From Baby to Little Man

December 24, 2012

So... we started to get lots of comments about our little girl. Sure, sweet little man's hair was long but it was a little silly that people thought he was a GIRL. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being a girl. I'm a girl. I like it, actually. Plus, boys have long hair all the time. Look at my other kid. Nobody ever thinks he's a girl, but he usually has a big ole mop of red mess on top of his head. Anyhow, we started to think that it *might* be time for a haircut. I have to say, I'm so slow with this guy. It was one thing to rush through stuff with mister W even if I felt like he might be the last kid in this family, but this little guy feels so much more like the last baby this family might have. I know now how fast babyhood turns into childhood and I want so badly to SAVOR it. Basically, I'm not rushing into things like first haircuts this time around. It did start to seem like it was really time though.

Christmas Eve we were all home and getting ready to go to church in the evening and it was snowing and seemed like as good a time as any to cut this baby's hair. Daddy got all his hair cutting stuff ready and went for it.

Sweet little man was unsure what it was all about but he sat still enough.

Mommy got a little sad as the first curls started falling.

...but as Daddy kept going I felt better.

Especially since this little boy is so cute!

Christmas Cookies

December 23, 2012

I've always either had or wanted to have a tradition of making sugar cookies a few days before Christmas. I'm pretty sure we did it last year and possibly the year before, but now we are in it. Miss L remembers it and that means it sticks. :o) We also have an extremely loose tradition of getting together the last weekend each month with our family friends, parents to the "C's." It was a great evening to do both. We baked the cookies before hand and the kids set to decorating them after our dinner. I'm afraid that Brad and I set to eating them after everyone slept. :o)

Miss L making a "gingerbread" man.

Miss C making something under all that frosting!

Mister W enjoying the part he likes best.

We ended up with a whole bunch of lovely cookies to enjoy. Merry Christmas!

Baptism Day

December 16, 2012

When miss L was born we made plans for her baptism quickly after we got our feet under us. She was four months old or so at the time and it seemed perfect. With mister W it was so much more complicated. When I was pregnant with the twins I envisioned waiting until Ben was home and it being a huge milestone for us, so when Ben died and we knew we'd never achieve that milestone it was difficult to think of scheduling mister W's baptism. When I was 9 months pregnant with sweet little man we knew it was really and truly time to get it done if we were going to baptize him as an "infant" or wait until his confirmation as a teenager. We ended up getting it done with me as big as a house and it was emotional for us but lovely.

Sweet little man was much easier in many ways. We waited a bit, sure, but goodness we have lots of people in this house and it's hard to remember to schedule some of these things. He did a lovely job though. He smiled and wiggled his feet. I was so nervous that he'd cry, but he didn't. He was truly adorable. It was a sweet entrance into the family of God.

This boy...

December 5, 2012

I never expected this little guy in my life. He just sort of showed up. He's got my eyes and my stubborn streak and he's got me wrapped around his finger. When he hands me the camera and says, "cheese!" you can bet I do my part. I just love this little guy.

Sometimes...

...even princesses have to do some school work.

Snow Writing

December 3, 2012

 We're keeping it fresh around here! This week we added a new spelling tool to our toolbox. We've done salt trays before (just some salt dumped into a tray so that miss L can practice writing by drawing in the sand) but today we added some sparkly stuff to make a snow tray. Miss L loves writing in the stuff so she's been at it for a good afternoon.

Happy Spelling Everyone!

Dermographism

In late November poor mister W had an ear infection. It was nothing major, just an ear infection and he started taking amoxicillin for it. He'd had it before and it was no big deal. He finished his course of antibiotics. Everything was fine.

Then a couple of days later he developed hives. They were HUGE. We called the doctor. We started benadryl. We eliminated all kinds of things from our diet and he just continued to have nasty, large, itchy hives, especially right after dinner. He started looking swollen all the time.

After a couple of weeks of nothing helping we were able to see the allergist. In ten minutes she knew exactly what it was. Mister W had dermographism. It literally means, writing on the skin. Basically his immune system freaked out. It's pretty rare and so it's no surprise that the pediatrician wasn't sure what it was. They aren't sure what causes it except that it seems to happen when a person has had a fever and then takes a course of amoxicillin. It isn't an allergy to the drug, but rather just a hyper-immune response when the system gets overloaded. Any place where his skin was touched he would develop a hive. We could actually write on his skin and it would appear in the shape of whatever we put on his skin. Most of the time this doesn't bother the person affected. It's simply cosmetic. For mister W he fell into the type that was itchy so he was pretty miserable.

There's no real treatment for dermographism and in some cases it's permanent. It can be controlled somewhat with Zyrtec. Luckily for mister W, his cleared up after a few days. Whew!

How is it we always get the weird illnesses?! :o)