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.
Shane Halbach 