Visits Near and Far

This past week was full of visits near and far - some more exciting than others! It started out on Monday when we had to take Elise to the doctor to get her elbow looked at again. For the fourth time since the first time it happened, Elise got "nurse maid's elbow" (sort of a dislocation of the elbow). The last few times it has happened, we did the maneuver the doctor did in the hospital and set it back into place. But for whatever reason, this time it just did not go back, so we had to enlist help from the doctor. Our pediatrician suggested that we have a consultation with an orthopedic surgeon to make sure that she will not need surgery to fix this issue. Once it happens the first time, it does happen a lot more easily and more often, but now it's becoming a serious problem in that she is doing random things to pull it out of place herself. The idea that she would need surgery is absolutely terrifying, and hopefully it will not come to that. While at the pediatricians office, she mentioned that Ellie should not still be getting the eye "gunk" that she still gets (she seems to often get mucousy eyes - not pink eye, just mucous) and it seems like she may have blocked tear ducts and may need to get tubes in her eyes to alleviate the problem. So, we also got a referral for the optometrist too. Urgh. Our poor little baby! We'll try to schedule these appointments next month.




On Tuesday, I took her to her first ever appointment with an allergist. Even though I was dreading putting Ellie through the testing, I have been looking forward to this for two years now so that we can FINALLY have some answers as to what Ellie is definitively allergic to. It has been frustrating that she seems to always have a rash, hives, runny nose, eczema, etc and we are never completely sure what is causing it, so we are unsure what to avoid to keep it from happening again. For example, in the last few days at Bethany Beach, she developed this horrible rash/eczema on the backs of her legs. Even though she didn't really complain about it, it looked really horrible - the type of thing that strangers stare at and steer their children away from so that they won't contract whatever disease our child has. It was awful. But where did it come from - the suntan lotion? chlorine from the pool? did she eat something she's allergic to? It could have been any number of things and we never did figure it out - it just cleared up after several days and applications her prescription eczema cream.





Anyway, the allergist was probably the nicest man on the planet - and he was even better with Ellie than our pediatrician! He had her laughing and feeling comfortable within seconds. She did not even cry for the whole thing (and we were there for more than an hour) - I was so proud of her! They used a plastic tester thing to prick her back with 18 different common allergens, then we waited for 15 minutes to see the results. And the results were... negative. ALL OF THEM. Even the dairy one! So now, basically, I am more frustrated than ever. I swear I am not imagining that Elise is always randomly breaking into a rash or getting hives. I know for a fact that after she eats something that lists milk as an ingredient, she develops and rash and hives several hours later. I have seen this. Other people have seen this too. We are not all crazy! So, basically the allergist said that we will now do a blood test. And if the blood test comes back negative, we will do a "dairy challenge" (give her a big ol' glass of milk and wait to see if there is a reaction) in his office. It is possible that she has outgrown the allergy (she has not had dairy since 18 months) but he did say that usually children outgrow the dairy allergy at 1 year or 5 years. Who knows. Regardless of the dairy thing, it does not explain why Elise has an almost constant runny nose and rash. This test basically said she is allergic to nothing. He did say that it is possible that she just has extremely sensitive skin - but what does that mean? Again, there is nothing that can be done about that. So we are back to square one apparently.



Heidi, Riley, Heather, Tyler, Ellie and me on our college campus
Now, for the fun visit! On Thursday after we picked Elise up from Marty's parents house, we headed down to Fredericksburg, VA for a weekend visit with some friends from college. Our friend Heidi (and her 3 year old daughter Riley) hosted while Meredith, Ryan and their new baby Evan, were in from California for a wedding. It's a pretty lengthy trip (4-5 hours) and as you know Elise has been notoriously nightmarish in the car since birth, so we have never attempted the trip down there before now. She has gotten a lot better about being in the car, but still her tolerance for being the car seat is still fairly limited. So we thought that if we left around 7:30pm, she would sleep in the car most of the way and our problems would be solved. We did not anticipate that:


1) She would not fall asleep until after 9pm


2) We would hit no traffic whatsoever and make it down there in a smidgen less than 4 hours - arriving a little before 11pm


3) There would be so much excitement when we got there (dog, baby, new people) that she would see her two hour sleep in the car more as a nap and would be ready to go
Ellie, Evan, Riley and Tyler - probably the only time Evan cried the whole time so the girls were trying to comfort him



We put her down in the pack n' play and visited for a little while with Heidi, Meredith and Ryan, then headed to bed around 12:30. Elise was still wide awake, playing in the bed. We tried telling her it was bed time and ignoring her, but she was making lots of noise, banging around, standing up and whispering "Mommy, can I get up?" and "I want to play with the dog" that no one was getting any sleep. Finally at 1:30 am it became obvious that ignoring her wasn't working and she wasn't going to magically get tired and go to sleep, so we all got up and went for a walk around Heidi's neighborhood. Ellie had fun chasing after frogs and looking at the stars (which she doesn't see at home because we live in a big city and also because she is usually in bed before stars come out). After an hour of walking around, we got back to the house, read a book and FINALLY all got to sleep at around 3am. Luckily, she slept until about 9am, instead of her usual 6am!

Me and Ellie, Meredith T. and Evan, Heather and Tyler, Heidi and Riley

On Friday, another good friend from college, Heather, and her son Tyler (17 months) came up from Richmond, and Shoshana and her girls (Regan 3, Lauren 17 months) came up from Raleigh. It was so much fun (if not completely surreal) to watch all of our kids play together and to catch up with each other. Even with the crazy sleep situation the night before, Elise was in a pretty good mood and had fun running around with the other kids and despite of all the excitement even went down for a decent nap (after a lot of work on Daddy's part). She didn't even seem to bat an eye when I was holding baby Evan (it was the first time she's seen me hold a baby and not get jealous), which makes me feel more confident about her reaction to Juan in a few months.
Tyler, Ellie and Riley



Unfortunately, Shoshana had to head home, but the rest of us went over to Mary Washington's campus to reminisce about the good old college days and walk around. Elise had a blast playing in the fountain and pushing her baby in the stroller. It was bizarre to see our child playing in the same spots where I hung out with friends, "studied", and first met Marty! After the campus visit, we got frozen custard from local hot spot Carl's (yum!) and then went back to Heidi's to visit a little longer before Meredith, Ryan, Evan, Heather and Tyler all left.





Riley and Ellie boogie down
On Saturday, Ellie and Riley continued to play and have a blast together at the playground and at Heidi's house. If only Juan could come out a 3 year old girl, we would be set! Ellie was completely enamored by Riley - wanted to do everything she did and followed her around constantly, and Riley had an equally great time telling Ellie what to do! There was little to no arguing over toys or anything else, so it was pleasant for all of us. We'd originally planned to stay all day Saturday and head out Saturday night (so that she could sleep in the car) but after the disastrous staying up until 3am incident from Thursday, we decided to go ahead and get on the road in the afternoon and take our chances. She slept in the car for the first two hours or so (unfortunately the traffic was so terrible that only got us to DC - I'd forgotten how much I hate Northern Virginia traffic!) and for the next two hours she did really well. Then we stopped in Delaware for dinner and a break from the car - and Marty and Ellie ran around in the parking lot like maniacs for about 30 minutes to burn off some energy. Marty joined Ellie in the backseat for the last leg of the trip and did a wonderful job keeping her entertained and distracted.


Regan shares a necklace with Ellie


We used Sunday to recuperate from the busy week and have been enjoying the boring, trip-free week!