How quickly time flies. It seems like just yesterday it was Ana’s first day of preschool:
Then it was her first day of Pre-K:
And now she’s a full fledge Kindergartener:
Ana had a great day today. She loves her teacher, has already made a new friend, and cannot wait to go back tomorrow. Kindergarten is going to be amazing!! You can see all the pictures from Ana’s first day of Kindergarten at St. Pius X here.
It happens all the time: Your toddler gets excited in a public place and and tries to bolt. You grab their arm to keep them from getting away, but the next thing you know they have fallen down onto the ground. They start crying so you quickly pick them up, move out of the center of the crowd, and calm them down so you can get back to the fun evening you had planned. Typical, right?
Only this time Hadley didn’t calm down. She just kept screaming. And crying. And saying, “Ouch! Ouch!” and holding on to her arm. That was when we knew something was wrong.
Luckily the fun evening we had planned was a night at John’s Incredible Pizza and there just happens to be an Urgent Care literally across the street. So Sim carried Hadley in his arms, holding her arm in his hand because it was the only way to get her to stop wailing, and we walked over to the Urgent Care. The fates must have been aligned because we hardly even had to wait, there was only one other person in the waiting area and they took us first due to the sobbing baby factor. We got in to the room and they informed us that we were very lucky because there happend to be a pediatrician working that night. So we waited to see the doctor.
The doctor looked at Hadley’s arm, said it was noticeably swollen in not one, but TWO places, and she wanted to X-ray the arm. So off to X-rays we went…
The doctor looked over the X-rays and said she couldn’t see anything broken. Since Hadley’s wrists and the area they were mostly concerned about are basically just cartilage it’s pretty hard to break. But Hadley was obviously in pain so they wanted to get her into a splint to stabilize her arm.
Once she was suffieciently wrapped, splinted, bandaged, and placed in a sling (an adorable tiny sling covered with bears holding balloons, mind you) we were ready to go. As we were walking out the tech who wrapped Hadley’s arm mentioned there might be stickers and Hadley perked up for the first time since we got there.
Armed with her newly beloved Wonder Pets sticker, Hadley was content and remembered that our original plans for the evening included pizza and games so we were ready to resume our evening.
(Hadley, being the wonderful sister she is, made sure to get an extra sticker for Ana who was waiting patiently in the lobby area with our amazing friend Brad.)
So far Hadley is being a trooper and dealing with only being able to use one arm. The splint is helping but occasionally Hadley bumps her arm, winces, and says, “Ouch!” So we are keeping an eye on her and making sure to take it easy. If things don’t get better in a few days the doctor wants us to see an orthopedic specialist (well, we already have one of those from when Hadley broke her leg less than a year ago!). I’m praying we don’t need to go that route. For now, all I can say is at least nothing is broken!
Today is Molly’s 9th birthday so I thought I would do a little pictorial homage to our youngest canine companion.
Ana, however, was insistent that we make it more of a party, so we made Molly a doggie birthday cake, complete with Puperoni candles.
Oh and Molly totally preferred Ana’s tribute to mine.
About a week ago, Ana got a bite. We think it was a spider, but as these things often go, we didn’t see the sneaky attacker. She just mentioned her leg was bothering her and when I looked, sure enough there was a little tiny red bump on her thigh. Nothing to freak out over, but as Ana is five, she requested we put a Band-Aid on it. I sprayed it with a little topical anesthetic for the itch/ouch factor and I thought that would be the end of it.
A couple days later she said the bite was still bothering her. So I checked it out. It was pretty red and a kind of swollen, but I figured she was just having a little allergic reaction to the bite and repeated my original process of topical anesthetic spray covered with a Neosporin Band-Aid.
On Thursday it was really hot outside so we met some friends for frozen yogurt and to play in the fountain at Progress Ridge. At one point during our play date I accompanied Ana to the bathroom. When she pulled down her pants I was shocked to see her leg. Right in the middle was the bright purple Band-Aid, and a circle about four inches in diameter around the bite was bright red. I then decided to check it out a little more. The skin was red, hot, and obviously angry. When I touched near the bite Ana flinched. I then sent Sim a text that when he gave her a bath that night I wanted him to make sure to check out her bite because it was making me nervous.
Once he looked at it, he consulted one of our friends who knows a thing or two about this sort of thing and she (without seeing it) said it sounded like an allergic reaction and we should probably give Ana some Benadryl. Not being allergy sufferers, we don’t have Benadryl, let alone children’s Benadryl so I headed off to Walgreen’s. We decided to let the meds have a chance to work and left it alone.
Yesterday morning we looked at her leg and it was most definitely NOT better. In fact it was worse. Now there were two blisters near the original bite. (Here is a picture. Not for the faint of heart.) So we decided we had waited long enough and it was time to take Ana to Urgent Care. Once we saw a doctor, he examined the bite and was touching the surrounding area asking Ana, “does this hurt? How about this?” and working his way gradually closer to the now large and oozing wound. At one point he touched it and it literally ruptured. He quickly looked from me to Ana (who was laying down on the paper sheet covering the hospital bed) to judge our reactions. Upon seeing that Ana didn’t notice what had just happened, he did it again. She said “Ow!” and winced but didn’t actually cry or make him stop. He continued to squeeze her leg until all the junk was visibly gone and it was just dark blood coming from the hole that was now in the middle of her thigh. He had the nurse come in and wrap her leg and we were done.
I gotta give the doctor credit, he was quick and cleaned up all the blood quickly to keep Ana from seeing it and thereby totally freaking out. I was so proud of Ana. She managed to keep her cool, never even cried, and was really brave during the entire event. (I managed to hold it together too, not letting anything show on my face and only allowing myself to feel nauseous once we had LEFT the doctor’s office.) The prognosis was that it probably started as a bug bite but she ended up getting a staph infection (cellulitis) in the wound. He wrote us a prescription for antibiotics that she needs to take twice a day for a week and recommended putting a hot pad on it three times a day. He said we would need to drain the abscess at least once (possibly more) to make sure it’s healing properly.
So all in all, it’s been a crazy couple of days. I cannot believe that Ana has not been complaining more about being in pain. I mean, after seeing the amount of stuff the doctor drained out of the wound, it had to of been hurting her! And I think back to all the times Hadley was climbing on Ana, bouncing on her lap, not to mention Ana just being five. She is such a tough cookie. I am so proud of my brave little girl. In fact, to reward all her bravery through the whole ordeal, this afternoon we took her on a movie date to see Brave! And she loved it!
Hadley had her 18-month doctors appointment this morning. Here are her stats from the appt:
Height: 32″ (55th percentile)
Weight: 24 lbs 7.5 oz (50th percentile)
Head: 47.5 cm (75th percentile)
Hadley is still slowing on her weight and height. She is my perfectly average little girl, hanging out right in the middle of the growth chart. The doctor performed a myriad of tests (disguised as play), which Hadley found to be quite entertaining. He noticed that she is very good at comprehending the things we say to her and following directions. He asked if she had many words and I said I thought so. He asked if it was more than ten and I said definitely! I had been pretty diligent about keeping track awhile ago and we were at over 25 words so she has certainly added more since then. Our doctor was quite impressed by that.
He mentioned taking her to the dentist and I said that we hadn’t yet, but I was concerned about the order she was getting her teeth. (Here is an interesting pictorial description of typical baby teeth order of appearance.) For the longest time she only had the top four and the bottom middle two but she was teething again and we noticed she is getting a couple more on top, but way in the back. He checked and confirmed they are her first molars. I asked if that was normal to get the molars before she even got the lower lateral incisors and he said sometimes kids are just missing some of their baby teeth. He felt around and said he was pretty sure there are teeth there, but without an X-ray he has no way to tell if they are baby teeth or adult teeth. He said I might talk to our dentist if we think it’s a concern. (Auntie Jeni, care to weigh in on this??)
Otherwise, she got one shot (Hep A) and didn’t even cry. Though she did throw a pretty menacing glare toward the nurse wielding the needle! We go in for her next appointment when she is two years old.
Back on April 14th we found ourselves with a free weekend day and the sun was shining so we headed off for our annual visit to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. It was absolutely perfect and everyone had a fabulous time.
You can see all the pictures we took on our adventure here.
The other day we went met some friends for a play date at Play Boutique in Progress Ridge. The girls always have a great time playing with their friends, but without fail they always seem to make a little time to be together. I just happened to catch this sweet moment with the camera on my iPhone. I just love these girls.
Ana’s homework for the weekend was an activity that had her rolling dice, and adding or subtracting cubes to create math sentences. We had a lot of fun working on it. While Ana was writing her numbers we had the following conversation:
Ana: Does my one look like a seven?
Sim: A one is just a straight line. Why are you writing it like that?
Ana: It’s how my teacher told me to do it.
Carrie: Yeah, I’m not sure why they make them do it that way. But if your teacher said you need to do it that way, please do what she said.
Sim: Well, if you are going to give it a tail you need to give it feet.
Ana: It’s not a tail.
Carrie: Do you call it a hat?
Ana: It’s not a hat.
Sim: Well then what is it?
Ana: It’s just a line.
Well, it’s official! Hadley is now walking. She’s been doing it more and more over the last couple days. Now I’d say she is walking about half the time (she still crawls when it’s really far or when the ground is “questionable”). She knows she can do it and she is so cute as she just WALKS across the room. It’s been a long time coming (she’s almost 16 months) but considering her broken leg added a little bump in the road, I’d say she’s doing pretty great. We are SO proud of her!
Tonight Simeon and Ana went to the annual Daddy Daughter Dance that is held each year (around Valentine’s Day) at the Cedar Hills Rec Center. Ana looks forward to this ALL YEAR. And you can imagine why.
For Ana, this is the ultimate dress up adventure! I found a bunch of clearance holiday dresses on-line several months back and I let Ana pick out her very own dress. We also ordered some sparkly silver “peep toe” shoes, bought some glittery purple nail polish at Target, and she was set! Naturally she decided to grow out her bangs a few weeks ago so we had to improvise with “long side swept bangs” and a polished ponytail. Ana also found a rhinestone barrett and a string of fake pearls which she felt really rounded out her look.
Here she is coming down the stairs and making her grand entrance.
Sneaking a quick cuddle with her handsome date.
Then Sim surprised her with her fancy corsage!
And before it was time for them to go and have a great time together, I made them pose for several more pictures.
They had a great evening filled with dinner, dancing and even a little dessert. And Ana can hardly wait to do it all again next year. You can see all the pictures I took of the dazzling duo here. Before I end this post, I just want to ask you, do you know where to watch world of dance all seasons?