Ollie Update

The Family Curse

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Oliver’s battle with eczema continues.

We had an appointment with the skin doctor the other day, and it was amazing. They were very matter of fact and they talked about the eczema clearing up in 5 to 7 days. I have to admit I almost got a little choked up, thinking that his months’ long itchy journey could be almost over. They were as good as their word too; we put the medicine all over, and he looked 99% better the next morning. It was like a miracle. His skin is almost completely smooth, and he doesn’t scratch every time we bare a little bit of skin. Words cannot describe how happy I am! Our only disappointment was that it took us so long to get the proper medicine. We could have saved him weeks of discomfort.

Evie was there for them to look at a persistent fungal infection on her toes. Turns out, the reason we couldn’t get rid of that was because it wasn’t a fungal infection at all. Nope, it was eczema too! Lucky her. Sure enough, the same medicine cleared that up overnight as well. It was like the skin knit back together or something. It was almost creepy!

I’ve learned a lot about eczema recently. The root cause of eczema is basically a hyper-sensitivity to things that shouldn’t necessarily cause you trouble. Therefore, it is very closely related to asthma and allergies. Unfortunately, eczema, asthma, and allergies are three things that my family has in spades.

The more I think about things, the more things started to fall into place. I wonder how much else is connected to that? For example, my allergies are obviously related, but is my hyper-sensitivity to poison ivy also related? How about my hyper-sensitivity to cutting onions? Am I just a genetic wuss?

So, long story short, I passed on my ear problems to at least Evie, and some sort of sensitivity that manifested as eczema in both of my children. (Side note, Evie has another ear infection. So looks like that’s not cleared up yet either.) So thanks for that, dad. They may or may not grow out of it. Talking to some of my relatives who struggle with eczema as adults, it’s not very pretty. I’m sad that he might have to deal with that forever. I just hope they don’t develop any other related problems, specifically asthma.

It’s not all doom and gloom around the house though. Oliver is growing up so fast! And I literally mean growing. The other day, we accidentally put 24 month pants on our 8 month old and we didn’t even notice! It seems like he eats a ton. He’s eating a lot more than Evie did, but it’s still way less than what the pediatrician says is average. Oh well, I don’t think anybody is going to be accusing us of neglect this time around.

Oliver is very good at giving high fives. We’re working on “bye-bye”, “so big!”, and the signs for “more” and “all done”. He doesn’t quite have those ones yet, but it really seems like he could get them at any moment. He already kind of pounds his hand down on his tray to mean more.

He is also working on pulling himself up to stand. I think he’s only done it once on his own, but if you hold out your hands, he will definitely use them as leverage to pull himself up. I think he just needs sufficient motivation (like realizing how much more mischief he could get into if he could pull himself up).

Oliver just loves taking a bath. We didn’t give him a bath for a long time, due to the eczema (It turns out giving him a bath *was* the right thing to do, but we’ve tried about everything at this point), but he loves it so much that he gets excited when he hears the water running. A little too excited maybe. Evie does NOT like to take a bath with Oliver. He splashes like a maniac, but she likes a nice sedate bath, with no water flying. She does not appreciate his splashing.

The interesting thing is that you can really start to see how he and Evie will play together. He just adores his big sister and follows her around everywhere. He already tries to do everything she does. She can’t really play with him, but every once in a while you’ll get this glimpse of how things are going to be in a year or so.

Tis not a man, tis an eating machine

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Oliver loves eating. I think that it’s not so much that he is a good eater, but more that Evie was a bad eater. Getting her to eat was *always* a major effort, involving singing, dancing, distraction, etc. Oliver gets mad at you if you’re not shoveling it in fast enough. Believe me, it’s better the second way.

This video is a little old, but it shows the first time we let him try applesauce. I guess it was a little sour…

I’ve watched this video 100 times, and still those faces make me laugh. Notice that it doesn’t dissuade him from wanting to eat the applesauce!

Vampire?

/ Shane / 3 Comments

At this point, Oliver has pretty much just given up on sleeping. Maybe he has been turned into a vampire.

I guess we won’t know until he gets teeth.

Ollie Ollie Oxen Free

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Well, the big news is, Oliver is now crawling!

He started last Thursday or Friday. It was slow and difficult at first, but he’s been improving every day. He already could roll and pivot to get pretty much everything he wanted, so only the straight ahead part is new. It’s surprising how much more trouble he can get into, even though he’s hardly crawling at this point. However, I think the cause and effect relationship is reversed: I think he finally started crawling *because* he wanted to get into so much more mischief! It gave him the required motivation.

He’s doing pretty well eating solids. He certainly has his likes and dislikes. His likes are baby cereal, pumpkin, and anything he can hold in his hand. He really likes apple slices, cucumber slices, green beans, potato wedges, etc. I don’t know if he likes things like that so much more than Evie, or if we just never figured out that it was so much easier to occupy her with something like that. Certainly food seems to be going better with him than with her, although we have a much smaller sample size.

This has changed his…bathroom habits quite a bit. He goes a lot longer in between poopy diapers, but when he goes, watch out! (You can ask Sara and the bathroom wall about this one)(and the floor, and the bath mat…)

Also similar to Evie, he’s not keen on sleeping through the night. A couple of times a week he wakes up at 4:30 or so and just stays up for an hour, usually crying. He’s crying because we’re trying to put him back to sleep and he doesn’t want to go; I’m sure he would be perfectly happy if we just let him get up. However, this never seems like a good idea at the time, so I usually just end up tired and irritable. Sara has to remind me that we went through all of this with Evie and it didn’t last that long and we all survived.

Oliver is as rashy as ever, with no end in site. Some days are better and you think something you’ve done is working. Then the next day he will be as bad as he’s ever been. We’ve sort of gotten used to that at this point, and gotten a routine down. But I still feel really bad for him, because he still seems pretty itchy.

Evie and Oliver’s relationship continues to be a little strained. They are now getting into that area where Oliver wants to “share” her toys (read “eat” her toys). Naturally, Evie doesn’t like that too much. She is constantly yanking things out of his hands and telling him he can’t touch anything. However, I think she is starting to crack. Lately she has been designating things that he is allowed to touch, or giving him one thing so he doesn’t take something else. Also, she will occasionally “play” with him by building towers for him to knock over (which he finds *hilarious*). However, this usually ends in her deciding she would have even MORE fun if he wasn’t involved, and cutting him out of the action.

She still doesn’t quite get that she can’t force him to do whatever she wants him to. Something tells me he might be stuck with that for life.

Eczema follow-up

/ Shane / 6 Comments

So far, no good.

Oliver’s eczema is worse if anything. We’ve been going through all the clothes, washing them without detergent, Vaselining him morning and night, changing our sheets twice as frequently, trying not to touch him with clothes that may have touched detergent, etc. It certainly doesn’t seem to be helping. I even switched shampoos.

He has good days and bad days. Some days he looks better and I think, “Maybe what we’re doing is working!” and then the next day he looks worse than ever.

The worst part of all is that he has now discovered scratching. Before, I could always pretend that he wasn’t really bothered by the eczema, even though it looked terrible. Now, however, he tries to scratch his chest and face whenever you give him an opportunity. At this point it takes two people to change his clothes; one to hold his hands back, and the other to dress him. We have to put him in a double shirt and put socks on his hands to prevent him from scratching in the night.

It makes me so sad to see him desperately trying to scratch. It wasn’t so long ago that I myself had to deal with insane, full-body itching, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I certainly wouldn’t wish it on my precious baby. And I certainly can’t pretend that he’s not bothered by it anymore.

I feel very helpless, and that’s not a great feeling when it comes to watching your kid be miserable.