Yes, my little girl is already 4 years old! Abigail's birthday was on Thursday. She absolutely loves the idea of birthdays and has been nearly counting down the days since her last one! And sure enough, she's already talking about how long till she's 5! LOL
Presents, balloons, cards, etc waiting for her in the morning!
Opening said presents
A funny pose!
A new scooter
Playing with balloons
Clement escaping from birthday excitement and paying a visit to the Book Shop (aka Daddy's office!).
Playing with another of her presents - a lovely paper doll house, meant to be an exact reproduction of the house of Anne of Green Gables.
Birthday cake! Abigail specifically requested a "Hello Kitty" cake, so I had to attempt one! Looking at her placemat (seen in above photo) I tried to copy that, but I think I could do with some lessons in cake decorating! lol
Blowing out the candles, with help from Benjamin!Then yesterday (day after her birthday) I took the 3 children on the train and we met my good friend Ruth and her 2 little ones, Jonathan & Lois. We had a lovely morning/afternoon at Runaround, which is an indoor soft play place. It's only for under 5s, so is a nice & safe place for little ones to get their energy out and play with numerous toys, including slides and a bouncy castle, and *lots* of riding toys! Leaving the mums to have a chat and cups of tea! :-D So we had lunch together there (there's also a cafe) and then the kids and I got the train back home.
Benjamin started feeling poorly last night - coughing, which then led to vomiting. I'm guessing it's the cold that Abigail seemed to come down with the day before her birthday. However, she seems to always find some energy at various points in the day. But Benjamin has been flat out with it today - not eating (he's gagging on foods) and sleeping a lot of the day, or just wanting to be held. He's got a temp of 102.8f (39C) just now and is drifting off to sleep for the 3rd or 4th time today. He's only eaten his cereal at breakfast and hasn't been able to cope with any food since- just trying to keep giving him fluids. And then to make matters worse, I slipped on a fleece cloth (on kitchen floor) *while* I was carrying Benjamin (who was asleep) and fell flat on my face on the floor on top of poor Benjamin! :( He seemed to be OK, though rather frightened. But I hit my face on the door jamb, and did something to my arm (between elbow and wrist) and it's hurting quite badly still. I don't think anything is broken, but maybe it's sprained in some way.
My big happy 7 month old! :-) He loves his baby walker and goes all round the house in it.
In the walker again!
Eating biscuits - yum yum!
Joiner (builder) in the making! :-D Wearing Benjamin's new yellow wellies and his hard hat.
Story time with daddy - something they all enjoy! Especially Clement when it's a book with animal sounds! We're beginning to think he's a parrot - the only way to explain how he copies complicated sounds after we tell him something! Last week we were waiting in the car and I was holding Clement when a cat walked past the car window. I pointed it out to him saying "Kitty-cat says miaow" and he responded with "kie-kaa" several times. And then whenever I would just saw miaow, he'd say "kie-kaa"! And he also says "moo" and "baaa" at times when we're talking about cows and sheep! And what's really sweet is when he says "lov-ya" or, more commonly, "lov-ya dadda" and looks at his daddy with a big smile! :-D He also attempts to repeat all sorts of words, some which really catch us by surprise, like digger. I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of too. It's just really neat to watch the way his speaking develops - he certainly wants to talk!
Benjamin taking his eczema treatment into his own hands! LOL Spreading Eucerin cream on his face! We've had a few nasty flare ups lately. With one I ended up (being naughty) and using some of Clement's anti-fungal cream on Benjamin's skin, as I thought it looked rather like a fungal infection. It cleared up very nicely - redness went away very quickly. But unfortunately his skin was very dry and he got rather itchy not very many days later. So then I ended up putting some Eumovate (moderate potency steroid) on him earlier this week, because once he gets to scratching (and chewing his fingers/wrists/hands) there's just no stopping him, and it results in both him & me getting stressed, and then that just makes him even worse! I only put the Eumovate on him about 3 times and then back to his manuka honey cream, and his skin was looking really nice. But his hands/wrists are quite bad again just now. I don't know how to break his recently begun habit of chewing his hands! It is very damaging to his skin, and they're just covered in sores. :-( But otherwise, his legs/feet are OK at the moment - it's really limited to his hands and the odd patch on his neck and arms.
Doesn't he look fat?! LOL But poor Clement has been having skin issues too - his face is quite sensitive to fabrics. He'll go super red on his cheeks if he's held next to me while I'm wearing a wool coat. Or if he comes in contact with something that's washed in detergent/fabric softener - like a pillow case that I pulled out the other day, which hadn't been used since we went over to no fabric softener or detergent! And also having issues with "nappy rash", though I'm starting to think he might be getting eczema there, possibly from the stitching on some of his cloth nappies! So I keep doing "testing" to try and determine that brings him out with the rash, since it usually goes away when he's in disposables. But he's been wearing cloth nappies since birth without problems - so it seems he's becoming more and more allergic/sensitive to things that were previously ok.Well, I think all my children are asleep now, so I better get the dishes and other chores done before having a shower. I feel like I've been sitting on the couch most of the day with Benjamin being poorly, so the house is rather upside down!
9 comments:
Sorry you've been having a rough time with Benjamin being ill. :( And I hope you're okay after slipping and falling. That would be rather scary esp. since you were carrying someone!
Abigail is SO grown up! And her hair is *beautiful*. I love the color of it too! Make sure you tell her that I'm sending her some birthday presents with Nat. :)
Wow, I can't believe Clement is talking so much!!! He is a genius!
Love you! xxxxxx
Happy Birthday to Abigail! Hard to believe she's 4 years already indeed!
I hadn't realized Rebecca's birthday was the day before Abigail's!
Just a quick thought on the diaper rash you mentioned. He recently had thrush didn't he? My midwife told me when Cameron had it, that I had to make sure I washed his cloth diapers really well in very hot water b/c they can reinfect that area. If you hang dry them it's even more likely that they are carrying the yeast still. That may be partly why the rash is better with disposables...hopefully it gets figured out soon! :)
Hayley: thanks for the comment and tip regarding rashes. :) I usually always wash the nappies in a hot (60 C degree) wash, as well as at least 20 minutes in the tumble dryer. But since the rash was coming back with the nappies he was wearing, I decided to take our stash of Cotton Tots (shaped cotton nappies), most of which hadn't been used for a couple of months (so didn't have anything lingering in them), but just to be sure I then *boil* washed them all (95 C degrees) and blasted them in the tumble dryer for 1.5 hours. And yet the rash still appeared, after about 12 hours in cloth! But I'm wondering if it's something in the seam where the booster is sewn on, or possibly the elastic in the legs. So after a good 2 weeks in disposables, if nothing comes back, then I hope to try some different cloth nappies which don't have a seam just below the waist. But it seems that he has a "wavy" area of redness which there is still a shadow of, even when the rash isn't here - it's about 1 inch below his lower waist line. So seems a bit odd to me, and very possibly a bit dry skin/eczema. He's been a full week in disposables just now, but I was worried this morning if the redness was increasing a bit. So not really sure what will sort him out! It might just be that he has very sensitive skin - today his poor cheeks are going super red from lying on my pillow, which he's slept on for months without major problems - and the pillow case hasn't been washed in anything different to before! So it's a bit of a mystery to me!
I know the feeling Rach about sensitive skin! I'm almost at my wits end with Owen. I wonder if my Owen starts to get more red when I haven't washed the pillowcases or sheets in a weeks time (I don't usually do it that often, everyother week or three weeks) but I wonder because he ends up slobberying (I know that isn't a word) all over his sheet in his bed, that maybe I should change his very often? I've never seen soo bad eczema on my little Owen...it really is dreadful! Maybe he is allergic to his formula, and yet how can that be when he was having eczema starting at 6 weeks of age!! Fabric softener is banned in all forms here, because I know for sure that it affects Owen badly! Is Clement allergic to dome fasteners? My mom had issues with those with my brother Ben. Any thoughts on finding a product to wash clothes in that will make them clean but is super sensitive to skin? I use fairy because it is the only one that doesn't make things worse I used Persil before but my did that ever cause outbreaks around here! I'm beginning to think it may be a combination of things. Yikes what a long book I'm writing! Sorry! And I do hope you guys start feeling better asap! xx
Evelyn: Thanks for your comment. I certainly know what you're going through, though I never had a baby as young as Owen with severe eczema. Benjamin was about 18 months before his started, and although Clement has had it since he was only a few weeks old, it's not yet been severe, apart from the problems in his nappy area. So far his face calms down once the offending fabrics are away from him, so it's not yet got too sore.
As for washing bedding, it's actually quite important to wash them frequently - at least once a week. It's possible he's allergic to dust/dust mites (which I think Benjamin is) and I find it important to keep his bedroom as free of dust as possible and change his bedding (always washing them in a hot 60 degree wash) every week. Certainly I think he was allergic to old carpets with a lot of dust in them, though the eczema hasn't magically disappeared with moving to a house with solid floors - not yet anyway!
But detergents can certainly play a major role in eczema. The confusing thing is that what some people say is fantastic for their children actually makes mine really bad! So it really can be a trial & error thing till you've worked out what is best. As for brands of detergent, we didn't get on with Fairy (maybe because it's scented?) but Surcare was the best we found. However, once I started using soap flakes, then going back to Surcare to try and "strip wash" Benjamin's nappies made him get patches of eczema on his bottom! So I think even that isn't perfect (for us anyway), though it was the best I could buy of branded detergents. At the moment I use my own mix, which is:
2 cups of soap flakes (you can buy Granny's Soap Flakes in Tesco)
1 cup of soda crystals (a green bag, also bought in Tesco)
1 cup of bicarbonate of soda
1 cup of Borax Substitute (both the bicarbonate of soda & Borax stuff I've found in boxes at "old fashioned" chemist/hardware stores).
I mix all the stuff up in a tub and then use 2 tablespoons for each load of laundry. I found (at least in our area, with soft water) that it was cleaning the stuff better than non-bio detergents. As long as I wasn't overfiling the washing machine. I don't know what kind of water you have down in Perth, so wouldn't know how it would work for you. I also find I have to keep the detergent drawer on the washing machine clean, as it tends to get yucky more quickly with the soap flakes, and occasionally they've stuck together and made a bit of water leak out! But I do think stopping all detergents has helped Benjamin's eczema a lot. He hardly has any on his legs/feet anymore - it's basically the hands and arms we're struggling with. But some areas have almost totally cleared up since I stopped using all nasty cleaners. We try to not use anything with SLS or non-ionic surfactants (which basically all household cleaners and dusting stuff has). I've boiled soap flakes with water, bicarbonate of soda, and tea tree oil and made a "gel" which I then dilute in warm water for all my household cleaning/mopping. And I think it has helped to use the pure soap to wash all the household surfaces with. It was a daunting idea at first to think of switching to natural stuff, but over a period of months it's happened and just took time.
We use natural shampoo & conditioners for all of us (so the bath tub isn't getting contaminated with SLS stuff). We've been using a range of stuff from Faith in Nature (with rosemary) and although the first few times using it we weren't sure how good it cleaned, your hair soon adjusts to not using stripping things like SLS and the natural oils will balance out! :-) And certainly natural things for the children who have eczema. I've used "Horns and Halos" (do excuse the name), but it's a natural shampoo that one can get cheaply from Tesco/Asda - we've used the orange scented one for Benjamin since he was young and it smells nice, cleans well, and is tear-free. Just use it the same as Johnson & Johnsons (which is really nasty stuff for eczema, btw!).
So I've probably given you too much information (Blogger thinks 740 odd words is too long for a comment, so I've had to split it into 2 comments!) - sorry! but I'm always thinking about eczema and any triggers/factors, as it confronts me *all* day long! So if you ever want anyone to talk to about it, just let me know! I find it's good/encouraging just to know there are other mamas out there who are going through the same thing! :)
Hey Rachel,
Abigail's dress is sooo cute ...glad it still fits her ...I can hardly believe how well it has lasted with wearing...I had no idea the smocking would..:)))take care love Marilyn
Hi Marilyn! Lovely to see you could get back on my blog! Yes, the dress really is fantastic, and has worn very well indeed! It's great how she's been able to wear it for so long. She had told me she wanted to wear a pretty dress on her birthday and she picked that one! :-) You really are very talented indeed! Lots of love & hope you're well! xx
Post a Comment