. Such was the case this time, but the only new thing in her diet was string beans, and I can’t imagine a reaction to that. Nevertheless, I eliminated string beans the 2nd day, and the issues were still there, so I reintroduced string beans.

What I also did was buy some tea tree oil antiseptic lotion at a local organic food grocery store, and applied that to her ankles. Now all the redness is gone, and the ankles have gone back to just patchy dryness where the skin looks almost like post-burn or post-scab skin, and the blisters have dried up. We’ve asked Missy to apply a protective organic butt balm to Allie during diaper changes, and we’ve continued use of Desitin, and the diaper rash has not recurred.

The baby stuff is pretty puzzling. If anyone knows or suspects what the ankle stuff is, I welcome suggestions.

Meanwhile, here’s Allie being held by my dad last weekend, spotting a plane overhead.