Eggs

So, now that we have had to monitor all of Carissa's food since she was about 1 1/2 years old for her allergies to eggs and walnuts we hopefully have good news. Since the beg. we were told by the doctor that a lot of kids will out grow the egg allergy by the time they are 5 years old, so as her birthday got close I started counting the days and hoping. It is just so sad to tell your child that they can't have cake at their friends birthdays or other similar events. We tried to still make things nice for her, but it wasn't the same as actually getting to eat what everyone else was eating. So, this past weekend we decided to start experimenting. We rubbed egg on her skin and nothing happened. Then we let her eat pancakes made with eggs, and she was fine. Since then she has tried a doughnut, a toaster strudel, a Twinkie, ice cream at Applebee's, and I made her birthday cake with eggs this time. So far she hasn't had any reactions, and she is so excited to get to try all the new foods. She now knows that she doesn't like toaster strudels or Twinkies, but at least this way it is her own preference. We still have to watch out for walnuts, but that is a lot easier than eggs. And for now I'm still want to wait a little while before telling her school that eggs are okay.

Five

It has been five years since Carissa was born. It seems to have gone by so fast yet I know that there have been days where time just couldn't go fast enough. Carissa has been a wonderful person to have in my life and I'm sure that she will continue to be. She has pushed me to learn new things and to think differently about things. By the time she was about 28 hours old she had me feeling like a complete failure at being her mom. (I think hormones may have contributed to that as well.) But, from there things got a little better and within a few days I knew that Carissa knew what she needed even if it didn't fit with what I had learned about babies previously or what any doctor said. Then things got a lot better.It has been a bit of a bumpy road, but things keep going and overall still get better. Carissa is very bright and loves learning new things. She is also very social and more outgoing than I have ever been. She is a great big sister and looks out for her brother. Also she likes to try to reason her way to whatever it is that she wants, which I rather enjoy listening to and sometimes she makes more sense than we do. It has been a great adventure being Carissa's mom and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I am both sad and excited to think that she will be starting kindergarten soon, my baby is just getting so big.

Dinosaurs

Last Friday, January 16th Carissa, Gabe, my parents, Josh, Alyssa, and I all went to see Walking with Dinosaurs Live. It was a lot of fun and the kids both really liked it. I couldn't take pictures during the show, because they said that flash photography might upset the dinosaurs. But, it was definitely neat to see dinosaurs that were life sized and moved. Gabriel was disappointed though that he couldn't actually walk with the dinosaurs, so the name of the show is a little misleading to a 3 year old.

Too Bad

Today, I was helping the kids clean up their play room this morning. And when we were almost finished cleaning Carissa was holding a Barbie in her hands and getting it dressed to put it away when she said, "Mom, it is too bad that you had kids." Now, that completely threw me and anymore half the time when she says Mom she is just playing pretend and not even talking to me, so I asked her if she was talking to me. And she said, "yes, it is too bad that you had kids." At this point I was totally confused and wondering where that had come from. So I asked her why she thought that it was too bad that I had kids. Her answer was, "Because you have to feed them and take care of them and stuff." I don't remember exactly what we said after that but pretty quickly she was off on another subject. And after having all the rest of the day to think about it I think that maybe she came to that because early on when we started cleaning she was getting distracted a lot and I had told her that if she wanted me to help then she needed to keep cleaning, because I didn't want to spend all day cleaning up their toys.

Home Show

This last weekend was the home show at the expo center here, and I worked with my family there on Sat. and Sun. But, since the kids and I had free time on Friday afternoon the three of us went to the home show together to visit and walk around and look at everything. We spent a couple of hours there and the kids overall did really well. Gabe started to have a couple of issue right before we left, but nothing too bad. They both had a lot of fun at Grandpa's mini casino playing the slots at the home show. (It isn't actually a casino, my dad sells refurbished slot machines for in home use-game/rec rooms usually.) And Carissa and Gabe have grown up playing with the machines. Also they had an area for kids with a bunch of big Lego's and Carissa and Gabe built a tower about twice their height by standing on a chair and reaching as high as they could. By the way, Gabe did his own hair that morning in a spiky up do and when it dried about half of it went flat, the other part stayed up all day.

Snow, and Dress Up

Christmas evening and night we got a lot of snow. It wasn't very nice to drive home in that night, but we made it and then we got to spend the next day shoveling before we could go anywhere. The kids got to play in the snow while Ben and I shoveled.

Then the next day, the kids were playing really well together while we were getting ready for the day. Then Gabe came in to say hi and show off his outfit. We found out that Carissa used her new dress up set that she got for Christmas to dress up Gabe as a singer. It was so funny and cute I just had to take a couple of pictures. I'm sure he will love it when he grows up.

Christmas morning

Christmas morning the kids got their gifts from Santa, the charity, and Ben and I. They got a new table and chairs and the table doubles as a dry erase board, so they also got markers and an eraser for the table and then some new painting stuff from Santa. And it looks like this year I did a good job picking presents for the kids, because Carissa really liked her cruise ship and Gabe really liked his pirate ship, and I got really great deals on both of them when I bought them. They got too many presents for me to even remember them all right now, but Gabe got another train set which will connect to the one he got from my grandparents and a few cars from the movie Cars. Carissa got an Ariel doll and mermaid bath toys to go with it. They also got a big set of play food and animals along with some new clothes and snow boots.