From the Mouthes of Babes...

N: (making up her own verses to "Be Careful Little Eyes" in the back seat of the car today)
"Oh be careful little toes when you tiptoe. Oh be careful little toes when you tiptoe. For the Father up above is working down in love so be careful little toes when you tiptoe!"

N: Beholdy comes! Riding on the clouds, shining like the sun, at the trumpet call. So, lift your voice. Hear and you'll believe. High on Zion's Hills I'll Va-Ca-tion!"

(For those who don't know, the actual lyrics are "Lift your voice, it's the Year of Jubilee. Out of Zion's Hill, salvation comes!")
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N: ("Reading" the model name of the truck pulled up beside us at a red light)
"S-I-L-V-E-R-A-D-O (pauses as if sounding it out to herself)....Car!"
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Tonight, Jason was holding Norah's hands and letting her climb up his legs to flip backwards. What was her sing-songy exclamation each time she performed this impressive feat?
N: "Ta-Da! I'm famous!"
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Norah ambushed Jason and I while we were cuddling and immediately demanded to be center of her daddy's attention. When her demands weren't met, she resorted to whipping out her first 5-syllable word (at least that we can recall)
N: "Daddy, I want you to snuggle with ME!"
J: (continues jokingly cuddling with mommy to make Norah jealous)
N: "Daddy, I want you to snuggle with me, but you are not cooperating."
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Not to be left out, here are some of my favorite "Eli-isms" of late:

"Ah duh"- Translation: "All Done". Spoken after each meal.

"Tuh-kuh-buh"- Translation: "Take a bath?" Spoken, without fail, the instant he's finished with his evening meal. This kid lives and breathes by his schedule.

"Bite"- No translation required. He doesn't mess around when food is involved and annunciates very precisely (especially on the "t" in bite)

"Goot" (Rhymes with "Foot")- Translation: "That bite you shared with me was out of this world!"

"Nigh Nigh"- Translation: "Please, just put me in my bed so I can go to sleep."

"Bye Bye" or "G'bah"- Translation: "See you later!"

"Cup-cuh"- Translation: "Cupcake". Also, "Cookie". Always said with an enthusiastic, expectant look in his eye.

No More Moldy Bread for Eli

Disclaimer: Gruesome photos to follow. There is a happy ending, but if you're squeamish, take a hike. (Just don't accuse me of posting without pictures again :)

We had the misfortune/fortune (dependent on whether your a glass half full or half empty kind of person) of discovering that Eli, like his father, is pretty allergic to Penicillin. (And no, he didn't get exposed to it by moldy bread, as the title implies. If we ever found any moldy bread growing up, my dad would always say, "No big deal, just a little penicillin", so that's just what I always think of when I hear the word)
At any rate, it all started with a little, rash on his torso. It really resembled ant bites, but since I couldn't' find any ants in his bed (he woke up with the rash), I decided to ask a pharmacist. (Couldn't get into the doctor's office that day, and didn't want to wait through 4 hours of urgent care like the last time). The pharmacist asked if E was taking any antibiotics, and after I fessed up to his being on day 9 (of 10, I should add) of Amoxicillin, he hypothesized that E was reacting to his meds. I wasn't worried. It didn't seem to be a big deal. He wasn't itching or running fever, and seemed to be normal, other than the rash, so I didn't sweat it.
The next day, it had spread a lot! I didn't feel as comfortable as I had before, so we went ahead and took him into Urgent Care. The doctor walked in the room, took one look at him, and declared that he had a "more convincing penicillin allergy reaction than some textbooks photos" he'd seen. He said there wasn't much we could do for him, other than Benadryl to control the itching (which still hadn't started).

The next few days, it got progressively worse, and was accompanied by a fever which responded well to Tylenol and Ibuprofen (it would go back to around 102 in between doses)
Around day 4, he started itching. The Benadryl helped some, but seemed to stop working a couple hours before I was allowed to give him more, so I'd do my best to distract him. (If he wasn't thinking about it, it seemed to bother him less than if I, say, put him in his bed and left him to sulk). We spent many a late night (2-4am) waiting out those Benadryl doses. Look at how thick those welts are around the leg hole of his diaper. Poor baby!

He was a real trooper. I know I couldn't have handled it as well as he did. He never really cried, except when he was really tired and unable to sleep for itching (between Benadryl doses)











Days 5-6 were especially bad around his eyes. He didn't even look like himself. Thankfully, he never lost his appetite.













Finally, Day 8 came...Eli discovered Norah's magic wand and....









Voila! No more rash! (That's just strawberry jam around his mouth) So, from now on, no more penicillin for the boy!

The One with the Regurgitated Raisin

For those of you who don't read picture-less posts, just walk on by. The fact of the matter is, I haven't been so great at photo documentation of late (unless you want to see the awesome full-body rash Eli has developed as an allergic reaction to his antibiotics), so if you want to wait around until the next time I feel like uploading pictures, I'll see you then. In the mean time, I did have one story I needed to record that should pretty well seal the deal that I wont be voted Mother of the Year, at least for 2009.

Last Monday afternoon I stopped into Old Navy and tried a couple of things on. Naturally, since I had both kids in tow, I used the "big daddy dressing room" to accommodate the shopping cart I was wheeling them in. While changing clothes, my cell phone rang and it was my newlywed sister, who lives out of town and who I greatly look forward to talking to, so I took the call, in spite of the lack of privacy. Meanwhile, Norah decided that she wanted to sit on the bench in the dressing room, as opposed to the cart. I complied (with the agreement that she wouldn't stray from the bench), in hopes of keeping her quiet long enough to have conversation with Amanda.

The next thing I know, Norah is off of the bench, asking me if she can eat a raisin she's discovered on the dressing room floor. I immediately give her my full attention and shriek "NO! Absolutely NOT!", resulting in a look of wide-eyed shock and bewilderment from my daughter that could only mean that she had already commenced consumption of said raisin. My fears were confirmed as she proceeded to spit the half-eaten, offending raisin back onto the dressing room floor next a couple of crushed goldfish crackers (also not ours), clearly in hopes that this would purge the wrong-doing. All I could think of was how many times I've watched kids spit things out of their mouths and onto the floor...and who was to say this was the first time THIS raisin had been regurgitated. Germs! Germs! How do you disinfect your child's mouth in situations such as these!? And seriously what was Norah thinking? She KNOWS better than to eat random trash on the floor, and at a public place with nasty, concrete floors where people drop their drawers, no less! Ok, I have to stop...I'm grossing myself out again. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.

It ate at me. All day long in the back of my mind I wondered what childhood disease we could look forward to contracting in the weeks to come thanks to the "second-hand raisin incident". Fast forward to dinner that night. I went out with my sister-in-law, Paige, and our good friend, Katy. During the course of our conversation, Katy mentions that she had been to Old Navy earlier that day and that she had tried on some clothes, and like me, had received a cell phone call. She then proceeded to tell me that her daughter was begging for a snack which she happily gave her to keep her at bay while she finished her call. I excitedly inturrupted her at this point, to ask which stall she had been in...
K: "The big one".
A: "And the snack? It wasn't, by chance raisins and gold fish crackers, was it? And did you happen to notice if she dropped any on the floor?"
K: (mildly amused by my apparent ESP): Ummm...yeah, actually, it was, and she did.

Granted, who knows how many people stepped on those raisins between Katy's daughter's dropping them, and Norah's decision to wolf them down, but I was still mildly relieved to know from whose hand they fell.

What are the odds that this happen in the first place AND then that we meet for dinner the same night AND happen to discuss it? Crazy. Still disgusting, but crazy, nonetheless. Moral of the story? Don't take calls in the dressing room.