A Visit To Santa

For the past several weeks, toy catalogs have been coming in the mail to the house. The boys get so excited about them and read them from cover to cover. At nearly every toy, either Simi or Asher exclaims, "Can we buy this toy?" The canned response is, "You can ask Santa for it."

So now, with Santa's visit nearly here, I asked Simi and Asher to make a list of the things they want, so that they can visit Santa and tell him personally. They both sat down with pencil and paper and make a list: trains, race track, race cars, Ramone (from the Cars movie), and many other types of race cars. Cars, cars, and more cars. (Those folks at Pixar know what boys like.) Simi wrote down all the words and letters. Asher did too, in three-year-old style. Then, we took those lists and headed down to the mall to visit Santa and deliver the lists.

Asher has always been afraid of Santa Claus. In fact, he's afraid of sports mascots and other huge fake animals. I was hoping with the hype of toys and stuff that he'd overcome his fear enough to be able to sit on Santa's lap for a photograph. He did, but it was a really hard for him. I am really proud of him that he managed to overcome his fear enough to sit near Santa. He BARELY sat near him, though, and leaned SOOO far away from Santa - with a great big frown on his face.

Leila, who has the normal 10-month-old stranger anxiety, did GREAT! She let Santa hold her and smiled and laughed. She's the one who looks the happiest in the photo. Simi was the first to go up to Santa, list in hand, and spoke to Santa about what he wants for Christmas. It was adorably cute.

Now we need to find the stuff on their lists.

Thanksgiving

It was an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving.

Simi counted down the days until his cousin Nicole arrived. Simi absolutely adores his cousing Nicole and was incredibly thrilled to hear that she was coming to visit over Thanksgiving. Nicole's mum and dad and big sister, Jessica, also came to visit. Simi's grandfather and grandmother visited too. In fact, Grandma Laurie came bearing gifts and even cooked Thanksgiving dinner. Now THAT's what I call a welcome guest!

Y'all come back now, ya hear?

Ms. Personality

Leila is growing up. As she matures, she reveals more and more personality to us. And the more she grows, the goofier she gets.

Leila will look at us and cover her eyes with her hands: to play peek-a-boo with us. She'll cover her eyes, take her hands away, then smile and laugh. It's too funny.

She will also hide behind the curtain (yes, I do know it's a choke hazard. We only let her do it while she's supervised.) and play peek-a-boo. She pulls the curtain around her, then comes out from behind it with a great big smile on her face.

Leila hasn't yet met a stranger she doesn't like. Folks are always coming up to us at a store check-out line because Leila has been looking at them and smiling and they just NEED to come up and say hello to her. She's such a happy baby.

Going Mobile

Leila has been slowly moving around for a few weeks now. Yesterday, her movement has turned into the full-fledged crawl. She can quickly and easily get from one end of the room to the next. Our baby is mobile!

Most parents look forward to this milestone with their baby. It's exciting and new and they love to see their child developing. But since this is our third baby, we dread this day. It means that it's no longer sufficient to put the teeny tiny toys that they boys love in the toy bins on the other side of the room. Now, they have to go up high. And when the boys play with them, we'll have to carefully supervise to make sure no small pieces get into Leila's eager paws. Oh, what fun!

On the other hand, we invented a really fun game with the goofy giggle remote control toy. We make the little toy go and watch Leila chase after it. Hee hee!

Asher Update

We haven't had an Asher update in a while...here it is:

The news is - no news! We still have not started the elemental formula. Insurance denied our request and we can't afford the $35/day ($1000/month) that the formula costs. Right now we're looking into options to see what we can manage.

A couple of weeks ago, we removed corn syrup from Asher's diet. We know that Asher reacts to corn, but corn syrup is supposed to be safe, due to something about the food processing stripping 99.5% of the proteins away. Corn syrup, by the way, is in EVERYTHING. But after reading in three different places that food reactions do occur to corn syrup, we removed it from Asher's diet.

Interestingly enough, Asher is eating A LOT better now. He no longer struggles with eating and eats so much that I think one of his legs is hollow. It's a pleasure to watch him eat now. Is that IT? Have we gotten the last remaining allergen from Asher's diet? I'm tempted to have him scoped now, just to see if he scopes clear now. If these scopes weren't so invasive - and far away - I'd be tempted.

We're pretty sure that Simi does NOT have ee. Simi struggles with eating too, although clearly not to the extent that Asher does. Rather than submit Simi to an endoscopy, we sent his two sets of endoscopy slides (from when he was a baby and struggling with reflux) to Cincinnati to be read by their pathologist. No eosinophils in either of the two sets. Phew!

So, in a nutshell, Asher's fine right now although we haven't made any progress at all on his ee. I'll post another update when there is news to tell.