This fits perfectly

Life is never boring with a two-year-old around. Today, Elaina decided that it would be neat to stick some plastic beads up her nostrils, one in one side, and two in the other. She came up to me and asked me to help her with her beads. I thought that she wanted help cleaning them up, but she started pointing to her nose and that's when I saw the first bead. I was able to get it out with a prong of a fork and I thought that was it, until Elaina grabbed the fork and started trying to stick it up her nose. I took her over to the light and discovered that she had an additional bead up each nostril. We ended up breaking our family goal, to stay out of the emergency room. We were there about 8 weeks ago for Elaina when she split her forehead open and had to have it glued shut, and once for me when I had a breast infection.

Elaina seemed to remember the place and upon arrival and asked to watch Ratatouille. (she watched that last time she was there) The University of Chicago has a brand new Children's Hospital, with it's own children's ER. It's really nice. We didn't have to wait at all to get her in and the doctors and nurses were great. They tried having me blow into her mouth in order to force the beads out the nostrils, but that didn't work, so they tried using forceps to get the bead out, but that only ended up gouging the inside of her nose. Blood was everywhere. Then they suggested that we plug the not-bloody nostril and have me blow into her mouth again. Why didn't they think of that before the blood? So I blew and ended up getting a face full of blood and snot! Plus the bead. Gross. If it was anyone else, I think I would have died. Isn't it funny how much you don't care about that kind of thing when it's your own child? They got the other bead out with forceps, all the while Elaina is just freaking out. I felt kind of bad for her, but I couldn't help but think that it was kind of funny too. It was such a two-year-old thing to do. Almost a right of passage. Hopefully she won't do it again.

Learning the Loo

Subjected to the tyranny of a 3-year-old's bladder, we've had to dramatically curb our activities away from home. She's picked it up in about a day, and stays dry very well now. However, the #2 portion of the affair has been a tough nut to crack. The first time scared her, so now she holds it as long as possible. This leads to constipation, then pain when it finally does come, and thus more fear and more holding. It's a rough cycle to be in, and we're scrambling to help her break it (hello, fiber: oatmeal, whole-grain pasta, lots of fruit and apple juice).

We just finished day two of the modified diet, which is yielding promising physical results but seems to have no psychological benefits for the subject. We continually find ourselves in a situation where, when she first realizes she has to go, she asks. But the she doesn't go. So she leaves, but asks again 5 minutes later. This repeats continues 6-10 times until she can't hold it any longer and finally gets a tiny bit out. A few hours later, it all happens again. It's very stressful, and we feel terrible for her because she's genuinely afraid and the look in her eye seems to convey a keen sense that she's trapped, that there's no way out except the hard way. (This is consistent with Heather's retelling of her own thought process during Camden's birth.)

We've offered to let her go back to a diaper when she needs to go, but she seems to like being clean and dry so much that even when she's wearing one, she refuses to take advantage and insists on using the bathroom. It's probably time to get her doctor involved, before she starts having health issues.

Camden's Blessing Photos

OK, so we haven't had the blessing yet, but we had to get pictures while he's still small since we won't be blessing him until he's 3 months old. We're waiting until Father's Day because our families will be in town for Torry's graduation. We were pretty impressed that these turned out pretty well, seeing as they came from Target. We had a sub-par experience at JC Penney with Elaina when she was at a similar age.