Ellie's 2nd Birthday!

(By JPC)

Yesterday was an exciting day in our household - Ellie turned 2! It is hard to believe that she is 2 already (wasn't she just born a few days ago?!?!). Although she certainly has her moments, whoever popularized the phrase "terrible twos" clearly didn't have this 2 year old. She is an absolute delight and so incredibly much fun at this age.

We woke her up in the morning by singing "Happy Birthday", which she wasn't so crazy about at 6:15 am. She obviously somewhat understood the importance of the day becuase she insisted on wearing her sunglasses into school. When I dropped her off, they made a big fuss and she even got a gift from one of her teachers. I returned later in the day to host her birthday party. The smile on her face made me so glad that I had stayed up the night before making cupcakes (even though I just wanted to go to sleep after our travels home from Florida!). She was so proud to show everyone the cupcakes we had made!

Ellie with her just-frosted cupcakes for school at 6:30 am. After her oatmeal, she got a little scoop of icing for breakfast, too. Hey, it's only once a year!

Ellie sharing her birthday treats (cupcakes and juice) with her friends at school.

The birthday girl and her pals

Opening some birthday gifts at home. We made the mistake of letting her open a toy first so that she then wasn't interested in opening anything else for a while!

Ellie's birthday party is this weekend at our house. We'll try to get pictures up as soon as we can afterwards. We also have lots of other pictures to post from our Florida trip last weekend and other happenings for our family. We've been quite the busy bunch!

Allergy update

(By JPC)

Today I took Ellie to a new allergist. It wasn't because our previous allergist was terrible, but he was much more focused on the diagnostic aspect without paying any attention to the issue of helping the upset parent figure out how to manage these allergies. (Actually the short story is that he told me that Ellie was allergic to egg and dairy and then gave me a brochure for an on-line group for parents with food allergies - appropriate but not quite enough for the mother of a then 18 month old.)

The good news is that I absolutely loved the new allergist and more appropriately, I trusted him and felt heard by him. He asked me a lot of questions about Ellie's medical and allergy history, but also questions about what kinds of things she's eating now, what dairy and egg alternatives we've tried, etc. And most importantly for me, he started off our appointment by telling me that Ellie will most likely grow out of both allergies by the time she is 5 or 6! It is not a guarantee and no one can predict which kids will outgrow them and which won't, but the statistics of food allergies are on our side. Our previous allergist had made it seem much more dire so I felt immediate relief.

Today we spent 30 minutes with the allergist in his office just talking and outlining a plan of action. The short version is this....

- Ellie had her blood drawn there today and they will measure the antigens in her blood to dairy and egg. This will tell us exactly how allergic she is to these things. This is important for Ellie because although she develops hives when she eats any dairy product, the skin test did not show that she was allergic to dairy earlier this year. We'll get those results in 2 weeks.

- In 6-8 months we'll go back and measure them again in hopes that the antigens will decrease, meaning that her allergy to that product is decreasing as she gets older. She'll then have this done every 6 months.

- Once they have decreased a certain amount, we will actually challenge her by feeding her one of those items and watching for a reaction. This will be done in the doctor's office since her reactions in the past have been pretty bad.

This is at least my understanding of the plan. He didn't know how long this would all take since there's no guarantee that her allergies will resolve. At this point, we will plan to see him every 6 months until that happens. He also did an exam today and told me that her skin and eczema look terrific and that we are doing a great job taking care of that. Yay!

We're of course really hoping that she will be one of the kids to outgrow her allergies, but if not, at least we've found a good partner to manage this with. Yes, we will be disappointed and yes, it will make some things harder for us and harder for Ellie, but I'm optimistic today that this is something that can be managed. We'll update everyone once we get the test results.

Here's a photo of Ellie eating one of her new favorite snacks - chips and salsa! Desperate to find foods that she can eat AND will like, we will try anything, even foods that most toddlers don't like. Tonight we sat on the couch, watching Sesame Street, and she ate a huge bowl of salted lima beans like they were popcorn!