To Catch You Up...

Okay. Here I am. A rare, substantial, weekend blog. But there is oh so much to cover and finally the boys are back in their respective rooms and J and I are having a date later so I can ignore him right now too to bring this overdue post to you all.

I can't really remember all the way back to Wednesday except that Dalton made this while helping in the kitchen:


Thursday was a special, super-fun day. J stayed to work from home in the morning with Dalton underfoot so that I could lend a hand at E's class Christmas party. He was pretty excited I'd be joining him for the morning:


And he took one of me:


I'd raved about how cute he looked in his coat (a hand-me-down from Max) and so when we got to the class I asked if he was going to take it off and he said, "No, I think I just want to be handsome". So he left it on. He often does when he wears lighter jackets to school.

Anyway...we got there and the children started out their normal way with attendance and the pledge and such while the moms got everything ready. We had several stations for the kids to stop by throughout the morning. One was an ornament painting station, which I was in charge of:


Here's his finished product:


I was pleased with how many of the children's names I knew. I can even tell the twins apart!

Next E was off to the candy cane beading station where he made this:

I did not realize candy canes were trying to be Jesus-based. Interesting. That's what the little tag says...what each element is for.

Easton also made a stop over at the bag coloring table:

See that young pretty lady running that station? She suddenly felt ancient when she realized the Room Mom was a former student of hers! I would too if someone I used to teach and I suddenly had kids in the same preschool class!

Anyway, he made this:


When the cookie-decorating area was finally free he hopped up to do his:


Then he enjoyed his cheese cubes and cookie with buddy Isaac:


His last stop was the nativity scene stickers...


Somehow he forgot the most important part!


When all the kids were finished they sat and watched a movie, sang some songs with jingle bells and then we all went to run around in the snow for a VERY short time. We had hot chocolate ready for the kiddos when they came back inside:


They sat for another short movie, we took some class pictures, the teachers handed out gifts and then they waited for the rest of the parents to arrive.

We rushed home to relieve J. We ate a quick lunch and needed to change shirts afterwards because we were heading over to a completely dairy-free house and there was remanants of dairy on the boys. Then we were off to E's pal from class Jacob's house. It was Jacob's house we went to for the "pretend slumber party" birthday back in October.

His little brother Sam (2.5) was napping but Dalton didn't mind. The boys all played SO well together. A lot of our playdates are with children who are more aggressive and dominant personality (bossy) types but not Thursday. It went super well. April (Jacob's mom) and I were able to chat and chat and chat over chai. She is SO nice and warm that I really opened up to her and at one point she had to get up for a box of tissues because we were both crying on the couch! I'm not normally like that, she's just one of those "friend to all" types where it felt comfortable.

Anyway...we did not spend the entire time crying. In fact, the boys made some cookies...

Around this time Jacob exclaimed, "This is the best Christmas ever!" and exchanged a high-five with E. Soooooo cute.

And we brought some crafts to do...



Of course we ate some cookies too!


We watched "The First Noel" and ate graham crackers and the boys played and played and played. I don't know that we've ever had such a long, yet pleasant, playdate. Sam woke up and played with D a bit...

And then April realized that it was almost time for her oldest son to get off the bus so she asked if I'd stay and hang with her kids while she did that. It was no problem. They were all playing so well it was a piece of cake to handle the 4 boys.

Dalton made himself comfy:


A little after Tim got home (which E claims is his favorite part of the playdate) we decided to head out. 4 hours after we'd arrived! Jacob and Easton shared a couple big huge hugs and at one point they tumbled to the ground...Jacob hit his tooth on E's head and E cried and then we really had to go because he was saying rude things about not liking Jacob anymore. :(

Poor D crashed shortly after we got in the car:


He couldn't sleep long though because we had to stop at the post office. Then we drove over to meet J at Sweet Tomatoes for our free dinner. However he got hung up in a bunch of traffic and I had to sit in the car with the boys but they were great.










We had our yummy, filling dinner and headed home for bed.

Friday morning found me calling the dermatologist again. April (from Thursday) deals with severe eczema from her son Sam (who has horrible, life-threatening allergies) and she inspected little Dalton and thinks a pediatric allergist visit is warranted. I'm afraid (as I mentioned in my short post yesterday) but decided one more call to the derm first was in order for us. Before I go to the allergist I'm giving regular dermatology one last chance. The stronger steriods finally cleared up D's eczema, but it was very temporary. And all his spots have come back. And then he's got a regular, almost viral-looking, rash on his trunk and thighs. So, something is up with the poor dude.

It wasn't long for the office to call us back and they wanted to see Dalton first thing in the afternoon. Until then we busied ourselves with making cookies. Since last Christmas I'd been wanting to make these Mint Thins. Yesterday we finally did, using snowflake shaped Ritz. The boys both helped me crush the candy canes:



(You can see a patch of bleeding eczema on his cheek there and a less severe (not bleeding) patch on his neck.)

Dalton wandered off to play and E helped me melt the chocolate:


And sprinkled the candy cane topping on the cooling cookies after I'd dipped them:


Mmmmmm:


They are mighty tasty. Very much like a Thin Mint.

We were going to bring some up to J's office but we couldn't get ahold of him and when we finally did he was having too busy of a day to see us (for long) when we'd be in town so we skipped trying to see him and just did lunch at home then off to the doc.

Both the P.A. and the M.D. had to check D out once again. He's perplexing. It's tricky because they tell us not to do too much off the cortisone creams...they're steroids after all...so you can't just slap some on him every single day. For the face and neck especially you have to limit it's use. But because D's eczema is so stubborn we're just gonna have to use it a bit more than they'd typically tell you is "safe". For his little body rash we're moisturizing the heck out of it (3 times a day) with a special, pricey cream. He already has a humidifier running in his room to keep his skin (and airways) moist. We already soap the boys up rather infrequently but we just switched to something even milder for the few instances when we do wash them. I've added an extra rinse cycle to our clothes when I do laundry. We've never ever done fabric softenener because of E's sensitive skin but now I'm thinking I might have to cut out dryer sheets now too. At least until we get his skin under control. Two of the spots really seem to bother him and that makes me sad. This is tricky but I'm so done with that place for awhile.

This morning (Saturday) I took the little guys both up to Open Gym at AussieROO. Dalton missed on Thursday with J working from home and me at E's school. So we did a make up today. E was all, "I've never been to Dalton's school before!" and we had fun. Ember and Neo (Ellis's mom and brother) were there too! After open gym we ran to the store briefly and came home. Jason was out doing some holiday shopping of his own.

This afternoon Lauren is coming up and J and I are having a shopping date to finish up everything for the boys (mostly D) and then dinner for two. Looking forward to it!