Hug Twice

On October 27th, Alexa had the MMR vaccine at her well-child appointment.  She seemed fine afterwards, no swelling, fever, or anything like that.

10 days later, she developed a rash that started on her legs and over the next 24 hours spread everywhere, as well as a fever.  The pediatrician’s office made a few stabs at a diagnosis, and eventually, after the fever started, settled on a reaction to the MMR vaccine.  According to my internet research, about 5% of children have a rash 10-14 days after the MMR.

That was Friday.  Today (Sunday), she started to swell.  Her face, her ankles, her hands - all swollen.  I rushed her to urgent care this morning, and after examining her, they called our pediatrician’s office.  The other pedi in the practice was on call, and he met us at their office to examine her himself.  He declared her having a systemic, whole-body allergic reaction.  To something.  He claims the antibiotic she had to treat the ear infection, I am still suspicious about the vaccine itself.  The reaction didn’t start until she’d had 20 doses of the antibiotic, so I find that, well, odd.  The allergic reaction, whatever it is, is happening, and he gave her a steroid treatment in the office as we need to give her more steroids for the next two days.  Oh, and a lot of benadryl.  Around the clock doses.

And we see how she is by tomorrow.  I’ve spent most of today in tears or folding laundry.  I’ve never felt so helplessly scared in my entire life.

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A long long time ago, I said that when I have children, they wouldn’t be picky.  I have no tolerance for picky.  You’ll eat what we eat, or you’ll go hungry, and that’s that.

And then I had CJ.  CJ, from the very first moment he was born, was extremely picky about food. At first, he was displeased with the idea of nursing.  He would literally rather scream himself to sleep than nurse.  After he started losing weight at an alarming rate, we got a pump, and I pumped and fed him with a bottle for the first month.  Then he decided nursing was okay, and bottles were the incarnate of evil.  Honestly, he would rather literally starve himself than deviate from the plan in his head.

This is the point I realized that nothing was ever going to go according to my plan.

At about 7 months he started solid food.  At first it went okay.  And then we tried apples.  Apples he hated with every fiber of his being.  In fact, he would not only scream and spit them out, but if pushed he would literally make himself vomit rather than eat them.  At 7 months old.  And it wasn’t limited to apples.  We kept trying different foods, and some were happily accepted, some were tolerated, and most fruit (save prunes which he adored) were spit out and gagged on if offered again.

Fast forward 4 years.  CJ is still incredibly picky, and still gags on food he finds unacceptable. Someday, at some point, we’ll push the issue, but for now, I know he has a real problem with foods he doesn’t like, more than I am comfortable pushing him.  The biggest problem for us is that he still eats about zero fruit.  Veggies I can hide in things and he doesn’t know he’s eating them, but past fruit and grain cereal bars, actual fruit doesn’t really come close to him.

Until now.

A month ago CJ was responsible for snack that week at school.  The school always asks us to bring a specific thing on Fridays, and he was supposed to bring bananas.  I made a HUGE deal about the bananas with him - how fun bananas are, how exciting it is that he is bringing them, and by the time Friday came he was really psyched about the bananas.

And when he came home from school, they sent a note saying he ate a few tiny bites of a banana!  Hurrah!

And he’s repeated that here.  He will ask for a banana, and eat 3-6 tiny tiny bites of one.  Which is a start.  Until yesterday.  Yesterday he ate about half a banana, and normal-sized bites to boot.  And this morning, with breakfast, he ate an entire banana.

:cheer:

Too bad bananas are one of the few things I seriously cannot stand.  I love most any fruit *except* bananas.  Just my luck. 

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I think I am the one who is toilet trained here.

CJ has been in underwear, no diapers at all, for about six weeks. He sleeps in underwear (no accidents for at least a month now), he wears underwear to school, on the bus, out and about, everywhere.

He hardly ever has pee accidents but that is because I remind him to use the toilet every hour or two.  I tried, once again, to back off and not remind him yesterday morning, and he had his first pee accident in a week.  So I am back to reminding him.

He still has most of his bowel movements in his underwear.  He isn’t trying to hold it anymore, but that was I think because I was acting too frustrated with his accidents.  So I backed off getting upset and just act calm instead.  And once in a while he goes on the toilet (with us reminding and asking him to).  Mostly, he goes in his underwear.

Small favors - he has, for his whole life, almost chosen to have his bowel movements exclusively at home.  So I don’t worry too much about taking him out and him having an accident.  Too much, at least.  I do worry a little.

I think we are at a plateau.  I guess I can say he started wearing underwear full time at four.  Will he be toilet trained at four?  No clue.

In an interesting aside, I have been digitally sorting old pictures, and I came across my first attempt at toilet training CJ.  By the date stamps on the camera it was February 2006, when he was about 20 months old. I was so excited I took pictures every time I sat him on the toilet.  That was short lived.  I think I still have nightmares about how well that attempt went.  I think I lasted two weeks before I threw in the towel, that time.  Two and a half years and more attempts later than I can count, at least we’re in underwear.

Maybe I’ll start earnestly training Alexa next week.  Because I am a glutton for punishment. 

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Alexa has been going through a spell where she doesn’t sleep at night.  This has been a struggle for me to deal with without a nervous breakdown, but so far we are (barely) managing.  Even when we get her to sleep at a reasonable hour, she wakes up in the middle of the night and wants to play play play not go back to sleep.  After hours of this I basically give up trying to get her to go back to sleep and bemoan my own lost shuteye.

This morning, after trying from 230am until 430am to unsuccessfully convince her to go back to sleep, I gave up and we went downstairs for some quiet time.  At 530am I was falling asleep despite Alexa’s constant poking me and climbing me, so I made some coffee.

When I poured the coffee in a cup, Alexa started pointing at it and trying to stick her hand in it.

Um, no.  The last thing you need, my dear, is coffee.

I anticipate she will go back to sleep finally at about the same time CJ wakes up.  Heh.

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Before I had kids, I just knew that my children would be the polite, well-behaved ones.  Because they just would.  I am awesome, and I would be an awesome parent.  Of course.  And because of that, my children would be model little people when appropriate and never ever embarrass me with their behavior.

And then, well, I had kids.  You can stop laughing now. 

Today at taekwondo class, I had a new prospective student try it out who is not quite 3.  We usually have kids wait until they are at least 3, but his brother is also a student with me and he is close to 3, so we tried it.

And who behaved better and paid attention more in class?  The not quite three year old, or CJ.  You guess.  I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t CJ. 

Of all my pre-child-having expectations, this is the one that I am having the hardest time letting go of.  I can’t just will my children through some kind of mind meld to act appropriately at all times.  But really, I think I should be able to. 

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