family, woodworking, photography, K-pop
I saw these pre-assembled gingerbread house kits at Costco a while ago and picked one up to decorate with E. We decorated it last night and he was surprisingly good about not eating the candy pieces unless I told him it was okay. But now every time he walks past the kitchen table he sticks his face inches away from the house, staring at it, and declares that he wants to eat “the Christmas house.” I guess we’ll see how long his self-control holds out.
Last night we went to our church’s Christmas party. There were rumors about an appearance by a certain special someone and I was curious about how E would handle it. Luckily his face lit up when Santa walked in the room. It was pretty cute.
Sadly the professional photographer who volunteered to take photos of the kids had her camera knocked over and her pricey lens broken (thankfully it was insured) so I only have a few photos I snapped with my phone.
I know I was supposed to learn my lesson about pushing E into what I think will be Kodak moments after the disaster that was the Yo Gabba Gabba live show but now I’m thinking it might be worth it to take E to the mall and get a real pictures with Santa.
Am I being utterly foolish or do you think it will turn out okay?
E knows this Free Design song, “I Found Love,” from the tv show Yo Gabba Gabba. We have the original song on CD and the other day when it came on it the car as we were pulling into our driveway E started rocking out.
(I neglected to turn my phone sideways to film it so unfortunately the video is long and skinny instead of wide.)
Here’s the segment from Yo Gabba Gabba that E learned the song from. The animation is really cute and goes well with the music.
Yesterday I snapped some photos of E for a Christmas card. I’m trying to decide which of these first two to use for the card. What do you think–any strong opinions?
As he’s gotten older E has less and less patience when it comes to having his photo taken. After about 5 minutes the situation dissolved into this (only with more spittle than pictured flying around the room).
I’ve been having a lot of fun with my new iPhone. It’s been handy to always have a camera/video camera with me. I downloaded the Hipstamatic photo app and used it to snap these while we hanging out before church yesterday. They remind me of shooting with my Holga only with instant gratification (but I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for film).
Last week E had to have several vials of blood drawn so they could run tests on his food allergies. As you might imagine, the blood draw did not go easily and kind of traumatized E. It was worse than last year because now E has a much better idea of what’s going on and he’s a lot stronger (it took two techs and myself to hold him still). Anyway, yesterday I took E in to get the test results and to see his allergist for his annual check-up.
Sadly the test results were not encouraging. The tests measure the amount of antibodies in E’s blood that react to specific allergens. Last year his results for milk were already quite high and since then they have doubled to being super high. His results for peanuts doubled as well and eggs and most nuts stayed the same.
All of which means that E is very unlikely to outgrow any of his current allergies. I’ll admit that I was pretty disappointed. From year one to year two it looked like E might outgrow his nut allergies and maybe his egg allergy. But this last year everything just looks worse.
I was feeling kind of down as I drove home. It just hit me again that my son will most likely never be able to eat like a normal person. Right now making sure that he only eats food that’s safe for him is solely my responsibility (and N’s) but what’s it going to be like when he’s in school or away from home? It’s a lot for a little kid to handle.
On the positive side E’s allergist said that there is hope that this new baby won’t have allergies/or will have less severe allergies. She said it’s a combination of genetics and enviroment and that when nursing moms cut allergens out from their diets (like I’m going to do) sometimes kids only end up for a few milder allergies that they outgrown within a few years. I don’t know how much difference it will make since I eliminated allergens from my diet when I was nursing E once we found out about his allergies but he was already seven months or so old at that point.
So while there’s nothing really concrete to go on I won’t be eating dairy, eggs, and nuts after the baby’s born because I will do anything in my power to lessen the chance that another one of my kids has to go through this. On the plus side, this time around I’m a lot more knowledgeable about what our food options will be (and it will probably help me lose the baby weight).
After spending a few hours at the doctor’s office, getting skin tested to see if he could get a flu shot, and then getting the flu shot itself E was pretty wiped out and hungry so on the way home we stopped into a Chik-Fil-A that recently opened near our house.
As I watched E eat his waffle fries and chicken nuggets (his doctor okayed food fried in refined peanut oil) and then run around the playground I felt my spirits lift. While there are a lot of things E can’t eat and he’ll most likely have to be careful of them his whole life it’s not as though he has a serious or terminal illness like some kids do. He’s still a healthy little boy for which I am deeply grateful.
E has a way of keeping me humble. Just when I start to get a bit smug that I have this parenting thing figured out fairly well something happens to deflate my ego like a sad balloon.
E still has the last bits of a insistent cold and was sort of tired yesterday. He took a long nap but even then I had to go in and wake him up so we could go to see Yo Gabba Gabba live. N had had a crazy day at work but he managed to leave the office a couple hours early so we could make it on time.
When we got to the arena E loved looking around and seeing all the kids and the Yo Gabba Gabba stuff. And then the show started.
At first he was intrigued and even had fun dancing around to the songs. But then they shot confetti into the audience and cranked up the volume and suddenly it was TOO MUCH. E started whimpering and then full-on crying to go home. N took him out into the hall to calm down and would bring him back into the arena where he was alternatively fascinated and terrified. After about twenty minutes or so he was still asking to go to the car.
So we gave up and left the arena. As soon as we walked outside E started crying again and asking to go back to the show.
The drive home was lame. I was frustrated and sad, N was frustrated and grumpy, and E was frustrated and tired.
In hindsight, I obviously shouldn’t have bought the tickets. They weren’t cheap and I spent basically all of E’s birthday budget on them. I thought he would like it–there were kids much younger than him there happily bopping around in their seats. Maybe having some sort of ear protectors would have helped? The show was really loud. Eh, I don’t know.
But the whole experienced emphasized that I need to let go when it comes to wanting to have Kodak-moment-type family experiences. For instance, I thought this would be a special experience the three of us could enjoy before the baby comes. I get sucked into “the idea” of things very easily. Sometimes I struggle with walking the line between not wanting to deny E experiences he would enjoy and having a realistic idea of what he would actually enjoy and what’s worth the hassle and money.
Blargh.
E’s third birthday was over the weekend. E is nuts for balloons so I surprised him with a bunch and then that evening we had a pretty low-key celebration: the three of us went out for dinner and then back to the house for cupcakes and presents.
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been three years since E was born. Maybe it was just the pregnancy hormones but I was surprised by how sentimental I felt about this birthday. E’s just such a great little guy. We feel so grateful to have him in our family.
I still have quite a few photos from our trip to Korea that I wanted to post so I hope everyone’s not sick of them yet. I’ll be posting some more this week and then wrapping it up.
Like I mentioned before, we visited several Buddhist temples while we were there. These are pictures from our trip to Bulguksa.
The trees were just starting to turn when we were there. I bet they’re stunning right now.
E pretending to be a monster–Rawr!
E is nuts about drums and likes turtles so this was easily his favorite part of the temple.
People stacking rocks for blessings/good luck. E really wanted to get right in there but we were horrified at the idea of him knocking down someone else’s stack so we set him up off to the side with a few rocks of his own.Looking at these photos is funny because our trip already seems so far away even though it was just a few weeks ago. Coming home to being sick, a messy house, and a lot of work to do for my job jolted me back to reality none too gently. But even still there’s something comforting about getting back to the daily grind.
It was cold and rainy but E still loved treat-or-treating.
Now that Halloween’s over I’m gearing up for the mad holiday dash through Thanksgiving and Christmas and then on to welcoming our baby girl in January!