sienna had her 15-month well-visit today.  the waiting room at our doctor’s office was all dressed up for halloween.   i guess sienna didn’t like it because she redecorated.  she moved some of the pumpkin cutouts and removed one of them altogether.  and then once she got into the exam room, she started rearranging stuff in there, too.

anyway, here are sienna’s stats:

• weight: 19 pounds 7 ounces (6 %ile)
• length: 30.25 inches (43 %ile)
• head circumference: 45.4 cm (35 %ile)

our pediatrician used to be an allergist, so he was really interested in all of sienna’s allergies.  he talked mama’s ear off for 45 mins about allergy tests, epi pens, and sienna’s elimination diet.  after that, the nurse came in with the immunization tray.  sienna protested “no no no!” but the nurse didn’t listen.  she got 2 shots.  compared to all of the visits she’s had with her specialists lately, this one was very uneventful.

mommy promised that if i took a nap today, we could make apple cake when i woke up.  so the first thing i said when i woke up was “mommy?  we make apple cake now?”  so we got to work.

we weren’t making a healthy wheat-free egg-free version.  we were making a full-sugar full-fat sour cream apple coffee cake that would be full of deliciousness (and allergens).  after we had poured the cake batter into the pan, i went off with daddy to help him with something upstairs.  mommy turned her back to the counter to get some ingredients for the crumb topping, and when she turned back, sienna was standing on my step stool.  she had dipped her fingers into the raw cake batter and was trying to shove her entire hand into her mouth.

mommy tried hard not to laugh, but she couldn’t help herself.  she wanted to stop to take a photo, but given sienna’s confirmed allergy to egg (and positive blood test for wheat) — both of which were in the cake batter — there was no time to waste.

sienna’s face and hands turned red and broke out into hives immediately upon contact.  she started scratching her neck and chest.  (the photo was taken just seconds after mommy wiped the cake batter off of sienna’s face.)  mommy thinks it was the raw egg in the batter than caused such an immediate reaction.  daddy went out on a benadryl run, and mommy stood by with the epi pen.

by the time daddy came home with the benadryl, the hives had spread to sienna’s torso.  mommy gave her 1/2 of the doctor’s recommended dosage, and that did the trick.  no epi pen needed.  darn.  i mean, whew!

doctors always say that benadryl can make a kid either sleepy or hyper, so we weren’t sure how it would affect sienna.  well, it knocked her out.  cold.  her bedtime routine was much quicker and earlier than usual.  i hope mommy doesn’t get any ideas about “off-label” benadryl usage 😉

matthew and i went to the palo alto junior museum and zoo (“the zoo”) today.  it was his first time there, so i showed him around.  (sienna was sleeping in the car.)  we did a quick run through the museum, spent a few minutes looking at bugs, and then hit the zoo.  i showed matthew all the animals that i’ve seen so many times before.  i was especially excited to show him the rabbits.  matthew noticed that the big snake had shed his skin.  that was cool.  and there was a new animal at the zoo — a giant turtle!  he was being fed while we were there, so we watched him eat bok choy and other vegetables.  and then we saw some baby turtles near the pond where the ducks hang out.  (do you see them?  matthew is pointing at them.)

after making a couple of rounds through the zoo, we went back into the museum.  i was a lot more interested in the solar power machines this time than i ever have been in the past.  i don’t really understand it yet, but it’s fun to make the fan, buzzer, and lights turn on 🙂

i also spent  a long time with the butterfly exhibit.  when sienna finally woke up, i taught her how to open all the drawers and doors on the butterfly display cabinet.  i think she liked opening them more than looking at what was inside.  after that, i made everyone sit down on a bench to watch me climb the giant spider (rope) web.  i showed everyone to their seat, and i told them “i don’t wan’t you to talk.  watch me.”  they did.

it was fun to show matthew around some place for once.  usually, he is the expert on everywhere we go  and i just follow him around!  we had so much fun at the junior museum and zoo that we didn’t even have time to go to the nearly playground afterwards.  but we got to feed froggy (donation bin) on the way out, and that’s always one of my favorite things to do at the zoo 🙂

things she likes:

• saying “no”.  that is her favorite thing in the whole world.  “no no no!”  she says that ALL THE TIME.
• rolling around.  she rolls (like a log roll) from one end of the room to the other.  that’s her version of a temper tantrum.
• dancing.  she likes to dance, and she actually has rhythm, unlike me.
• reading.  right now, she just looks at the pictures, but she really likes to do that.
• going down the stairs on her butt.  she scoots on her bottom instead of sliding down on her tummy like she is supposed to.  i always try to show her the right way, but she doesn’t always follow my example.
• amusement park rides.  she loved the disneyland rides that take you on an adventure through changing surroundings.  she’s not as into the ones that just go around and around in a circle.  although, she does love the carousel when the horse goes up and down!
• dairy products.  daddy accidentally fed her some cow’s milk, so she has been eating dairy for the past week (and doing okay).  she loves yogurt and cheese.
• being fickle.  sometimes, in the middle of a meal, she’ll decide that she doesn’t want to eat anymore.  she’ll thrash around like a wild shark and/or spit out her food and throw it.  and then she’ll sign that she wants to eat.  mama and dada can’t always figure out what she wants, so she just goes hungry.  that’s fine, except for when she wakes up in the middle of the night, staaarving.

things she doesn’t like:

• napping in her crib.  still.  she sleeps so well in her crib at nighttime.  but during the day, she doesn’t like to nap in her crib.  she’ll nap anywhere else (even in the middle of the floor), but not in her crib.

yesterday when mommy told me that we were gonna go to gilroy gardens today, i asked her “with matthew?” but no, not matthew — not any of my usual gilroy gardens crew. cousin zoey! all the other times that i’ve been to gilroy gardens, i’ve met up with my friends around 10am and left in the early afternoon when my friends take their afternoon naps. but like me and sienna, cousin zoey has quon blood in her. that means that we are night owls. we like to sleep in late. and we don’t like to nap.

so today was different.  we arrived just before noon and stayed until around 4:30pm.  i was really into going on rides.  ride after ride after ride.  it’s good thing that there were hardly any lines, so a lot of the ride operators let us stay on and ride again and again.  i got so used to it that i was disappointed when i had to get off after only one time.  we hit most of the usual rides — some of them more than once: artichoke dip, apple and worm, rainbow gardens (bumper boats), the little kid cars that drive in a circle, strawberry ride, goldfish, and of course, the train.  but instead of driving our usual 1920′s cars, we drove the 1950′s models this time.  the 1950′s cars are 2-seaters — we chose those so that sienna could drive too.  (bad idea.  you think i’m a bad driver?  she’s way worse.)  i also went on the tubs of fun (spinning ride) for the first time.  i went by myself on that one.  zoey and i really wanted to go on the banana split ride, but mommy said that we had to be as tall as the red line on the post (48″).  i stood next to the post and exclaimed “almost!”  just 11 inches to go.

surprisingly, sienna wasn’t into all the rides like she was at disneyland.  she did LOVE the carousel though.  she sat on a horse that went up and down, and she was laughing the whole time and shaking the pole as if trying to make it go faster.

since it’s almost halloween, gilroy gardens is all dressed up for “halloween scary boo”, just like last year.  we didn’t do the scavenger hunt, but we did take a whirl through the hay maze.  mommy and i beat daddy and sienna to the exit

we had a fun time with cousin zoey at gilroy gardens today.  it was especially nice we got to ride, like, a million rides since the lines were so short.  i wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that we started our day right around lunch time and that we stayed later than we usually do.  hmm.  next time i want to try having an early lunch/brunch somewhere outside of the park, then go to gilroy gardens and spend 4+ straight hours going on all the rides.  that will make mommy and daddy happy because they’re always complaining about how awful the food is there.  i just don’t know any non-quons who can hang on my messed-up schedule.

today was the last day of my current soccer session.  thank goodness, because i play soccer in the evenings, and it has been getting dark and cold very early these days.  tonight, one of the exercises we did was running through an obstacle course.  that was pretty fun.  but then we had to do it while dribbling a soccer ball.  that’s a lot to ask of 2 and 3 years olds, don’t you think?

i really like soccer, but i’ll probably wait until next year to start playing again. i would think that there would be a lot of rainouts in the fall and winter. it’s a good thing i still have my indoor gym membership so i can get my exercise during the cold and rainy months 🙂

sienna has food allergies.  maybe.  it depends on whether you believe the results of her blood test or the skin test.  and even if she doesn’t have a true allergy, it is possible that her eczema is triggered by certain foods.  so for the past month, sienna has been on an elimination diet.  it was confusing for me because mommy and daddy used to always tell me to share things with sienna.  then all of a sudden, i wasn’t allowed to share any food with her at all.  not even cheerios.  mama explained to me that some foods make sienna itchy.  okay, i get that.

here are the details of the first 4 weeks of her elimination diet.  if you don’t care about the details, you can skip down to the results summary.

week 1:  no eggs, wheat, or peanuts.  those are the foods that she is allergic to (according to the blood test).  also, no oats.  mommy just wanted to make it more difficult to find anything for sienna to eat.  just kidding.  apparently, oats are a common eczema trigger.  mommy had a hard time baking snacks for us without wheat and eggs, but she experimented with substitutes.  she wasn’t thrilled with the results, but sienna and i gobbled up everything that she made.  but guess what.  sienna’s eczema flared up.  mommy realized that in eliminating oats and wheat, she had inadvertently increased the dairy in sienna’s diet (e.g. breakfast became fruit with cottage cheese or yogurt, instead of oatmeal).  apparently, dairy makes sienna itchy, so bye bye dairy.

week 2:  no eggs, wheat, peanuts, oats, or dairy.  this sounds impossible, right?  but sienna could still eat meat, veggies, fruit, and rice.  mama tried not to give her too much rice because of the recent news about arsenic, but she likes gluten-free pasta and quinoa.  so don’t worry, she didn’t starve.  (by the way, some things just shouldn’t be made gluten-free.  like tortillas.  bleccch.)  her skin looked great.  no eczema.

week 3:  no eggs, wheat, peanuts, or dairy, but we added oats back into her diet.  she did fine with it.  no eczema.  whew.  yay for oats!

week 4:  no eggs, peanuts, or dairy, but we added wheat back into her diet.  wheat didn’t cause anaphylaxis, but her eczema came back.  apparently, wheat makes sienna itchy, so we eliminated wheat again.  although…  sienna had the stomach flu that week, and her eczema seems to flare up when she is sick.  hmmm…

oral food challenge:  egg.  this morning, sienna went back to LPCH for an oral food challenge.  she was assigned to a room that had a bunch of medical equipment and she was seated on a gurney.  a little unsettling, no?  sienna looked unsure of her surroundings.  can you blame her?

the nurse started sienna off with 1/8 tsp of scrambled egg.  that’s almost as small as an edamame bean!  mommy urged the nurse to let sienna eat a bigger piece.  for one thing, she had eaten eggs in baked goods plenty of times, and she didn’t die.  plus she was starving.  the nurse insisted on stick to the plan and gave sienna the tiny little piece of egg.  if she had tolerated that, she would have continued eating larger and larger pieces until she finished the whole egg.  but she didn’t.  within 10 minutes, hives appeared on her face, she started scratching herself all over, and she got really fussy.  5 more minutes passed, and the hives continue to spread.  at that point, the doctor called off the challenge.  FAIL.  (for the record, the nurse never told mama “i told you so”.)

over the next 30 minutes, the nurse stayed with sienna, just in case she needed medical attention.  the nurse offered benadryl several times, but mommy declined it.  75 minutes after eating the bean-sized piece of egg, sienna’s symptoms were almost gone.  she was free to go.  i guess she really is allergic to eggs. the blood test results were accurate, and the skin test gave a false negative.

RESULTS SUMMARY

sienna is continuing on her elimination diet, but here’s where we are so far:

• oats are fine.  (all tests negative.)
• no wheat.  no traditional allergy, but we think it makes her itchy.  (blood test results were MODERATELY positive, skin test negative.)
• no dairy.  no traditional allergy, but we think it makes her itchy.  (all tests negative.)
• no eggs.  allergy confirmed by oral food challenge.  (blood test results were MODERATELY positive, skin test negative.)  the doctor says that she can probably eat eggs in baked goods, but mommy is steering clear for now.
• no peanuts.  since it’s easy to avoid peanuts, we won’t be experimenting with them for now.  (blood test results were HIGHLY positive, skin test negative.)  although… we do have epi pens, so why not give me a chance to use them? 😀

the thing about eczema is that it can flare up for no reason, so we might be blaming foods that are really “innocent”.  we’ll re-test wheat and dairy soon.  everyone/everything deserves a second chance, right? 😉

last year, i was superman for halloween.  i didn’t even know who superman was, but since matthew was spiderman (and we were planning to go trick-or-treating together), mama picked something for me in the superhero theme.  i was fine with it.

about a month ago, mama started asking me what i wanted to be for halloween this year.  my answer was always the same.  superman!  mama suggested dozens of different ideas, and she even took me shopping to see buzz, mickey, a firefighter, and lots of other cool costumes.  they were nice and all, but i wanna be superman!  mama was very confused by this.  i never talk about superman.  i’ve never even seen superman in a book or on tv or anywhere.  but still, i wanna be superman!  so mama bought me a new superman costume.

a few days later, i changed my mind and decided that i wanted to be thomas the train.  mama said that i could be a train conductor.  i liked the idea of wearing my thomas the train hat and blowing my train whistle while trick-or-treating.  but that idea passed quickly.  and then i wanted to be a mailman.  and then a penguin.  those thoughts passed quickly, too.  and now…  i’m back to superman.  i definitely want to be superman.  but i still have 2 weeks to change my mind 😉

FRIDAY (10/5)

we had planned to leave for LA right after breakfast, but because of mama’s travel ordeal, we didn’t get on the road until after 5pm.  with one stop for dinner/starbucks/target and another stop for gas, we finally made it to sierra (and sofia)’s house at around 1:00am.  i know that lots of people travel at night so that the kids can sleep in the car, but i don’t travel well.  sienna sleeps pretty well in the car, but i wake up every ~30 mins screaming.  so i need a comfortable bed to sleep in.  can you blame me?

SATURDAY (10/6)

we spend the whole day at disneyland.  it was mine and sienna’s first time there, so we didn’t know what to expect.  we ended up going on a total of 4 rides (buzz lightyear astro blasters, winnie the pooh ride, it’s a small world, jungle cruise), watched the parade, hung around toon town, and stayed for fireworks.  oh, and of course, there was my birthday party!

here are the highlights:

• the rides.  i liked all the rides except for the buzz lightyear one.  that was too loud, and i covered my ears through the whole ride.  sienna loved it.  she kept pulling the lever to spin the pod around and around.  actually, sienna loved all the rides.  she was wide-eyed and clapping and kept trying to climb out of the car to get a closer look at everything going on around us.  in the small world ride, she even clapped and swayed back and forth with the music.  she also tried to dive overboard and swim in the “river”, but that’s another story.
• toon town.  that was cool.  the whole place looked like a cartoon — even the sky.  i especially liked checking out mickey and minnie’s houses.
• my birthday party.  it was so awesome to have a destination disneyland birthday party with so many of my friends and aunties and uncles!  (most of them were planning to be at disneyland regardless of my birthday party, but it was still nice that everyone took time out of their day to celebrate with me.)  i had fun decorating my cake, and i discovered that i love m&m’s.  mickey and minnie surprised me (and the other birthday boys and girls) and led us on a parade around the patio.  and as an added bonus, our spot at the plaza inn was a perfect spot to watch the parade go by 🙂

here are the lowlights:

• the lines.  we got a late start getting out of the house on saturday morning.  and when we finally got to disneyland, there was the line to get into the parking garage, the line for the tram, and the line for the tickets… all that took over an hour!  there were lines for everything.  even a line to say hi to goofy!  luckily dada and uncle dave had iphone apps that told us how long the waits were for the rides.  mama made a rule that we weren’t going to any rides that had wait times of more than 20 minutes.  i don’t know what the big deal was — all of us kids did fine waiting in the lines.  there were so many other things to entertain us while we waited.
• not many characters.  because we got such a late start (and we didn’t know better), we missed out on a lot of the characters.  next time we go to disneyland, we will stop by pooh’s corner to see tigger and winne the pooh.  we will also go to toon town earlier so we can see more of mickey’s friends walking around.

all in all, it was a fantastic day.  it was my best birthday party ever!  thanks so much to matthew, logan, mason, edison, sierra, sofia, allie (and their families) as well as auntie mimi and auntie alice for coming out to celebrate with me.  here are some photos taken at the party and throughout the day.  thank you auntie mimi for all the great photos!

SUNDAY (10/7)

after such an action-packed saturday, it was nice to have a relaxing sunday with sierra and sofia.  we went out for brunch (logan and mason came also, as well as some new friends whose daddy is mama’s friends from college).  after brunch, we just went back to sierra and sofia’s house to play.  we played.  and played.  and played.  for awhile, i played bartender, pouring glass after glass of wine for uncle greg and mama.  just water for auntie cheryl and dada.  and then while all the little kids were napping, sierra and i went to the park.

when we got home from the park, uncle dave and auntie jo made dinner for us.  during dinner, i turned to auntie and told her “auntie jo, the dinner is yummy”.  now, she thinks that i am such sweet boy.  yesss…  another auntie fooled!

after dinner, we packed up and headed home.  i know.  crazy, right?  it was such a quick trip.  i guess dada was going through borderlands withdrawals and wanted to get home to play.

thank you to sierra and sofia for letting us sleep in your room and sharing all your toys with us.  and thank you to auntie jo and uncle dave for being such fantastic hosts.  we had such a nice time spending time with the whole family.  hopefully we’ll get to see you again soon!

mama went to new jersey on tuesday.  i had never heard of that place before.  mama says it’s very far away — even farther than texas.

while mama was gone, sienna and i went about our usual routine.  mostly.  miss denise took care of us during the day.  dada took care of us at night.  we went on our daily walks.  i went to gym class.  i went to school.   life went on like normal.  oh, except that i skipped soccer on tuesday because there wouldn’t have been anybody to watch sienna (gung-gung was not feeling well).  and on thursday, dada forgot to take me to school.  FORGOT.

on thursday, when dada finally remembered that it was a school day for me, he was already at work.  in case you’re wondering, no, he did not leave me in the back of his car.  if he did, this post would have been titled “dada went to jail” or something like that.  don’t worry, i was safe at home.  or so dada thought.  when he went home to pick me up, i was not there.  i was out doing circuit training at a nearby park.  (dada eventually found me, and i eventually made it to school.)

when i talked to mama on wednesday night, she told me that she would be home the next night.  she said that after i went to sleep, she would come home and come see me in my bed.  well, she never came.  and friday morning when i woke up, she wasn’t home then either.

mama was stuck in denver.  her flight from new jersey was delayed, so she missed her connection in DEN.  and rather than going to the hotel that united airlines booked for her, she stayed at the airport overnight so she could get on the first flight outta there.  the first flight on friday morning was to LA.  so she got on that flight.  but guess what.  that flight was delayed too.  so mama missed her connection in LAX and there were no more available flights to SJC for the whole day.

mama was able to get a flight into SFO, but her car was parked at SJC.  she had met a man who had offered to give her a ride from SFO to her car, and dada was fine with that idea.  (can you believe that dada was going to allow that?!)  but mama didn’t want to deal with riding the tram/shuttle to the car rental place, then wait in line to get a car, and risk getting kidnapped, so we went to go pick her up.

mama finally got home on friday afternoon.  being stuck at the airport overnight wouldn’t have been a big deal, but she was so anxious to get home so we could get a start on our disneyland vacation!  every time she called dada to tell him about another delay, dada wanted to complain about how tired and frustrated he was taking care of me and sienna.  but he knew that mama was more tired and more frustrated with her travel adventures, so he wisely kept his mouth shut.  instead, he sent mama pictures of me and sienna to make her smile.  (here’s me telling mama that i love her so so so much.)  dada is so smart.