Operation: ALLERGY

We've always known that little Conner has allergies. Not sure where he got them from since there is hardly any family history (at least immediate fam) of any food allergies but He's been known to be allergic to peanuts from the day after his first b-day and we gave some to him and ended up with hives and swelling and wheezing all over the place. (so scary!) and egg whites came back positive during a blood test that was done when he was about 16 months old. Which when we cut eggs out he magically stopped throwing up ALL the time. Which was really nice. But I've never known what else he was allergic to. I was pretty sure he was allergic to dogs because every time one licks him he breaks out in hives in a tongue shaped red blob and he always breaks out and gets swollen eyes when he's around hay/weeds. But I never knew what else. I've  always been scared to give him foods and I kind of wanted to be in front of an emergency room whenever we tried something new.

So anyway, last week, after being on a waiting list for like 2 1/2 months we finally got in to see the allergist to do some testing!! hooray! Conner was the biggest trooper ever during the test and never complained! except to say that he was tired of sitting still. (15 min) I'm sot sure I've ever seen him in one place for so long! :)

So there's his sad little scratch test. Thankfully only like 2 or 3 of the big scary looking ones are food. Most are environmental things.
Here's what we learned:
He is, no surprise, allergic to peanuts. that was the biggest one at 20/40 (not sure what the measurement means but that's what it was!)
Pecans came in at 15/30. so another biggie
Almonds was 7/15
and he's slightly allergic to walnuts and hazelnuts, wheat and soy (those ones not so much that we need to cut them out. they were like 2 or 3/somethings)
Good thing I hate nuts in general so it's not like a sacrifice to take them out of our diet!
and not allergic at all to brazil nuts, cashew's and pistachio's! and he's thankfully not allergic to milk and magically grew out of his egg allergy! which makes me SO excited!

Unfortunately he was allergic to everything that they tested for environmental. with those they measure different than foods on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the most allergic.
3+ trees
5+ timothy grass (whatever the heck that is)
5+ weeds (sagebrush, ragweed, etc)
3+ cats
5+ dogs
5+ horses

So anyway, there's my allergic boy :( I'm glad that he's not allergic to more food though. I was worried about having some gluten thing that seems to be all the rage with kiddos these days. Doc said that if we bring the other kids to his next appointment he'll check them, free of charge, for the peanut allergy to just ease my mind. so nice!

We also talked a lot about his eczema that he's had since 2 months. Doc said that while most people think it is associated with allergies really has nothing to do with them! It is a disease of this skin where these is no cure, just management. But yay! most kids grow mostly out of it! It is skin that is kind of missing some element to keep moisture in and bacteria and junk out. He explained it as being like a brick wall without any mortar. He said that if we took a culture of C's skin it would probably grow some sort of staph bacteria. awesome. So he prescribed some antibiotics to kill that icky stuff and we are now on a new regiment of taking three 30 min bleach baths (bath water with some bleach and a ton of salt) a week and are trying a new lotion (cera ve) in addition to his steroid creams. So far it seems to be working!

We also will be talking at later appointments about asthma. woo hoo! the list keeps growing! He doesn't have it bad, but it seems like whenever he gets a cold or is being one with nature in a lot of weeds he gets really wheezy.
Aside from the peanuts (which he will probably never outgrow) hopefully he will outgrow lots of these, or at least get better as he gets older.
It breaks my little mommy heart to see his have to go through all of this but C is such a little champ! I don't know if it's because he sadly doesn't know any different, but he never complains about all of his little problems and always has such a happy attitude! love you Conner bud!

Operations: FATTY Double Whammy

The nice thing about kids being EXACTLY 2 1/2 years apart (well 2 days away from exactly, to be exact) is that we get to piggy back well check visits (for a little while anyway) Conner had hs 4 year check-up an Soph her 18 month on Wed. the 2.

Everyone ready for some stats??? Here we go!

Conner's 4 Year Stats

Height: 38 Inches= 15%
Weight 29.6 Lbs= 5%
BMI 14.06= 5%
Last year he was 11% height and 5% in weight. So...we're pretty much the same. Which is great! He's just chugging along just the way he's supposed to I guess!
Dr went pretty good for him except that Sunday he started to get a little cough and by the time we got to the docs on Wed it was pretty bad (good timing for an already scheduled check up! I'm good at planning things like that) He was wheezing pretty bad so Doc had him do this breathing thing called a nebulizer. It's basically a machine that turns medicine into a vapor form and inhaling the medicine reduces inflammation in his lungs and stops the wheezing. Usually people with bad asthma need it. what?! asthma! He doesn't have asthma! or does he? They sent us home with our very own nebulizer stuff and have to do it every 4 hours to get rid of this cold (which by the way me and Soph caught to...so we're all sickleys here. fun!) Anyway we're hoping that it's just a cough and not a lovely appearance of asthma settling in this little guy. Cross your fingers for us! Otherwise we might have to do this every day for forever! Picture time!

But more fun, non medical things about C, at 4 years old Conner is such a little ham! He says funny things every single day that make any day a little bit better. Example: out of nowhere "Mom did you know that bats sometimes poop?" or "Mom, you and me is uppercase people and Sophie is a wowercase person" (because she's little? I guess?) fun little things like that. He's fully, and has been for over a year, day time potty trained and as of today has gone 10 consecutive nights going to the potty at night and being dry in morning! yay! Except for the part where he yells at 2:30am from the potty "Mooom I'm done!" "Awesome. Go to bed"

He loves to learn and can say all of his ABC's (recognizing all of them is another story), can count to 20 (as long as he's singing his numbers song) and can write his name! That last development is only about 3 weeks old but it makes for one proud mama! He's really into dinosaur fossils right now and likes to "go find me some fossils" (aka rocks) outside then lay them out in the shape of a dinosaur. I use "shape of a dinosaur" very loosley :)

He also really likes to eat black cookies (oreos) and "new kind of cookies" (girl scout cookies) and will negotiate very well with me until he gets a good amount in any sitting. Although now I feel less like a horrible lots of cookie giving mom because C is such an awful eater that she said "Cookies are better than no food at all" so there ya go...
and here's some more pics of Conner!

classic taking a picture of Conner look. He's starting to smile a little more though...

Photo bombing my last preggo pic. (since we're talking about being fatty here's me at 24 weeks! although I'm 27 right now...)

Sophie 18 month stats

Height 30.5 Inches= 18% (not too shabby!)
Weight 19 lbs =1% (we're on the charts people!!!! This is exciting!! although 1% explains why she is just barely kind of sort of fitting into 12 month clothes)
Head Circ. 45.25 cm = 16%

Sophie is still just the sweetest little thing that ever was. Ask anyone, she has probably got to be the very best cuddle baby EVER. I'm serious. My mom says that if you're every having a bad day just go see Sophie and she'll make you feel better about everything. Of course sometimes her cuddles are induced by her shyness, like if she is around new people (or even just people she hasn't seen for a while) she cuddles even more! 

She's also such a girl. She LOVES shoes. In fact, "shoes" was her 4th word right after "Mom" "Dad" and "Duck" If she doesn't have shoes on she'll bring me one or two, mostly not matching ones, and say "shooos" then stick her foot out. She loves the color pink. In stores she always spots the pink. I was getting her a little chair for the back yard and was debating on getting a green one, ya know, to last through the years and she saw the pink one and jumped up and ran to it and said "dis, dis!" So....she got the pink one. What can I say? I'm pretty soft. She also loves necklaces, and (finally) bows in her hair. She even sits so still while I actually do her hair which is a HUGE  blessing to a has-no-idea-what-she's-doing, trying-to-learn-how-to-do-little-girls-hair mama.

She also loves to find belly buttons (especially my giant poking out one) and noses. We love "Little One" as conner calls her and are so SO happy to have her in our family!

And some more pics...

Not sure why she just decided to lay down...

She out grew her black sunday shoes (it's been a few weeks since she wore something that needed black shoes to church) so we had to improvise. Pretty cute though!

This is how she looks most days...kind of like an orphan. But at least she's a very cute orphan!

Very first pig tails day! (they lasted about 3 minutes) and that's a library book she just ripped. oops.

Transformation Complete!

We are slightly (and by slightly I mean reeeeally) obsessed with Transformers at our house these days. About a month and a half before the Conner's birthday I asked him if he was excited to turn 4. He started crying and said that he didn't want a birthday party this year because he didn't want to be 4. When I asked him why "because my faborite # is 3! I gotta stay 3" I tried lots of things to make turning 4 sound so cool. Eventually my question "if we have a transformers birthday party would it be ok if you turned 4?" did the trick! ever since that moment he was so excited to transform into a 4 year old.

His birthday was on a Saturday so we had his party ON his birthday this year! Awesome! I will say though planning a giant party during tax season with no husband and being 7 months preggo was a little challenging. I had a giant project every day the week leading up to the big day. I can honestly say that with out my college education this party would not have been possible...or at least it wouldn't have been as super cool.

 

I remember everyone saying that if you majored in elementary education you were a"Mommy Major" Well after this week I officially think that Art is the new mommy major. I graduated in Graphic Design and had to take all sorts of random art classes, some that I never thought would be useful in my life. But oh no. While planning a nearly 4 year old's b-day party I was channeling all sorts of crazy classes. Examples:

 

Graphic Design classes=invitation(well this one's not so random of a class...since it was my major and all...)

 

3D Design/Sculpture= Piñata fun!

 

Conner helped me out with this. yup, he was a huuuge help :) But we had lots of fun working together.

Ceramics and painting= super cute experimental first time Fondant Cake



C helping me make the cake!

The finished Transformers Cake

 It turned out so cute and I only had to call up Rusty once crying! Note to self: Apparently if you try to make gray with black food coloring it turns purple! Yikes! thanks to Google and a little remembering of color mixing rules if you add yellow to purple it makes gray. phew! Although Conner may or may not have thought that it was going to transform into Optimus Prime at some point. He was slightly disappointed.

Party Time!

So anyway the day of the party came and honestly...I was pooped! But C was excited enough for the both of us that it kept me going and made it all worth it! It was a giant party with 21 adults and 12 kiddos! holy cow! That's a lot of people in my house!

"Ocams Prime is in the middle because he's my faborite autobot"



When all the new people started coming Sophie go so shy and scared.

But she eventually warmed up and had lots of fun :)



Energon Cubes (the stuff transformers get their energy from, of course)

 Piñata!
Even though the day wasn't as BEEEAUTIFUL as the weather guys on TV made it sound like it would be, we still were able to go out and take some whacks at the piñata. Either it was very strong to begin with, or a bunch of 4 year olds were hitting it (with really good form like you can see Conner doing) because eventually after every kid went through the line 5 times Rusty had to intervene and it still took him like 4 hits to get to the candy. Guess it's safe to say that if you order something from Amazon.com the box it comes it will keep it safe.

He got lots and lots of presents. What a lucky kid! We, the parents, got him a swing set! which will be set up shortly after April 15th...

Happy Birthday Conner! What a fun little guy you are. You always keep me on my toes and make my smile every single day! Love you so much!

Thanks to everyone who came to help C have an amazing day! He had a blast with you all there!

The weekend of memorial

This memorial weekend was busy busy busy! We were planning on just staying home all weekend to complete my miiiile long honey-DO list but ended up last minute going to Oakley on Saturday to visit Rusty's fam. It was lots of fun. We got to take Sophie's 8 month pictures (YES 8 months! As of Monday!) They turned out pretty cute!

 

Awe man sorry. I always tell myself that I'm not going to overwhelm the world with pictures, especially since everyone but me probably thinks they all look the same, but I just keep adding them. oh well.

 

Ye haw!

Then Conner got to go for a ride on the mules (the horsies if you ask C) and had a blast. Except for the part where his eyes got all swollen and red. Apparently he's allergic to them...or grass...or both. dang it! Another thing to add to that darn allergy list. But he still had fun!

 







 Soph and grammy watching the boys.



Then we had a BBQ and when Conner was good and ornery and tired we went home!


Memorial Day
The great wall of Hansen!
For actual memorial day we just worked and worked. After all, I still had my giant list-o-stuff to do and one less day to do it all! My flower bed (Ha "flower bed"! more like dirt pile of weeds) in the front is GIANT and I wasn't' sure how to fill the whole thing up with plants that I don't know how to keep alive. So we decided to build a little retaining wall to break things up and give the space some levels. I think it turned out quite nicely!

The wall!!! Look at us being handy.

And the top so you can see the shape. Lucky for us some nicey nice neighbors just happened to be digging a giant hole in their back yard for an in ground tramp and shared some of their dirt. Other wise we would have had to buy, like, 50 bags of dirt in a bag and thus ended up spending more $ on dirt than the actual wall. That would have not been cool. Yay for free dirt! Thanks friends!

Out with the White
We also bought paint to paint my boring white walls. If you have come to my house in the last 2 months there have been swatches and swatches of paint colors stuck all over my walls. I have been painstakingly trying to find the perfect shade of gray. And after months of looking and squinting and imagining and making giant swatches from poster board I think I found it! "Wood smoke" by Glidden is the winner winner chicken dinner!

I originally had settled on the top really light one ("Stone" by better homes and garden) but Rusty wanted it reeeeally darker (the second one..."drift wood gray" by glidden,) so we compromised on the big giant bottom one and ya know? I think I like it best anyway!

Here is the color in a different spot!

We'll probably be painting in the next weekish which is really exciting! I'll keep you posted!

 

Snippety snip

I also gave Conner a hair cut on this fine memorial day! As cute as he is always I'll admit it was getting a little shaggy.

before

during. we have to take turns, otherwise I would never get near his head.

 



after! Sorry it's a crazy picture. He really wanted to cut off my leg and arm with his saw while I was taking the picture and this is the best one I could get.

So there was our memorial weekend. it was jam packed! I'm not sure we could have done more if we wanted to. Which Conner sure didn't want to. He came inside at the end of the day and plopped down on the floor to take his shoes off and said very seriously "that was a hard day."