A little of everything

Ahh… what’s been going on lately? Well, let’s see…

Braden is enjoying his new school. He comes home with at least two or three papers each day that promptly get clipped to the fridge. I think I’m going to have to invest in a file box to keep them all organized. He writes his name several times a day, and I think he’s getting a little better at it. Today, he drew a picture of me and wrote MOM on it. It will be fun to compare his papers at the end of the year to the ones he’s doing now. He has a little cold this week, which of course, he has passed on to Cameron (even though I make him wash his hands and try to keep him from touching the baby). It’s so hard for little babies to have a stuffy nose. I feel sorry for him. He wants to suck his paci, but it just doesn’t work if he can’t breathe through his nose. Braden had his last tennis class last Saturday. He’s excited about starting soccer soon. He has said several things recently that I wanted to write about, but I can’t seem to remember them at the moment… Oh, one’s coming back! He has been entertaining an imaginary little sister for the last week or so. Her name is Elizabeth. She’s 2 1/2. She has long blonde hair and brown eyes (because she’s a girl like Mommy, and Mommy has brown eyes). She likes to have animal crackers and water for a snack. She sleeps on the rug next to his bed, and we have to tell her goodnight and be careful not to step on her.

Cameron is doing great – growing like a weed, of course. He’s already busting out of his 6-9 month size clothes. I thought he might make it to 7 months before we had to move into the 9-12 month clothes, but I’m doubtful. Like I said above, he’s got a little bit of a runny nose right now, so he’s been a little fussy. He is such a patient baby, though. I get him up from his morning nap and put him directly into the car seat so we can go pick Braden up from school, and he never complains, even though he’s used to having his bottle first thing upon waking. He’s very easy-going. We started solids last week, and it’s going really well. So far, we’ve tried rice cereal, sweet potatoes, and pears. I’m introducing a new food (alternating vegetables and fruit) every four days at breakfast. He’s having two meals a day right now – usually breakfast and dinner. I am struggling with lunch due to having to leave to pick up Braden. I’m sure I’ll get it figured out eventually. I’m trying not to stress over it. It’s so cute when I wipe Cameron’s hands after he eats – he’s ticklish on his palms, so he always laughs. He is starting to sit up some. He still needs support, but I can let go for a few seconds before he topples over. He can roll onto his belly, but he still doesn’t do it during playtime. I guess he just doesn’t want to be on his belly.

David has been extremely busy at work the past few weeks. He is also trying to get ready to go to Russia for a mission trip. A small group from our church is going to meet with a missionary who has been there for a few years, and set up a partnership with a church there. Two of the people going have been there before. David is excited about it. Sometime in the last two years, Chick-fil-A had language learning CDs as their kids' meal prizes. I dug out the two or three in Braden’s CD box, and sure enough, we had one in Russian! So, David has been listening to it in his car and is learning how to say a lot of things. He said something to me last night that sounded like, “Bok Choy placebo.” I had no idea what it meant. I think I responded with, “Habla ingles, por favor.”

I have been doing a lot of digital scrapbooking lately. It’s fun. I get to do it on the computer (I like working on the computer). It makes me feel productive (as opposed to reading all my friends’ status updates on Facebook, which makes me feel very unproductive). It keeps my mind off of what ails me. I haven’t been feeling all that great lately. I have chronic idiopathic urticaria. Sounds fun, huh? Basically, I have hives (urticaria) that won’t go away (chronic), and they don't seem to have a specific cause (idiopathic). They started back at the end of July. I remember having a few itchy spots when we were in Branson, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. A couple of weeks later, I had red welts all over my torso. This has happened to me two other times in the past – off and on for six months or more during my first year of teaching (2000-2001), and for three months straight right before I got pregnant with Braden (2004) – both very stressful times in my life. I went to several doctors (at least two GPs, two dermatologists, and an allergist), and they couldn’t figure out any reason why I kept having hives. I was tested for all kinds of things including Lupus and other auto-immune disorders, and got shots of cortisone and adrenaline. Eventually, the hives went away, and I never knew for sure what caused them or what cured them. I haven’t been to the doctor this time because I doubt they will be able to help me and I don't really want to go through all the rigamarole again. I may try to see the allergist after David gets back from Russia if I'm still having problems by then. So, anyway… there’s that.

Here are my latest scrapbook pages (click on each to see a bigger view):