Getting Ready for Kindergarten

Simi is getting ready to go to kindergarten. He's so excited; he just can't wait. Every time we talk about it, he gets a great big smile on his face and he jumps up and down; he just can't wait to go.

I think this year at pre-school has been difficult for him. He was REALLY sad last year when his friends moved on to kindergarten and he had to stay at pre-school. Now, he is the oldest in his class because he missed the cut-off for kindergarten by a mere two weeks. Academically, he is reading and doing math on a first grade level - in pre-school. So, he's excited to move up to kindergarten.

Poor kid, he's going to be in for a shock when he learns that he's far and away ahead of everyone else in kindergarten too. He is going to be bored out of his mind while his kindergarten class-mates are busy learning the letter of the week.

Simi and I went to the pediatrician for his kindergarten check-up. He got FIVE shots and he was REALLY brave about them. I just about passed out watching this kid get his shots and he took them so bravely.

The pediatrician was checking Simi's development and asked Simi to identify some shapes (circle, square, and triangle). Then, she asked Simi to draw one of each and to draw a picture of a person and she left the room to pierce another child's ears. Simi draws his shapes, then moves onto drawing his person. He first draws a head, with eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Then, he draws a neck, shoulders, and arms. He draws a torso, and legs and feet. Then, he goes back to the arms and he draws hands and fingers. He draws five fingers on each hand. He would have continued but I asked him some questions and then we started reading a book.

The pediatrician walked back into the room, saw Simi's person and explained that at age five, they look for stick people with three parts (for example, a head, torso, and leg). Simi's person had well over 15 parts. So then the pediatrician and I talked of ways to keep him engaged and continue his love of learning while he's at school....

OK, now for his stats. But before we talk about this year's stats, let's review last year's stats. Last year, just before we got his heart fixed, he was in the 25th percentile for height and in the 5th percentile for weight.

Now, he is in the 60th percentile for height and 50th percentile for weight, with a BMI of 10.

And now we can register Simi for kindergarten.

Failed Apple Food Trial

On day 5 of Asher's apple trial, Asher had a full-blown asthma attack. Even the albuterol didn't help. It's painful to watch your child gasp for breath, to watch him cough so hard that he vomits, and resist eating or drinking any food because he feels sick to his stomach all the time. He's exhausted, yet the coughing interrupts his sleep.

Raj isn't convinced that the asthma attack and the food trial are related. I'm pretty sure that they are. He has only had two other asthma attacks: one at 4 months, right after we started feeding him rice cereal (with stage 1 applesauce) and one when he went on the elimination diet. I think that the food allergy triggers the asthma attack. At any rate, apples are out of Asher's diet and Raj and I intend to confer with Asher's doctor to get an understanding of what this means and what to do next.

If Asher is allergic to something as benign as apples, just imagine to what else he is allergic.

We've had one step forward with the successful pork trial and a million steps back with the big-time asthma attack.

More later as we figure this thing out..

Successful Pork

We're declaring pork a successful food trial. We're so grateful that Asher 1) can eat pork and 2) that he can eat and enjoy a food again. Asher is absolutely enjoying his pork fest.

Now we're trialing apples. Asher and I went to the supermarket on Saturday and bought tons of apples and applesauce. We're serving them fresh, dehydrated, fried, and cooked with pork. Asher is really having a good time with this now. With two foods in Asher's diet, his diet almost feels normal again.

Stay tuned to learn if the apple trial is successful.

Easter HinJew Style

We have been celebrating Easter all day and loving it. This morning, the boys woke up to find that the Easter Bunny left them both baskets filled with goodies. Out of respect for Asher, the goodies were all toys (silly putty eggs, eggs with stickers, rings, and other small fun things) and no edible treats. After breakfast, we had a few egg hunts, then went on to color Easter eggs. In short, we've all had a wonderful day.

What's a HinJew family doing celebrating Easter? Today's cartoon For Better Or For Worse speaks volumes. Honestly, what does Jesus have to do with the Easter Bunny?

Caminando!

Leila is 14 months old. We thought she'd never start walking. She seemed happily content to trot anywhere she needed to go while on four paws. She seemed to say, "why bother walking when crawling is a perfectly fine form of transportation?"

Then one day, she just started to take steps. Just as quickly, she stopped. There we were, patiently waiting for some more steps, which didn't seem to come.

Yesterday, she just decided that she was going to walk everywhere from now on and forget about crawling altogether.

And so it is. The little half-pint is walking.

[update]Here's a video of her starting to walk:


And another of her getting much better at it:

Asher Update

Asher has been eating pork for the past five days. I'm terrified to jinx it by saying anything and my fingers and toes are all crossed in the hopes it brings good luck. So far, we haven't had reason to stop the pork trial, so that's good news.

Yesterday, the boys went to a friend's birthday party. While getting ready to go, I had thought about what to do with Asher when the cake was being served and figured that I'd bring the Dum-Dum lollipops. They are allergen-free. My thought of Asher eating pork while the other children were feasting on cake and ice cream and juice was - well - was that it seemed really sad.

But in my rush to get to the party on time, I forgot the lollipops. We got to the party and when cake time arrived, Asher runs up to me and asks for his pork. Poor kid, he really wanted the pork. Every bit of distraction failed. He REALLY and TRULY WANTED THAT PORK. Little slivers of pork are Asher's treats. How absolutely incredibly sad.

So here we were playing in the gym, jumping on the trampoline and the ball pit (Well, Asher was jumping in the ball pit) and people kept coming up to us and asking if we wanted cake. And each time I said, "no thanks", I just felt sadder and sadder for Asher.

But now let's talk about good news:
1. His EE is under control. For the first time in Asher's life, his EE is under control. Just that is cause for celebration - woo hoo!

2. The first week that Asher began the elemental formula, I felt someone had to call the child welfare authorities on us. But then, during the second week, Asher underwent a transformation. He became a different kid. His energy level increased dramatically. He started climbing the furniture because he just didn't know what to do with his newfound energy. I used to call him my "teen-ager in training" because he was so difficult to get out of bed. Now, most days, he bounces out of bed in the morning and is raring to go. The dark bags under his eyes are gone. He seems to have more focus on tasks. Now we know what Asher SHOULD be like. Because he has always suffered with EE, we have never seen how he SHOULD be.

If nothing else, the trial of elemental formula has been a gift because now we know Asher's baseline.

Endoscopy results

We received the results of Asher's endoscopy today ..... everything looks good. There are still eosinophils in Asher's esophagus, but they are "under the limit". Dr. Putnam says that it just takes a very long time to completely get rid of them.

Now we can add foods back into Asher's diet - one at a time. Offer one food; wait a month. Offer another food; wait another month. After 3-4 foods, do another endoscopy and get the results. Repeat.

I know this is good news. This is exactly the news for which we hoped. The joy was tempered with other news....

While preparing for the endoscopy, the nurses asked routine questions. One of the questions was, is Asher allergic to any foods? After giving the nurses this long laundry list of foods to which Asher tested positive on the skin prick test, I asked Dr. Putnam what he thought - if Asher really was allergic to all those foods or if some of them were false positives. Dr. Putnam's response took me by surprise. He said that he suspected that they were all true positives - that Asher is truly allergic to all those foods and that there are probably going to be a lot more foods to which he tests positive. And he tried to prepare us for a lot of food failures as we go into food trials. The thought of that is overwhelming.

Anyway, for a lot of reasons, we chose pork as the first food to try. Asher's thrilled that he gets to eat food -- and less super-milk. So, we'll just keep going and see where this road takes us. But we reserve the right to change our minds at any moment.

Asher in Cincinnati, scope looks clean!

Asher and Liz are in Cincinnati for his first endoscopy since starting the elemental diet. Liz called from the hospital to tell me that everything went well and that Dr. Putnam said the scope looks clean, though he's been surprised before so we'll wait until the lab results are back Tuesday afternoon/Wednesday to be sure. Later, they went to the zoo and Asher had a rice cake, his first "real food" in about two months!

We'll post more later (including some pictures).

Admin note: RSS feed posts out of order

We've switched to the new Blogger interface. One of the new features is "Labels" (which the rest of Web 2.0 world calls "tags"). I've been going back and tagging labeling old posts. Unfortunately, Blogger orders the RSS feed by update time, and labeling counts as an update. The actual webpages are ordered properly, but if you are using a blog reader then the list of posts will probably be confusing (the "Set-back for Asher" post at the top of the list is actually from March 2005). If you aren't using a blog reader then this doesn't matter and is probably confusing ...

[April 3 update: you can use the link http://rubensingh.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=published to get a feed ordered by published date]

Super Asher, Up Up and Away!

A friend of ours from work, Jennifer Cole, sent Asher a set of Superman pajamas complete with cape. She include a letter from Superman who told him that he gets to wear the cape whenever he drinks his supermilk nicely. Simi got to read the letter to him.

Circus

The whole family went to the circus. The boys had a blast, especially watching the motorcycles spinning around in a big sphere without running into each other. But I think the best part was before the show started, when they let people onto the floor and see the animals and clowns putting on little shows up close.

Snow!

We haven't had a good snow in years. This doesn't really qualify as a good snow either, but it was enough to build a tiny snowman and to finally use our sled from Christmas 2005.

I also got a picture of the boys in a pose similar to one my parents took of me and Rita when we were kids.

Leila's First Birthday

Leila is now 1 year old. We had a small party at our house, and another one next week with the Singh grandparents. The kids had a great time playing with kid friends, and the adults had a great time chatting with adult friends.

Congratulations, Leila, you made it!

Asher starts Elemental diet

Liz has spent months fighting with insurance, and finally they've agreed to cover it, though only for a few months worth. So today Asher finally is starting his new elemental diet with Elecare. No food, just the Elecare elemental formula. We'll actually transition for a couple of weeks and taper down off of real food until it's only Elecare (Dum-Dum lollipops, and Smarties are also allowed). In 10 weeks we'll go back up to Cincinnati for another endoscopy to see if there are any signs of the Eosinophilic Esophagitis. If not then we'll start adding food back in to his diet, one every couple of weeks, then scope again to determine if the food we added was safe. We'll continue this until we have a good list of what is and what is not safe for Asher to eat.

Leila Adenoid Removal Surgery

Leila had an adenoidectomy, and had tubes put in her ears. She's been congested her entire life, and her adenoids were so big they interfered with her breathing. Lately at night we've been staying up with her and letting her sleep in our lap so she can breath more easily. Her sleep apnea was pretty scary. The doctor was initially hesitant to perform the surgery because of her age, but she's a big girl so things aren't too small in there and the problems we're having are bad enough to balance the likelihood of having to repeat the surgery later when they grow back.

Now after the surgery she's already breathing very easily, including at night (which makes us breath more easily as well).

Puppy

OK, I know I promised to write about our holidays -- and didn't do that.

Instead, I'll tell you a story about Simi's puppy. About five years ago, for Simi's first Christmas, his aunt and uncle gifted him a beanie-baby puppy and a beenie-baby frog. I put them in the crib with Simi; he was just a couple of months old at the time. (Putting stuffed animals in the crib with your infant is now considered a dangerous practice, but at the time it was a perfectly acceptable thing to do.) Over a short period of time, Simi developed an attachment to the puppy (he never thought anything of the frog) and he still, to this day, carries the puppy around with him everywhere he goes. Puppy has become so important that he wears an id tag around his neck with our phone numbers so that we can have a better chance of recovering him if he becomes lost.

A few years ago we told Simi the story of the Velveteen Rabbit. You know the story: the little boy loved the stuffed bunny he received as a Christmas present so much that it became worn and thread-bare. It was the little boy's love that made the Velveteen Rabbit become a real one.
After reading the story, we told Simi that his puppy was like the Velveteen Rabbit and that, one day, it would become real. Of course, we have been hoping that Puppy wouldn't become real for another 10 years or so...

Puppy is showing the signs of five years of being carried around by Simi. He developed a hole in his nose and the little plastic beads have been falling out. Over our Christmas (see, we are getting around to the Christmas part of the story) break, I found some of the plastic bead stuffing and fixed up puppy. He is now plumper than ever and his holes are all sewn up. We still need to sew back his mouth and nose, which seems to have disappeared over time and because of the repair. But Simi doesn't seem to care.

Here is a photo of a happy Simi and Puppy post repair. Hopefully puppy will last another five years or so.

Happy New Year!

Wishing y'all a very happy new year! I'll be back very soon to tell you stories from our holiday. I'd love to hear about yours too. Please write some of your favorite memories in the comments section of this post.

Take care,
Liz

Preparing for the Holidays

We're getting ready for the holidays!

This past week-end, we got our Christmas tree. This year, both Simi and Asher helped decorate the Christmas tree. In previous years, we waited until they were asleep to decorate, but now they're old enough to be involved. They absolutely loved it and they did a great job of putting the ornaments on the tree!

Sunday, we went to see the Nutcracker. Last year, only Simi was old enough to go but this year, both boys went. They absolutely loved it. We got to visit with the folks in the orchestra pit before and after the show and they even got to talk with a chap in the orchestra. It was too cool.

Simi had remembered from last year that someone dressed as the Nutcracker met us outside the auditorium and gave him a small candy cane. He was hoping that would happen again. Sure enough, when we arrived, someone dressed as the Nutcracker was handing out candy-canes to the children. Asher, who is terrified of people dressed up as things, was so excited and later said that he wasn't scared at all! He was even more thrilled that he got to EAT the candy cane!

All in all, a good holiday week-end. We're looking forward to more to come!

Cars vs. Dolls

It was inevitable; Leila likes vrooming cars as much as the boys do.

Now, perhaps Leila's taste for dolls and cars may change as she gets older, but right now she prefers to ditch the dolls and vroom the cars. OK, in all truthfulness, she prefers to EAT the cars.

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.