You Know You're a Veteran Mom When...

You have two children vomit on you and one poop on you ...and it's no big deal.

Leila and The Boys

I felt sorry for Leila even before she was born.

Leila is the third child - with two brothers just two and four years older than she. My concern is that we'd have to protect her from their accidental "mishandling" of their baby sister.

Turns out that she loves it. She loves it when Simi gets right up in her face and talks nonsense to her. She loves it when he waves his body all around - within milimeters of her face. She smiles and laughs and can barely contain herself.

Simi and Leila in the car: Simi gets all silly and Leila just laughs and laughs and laughs.

What does this mean for when she's older?

Allergic Asher

A year ago, I posted that Asher was diagnosed with eosinophilic esophagitis. That's a fancy word to say that he has a food allergy.

When he was first diagnosed, the Dr. gave him a prescription for Flovent and sent us on our merry way....

The Flovent has worked great. Asher stopped vomiting and started eating solids almost immediately. We're truly thankful for that. And we haven't had to worry about his allergies while we worked to fix Simi's heart or prepared for Leila's arrival. That was nice.

But during this past year, Asher has gradually began to struggle with eating again. So much so, that we started investigating how to deal with his food allergies.

Our most recent stop was to see the head of the department of pediatric allergy at Duke. Since he has food allergies, we thought it best to get the advise of a pediatric allergist. We couldn't have been more wrong. This doctor, after keeping us waiting for three hours, told us not to restrict his diet/avoid any food which may trigger his allergy. Instead, he said, just keep taking the Flovent and not worry about it. Truthfully, he made me feel like a terrible mum for restricting my child's diet.

When I asked about skin testing to determine the offending foods, the doctor said it wouldn't be helpful. He did agree to do blood tests, though. The blood tests revealed a mild allergy to wheat. Doctor told us not to restrict wheat from Asher's diet.

We followed his advice. Asher was thrilled. He started eating yogurt and things with wheat and things with soy. And within two weeks, he started vomiting. Then, he stopped eating completely.

After doing a bit of investigating, I learned that this doctor gave lousy advise.

We also visited our pediatric gastroenterologist, who told us that kids with EE don't usually grow out of it, and that he'll probably need to take the steroids forever. Hmmnn..

So...off we go in a quest to find more help. I'll chronicle our adventure, in the hopes that it may help someone else. Right now we're awaiting an appointment at the Eosinophilc Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Yes, indeed, there really is a place like this. We're told that our appointment will probably be in August or September. They only take 3 new families a week and that's when the next appointment will be available.

In the meantime, we've gone back to restricting Asher's diet and he's back to eating again. Phew!

Mothers do know best. We may not have the medical degree, but we know our children.

Hungry Girl

When Simi was first born, he and I would lay in bed together and alternate between sleep and eat (he would do the eating). He'd sleep so gently and peacefully, then start smacking his lips together (like Winnie-the-Pooh. I could just imagine the sweet thought in his brain saying something like, "oh, I'd like a little smackeral of something.") and then turn to me with mouth open, just like a little bird opening his mouth wide open to get a worm from momma bird. And then we'd lay together with him nursing until he was done and fell asleep again. And I'd wish we could lay there - just like that - forever.

Same with newborn Asher. When hungry, he'd open his little bird mouth and bump around looking for his booby. And he'd find it, nurse until satiated, then fall back to sleep again.

Not Leila. Leila has never given me a little bird mouth. Nope. Instead, she rams her entire body into me to wake me up and feed her. And she just keeps ramming until I wake up and shove the breast into her mouth. Sometimes, she doesn't even wait to find the nipple, just starts sucking on a random part (ouch!), until I get the right part in the right place. And then she sleeps soundly, sweetly, again, until it's time to become a battering ram again.

My sweet, delicate little flower...

Easter Week-end

I'd like to tell you about our very special Easter week-end. The boys woke up on Saturday to find an Easter egg hunt awaiting them in the living room. They quickly got dressed and came downstairs and scooped up all the eggs.

Now, you may be wondering why a Jewish/Hindu family would ever even think of celebrating Easter.... Truthfully, I fail to see a connection between the Easter bunny and Jesus. It's really just a fun way to do something special (color eggs, hunt eggs, eat chocolate) and fun. No religion is really involved.

We did tell them the story of Passover, though.

Now, back to our week-end...

Saturday morning, while at breakfast, we were talking about what to do that day. I mentioned that I'd like to go to the zoo, but it's a good two hour drive each way. So we decided to go to the Museum of Life and Science, which is about five minutes from our house. They have a great playground, which we never have a chance to go to because the boys are always busy doing something else there.

When we showed our membership card at the front desk, one of the museum staff told us to be sure to check out the new exhibit - which just opened up that day. Off we go to the playground...which is completely empty. The boys had a blast running up and down the structures.

At the playground is a caboose. Yes, a real train caboose. Raj fondly talks about the days when his parents took him and his sisters to the museum and they played on the caboose. I think it was one of his favorite things at the museum. And now here he is, taking his children to the museum and they're playing on the same structure that he enjoyed as a kid....

And then we decided to go check out the new exhibit...

Dang, this thing isn't just an exhibit, it's like a whole new entity! We walk onto a boardwalk structure to the most beautiful overview of a lake/marsh. The view is breath-taking. In the exhibit are bears, wolves, and lemurs. The enclosures for the animals seem fun and comfortable for the animals and the boys enjoyed watching the bears frolic in the water and jump on the trees. More than anything, they really enjoyed the deck full of interactive activities. They threw sand in the stream bed, swam like tadpoles and like ducks, and watched the Canada Geese sit on his nest. In fact, we couldn't get them away from this deck; they had way too much fun.

It was so much fun, we went back on Sunday for a second visit. And the boys are still asking when they can go back again.

I suspect we'll be there a lot this summer.

Oh, and that Easter basket? Both boys have quickly forgotten about it - and it's still full of candy.

Simi's Drawing

As Raj and I were preparing dinner, Simi was at the easel drawing and Asher was playing with a Rescue Hero toy. Leila was in her bouncy seat, taking in the scene. Simi called me over to ask me how to spell his last name. He wrote his first name on the drawing and wanted to make the name complete. Raj and I looked at the drawing. Simi had drawn a picture of two boobies, complete with the area "where milk comes out" (Simi's words). He had drawn it so well, that it was easy to see what he had drawn. Simi had obviously seen me nurse Leila a few times.

After laughing so hard that tears ran down my face, I was finally able to compose myself enough to help him spell his last name.

Tobor

We now have another new addition to our family: Tobor. Tobor is a robot created from our set of Tinker Toys.

The boys regularly play with the tinker toys and Simi loves to build robots. He loves robots that fly and robots that kill bad guys and robots that crash. OK, really, he just loves to build robots. And after we build them, we take them apart and put them back into the tinker toy container.

Except for Tobor. He's our only creation who has remained "outside the canister". In fact, he now has a personality, a background, and a history. He comes from the continent and/or country that Simi learned about that day, and takes all different types of transportation, based on what Simi is learning.

Welcome, Tobor, to the family.

Fun Toys

The weather cooperated so perfectly this week-end. Both Saturday and Sunday were the perfect spring days. We celebrated them by spending as much time outside as possible. We had gotten a play structure last summer, so we spent a lot of time in the backyard, playing on swings, slides, forts, and sand boxes.

But the most popular activity this week-end by both Simi and Asher was filling up the watering can (or small container) and watering whatever they could find. They entertained themselves for hours with the water.

Glad we got that play structure.