Baby Seals Part 2

Remember my first post on Baby Seals?

Well, we are in the fourth week and the boys are doing fantastic.

AJ still thinks we are crazy but the skills he has learned are so valuable.  I feel so much confidence having him around the water now.  And did I mention he LOVES the water? He enjoys splashing around and swimming  playing on the steps after class.

Matteo is a fish, he LOVES his lessons.  He begs to go see Ms. Steffi on our days off.  Pretty much a day spent in the water is heaven, a day spent outside the water not-so-much.

Without further ado...here is a cool video of the boys lessons.  AJ is practicing in his clothes so he knows how to handle the water even fully dress with a spongy diaper. (I put music over it because I hated listening to my extra loud voice on the camera, you know since I was right by it.)

Eczema

This cute little boy has eczema.  

I took him into the doctors to check on a rash that seemed to come and go and then it took a turn for the worse. 

He took one look and he said its eczema. 

Yeah diagnosed, not knowing much about it, I had heard the word before, I thought great give me the cream to clear it up and we will be on our way.

What there is not magic clear up cream?

Nope

Out came the laundry list:

change detergents
change soap
use lotion daily
no frangances
no dyes. 
use zrytec for childern
could be a cause be a food allergy
so what has he been eating a lot of? 
dairy. 
take out dairy.


So I took my list home and googled eczema.  

My heart broke as I looked at pictures and read.  I thought no my boy doesn't have eczema he was misdiagnosed.

Read more.

He fit ever symptom, EVERY symptom.  This is something we now will live with.  We can do our best to avoid "triggers" and then when an out break occurs do our best to tame the evil rash.  

Even thought I wanted to think it was a misdiagnoses, at the same time I was so happy to have a diagnoses. Because everything fell into the place.

For the past few months the child had literally been driving me nuts.  It was just about all I could do to get through a day with him.    He would cry at the drop of dime.  He would scream his hands hurt and not let me touch them.  He would bump into something and dissolve into tears.  He was defiant and mean. A total personality change.  But he had no fever, no running nose, nothing but a silly rash that came and went and Mama didn't think a thing about.

After he was diagnosed and the rash began to disappear Matteo slowing became Matteo again.  He is now back to a happy and smiley boy.  He is listening well.  He will hold my hand crossing the street.  He gives his brother love and he very rarely dissolves into tears now. 

I feel like a totally loser mom that my child was itchy and in pain and I wrote it off as the terrible 3's!  Oh well I can only move forward right.

I did everything the doctor told me including taking him off milk and the rash is finally gone. 

He has been off of milk for 2 weeks and now we are adding it back into his diet to see if it really was the trigger.  If it was not the trigger then the detergents and the soaps were.  We will see.   We did have a rash out break the first week of swimming but now we have a regime of showering immeditly after and lotioning, that seemed to solve the problem.

We are blessed that it seems to be mild case, some of the those google images are scary!   We have a whole new skin regime, including oatmeal baths, dove sensitve and cetaphil lotion.  (at first Matteo was not so sure about lotioning every night, now he loves it!!)

The most interesting thing I learned is that eczema can cause excess ear drainage (like wax). Well, I always teased Matteo that he had the most waxy ears in the world.  Everyday I would clean them out and then the next morning there would be another huge wax ball!!  It was amazing.  Now, no waxy balls, I am not kidding I haven't cleaned the kids ear in a week.  Its the little things right.

End of the Year

The kids end of the year programs (if you click on the little pictures it will make them big and 3 of them are small videos!

Another free scrapbooking design by Smilebox

The Two Little Boys

Share a quite Saturday morning in mommies bed watching cartoons:

This picture cracked me up. Aj is all ready mimicking his brother.

Cervical Strain: Neck Injury

Today I thought I would be uploading Christmas pictures to the blog and telling about our wonderful Christmas day. However I feel more compelled at this time to write about the events of Dec 26th instead of Dec 25th. (Don't worry I will get Christmas at a later date but it will have to wait.)

On Christmas we spent the night at Matt's grandfathers house along with most of his aunties, cousins and siblings. (His Grandfather wanted the whole family together, it was a blast). We woke up at the kids normal 7:00am, amazingly most everyone else was up also, so I made a run to Starbucks sans any kids. While there Matt phone's me that Matteo fell and needs Motrin, slight concern runs through my mind. When I get back I found my baby laying on Matt's chest not moving a muscle with ice on his neck. When I picked him up off of Daddy he screamed bloody murder until he manged to get back in the same position and again he stopped moving and just kept saying oww. All I could think about was this is my kid who the day before fell down 3 stairs and stood up looked over said oww and went on playing, this is my kid who chipped his front tooth and I have no clue how he did it because he doesn't ever show pain.

We were heading to the hospital. Matt, Karlee and I took him to Sierra Vista. He did smile once in the car when we put on his favorite song but mostly he was trying to fall asleep, which of course I was not allowing him to do, afraid of a concussion.

We got to the hospital about 8:15ish. They proceed to take is blood pressure which was through the roof and tried to keep him comfortable. Anytime we moved him he just screamed and would hide in his blanket. One of the nurses brought in a TV and VCR and put on Aladdin. That really helped him calm down but not enough that he would let anyone touch him. They did x-ray's which I couldn't be in for because of the pregnancy so it was up to Matt and Karlee to hold him down screaming while they took the films. They came back showing no broken bones so the doctor was leaning towards a really bad muscle strain, and decide it would be best to give him pain meds and see if she could exam him that way.


Pain meds it was, they shot him up and he finally calmed down enough the doctor was able to get a good look at him but he still would not turn his neck to the left. He would looked only to the right. We tried to get him to turn his neck every way we could think of but nothing, he would just reach back with his arms and try to blindly grab at what we had. So....the doctor said if it was her kid she would want a CAT scan just to be sure there was truly no fractures and whatever else the CAT scan showed. Off to the CAT scan we went. This time I did go down the hall with them, because if he didn't hold still they were going to sedate him. Thank God, he held still. They suited Matt up the heavy lead vests and had him stand right by the tube talking to him. And with the pain meds running through his little body he laid there like a champ.

Again we were lucky everything came back normal so he was diagnose with a Cervical Strain Neck Injury. They told us to keep him on Motrin for the next 24hr or longer and with a baby his age we should see improvement by tomorrow. Before we left they gave him the first does of Motrin (on top of his other pain meds) and at 12:30pm we walked out the hospital with a highly doped up 2yr. He fell asleep in the car and then woke up when we got home, still very uncomfortable and not moving his neck. At 2:00pm he feel asleep again until 6:00pm. He was still in pain but wanted to play with is trains so we propped him with pillows laid him in a direction he would see the trains and he drove them around for awhile. At 9:00 we tucked him into bed between us and he as out until 7:00am this morning minus a Motrin hit at 4:00am.

This morning he is doing much better he is actually moving around and playing but will still point to his neck every once in awhile and say owww. So everything seems on the mend yeah!! We are just going to hang low and not making any sudden movements around him.

There you have it our exciting day after Christmas. Here are a few pictures I took last night.

His hospital Tag.



Trying to play trains.

CHOO - CHOO Matteo is TWO!!

My little guy is turning 2!! Tomorrow is the official day but spent last week celebrating train style. For those who don't know Matteo is obsessed with trains. He will spend hours playing trains, reading about trains and watching train movies. But don't let it be a Thomas the Train movie, oh no he likes the movies with REAL trains in them. He is a crazy dude. We celebrated on saturday by taking La Condessa, a private rail car operated by the Santa Maria Valley Railroad on a little trip through the Santa Maria, Gaudalpe area. Matteo was in heaven and spent pretty much the entire time out on the deck wathing the rails and how everything worked. One of the best things about it was we had the opertunity to pick up frieght along the way so Matteo and all the kids got to watch the train couple up witht he frieght. What a day. For more picture of the day click here. My dad did a great job and finding the best pictures! I jsut uploaded a couple family shots.





So in order to truly ring in his birthday we start the week off with an Amtrak train ride to Santa Barbara. We went last Monday to avoid crowds and had the time of our lives. Matteo adored the train with his favorite part being the doors that went between the two cars. We spend most of our time walking between cars and he would belly laugh every time. Once in Santa Barbara we head off to the Zoo and of course rode the train there, the highlight of the zoo trip!! The following are pictures from that day:

Papa let Serafina have desert after breakfast on the train!


Waiting for the train.

Matteo made sure he read up on the Train and the Saftey info.

On a walk.

This bird was really cool, we got so close and it never flew away! The kids were not to sure.

Another train!

Serafina doing a happy dance at the end of the day (past her bed time!!)

Well I can't belive it my baby is two. And soon there will be a new baby in the family. They all grow up so fast. Happy Birthday Little Man, we love you so much!!

Another Aerospace Man?!?

As we preparing dinner this evening Matteo decided to entertain himself by reading the current issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology. The kid sat there for a good 10 minutes or more (obviously long enough for me to locate the camera and snap a picture). It was cracking the whole family up at how intent he was studying the pages (it was like he was reading the words.)

So between the train interest (or obsession) and now the interest in aerospace....I think he has been spending to much time with his Papa!!


And no the picture was not posed at all he was holding the magazine like that and reading it. I caught him totally of guard when the flash went off.

Kids Say the Darnest Thing

This statement is so true. The past few weeks my 4yr old has just been cracking me up with the things that pop out of her mouth so I just had to share a few:

She is talking to her Noni:
"Yeah Noni, mommy is pregnant, she looked on-line and found out she is pregnant."

Talking to Nana:

"Nana, I have been thinking that maybe I wont be a doctor, is that ok?"
"Of course it is, you can whatever you want, do you have something else in mind?"
"Yes I want to be a fairy."

Later talking with me:

"So you want to be a fairy now?"
"Yes mom, I meant an Angel though not a fairy."
"And why do you want to be an Angel?"
"So I can be close to God."

And Lastly,

"Mom, I have been thinking and I am not so sure about this Kindergarten thing." pause "You should just home school me."



Oh the subject of talking a mini Matteo verbal update, we now say:

Choo Choo
Track
Done
Mama
Nana
Daddy
Trevor
Hi

and..
Shakes our head no and yes

And of course all of these are spoken only when he chooses. There are other random words that pop out every once in while but these are the most frequently used ones.

First Day of School

Today we packed backpacks and lunch boxes and sent all three kids off to school. Sam started 2nd grade, Serafina pre-k and Matteo started in the toddler program. Matteo will only be going two days a week (Tuesday and Thrusday). Since all my Matteo sitter decide to go off to college (karlee) I need a place to send him so I could spend Chemo days with my mom! So it was off to the toddler prorgram at The Laurette, he was so excited to be going to the same school as his big brother and sister that he never even looked back to see if we were gone. And to stick with tradition we had to take our back to school pictures as we left the house. Here are a few of my favorites! (I cant believe next year we will have a 4th baby in the picture, and I thought is was hard to get 3 kids looking at the camera and smiling!)