Doctors visits and walking progress

Kaylee has been making great strides (literally) in the past couple of days. She is all of the sudden, much braver and walks all the way across the room. She can walk all the way from the living room to the bathroom (her walker was in there). She now walks not just to us but the things she wants...toys, dogs, etc. She has adopted additional walkers, she pushes around Eric's big blue square water container for his aquariums, her rocker, and a laundry basket in addition to her walker. It's funny to see a baby walking around pushing a laundry basket around the house. The mess in our house is more now since Kaylee can get around more to make it! So now I find myself more on my toes cleaning up clutter.  She's so sweet walking by herself, she babbles, squeals and smiles in the enjoyment of her new skill. She takes these little ginger shuffle-like steps. Very sweet.

This week we got some sort of bad but expected news about Kaylee's allergies. The blood test came back showing that she is allergic to milk, eggs and peanuts.  She has a high enough allergy for all of them to raise concerns and limit them in her diet but the doctor said there's an 80% likelihood she will outgrow them so she will be tested every year. For her milk allergy, we have already had great success introducing soy as an alternative. Now I will use it in some of my cooking too. Her milk allergy is quite high (but not in the severe category) so we need to not have any dairy in  her diet. We now have an epipen and benadryl on hand to treat her allergies. But where Eric and I are different is in regards to treating the egg allergy. We will by no means be giving her scrambled eggs or something but we have noticed when eggs are cooked into something like pizza crust or bread, she does fine with them. This obviously opens up a lot of options for us and we will continue to operate on this assumption that it is safe for Kaylee. Eric and I went together to see the allergist and he said some children have an allergy to just eggs but don't have it to eggs cooked into foods. She will not get her flu shot because of this. For the peanut allergy, her numbers weren't quite as bad and he's thinking she'll outgrow it. Our daycare has a policy against peanut butter and you aren't supposed to feed any baby under 3 peanuts anyways so it won't be as big a deal. We will be watching our labels for peanuts to make sure she doesn't get any though.  

We've known for quite a while that Kaylee has dietary sensitivities. We noticed eczema, redness around the lips and face, and on one occasion hives on the lips. Also we knew she had a milk allergy because she threw up formula and milk, she would down the bottle and then throw it up 2 minutes later.   So this wasn't exactly a surprise but I still felt sad because I thought maybe it was an under-one-year thing and that she would outgrow it. Oh well.  

Daycare has an epipen and benadryl too, and all their staff is trained to use the epipen and when to use it. It makes me feel good at the moment that we have her at a center, instead of a home because they are much more familiar with these things. The cook in the kitchen has a list of all the kids with allergies and makes them alternatives to any food that would cause a problem. I love not having to worry about packing her special food to take along for daycare.  We got all her paperwork signed and the meds in place, it was more of an undertaking than I thought it would be so I'm glad we are done with the setup.

Kaylee also went to the doctor yesterday for our follow-up with her pediatrician who wanted to see her back in 6 weeks. She was encouraged to see Kaylee following her own weight curve. She is now 21 lbs 12 oz. The doctor was a little unsure about it because her weight at one point did drop from 80% to 50% but after seeing Kaylee several times, she said Kaylee's following the 50% curve quite well and is still in porportion to her height.  She was glad to hear from me that Kaylee is eating some more foods as well. Strawberries, carrots, insides of potstickers, pizza crust, crackers with avacodo on them, etc. She was super happy to hear Kaylee likes meat and is doing well on the soy (with no reaction).  She feels she'll get her fat and protein well, but wants us to limit her milk to 32 oz a day to make sure she eats her food too. She recommended to us we get a multivitamin for Kaylee to take daily just to make sure on the fruits and veggies, and recommended that we try a couple new things --- getting the fruits from a can (unsweetened) so that they are soft, and also getting the veggies from soup  so that they are soft.  So we will be trying those things.  

During the doctor's visit, Kaylee was showing off for the doctor. She was walking between the bead board on the wall and me the whole time we were talking. It was kind of hard to talk through all the babbling and squealing she did. The doctor clapped for Kaylee and said she was so happy to see her getting around so well. Kaylee cried when the doctor left the room for a minute because she was in the middle of hamming it up and wanted her audience back. She loves attention.  

She did well with the chickenpox shot and didn't even cry.  But then we had to go to the shot room for the usual hemoglobin and lead tests that they do, and boy did she cry at that. They do a finger prick for it and then scrape out the blood into a little vial. The part she didn't like the most is how she was being restrained.  I'm glad that's over with, secretely I wanted to just leave after the chickenpox vaccine. Vaccines are obviously benefitting Kaylee, as are the allergy tests because we had a reason for them but when they want to just check on things because that's what they do with all babies, I just want to get out of there. But my logical side realizes I need to do it...I'm guessing most Moms feel this way.