My tummy is very happy

We started Colin back on dairy on Sunday, and he is one happy, happy boy. For lunch, he and Veronica requested Mac and Cheese — one of their favorite meals, and one they haven’t had for six weeks. They polished off the entire box. I wish I had thought to grab my camera to record the moment; Colin was very cute.

On Sunday afternoon, Colin, Veronica and I walked to Trader Joe’s to pick up some cheese and bananas. Colin saw the string cheese and danced for joy. I gave him a package, and he walked through the store clutching it to his chest (until he decided it was too heavy and threw it into the basket). 

On Monday, John gave them Goldfish crackers for snack. Colin announced, as he was chowing down, “My tummy is very happy!” 

Clearly, our boy has been missing his dairy products. And we haven’t even gotten to the ice cream (maybe this weekend) or the pizza (on Friday) yet. 

So far, going back on the dairy doesn’t seem to have made a difference. (Going off the dairy didn’t seem to make a huge difference either, after his initial problem cleared up.) We will continue to monitor his digestive health and comfort, but I do have to say that it’s quite liberating not having to watch everything he eats and to come up with creative (and high calorie) meals that don’t involve dairy. 

I have a new appreciation for the pain parents whose children have food allergies must face — not even factoring in the “my child might die if he or she eats the wrong thing” fear that so many people face. 

But for me, I hope, the no dairy chapter may be closed. And now we can go back to focusing on getting Colin to grow. Because that also is something he hasn’t done for the past six weeks. And that’s not good. 

Plague House

This has been a bad winter for illness in Chicago, and up until now, we have mostly been immune to it. Other than one set of colds early on, and Ethan’s Christmas illness, the kids have mainly stayed pretty healthy this year. 

Until last week. [Warning — if you have a delicate stomach you may not want to read on.]

It started on Thursday night, when Veronica walked in the door from Ethan’s swimming class and immediately told me her stomach hurt. I, being in the middle of cooking dinner, told her to go take off her boots and sit on the couch and I would be out in a few minutes. At the dinner table, she didn’t take a single bite (and it was pasta — and easy favorite), so I took her out to the couch and we snuggled while I rubbed her tummy.

She was happily chatting away on my lap, when suddenly … urp. She threw up all over herself (and me). “What was that?” was basically her response. “You threw up honey. That’s probably why your tummy hurt.” 

After getting her changed into her pjs, she started playing until bedtime (really, just a 15 minute gap there). She went to sleep just fine. For about 45 minutes. Then she threw up again. And again. And again. For the next 9.5 hours.  (We moved Colin into our bedroom so he could sleep.) 

Veronica’s sickbed style was this: thrash, thrash, thrash. “Mommy I going to throw up.” Sit up. Throw up into towel/cloth diaper (she wouldn’t have anything to do with a bucket). Pick up chatting where we left off. Until the stretch where she was getting sick every 15 minutes, she was just a cheerful little chatterbox. 

Next morning, her stomach was fine, but she had a sore throat and a bit of a fever. 

I felt queasy on Friday, so stayed home. The last thing I wanted was to get downtown and start getting sick. How on Earth would I get home?

Saturday morning, Ethan woke up and said he wasn’t feeling super good. He came down and ate breakfast as usual. Then he and Colin spent some time playing with Matchbox cars while I tried to get Veronica to take a nap (at her request). We gave up the nap when Colin started howling because Ethan put him in timeout for trying to eat the wheels off the Matchbox cars. (Really Colin? Do you have to destroy everything you touch?)

Suddenly Ethan was howling that he thought he was going to get sick. “Well then get into the bathroom and do it!” I’m such a caring Mom. 

So now I’ve got two sick kids and one totally wound up boy with zero empathy. And John was at the park registering Ethan for swimming. 

Ethan is the WORST sick person in the world. I am not exaggerating. The Worst. His illness mirrored Veronica’s, and while she stayed happy throughout for the most part, Ethan wailed. Constantly. At the top of his lungs. At the height of it, he was screaming, “Someone is trying to kill me. I think someone is trying to kill us all.” 

We were impressed that Colin seemed to have dodged the bullet. But we were impressed too soon. My mid afternoon, he was throwing up too. Apparently he was driving his truck along the side of the big bed in their room, when suddenly … urp. He didn’t really seem to miss a beat, and kept on driving. 

So Veronica is a chatty sick patient, Ethan thinks someone is trying to kill him and Colin barely takes note of it. Hmm … 

Colin didn’t want to use the towel method that Veronica preferred, so he got a bucket (less laundry for Mommy and Daddy that way). The problem was, when he was throwing up he would stick his head so far into the bucket that his face was very nearly in the mess. By 5:30, Colin had crawled into bed and covered himself up and told John he was ready to go to sleep for the night. 

He only got sick one more time, so he suffered the lightest hit. But he woke up at 10:00 and was thirsty and was VERY angry that I would only let him take a few sips. He got a few more at 10:15, and a few more at 10:45, at which point I gave in and figured that if he hadn’t gotten sick from the water at that point, he wouldn’t. So between 10:00 and 5:30 the next morning, he drank a water bottle and a half of water, plus a large sippy cup of juice. And he still woke up thirsty. 

Ethan made a full recovery the fastest, and was fine by Sunday afternoon. Both Colin and Veronica continue to have very little appetite (although last night Colin reversed that — thank goodness) and obviously aren’t fully recovered. I am completely wiped out. Between not feeling well myself, and caring for three sick kiddos (all night long) … 

And the laundry. The mountains of laundry. And our dryer broke in the middle of a load on Friday morning. (Fortunately, it is still under warranty, and Sears had an opening on their service schedule that afternoon, so we were back up and running after dinner.) I’m just now getting caught up. 

I hope this is the last plague of the season. Ugh.

All about Veronica

Veronica has enough personality to rule the world — and with it comes a long memory, a vivid imagination, a bucket full of empathy and a stubbornness that rivals my own. Oh my, we’re in trouble.

Veronica is very much a nurturer. She loves her babies, and she loves to Mommy Colin (and the rest of us) too. She and I were outside running recently (something I haven’t been able to do because I dislocated my femur a while back, and it’s taken a while to completely heal). Suddenly, mid-stride, she looked at me and said, “Mommy! You’re running. Your hip feels better?”

Several weeks ago, Veronica came up to Ethan and I and announced that she had “babies in her tummy.” “Babies?” I inquired. “How many babies?” “Three,” she promptly announced. Not long after that, Veronica started talking about her triplets: Aba, Iba and Una, who apparently sprang forth very far ahead of the curve developmentally. 

Aba, Iba and Una all play soccer (both indoor and outdoor). They also swim, and Una does yoga. They seem to spend a lot of time in school and, of course, already are potty trained. It’s very funny to hear Veronica sigh and say, “My kids …” and then tell us something they’ve done recently. Una appears to be her favorite, and is the most athletic. I hear more stories about Una than the other two. 

Most evenings, after dinner, Veronica gets dressed and goes to pick her kids up from school.

Veronica, ready to go pick her kids up from school.
Their school is somewhere along Irving Park Road.

She is becoming more of a fashionista every day, and has very definite ideas of what she wants to wear, always. I took her to Carters recently to buy her a couple of new dresses, since most of her favorites are getting rather small. Everything I picked out was studied and met with an “umm, no” until she spotted the dress she’s wearing in the picture above. She also selected a “Mommy’s little girl” t-shirt, because (she told me) that’s what she is. 

This is what I got when I asked if I could take
a picture of Veronica. Perfect pose. 

She also is very independent, and wants to do as much as
possible by herself. That is what makes her new rain boots
especially wonderful. Easy on and off. 

Despite being a dedicated follower of fashion, Veronica is easily the most naturally athletic of the kids, and continues to ask me when she can start playing soccer and taking yoga. She loves the Athleta clothing company catalog (her poses magazine), and can mimic nearly all of the yoga poses the models are doing without help. 

And finally, the stubbornness. Although many people have expressed their disbelief when I say that Veronica has a wicked temper, it is true. When she is unhappy, she gets very, very mad. 

Veronica responding to being put into time out.

And on an unrelated side note: We’re nearly through our month of dairy-free eating with Colin. We’ve really only had a couple of “I want cheese/the other yogurt” meltdowns, so in that respect it hasn’t been too bad. But I’m not sure dairy is the culprit behind Colin’s longer-term digestive problems. He is back to his old self, but that old self still has eczema, sometimes has very painful gas bubbles in his tummy and can easily get constipated. He also still is not really growing. 

So, we are not expecting to have problems when we reintroduce dairy, but we also may need to continue to explore whether some other intolerance is causing Colin problems. Of course, that just could be how his system operates. Who knows?

The many faces of … Colin

Blurry, half out of the frame. Yep, that’s a
typical Colin picture. He doesn’t hold
still long enough to get many good shots.

Two is an interesting age. Most of the time, it deserves its “Terrible Twos” moniker (times two, of course, in our house). But it’s also when those little personalities really start to blossom. So in between the tantrums and the hitting and the hair pulling and the drama, we also get some very sweet and funny moments. 

While Veronica is still the most similar to her big brother, Colin recently has been revealing some very Ethan-like traits:

He is all about reading cookbooks: “Read me Mediterranean Cooking Mommy!” Really … he loves his cookbooks. I even had to take my Tea Time cookbook away from him because he was loving it to death. Some days he’ll walk over to the cookbook shelf and ask for a specific volume, then plop down on the floor and start to “read.”

His Playdoh style is very much like Ethan’s was at this stage, although less well-developed because we haven’t really done Playdoh until yesterday. They used some in Sunday school, and their teacher said they both did very well with it. (Yes, I got to leave them alone in class this week until the very end, when Colin got bored and started to wander away.) So when we got home, I cooked up a big batch of dough and Ethan and I made some bright colors (love that gel food coloring, but my hands are a cartoon-like pink and red now). 

Much to my surprise, all three of them played with the stuff for almost an hour with minimal fighting. Then Ethan wandered off to other activities, and the twins continued to play for a good half an hour more. Veronica was all about making piles of different colors and then smooshing them with a play knife or the slotted spoon. Colin wanted to make “things.” Of course, that meant me making things, but that’s okay. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t think to grab the camera. 

Colin is totally into watching Wheels on the Bus videos on my computer (as is Veronica). They can sit for a good half hour watching, and know exactly which versions on Youtube that they are in the mood for.

Mom, stop buggins us. We’re watching Wheels.

Colin also continues to have a great sense of humor. I was taking some pictures of them recently, and in the middle of one shot, Veronica stopped to scratch her nose. I made an offhand comment about catching it on film, and Colin couldn’t stop laughing at the thought.

She picked her nose! Ha, ha, ha. 

“Big” sister

We often, in casual conversation, use “bigger” and “older” interchangeably when talking about kids. We’ll say, “Well, he can do that because he’s a big kid,” when what we really mean is that he’s older. 

Veronica is bigger than Colin. At some points, thanks to the timing of their separate growth spurts, it’s just by a little and not really noticeable. Other times the difference is quite apparent. She’s also more verbal (although he’s catching up quickly on that front), so it’s often easy to get caught in the trap of referring to her (or at least thinking of her) as the “big sister.” 

Looking up at an “umbrella” at the
Garfield Park Conservatory.
(It was a giant leaf, but they had fun
pretending otherwise.)

This is exacerbated by the fact that she think of herself as Colin’s big sister (or mommy — I’m really not sure some times). Right now, her mothering of Colin is cute, and he seems to really enjoy it. I think I’ve written before about how Colin will ask Veronica to read to him (Read to me Roni), and then will sit on her lap (sort of — they’re not that far apart in size) while she “reads” to him. 

Veronica, like most two-year-olds, is a little sponge. Not much happens near her that she doesn’t pick up on. She typically “participates” in Colin’s physical therapy sessions, so she is very aware of what he’s supposed to be working on. Very aware.

The other day, John came into the room where the two of them were playing, and found that Veronica had set up the pillows on the floor like Colin’s therapist sometimes does, and was putting Colin through a PT session. “Now step here Colin. Good. Now step here.”

It’s very cute, and as long as it doesn’t annoy him, it’s great. I see the day coming soon, however, where he is not going to want to be in the “little brother” role any longer. And that transition is not going to be so cute. 

Nervous tic

It’s been a very busy week here in Fiegel-land. Work has been crazy busy for me for the past couple of weeks (or longer, I can’t remember because it all blurs together), which doesn’t leave a lot of time or energy for home. 

We’ve had to restart the clock on the dairy-free month three times now because we keep discovering milk in places we didn’t expect it. I think, after a massive trip to Whole Foods on Tuesday, that we’ve got our dairy-free supplies down now and can continue past Day 2. But really, how could I forget that the milk chocolate in M&Ms is made with, well, milk? (We’ve now switched to using Skittles for potty-training rewards.)

So far, it doesn’t really seem to be making a difference. Colin still has episodes of pain and constipation, and was up most of the night on Tuesday because of gas pain. But then again, we haven’t been completely dairy free yet for more than a couple of days so who knows. 

Colin was at the ophthalmologist this afternoon to get his eyes checked out again. He’s been blinking a lot, like Ethan used to do before his allergies were diagnosed, but Colin didn’t test positive for any allergies. So his doctor wanted to make sure he didn’t have an underlying eye problem. So after getting his eyes dilated so the doctor could “take a look inside,” we learned that it’s just a benign nervous tick that probably is nothing. 

So we’re not supposed to acknowledge that he’s doing it or talk about it in front of him (the doctor even had an assistant take Colin out of the room before telling John his diagnosis), and it should go away in the next year. 

On top of all that, we’ve started to get more serious about potty training, including setting up a reward system (with the aforementioned Skittles) to encourage potty use. We did this after Veronica was getting very interested and had stayed completely dry one day and nearly so for two others. 

Unfortunately, this has backfired, and she now is having a wet diaper nearly every time we ask if she wants to use the potty. Colin is doing better with it though. 

I took three days off later this month, and was thinking about using those five days in a row at home to really make the “let’s get out of diapers” push. But now I’m second guessing that decision. We’ll see what happens next week. 

And that’s the latest fun from us. 

New Pics of Cute Kids

Okay, I admit that I’m biased, but I think my kids are very cute. I love taking pictures of them, and of going back through the pictures of them from the past to see how much they’ve changed and grown.

We’ve been getting out and about some this winter … to the Garfield Park Conservatory, to watch Ethan play soccer and just to go about the routine business of life. And here are a few pics I’ve taken recently of my cutie pies. 

Veronica’s sense of style:

Veronica continues to be the fashion girl. Here
she has claimed one of my silk scarves as her own.

Getting ready to head to school, Veronica
insisted on the tutu, tights, and light-up boots. 

Oh no, one of the dreaded self-portraits
with the cell phone camera. But at least
we’re finally getting Mom out from behind
the camera. I do exist.

Colin can be quite the snuggle bug.

Just giving Daddy a little snuggle at the dinner table. 

Brotherly love, before heading over to school.

And from our trip to a tropical paradise — the Garfield Park Conservatory — on one of our very cold winter days.

Look Mom, it’s a secret path!

Group shot! Quick, before Colin takes off running.