weight

Weight is such an interesting term. When choosing cantaloupe, you search for the heaviest weight for the money. But when it comes to your weight, you want the scale to read the lowest weight possible, especially after baby. Mommies, you know what I am talking about. I still have not reached my pre-baby weight so it is a number that is beyond my reach at this point. And when it comes to childhood obesity, you don't want your children to watch television and play video games all day while eating junk food. But what if your child is UNDER weight. That is the case for Elijah.

Elijah was born 7 pounds 1 ounce. I believe that weight is on the lower side of normal. He lost the usual number of ounces when we left the hospital, but unfortunately took a while to gain it back. And ever since then, putting on weight was something of an elusive dream. He was never one of those babies that cried out of hunger. He did not eat cereal until after he was 6 months old. Table food is STILL an issue with him. To say he is a picky eater is an understatement. If he was more like me, he would eat anything and everything, but alas, he is more like his Daddy. Not only is he a spitting image of his Daddy, he also possesses many personality traits that Daddy has so gracefully passed on to him.

Many Mommy friends have, in my presence fed their willing eaters apples, cantaloupe, grapes, strawberries, lots of healthy food. Eli will not go near any of it, even though I know once it hits his lips, he will love it. When presented with the food, he does not even want to touch it. In fact, it is almost like he fears it and will not eat anything else off of his plate unless you take the alien food out of his sight immediately.

Needless to say Eli's weight has ALWAYS been a worry of mine. He has always hovered between the 4th and 8th percentiles in weight. For those who do not have children yet, that means that of all of the kids Eli's age, there are between 4 and 8 percent of them that are Eli's weight and 92 to 96 percent are heavier than him. He has always had to visit the doctor just to check his weight, aside from his regular check ups. It is scary when your child runs around with no shirt on and you feel like people may think you are starving him because his ribs are showing. It really is heartbreaking for me to not be able to provide for my child in this way. It makes me so sad to have to prepare the same dinner for him every night (chicken nuggets) because that is all he will eat. It makes me so sad to have to add Carnation instant breakfast into his milk in order for him to have the extra calories. It concerns me so much that I give him any kind of food he wants, which is mostly junk food, in the high hopes it will make him gain weight. Elijah is my son and I will do everything in my power to make sure he gains weight, however and whatever it takes.

We went to the doctor Monday for a weight check for Eli. He was pleasant, chanting 'doctor' over and over again as we walked back to the room in which we wait for the doctor. The nurse had me strip him down to his diaper and all the while I am nervous about what that scale would tell us. As each piece of clothing was removed, it added to my nervousness. I picked up my light as a feather son and placed him in the sitting position on the scale. The nurse told me he was 21.5 pounds at his last visit. My friend's 11 month old daughter is heavier than that, to give you some perspective. Eli is almost 2. So as the scale is measuring, I see the numbers that I will never forget: 24. My son gained 2 and a half pounds in 3 months!!!! This is completely and utterly unprecedented!!!!! He went from the 4th percentile to the 13th percentile! I was so excited I cried. When the doctor came in, she was ecstatic too! In my mind, we were all jumping up and down in a circle and cheering loudly!!

Here is to hoping and praying that the weight goes up from here.....and maybe I can give him some of mine in the process. :) The worrying is not over for us, but God has answered many prayers. And we are thankful.

fountain (warning: pic heavy)

Fountains....they are a love of Elijah's....

...to run through

...to throw pennies into

...to watch excitedly

...to dunk his head into

27 days

In 27 days, Chad, Eli and I will be on our black Jeep Liberty, cruising down the Atlantic City expressway to our only summer vacation to Sea Isle City, NJ.

It is there that the rest of my family will meet us and we will spend the week doing lots of fun things:

cooking for the family (or attempting to cook in my case!)

eating wonderful seafood at Carmen's outdoor eating establishment

walking to the beach with every toy and beach accessory imaginable to keep a toddler entertained

dozing off at the breezy beach on beach chairs

playing with Elijah in the sand and them removing sand for each crevice of his body

sitting on the deck laughing and relaxing

driving to a boardwalk to ride the rides

rinsing off in the outdoor shower

walking to Marita's Ice Cream shop.....every night

playing games like Catch Phrase and saying things that sound dirty, but are not

e.r. visit (warning: long story)

Eli and I were having a nice Friday afternoon. We ran our normal errands for the day and were looking forward to coming home to get some energy out and run in the sprinkler. We came home and I unloaded and put away the food we bought. Then I began the process of getting Eli to go upstairs with me so we could get our swimsuits on. He was having fun using his little bat and plastic ball to play, as he calls it, 'tennis'. He knows what baseball is and he knew that baseball was not what he was playing. He would actually bounce the ball off of the bat and then exclaim 'TENNIS!!!' and run after the ball. He is such an aficionado for any sports at all. I thought this was cute so stopped to watch a little more before I would scoop him up to go upstairs. Looking back, I wish I would have just scooped him up. As he was running excitedly after the ball he hit, he tripped over, presumably his own feet because nothing was in his path, and did a face plant against one of his plastic yellow chairs. Here is a picture of those chairs with Eli and Foster in happier times.

I heard the loud 'thomp!' too and knew that it wasn't good. He cried for about a minute fairly hysterically and there was blood gushing everywhere. Luckily, the good old standby we use in order to get Eli to calm down worked this time: ice. You see, Eli is very clumsy. He always has been. Most toddlers are, but I believe that God gave him a little extra dose of it, as He gave to me as well. If you need proof, I have many stories from high school I tell that proves this point. And maybe I can blog about those too.....but I digress. :) So falling has become an art to Eli and when he does take a tumble, he usually ends up hitting his face and/or mouth on whatever he falls onto. Then we give him ice in a sandwich bag and 5 minutes later, he is good to go, albeit with a fat lip or bruise somewhere.

At the mention of ice, Eli stopped crying and said 'ice, pwease?' over and over. I took that as a good sign. So I gave him ice and tried to stop the bleeding at the same time. But the wound kept bleeding and bleeding and I couldn't even see the actual wound to see how bad it was. After about 10 minutes, many paper towels, 2 bags of ice and after bending his fat lip up as far as I could, I saw it.......it was a vertical cut from the beginning of his gums up about a centimeter into the gums. I pushed up on the gums on the right side of the cut and LIFTED HIS GUMS like the flap of a curtain!!!! Under the gum was dark red blood pouring out. This scared me, to say the least. I tried to wiggle his teeth on either side to see if they were loose and they weren't, which was a relief. I then proceeded to call any pediatric dentist in the area. The first one I called was closed. The second one was open and when I told her the problem, she exclaimed "ooooooo" and it was at that point that I thought, if there was any confusion about it, we definitely have something bad here. She told me to go to the E.R. so I called Chad and told him to meet me there and off we went to Chester County Hospital.

On the way to the hospital, I was thinking that he would need stitches. I could not bear to think about watching my child endure this, as he would be screaming and in pain from the numbing needles, watching them stitch his little gums together, the pain he would endure afterwards....ugh. It got me upset to think about these things. When we got to the hospital, he was running around the waiting room like a.....like a.....like a typical toddler I guess. He was making the nurses laugh, but also driving us crazy trying to touch very dangerous hospital devices.

After about an hour and half, we were checked in, treated and diagnosed: no stitches. YAY! The wound was healing itself, the doctor told us. And it was not too deep and not bleeding anymore, so we were good to go! They gave Eli ibuprofen and a Popsicle, which he proceeded to use as a drumstick on the hospital bed.....yikes. Any other kid would love a Popsicle, but my finicky eater of a son wanted to use it as a toy. :) So we were in and out of the E.R. in under 2 hours......Chester County Hospital rocks! :)

So below is the day after picture of what his wound looks like. It looks MUCH BETTER than yesterday, so that is a blessing. But just picture me being able to lift up the right side gum of that cut and see dark red, almost black blood gushing out......oh the horror!! But God took care of him and all is well. :)

mr. potato head

Ah, Mr. Potato Head! This is one toy that has been able to stick around for 56 years! I happened to see one at my grocery store (shout out to Thorndale Giant!) and decided that no child can go without owning one of these oldies but goodies. And Elijah, who cannot stand any sort of puzzle related activity very long, actually played with it for a while.

He liked the face and liked to put the glasses on.

Here Elijah is trying to put the ears on so that he can put the glasses on without them falling off.

Gotta love Mr. Potato Head! Have a great weekend! :)

sleepy

There is something so precious about a child sleeping. Yesterday morning, Elijah and I met some friends at Kerr park. Eli ran around like crazy and because of the humidity, his whole head of hair was sopping wet from sweat. Needless to say, he was exhausted. So we went home and he napped for a while. I went to get him up and bring him on our guest bed to talk about our afternoon plans, as usual. This time, he fell asleep again on the bed, which he has never done before. So I laid next to him and watched him sleep. He was so serene, laying there innocently. I listened to his shallow breaths, slowly pushing their way out of his little nostrils. I wondered if he was dreaming about the fun he had that morning. Or maybe he was dreaming about running around a heavenly playground on soft clouds with all of his friends. Maybe he had the ability to aptly move across the heavenly monkey bars, as he so desperately wants to do, but can't at an earthly park. But I think he was dreaming about Daddy because that was his first word as he moved around to reposition himself and opened his eyes just a crack to see if Daddy was there. Alas, it was just Mommy. So he moved a little again and fell back to heavenly sleep. I am so in love with my child.

hanging basket

Yesterday, Eli and I went to Mom Mom's house to go swimming. As Eli and I were entering the door to the garage, I heard a loud flapping sound to my right, directly next to my head. Of course I screamed and grabbed Eli and ran away. Bravery was never one of my strong points. :) I went back and looked around to see if a bird was still around, in the bush the next to the door, but I didn't see one so we were safe....because if it were still there, I would have to fight him because now I have to make up for the fact I ran away like a schoolgirl! :)

We swam a little bit. It was so hot yesterday! We also sat in chairs had a little snack, a favorite of Eli's: goldfish.



We peered into the cavernous storage bin of sports and of course, Eli wanted everything that was in it to be taken out of it to play with for a second and then move on to something else. Ah, the attention span of a toddler.

We did actually spend a good amount of time with the wiffle ball bat and trying to hit the ball. You can see in the background of this picture the infamous door where the flapping took place. Notice the hanging basket to the right. Next to that is a big bush, but that cannot be seen in this picture.

Eli let me use him in posing for photos. In this picture, I just told Eli that Mickey Mouse isn't real......haha, just kidding.

So my Mom came home and chatted a bit with us. I tell her the story of the killer bird, a la Alfred Hitchcock. She tells me that my Dad informed her that there is a nest in the hanging basket by the door. The basket is a bit high so I just reached my camera up there and took some blind shots. Below is what I saw.

Chad tells me they are robin eggs. I am excited to watch them progress and hatch, but I don't want to disturb them or the mama bird. I want to stay away and just reach my camera up there every once in a blue moon in the hopes to catch a glimpse of some baby robins. Is it an old wives tale that if you touch a nest or the eggs, that the mama bird will smell you and never come back? I have consulted the master of all urban myths: snopes. Here is what I found: http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/babybird.asp

I will try to keep up with the eggs and let you know of their progress! :)