Christmas Winter Wonderland

Here are our pictures from Christmas.
Bella and Papi trimming our little Christmas tree. It's fun that she is getting to an age that she can somewhat participate in the festivities.




We spent Christmas in Brigham City at Grandma's house. Christmas came in the middle of a week that we all spent sick. Bella got sick first the weekend before (while we were visiting family in Southern Utah) and of course she passed it to me a couple days latter. Deviating from the usual course of things the Blue Prince managed to avoid this round of the Plague. His foreign immune system usually catches whatever is going around the house and gives him a worse version of it. Anyway I was the one sick on Christmas which turned out to be fairly good timing since I had my mom around to take care of me and aunties to keep track of Bella.


This is Bella opening gifts Christmas morning. Santa got her a little red wagon and a stuffed monkey that she loves to pull around giving rides to. She got a little miffed the other day when I wouldn't let her take the wagon in the car to daycare.


A couple family shots


We have been getting a ton of snow for the last couple of weeks. This is the view of my mom's back yard Christmas morning. We decided to take Bella outside to play.

She liked the icicles that Papi let her take off the roof. Mom forgot to bring her gloves so she is wearing a pair of socks on her hands for mittens.

She wasn't crazy about the whole walking in snow part. (She is actually standing in a snow bank here)

Her favorite was of course Grandma's swing. Tears were shed when she was forced to come inside when her fingers were turning into Popsicles. The impromptu gloves didn't last too long.

Allergy testing

As many of you know Bella ended up at PCMC at the end of June for an overnight stay due to an allergic reaction to an unknown source. Today we had our visit with an Allergist for skin testing and we are a lot closer to an answer. The three main allergens are:

• Eggs:
  

Which basically we knew. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a little girls face shouldn't look like this after eating a scrambled egg Christmas breakfast.

Luckily so far, the facial swelling has been the extent of the effect from eggs, and it goes away after about an hour. We just have be careful of less obvious sources such as the "ah-ha" moment in the Buenos Aires food court when we remembered too late that Chinese fried rice is made with scrambled eggs. Dr. Allergist also said that raw egg is often more allergically potent than the cooked stuff, so we will be avoiding cookie dough for the time being.

• Shellfish:
  

Also not a huge surprise as it is the familial allergy group. The weird thing about it is that each member of my family with a seafood allergy is allergic to different things. My grandmother is allergic to Trout. My father gets deathly ill with Scallops and I have a mild allergy to Shrimp that I have mostly grown out of. One of my earliest memories is of being rushed into the bathroom by my dad to wash the hives I had developed after eating a shrimp dinner. I think I was about 5. Now I just get itchy hands if I have to peel shrimp. Dr. Allergist seemed somewhat surprised when I was asking in depth questions about what is defined as a shellfish. His comment of "most kids foods are fairly safe" in the tone of "what are you feeding your 18 month old" made me realize that most families eating habits are somewhat different from my own. We don't really go for Kid foods vs. Adult foods around here. My cousin Conner's favorite food as a toddler was Crab Legs. I'm sure that Bella has probably had Shrimp before without problem, but it will be interesting trying to figure out which Shellfish is her specific No No.

Number 3 and the real Kicker:

• Cats

Bella loves cats, Kitty was one of her first words. Thinking back, it makes sense and is probably the one that ended us up in the Hospital. She would always get a little congested when we would visit Grandma's and she would play with the Ancient One (i.e. Crystal), when she was still around. Two of the upstairs neighbors have cats but luckily they mostly run away from her before she can get too cuddly. For the time being I am just going to watch this one and try to prevent her from rolling around naked with felines. At least we have a good excuse now to turn down free kitten offers. We had a narrow escape from this the other weekend when we visited with Aunt Leanne. She tested borderline positive for dogs as well so no furry friends at all for us. Not news that will break either my or the Blue Prince's hearts. The down side is that this allergy leaves her at high risk of developing asthma, so another fun thing to look out for.

All in all I think it was a worthwhile visit and I appreciated my friend Kellie's referral to the Doctor in question. Anyone else have any fun allergy related comments to share?

Christmas Pictures

So I finally broke down and paid to get some professional portraits of Bella in her Christmas finery. She did great, it was probably one of the easiest photo session the photographer had ever done with a baby. Literally took about 20 minutes including changing the backgrounds to get 8 or so shots. The entire experience left me kind of Meh... and irritated at the incredible markups on the photo sheets. Using extreme self control and a couple coupons I made it out of there with 4 picture sheets (one of them supposedly free) for about $25. I will probably end up scanning the pictures and print off any additional copies I need myself.