Happy Holidays!

I guess that it is too late for Merry Christmas and too early for Happy New Year. We just got home last night from our long week of traveling. It was not actually a whole week but whose counting?

On Tuesday Night at bedtime we left for OK to visit The Rowes. We celebrated Christmas Eve with them, and we left on Christmas morning after Santa came to drive 5 hrs. to have Christmas dinner with my side of the family. The day after Christmas we went to Springfield, MO with my mom and brother to visit my grandma (mom's mom), and we just got back last night from that trip. Makayla traveled much better this time than she has for past trips.

We have a BIG THANK YOU for the Tates for the tip on the portable DVD player in the car. It never occured to me that she would be old enough to appreciate that. We got her veggie tales and Little Einsteins. It turns that Makayla hates Veggie Tales and loves Little Einsteins. She screamed for about 20 mins before I changed the DVD back. I think that she just likes all of the music on Little Einsteins.

Overall Christmas travels went very well, and Makayla had a great time visiting her family.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

I got this cook book , Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, that has a ton of egg and dairy free cake and frosting recipes in it. I made the Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes this weekend. They were so good, and I am tempted to say that it may have been some of the best...No-THE BEST, red velvet cake that I have ever had. That is saying a lot because i LOVE red velvet cake.

I am going to make their basic chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting for Makayla's daycare party tomorrow. They are completely allergy friendly for her. We are still learning about these allergies through trial and error unfortunately. It is coming together slowly. I really look forward to our visit with the nutritionist next week, and I hope that she is able to give us some guidance. It is my assumption that she has plenty of experience working with food allergies since she works in the allergy clinic one day a week, and I hope that she will have some ideas for good substitutes for all of the foods that we are omiting from Makayla's diet to ensure that she still gets a balanced diet

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Thankful

This morning we are thankful for God's gift of ear tubes! Makayla woke up this morning with gunk seeping out of her right ear. This is the first time that she has had any drainage from her tubes, but we love drainage and ear tubes around here. Before the tubes we would have had an ear infection for sure today! Drainage is good by the way because it means the puss is draining out of her ear instead of staying in her ear causing an infection.

see a little bit of color

I posted this picture last week, but I love this effect with this picture. It really looks

Christmas-ee to me.

I also did this to another photo that looks great. Check it out in this post from March. Wow! That was a long time ago.

bundled up

It has been a little chilly down here recently. Makayla has a couple of jackets and a couple of coats. This is her heavy coat that she will probably be able to still wear next year. We did not plan that, but her coat is a little big. It fits well when she is standing, but it really rides up when we carry her. I know that it is supposed to be a little big, but it is probably too big. She likes to chew it too as you can see.

Do you feel lucky?

WE DON'T!

Makayla had her allergy appointment with Dr. Ruddell today. I really had hoped that something horrible had happened down in the lab, and we had somehow been given some other poor child's allergy test results. No such luck. Actually, we would have been quite lucky to have only had the 4 original allergies, but guess what! We were not lucky today. We have 3 more allergies to add to our list equaling a grand total of 7. You read that right. I said seven. Here is our updated list from highest severity.

• peanuts
• milk
• eggs
• soy
• cashews
• beef
• pork

Good thing that Makayla is a self proclaimed vegetarian, or we might have a situation on our hands.

We did manage to get some good news today. People can often test positive for a soy allergy when they have a severe peanut allergy which Makayla has. The allergist told us to try to introduce soy milk to test Makayla's tolerance to soy in hopes that it was a false positive due to the peanuts. We hope that it was, or we might have to use one of our super expensive epi-pens because I just gave her some soy milk. We definitely don't want to have to do that, but it works through jeans and all clothes just in case you were wondering. We have a couple of trainers to practice. I guess that it is best to be prepared. Now I have to prepare everyone else on the planet.

Mommy and me!

I have so few pics of Makayla and me. I guess that I never look nice enough when I am taking pics to have my picture made with her or maybe it is because I do take most of the pictures. I have tons pictures of Makayla and Nathan.

like this one

and this one where he is pretending to be asleep

and this one taken during story time

This has been a great source of frustration for Makayla. She told me that I needed to post a decent pic of the two of us. Here it is.

Mommy and me!

Black and White Week

Get ready for a week full of black and white pitcures. Maybe it's boring to some, but it is classic to others. I hope not to disappoint, but I personally like black and white for certain things.

'tis the season for Christmas shirts

We love Christmas shirts around here. We just can't get enough. Makayla got this one from her Aunt Connie. It is so cute it says "I'm on Santa's List".

Makayla is standing up from the floor on her own. She thinks that she is really cool because she can stand up wherever she wants. She is taking more steps now, but she still crawls quite abit. She will walk quite a bit at home, but she won't walk much at daycare. She would also eat meat at daycare, but she wouldn't touch the stuff at home. Kids...they are so unpredictable.

expressions change

Did you realize how quickly someone's facial expression can change? Here's a great example. Please excuse the dirty daycare cothes. She played hard in these clothes all day.

Having fun just rockin' on our rockin' thingy that we got from Carrie Reaves (my friend from work that also goes to our church).

Starting to get a little freaked out. Kind of wanting off the rockin' thingy.

Demanding to be removed from the rockin' thingy.

I LOVE SANTA!

and I love this onesie that Makayla got from the Stafford's. It is just so cute that she wanted to show it off to everyone on the planet.

She wanted to let everyone know that she has a polka dot bow. Maybe she'll put it on Jennifer's carrots. We haven't given Jennifer the carrots that she won yet because we don't want her to be tempted to eat them before Christmas. It takes a while for something pickled to become pickled.

It has been cold here!

This is a picture of Makayla getting ready to go outside to help her Dad while he attempted to put up Christmas lights with the help of cousin Daniel. We got some new lights this year because the lights that we had last year would not stay in the right position, so they were flipping up, down, and all over. They just did not look good. Well this year was not much better because the strands either didn't work or were falling apart, so they went back to Wal-Mart. In short we have no lights on our house this year and probably won't.

Our little Picasso

Makayla loves to color. I bet that Santa is bringing her some big baby crayons for Christmas. Just a hunch that I have because Santa and I are tight like that. She just couldn't wait for me to show everyone her creation from lunch at Chilis's today.

I found a tooth

I found a 5th tooth in Makayla's mouth this weekend. I have been looking for another one to come in for a while on the bottom. Well you guys know how she can get to laughing sometimes...When she was laughing at me this weekend I saw it. It is half way in on the TOP. I thought that she was supposed to get more bottom teeth first, so that is where I have been looking. I have no idea how long that tooth has been there, but I am assuming at least a month or so because it is really big. It is about half as big as her front 2 teeth that she has had for a couple of months.

Am I a bad mom? Would you have been checking out the top gums?

Sorry, I'm allergic

I haven't posted this pic before because it just looks very sad. Anyway, Here's the story. About 3 weeks ago (or maybe 4 or 5) Makayla had an allergic reaction to something (we still aren't sure what it was that day). She had the reaction about 7:30 PM, and her eyes and ears swelled up like Will Smith on Hitch. This pic was taken about 12 hours and 3 doses of Benadryl later. As you can see her eyes were still quite swollen, but her ears were back to normal. It has taken us this long to get her allergy test back. I certainly hope that the test results were wrong. I don't want her to be the kid at a birthday party sitting there in her cute little party hat watching her friends eat cake and ice cream while she drinks her little cup of rice milk. That just doesn't seem fair to me. I don't want her to have to go through her life checking food labels. We don't have food allergies in the family. Makayla's Aunt Melissa had some when she was younger that she outgrew, but Nathan and I have none. Nathan is the only person that I know with no seasonal allergies at all. Here is Makayla's list which will help you understand the birthday party scenario.

Severe

Peanuts

Milk

Moderate
Eggs

Soy

How sad for her. I went to Wal-Mart to see if I could find something for her to eat other than fruits and veggies, but I couldn't find anything. Not even the organic crackers that we buy for her are okay because they have milk, soy, and eggs in them. She has to drink rice milk because she is apparently allergic to milk and soy. I called Wild Oats (a huge natural foods store) in Little Rock to see if they had some products that would work for her. The guy on the phone was so kind and sympathetic. He said that they did not have a huge selection, but we would find more there than we would anywhere else. He even said that if I have trouble finding things that I could page him, and he would help me find things that she could eat.