Happy Memorial Day! I have a big ol' bandage all around my middle finger so typing is a fun challenge today. Last night Jared and I taught the lesson for our stake mission prep class. On our way out the door I was slicing up some apples to snack on in the car and the very sharp chef knife I was using (first mistake) slipped. I was certain it was a stitches type of situation, but the cut was clean and Jared ended up just binding it up really tightly to hold it together on our way out the door. Maybe a little too tightly because I woke up every half hour all night long in agony with my finger throbbing, despite taking pain killers. Finally around 5 a.m. I had Jared unwrap it to add some lidocaine and take a look at the cut. As soon as it was unwrapped it started feeling much better. He wrapped it back up more loosely and it hasn't hurt since.
The mission prep lesson went well too. I'm feeling happy it's a holiday Monday, and grateful that Jared is home with us and able to come to the ward lunch and other festivities. We're still fresh enough out of residency that I'm not taking for granted having Jared home for weekends and holidays (small and major). Jared and Jack went to the trampoline park with his flag football team this morning while Alice napped. Jack's personal version of heaven. Then we went to a ward bbq at the beautiful Cascade church park, where Jack got to run and play even more. I am hoping to finish putting together the smoker/grill I got for my birthday (thanks to mine and Jared's parents each contributing!) and grill some inaugural chicken skewers tonight.
Ok, book club time! Jared and I read two books recently that I wanted to give quick reviews of. First, we read "I Will Teach You to be Rich" by Ramit Sethi. Mostly it's a finance book teaching you exactly what to do with your money and teaching you how to define and prioritize a "rich life" for yourself, whether that means prioritizing travel, or family outings, or personal growth, or convenience . . . I like the part where you ponder on what's important to you and then he guides you through cutting costs in areas you don't care about so you can spend guilt-free on the areas that are important to you. Jared has always been passionate about finance so 90% of the book is stuff we're already doing, but even he learned a few helpful tips, and I love that I now feel capable of managing our family finances if I ever needed/wanted to.
The next book we read is "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown. I checked out the audiobook on my Libby app and listened to it while I painted the bookshelves. Jared happened to already own the book, and I think he's read the first half so far. It was EXCELLENT. It's about "achieving more by doing less." He applies this theory to businesses and personal life, and gives practical tips for prioritizing what is most essential and saying no to the rest. I've chosen it as my "book of the year" for my 31st year of life. I took notes and will be reviewing them monthly to try and hone the skills outlined. I feel like some of the skills he highlights come naturally to me, and some others come naturally to Jared, but we both have areas we'd like to practice and get better at to be living our most intentional, happiest lives. It was a pretty quick listen as an audiobook--would recommend. It was a NYT bestseller for a long time, and I believe the author went to BYU for his undergrad.
On the note of books, I have a pretty lengthy list of books I want to read. The problem is, the majority of them fall in the "life-improvement" category (a book for raising unentitled kids, a book for dividing workload in the home, a book for improving relationships, one for setting habits, etc.). With these types of books I've found that if I don't make the time to take notes and check back in with them and practice the concepts over the course of a few months, nothing really changes. And I really only have the capacity and desire to "work on" one thing at a time. But I do want to read more! Maybe I'll try doing one "improvement" book every 2-3 months, and try and fill in with fiction books for fun. I'll keep you posted.
What a week! Once more, I am tired. I somewhat by accident offered to throw a baby shower that is happening in 2 weeks. So I have been scrambling to get a third/final coat of paint on our built-ins so they can dry/cure in time, and WOOF. I'll do a post about the whole process once they are finished, but it has been a doozy. I have taken to painting late into the nights to make progress on them. Like, laaaate. Add to that Alice continuing to eat 2-3 times per night. I am a zombie. I just keep telling myself, "This is a phase." And it's ok. I'm tired now but I really won't be forever. At least she's recently started taking hypoallergenic formula. When we top her off before bed she usually only wakes up 2 times instead of 3.
The news from this week is that I took Alice to get allergy tested last Monday, the day she turned 8 months old. After we trialed her on peanuts she had a reaction (red mouth and chest, puffy goopy eyes, somewhat pale face, vomiting). Her primary physician said, "We don't take chances with peanut allergies. I'm referring her to an allergist."
Alice was a champ at the appointment! She loves being able to sit up on her own, so she was really pretty happy sitting in her own chair next to me, holding my hand and sucking on a toy car I found in her diaper bag while the test results developed on her back. After I described her reaction to peanut butter, the doctor felt pretty certain it was a definitive allergy, but decided to do a scratch test panel to make sure and to check for a few other allergies. I wish I had asked him to test for dairy and soy, but we had already discussed quite a few other allergies he would be testing for (tree nuts because they run in the family, egg because it tends to go hand-in-hand with peanut allergies, salmon because her face broke out in a rash after eating it, and a few other random ones). I honestly just assumed dairy and soy would be standard on the scratch test panel so I didn't bring them up. Of course, they didn't end up being on the panel, so I will probably continue to avoid them and bring them up at her follow-up appointment in a few months, because sure enough, our sweet baby Alice has a pretty bad peanut allergy. Bad enough that we have to carry an epi pen for her now. Thumbs down.
She also has an egg allergy, and an almond allergy that only barely qualifies as an allergy, so we're not worrying about that one much. (Probably on the level of my brother Tim's mild tree nut allergy.) The egg allergy is moderate, and the allergist is recommending we expose her to egg baked into things 5 times a week until she tolerates that well, and then moving up to french toast and then cooked egg. He feels very sure that with repeated exposure she will grow out of the egg allergy. But the peanut allergy is bad enough that he is recommending we keep her away from peanuts completely instead of attempting any type of exposure or immunotherapy. Jared and I will research that for ourselves and go back to the allergist if we decide we do want to look into some type of exposure therapy. He said he's willing to do it if we want, but it's not his recommendation based on recent research. He believes it would only be a temporary help and not make a difference in the long run.
The diciest information to me was when the allergist told me that if Alice were to have the same reaction she did last time (any reaction involving 2 or more symptoms), I should for sure administer the epi pen. And along with that, any time you use the epi pen you are supposed to call 911 to dispatch an ambulance. He confirmed all of this with me twice. This feels scary to me because I know how serious of a situation that is, and yet Jared didn't seem worked up at ALL about her reaction to the peanut butter when he gave her the taste. He didn't notice her face getting puffy until I came home 5 minutes later and was like, "Bro, stop. That doesn't look good." In fact, I had to be the one to push for and take her to her primary care physician AND the allergist because I knew that if they were to ask Jared what happened when she ate peanuts his response would be, "Eh, nothing." Sooooooo ya. Nervous that she could be having an anaphylactic reaction with Jared and he literally wouldn't notice. Also nervous she could be having one with me and my response would be, "Is this real? Jared would tell me this is nothing. Jared would not call 911 in this situation. But the allergist said I should." Jared and I are going to do a deep-dive on anaphylaxis using his doctor resources this week to try and get on the same page, because this is an area we REALLY need to be on the same page about. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to have taken a picture last time she had peanut butter so Jared and I could look at it together, and with the allergist, and discuss the severity of that situation. Because honestly in the moment it didn't feel like a big deal, but after talking to the allergist and reading up on anaphylaxis, seems like it probably was a big deal. Anywayyyy there is more learning and discussing to be done.
Kids that have any type of allergy are more susceptible to having multiple allergies, so I feel really grateful and have more peace of mind knowing we have an epi pen now. It is scary that we have to though. There is a family history of allergies (mostly seasonal) on my side of the family and also asthma, which is highly correlated with allergies, so this isn't completely out of left field. But peanut allergies don't run in either of our families so we were surprised and a little shaken up this past week. There's a small chance she'll grow out of it, so obviously that is the hope. But if not, we feel prepared to advocate for Alice and keep her safe.
What a week! I am happy and tired. I kicked off last week with my birthday. Our waterfall hike went surprisingly well considering it was 4 miles round trip with a 4-year-old and a baby. Jared had the day off, which was so fun. I'm glad we went on a weekday (my birthday) instead of a weekend when it would have been extremely crowded. I also went thrifting and found a couple things to put on our built-in shelves once we finish painting them. Hooray. Speaking of painting, that's what most of my "free time" was spent doing during the remainder of the week. Next time we paint shelves I will be using a sprayer. It has been a tedious little devil of a project getting into all the corners and crevices of 20 different cubbies backed with bead board, plus 6 lower cabinets. Also we went with a DARK color that really probably needs 3 coats. I might chicken out and call it quits after I finish the second coat because I have already put over 20 hours into painting, and I didn't even do any of the priming--that was all Jared. We are definitely learning things for next time we attempt a building or painting project though, so we will count these as education hours.
I had a lovely Mother's Day too. I woke up to breakfast in bed, and some homemade and framed pictures of the kids. It is an exhausting stage of parenthood (in large part because my babies take their sweet time learning to sleep through the night--Alice still wakes up twice a night), but gosh I really do love being a mom to my spunky little boy and my sweet baby girl. My one mistake was going into the day with the expectation and request to be able to "relax all day" even though we had invited Jared's parents over for dinner. I came downstairs to check on things about an hour after Jared had started cooking and got a little stressed when I discovered he couldn't find the pork roast in the fridge, so he decided to substitute with 2 lbs of GROUND CHICKEN. Jail time. (To his credit, and also demise, he didn't consult me because he wanted me to be able to really relax). If my in-laws weren't coming for dinner I probably would've tasted the meat, been like, "lol this is hilarious but pretty decent actually--carry on," and gone back to being queen of the day. Instead I was like "Ur done, sir." And took over the cooking, cleaning, and somehow the baby wearing too. At one point I was very stressed and went looking for Jared only to find him playing computer games with Jack. Jail time x2.
But otherwise the day really was nice, and we are counting the afternoon hiccups once again as "education hours." Next time we host Mother's Day dinner we will go the Costco premade meal+sides route. Jared actually did a wonderful job of everything he cooked, but since we were having company over I found myself unable to enjoy my afternoon even though Jared is more than capable. Hats off to all the moms in my life who have had company over for countless Mothers' Days and most likely did way more of the cooking and cleaning that they should have, either by necessity or choice. Let's stop doing that and start either letting the ground chicken "roast" slide or going with a menu of entirely Costco premade sides so we can go back to being queen of the day. I love you all! And Mom, Grandma--I am so grateful for you. I'm sorry I let myself get so caught up in cooking that I didn't call in the afternoon. But I love you and I thought of both of you while I set the table with the nice China and other pretty things. I will always think of my mother and grandmother when I see a pretty table setting and gather for dinner with family <3 And now, some pictures from our week:
It's my BIRTHDAY! I am drafting this the day before because I will probably be busy PaRtYiNg on my birthday. And by partying I mean hiking, thrifting, and requesting foot rubs. Jared will make his signature salmon and asparagus for dinner. Hopefully we'll roast s'mores up the mountain, but probably not because Jack has football at 6:00. Maybe we'll just do backyard s'mores this time and presents. I'm trying my hand at planning my entire birthday out start to finish, and while the plans really don't look all that crazy (hello baby stage), I am excited. Sometimes I get the birthday blues before my birthday, but so far I haven't and I think planning out what I know it will look like instead of having this vague idea hanging over my head about "I hope it's special" when I don't have a clear idea what I actually want that to look like . . . I think this way is better. I'll let you know next week! 30 was a great year for me. Made it through a pregnancy, made it through a childbirth, met a sweet little Alice. It was a big year and I'll remember it forever.
^^How cute is this baby???!?!?!!! Love her so much it hurts. 
