allergy update

We finally visited with the allergist to check up on Elliot's allergies this week. This time we met with a different doctor in the office, which at first I was a little disappointed about until we actually met with him and I quickly changed my mind.  This doctor spent a lot of time going over things with us and answering our questions and thinking of questions on his own to give us an answer to.  Since Elliot is older and has a better way of communicating with us it allows us to do more than just wait each year to get tested.  But this year the blood work showed that the egg and dairy allergy have improved some and we were able to get a better understanding of where he is with it by comparing the results with last year.  There is a number scale that shows that he was ranging 28 last year for egg and this year it is closer to 26.  For dairy it was around 13 last year and is closer to 7 this year.  So he is more likely to outgrow his dairy allergy sooner than his egg allergy.  These numbers can go down a little more each year, but you never know how quickly it could happen.  The doctor suggested a food challenge in their office with baked or heated dairy (dairy - for now since the levels were much lower).  Some kids can tolerate the food this way as some of the proteins are cooked out. If he can tolerate it baked/heated it could hopefully help speed up the process to help his body tolerate it, completely.  If he does OK, we can slowly keep adding a little more heated/baked dairy to his diet till he can freely eat it. 

But before we start with dairy we are going to try a challenge with nuts.  He has never been positive for peanuts but had small reactions from skin and blood work with other nuts in the past - that they had us avoiding all of them.   On the 30th we will be doing the nut challenge, and hopefully it goes well so we can add some nuts to our meals.  If he can have almonds and cashews we would be happy for now,  we could replace soy milk or some of it with almond milk and he could eat the mac & cheese (cheese made with cashews) at the vegan bakery.   

Praying that we can eat a little more freely.

Fall 2011

Elliot has been loving:


rice & beef
uigi (Luigi from MarioKart Wii), we finally had to put the wii away because he would ask/cry for it all the time
juice, apple & carrot
telling us no to just about everything we ask or say
car rides
playgrounds - he LOVES to climb
playing with his cousins


Elliot has not been loving:


going to bed
washing his hair
brushing his teeth


We survived a few days without each other recently when I went on a business trip to Orlando.  Only a total of 2 whole days without seeing my boys but it went okay.  Elliot would talk to me on the phone a lot which I don't ever really do regularly and would kiss the phone.  His face when I got home was hard to see, his lip curled and the look told me, "Where have you been? I missed you, don't you ever leave me like that again!"  I don't think I will for a long time!

my little artist

Elliot loves to paint, color and draw.  He entertains himself pretty well with markers or chalk best.  He'll sit on the rug in the living room and will concentrate so hard on what he's doing.  Still a lot of scribbles but even in just the last couple months you can see how much more he tries to attempt circles and straight lines.  He is so happy if you hand him some paper and markers. He ends up with a good amount on himself but it's cute to see his colorful hands. 

It's very entertaining to see Elliot's face light up with little things like art time and talking about his cousins and the rest of our family.  He is very expressive.  He's also very sensitive, if someone is sad he can easily cry for me or along with me and anyone else.  He loves hugs and kisses. He can be quite a flirt.  Dancing, chasing and giving kisses to random baby girls at concerts we have been to this summer. 

Elliot has peed in the toilet a few times, YAY! but that's it for potty training for now. 

Right now he really likes owls and baby animals.  He calls most animals babies.  He really likes water fountains, Mater, playing in playhouses and playgrounds. 

He likes books and would prefer to keep them (multiple books) in the bed instead of a stuffed animal to sleep with.  He also thought it would be a good idea to keep his golf set in the bed, but I was able to convince him it wasn't a good idea.

He loves hide and seek, counting and hiding in the closet with Aidan.

Elliot and I like to dance to the MJ experience wii game together after work sometimes.  He's a very good dance partner!


Most of the time Elliot is smiling and it's hard not to smile with him.  Even if he doesn't like what you tell him you smile as he grunts and points to you in his own way of showing you he's not OK with it.  We still have a lot to figure out together. :)

what's new

I continue to slack at finding the time to keep this up.  I have so many pictures loaded to the camera that I need to post here and make albums with and never find the time to do it.  We have been busy with Elliot turning 2, vacationing in California and enjoying the summer.
To start my baby turned 2!  It's amazing he is 2, he has so much personality and is such a joy to be around.  He has become quite the kisser.  If he is in a good mood at times he will suddenly go in for a kiss, if we are playing or eating a meal.  It's freakin' adoreable.  Sometimes they are sloppy wet ones, but I love them and will take every sloppy kiss he wants to give me! 
For his birthday we went to the park with Lola, Liv, Aidan & Keegan.  It was an adventure for sure- for me & Lola having this many kids but they had fun all the playground.  We went to the Zoo with Dad & ate Este pizza for dinner.  Our favorite dinner spot - 1 of maybe 2 that we can all go out and enjoy.  We got Elliot a balance bike (actually got it for Christmas but held out on giving it to him) it's still too big for him so we have to push him around.  So we do around the house, which will work till he's tall enough.  The next day we had a Toy Story/Buzz party at Mimi & GPa's, sort-of a small get together with our immediate family.  Elliot had fun with his cousin's playing with water guns, balloon rockets, and the dirt!  The dirt wasn't something I planned but he covered himself up.  It was fun, and nice because we didn't have to worry about the food around.  We made it pretty simple and made everything on our own.
After Elliot turned 2 we got busy getting ready for our first family vacation with Mimi & GPa.  We drove to Las Vegas spent a night then to Carlsbad, California.  Elliot did really well on the drive there.  We were able to see family which was nice and just spend time on the beach.  Elliot LOVED the water and the sand.  The drive back wasn't as easy but still good. 
Since then we have just been busy in the yard, house and spending time at the park going to concerts and such. Pictures to come...

no, no, no, no, no

I don't think that I have heard "no" more in my life then in the last 2 days.  Elliot isn't even 2 yet but has been giving us such a hard time lately.  He refused to put on shoes the other day, so we didn't end up leaving the house.  He had a breakdown because he wanted another "super soy" aka Bright beginnings (his nutritional supplement drink).  It has a lot of sugar and doesn't sit well in his tummy if he drinks a lot of it but we give him one a day to help him gain weight :).   That's just a few things that he's been doing lately, I think we tend to ask him what, if more then we notice and now it might just be back-firing on us. He has been super sweet lately too, he's not always a bad boy.  Which sometimes can be hard since he's giving us kisses then starts doing something we don't want him to do. 

I couldn't sleep and decided this may be my only chance to get some words in the blog and fill in updates on Elliot...

So the last couple months Elliot's started to pick up more words.  For awhile he really had mostly movie character's down but he is picking up other words and relatives better.  A few of his current words are:  Water - that sounds similar to how he says Wall-E (yep the robot) which helped him start saying Rielly.  He has juice down, but not so much milk.  He will say banana - even though he doesn't even like to eat them.  He calls Aidan - A, loves to say baby and is good at saying mine, and will say please when you remind him too.  "Wanna fight?" - thanks to Uncle Rielly. He loves birds right now, really loves them but still doesn't quite say birds, it sounds a little bit more like bees, says bugs and ants.  It took him a few weeks but he seems to have gotten over the fear of them when he found them out in the yard.   He says Keegy, Joshy, Buzz and he will repeat some other words, names randomly. 

I know there are so many cute things that I never took the time to write down, that may become forgotten now... but before I forget Josiah did have his appendix before Memorial weekend before he was suppose to go to PA.  Luckily he hadn't left, and I didn't have to go without him for the weekend.  Other then that we are all feeling sick with a cold, I'm busy at work, busy trying to plan what is supposed to be a small family party for Elliot's Birthday.  I think I will feel better after work Wednesday since I will be off.  We are also starting to look forward to a trip this month to California. 

I had trouble trying to pull up pictures from the computer tonight so will have even more catching up to do later, yay!

easter pictures

Better late then never...

This was Elliot's first year of doing the easter egg hunt, he didn't totally get it, which helped at the filipino hunt where I could be sure he picked up eggs that were safe for him.  I had ordered almost $60 in allergy free candy the week of easter then thought that too chewey worms and such may not be a good idea.  I did all my double checking on fruit snacks on line and ended up filling most of the eggs up with fruit snacks.  I did also find some cute toy story figures that would fit and matchbox cars.  Mimi filled easter eggs with money and finger puppets so luckily Elliot stayed safe!

Cute cousins... Chloe & Lilly - we don't see these two as much as we would like to. 

Elliot would not smile for any of the pictures and kept trying to run away - the look on Liv's face explains how he was acting... 

here is a great picture of Keegan's killer dance moves!  I love that the kids love dancing. 

asthma... it is?

Last Tuesday came a runny nose.  At the time we were thinking maybe teething or allergies.  Elliot was still playful and didn't have a fever.  Then Thursday evening Elliot and I were outside on the porch waiting for Daddy to come home.  My allergies felt terrible and Elliot seemed itchy too.  Once Daddy finally came home we went inside and I took some medicine and thought if Elliot felt anything like I felt that he needed something too.  So we gave him benadryl.  He took a nap and when he woke up Dad was the first to notice his grunt when he was breathing - it was just like the last time he was sick. 

We started with some albuterol from the nebulizer which maybe  helped a little bit.  Elliot had a shower (with Dad) and once he was out he was sleeping again.  I left a message with the doctor on call and when she called back I told her how he was breathing and that he was taking 48 breaths per minute but said he seemed a little bit better now that he was sleeping.  She said that the breaths were a little bit concerning and that it's hard to say how he is doing without looking at him.  She said we could give him a little bit and see how he was doing or suggested taking him to the emergency room then.  We decided to wait a little bit, but Elliot woke up again and again and his breathing wasn't improving.  So just after 11pm we headed up to the hospital.  

It was much faster than I imagined to get in.  I gave our information and they sent us to the back right away and we went over things with someone there and then they headed us to the back right away.  We waited longer there after for someone to come in.  Elliot was hooked up to the monitor and his breathing was in the low 80's - it was a good decision to go and we were glad we didn't wait longer.  

They gave him oxygen and took a swab to do a test for viruses.  They suggested an x-ray and I was glad that Josiah spoke up asking if it was really necessary right now.  They explained how much things have changed but with all the x-rays that he has already had and something Josiah heard on NPR it was nice that they didn't push the x-ray further and just gave him albuterol which seemed to help so they then did the super dose and told us we would be staying overnight.

By 3 am we were in the room we would be staying in and maybe after 4 we were settled enough to get some rest.  Elliot stayed on oxygen and started an oral steroid and was taking albuterol every 3 hours or so.  I think it was by that afternoon that one of the doctors came by and talked about asthma.  They said that Elliot had rhinovirus again and that the virus is what triggers the asthma flare.  As they explained asthma to us it made sense how Elliot's cousins all get sick but he gets affected so badly it was just strange that they stopped the athma medicine last time we were there.  Elliot is just a classic case of asthma with his eczema, food allergies and frequent hospital visits.

We stayed another night because Elliot still need oxygen and through the next night he was on room air.  After an albuterol treatment he needed more oxygen still that morning so we were staying until he napped and had another dose.  So just after five we were released, yesterday. 

For now Elliot has to finish out the oral steroid and started flovant which is the asthma controller he will need to take twice a day and is taking the albuterol now through an inhaler (which is much easier) every 4-6 hours.  We have a follow up with his doctor tomorrow and will go from there.  Elliot definitely is doing better - and only time will tell how this asthma plays out.  It was just hard to accept with one other thing to worry about on top of his allergies but we can handle this... I hope!