Lorelai says

I know I've missed a bunch, but these are the Lorelai-isms I managed to write down over the past few months since the last post.



Mommy: (pointing to her right foot) Which foot is this?
Lorelai: Um, right!
Mommy: Yes! Which foot is this? (Pointing to left foot)
Lorelai: Left foot!
Mommy:(pointing to right hand) What hand is this?
Lorelai: Ummmm, yellow?
Mommy: No...try again.
Lorelai: Oh! Green!


Mommy: how do you spell your name?
Lorelai: L...E...R-S-T?
Mommy: not quite. LORELAI
Lorelai: Oh. L-O-RST
(And then we did a massive name spelling drill with all of us telling her and quizzing her, and now she can spell it correctly. Aaaand we sometimes still call her Lerst, ha!)


Mommy: Let's brush your teeth, Lorelai.
Lorelai: I'm not Lorelai, I'm a cow!


Lorelai: Ew, what is this, I don't like it!
Teacher: Fruit cocktail. It's got all the fruits you already like, just try it.
Lorelai: Oh! I like fruit cottontail.
(Her teacher was so tickled by this, she had to tell me all about their conversation. I guess Lorelai kept calling it "fruit cottontail" for a while, cracking everyone up.)


Lorelai: Don't stand on your phone, that would be terrible. I'll call the police if you do that. (A friendly warning while I was doing some ab exercises in front of my phone on the floor, ha!)


After I had put Lorelai to bed like I do every night, she gets up and comes into the boys' room.
Lorelai: When am I going to bed?
Mommy: Ummm, now. I just put you to bed a minute ago...
Lorelai: Oh! I'm crazy!


Lorelai: (while watching the Super Bowl) I really don't like football. I like Ariel. 



Lorelai: Mommy did I tooted? Smell my butt! (Classy alert--she said tooted instead of farted.)




 (Check out more Lorelai-isms here.)

TV Junkie

Adam and I are total TV junkies. We typically spend just about every night after the kids are in bed, from 8:30 to 10ish on the couch, vegging out in front of one of the many shows we watch. It may not be quality together time and we may be rotting our brains and being anti-social, but honestly, after a long day at work, it's the way we both choose to relax, and I'm glad we can do it together.

 
Via. We'd much rather stay home and watch TV than go out!


Hopefully I'm not forgetting anything, but here's the list of shows I record and watch religiously (only 4 shows on this list are ones I watch without Adam--I really wish he watched Scandal so I'd have someone to OMG with, ha!):

The Walking Dead (last night's episode, Holy $&!@ you guys!)
Shameless
House of Lies
Homeland
True Blood
True Detective
Game of Thrones
Downton Abbey
House of Cards
Orange is the New Black
Sons of Anarchy (still can't get over that season 6 ending, OMG)
Banshee
Strike Back
Scandal
Grey's Anatomy
Parenthood
Vampire Diaries
New Girl
Big Bang Theory
Parks and Rec
How I Met Your Mother
Survivor
So You Think You Can Dance

And let's not forget about the dearly departed, much loved:
Breaking Bad
Dexter (Adam and I binge-watched all 8 seasons over the course of a couple months and we were so sad to see it end!)

There are several shows that we used to watch on a regular basis, but we chose to not put on our new DVR. I'm kind of proud of us for cutting back. Although I should also probably say that I've got Revenge cued up on my Netflix list, ready to go at any point. :)

Not that I have much more room in my schedule...but am I missing any other really great shows?

3rd annual peanut allergy update

Lorelai had her annual allergist appointment at the end of January and exactly like last year, there's good news and not so good news.

First, the good news. We did a full nut panel (skin and blood tests) for the first time, which I requested because I really wanted to know whether she was also allergic to any tree nuts. The skin tests for pecan and brazil nut came up slightly positive, but the blood tests on all nuts came back negative. Woohoo, no tree nut allergies!


Marks for all the other 5 nuts were not measurable.

And she was also really good for the entire appointment, even though we had to wait FOREVER and they took a bunch of blood from her. She didn't shed a single tear! She still won't let any doctor near her ears with the otoscope, but she's come SUCH a long way since her early days of sheer terror at any kind of doctor visit.



HOWEVER. She still can't actually have any tree nuts on the advice of her allergist, since there's a high probabability of cross-contamination with peanuts, and the high co-existence of peanut and tree nut allergies. The doctor doesn't want her to develop any new nut allergies. So we continue to avoid any and all nuts (except coconut, which she's negative for, and it's a fruit) until/unless she grows out of her peanut allergy.

More bad news: the dip we saw last year in her peanut allergy levels that gave me such hope that she'd outgrow it were apparently a fluke. She's back up to her initial level when we first had her tested. According to her doctor, "The dip in the level in 2013 is not uncommon in food allergic children as there is some variation in the annual levels seen. The reasoning for this fluctuation is not well documented in the literature. This peanut IgE level of 5.06 along with the skin test greater than 5x5 mm screens out offering Lorelai a challenge to peanut this year."

Component Value
• IgE Allergen Peanut 5.06
• IgE Allergen Almond Nut <0.35
• IgE Allergen Brazil Nut <0.35
• IgE Allergen Cashew Nut <0.35
• IgE Allergen Hazel Nut <0.35
• IgE Allergen Pecan <0.35
• IgE Allergen Pistachio <0.35
• IgE Allergen Walnut <0.35
• IgE Allergen Coconut (Fruit) <0.35


REFERENCE VALUES for serum IgE levels
Class IgE kU/L Interpretation
0 <0.35 Negative
1 0.35-0.70 Equivocal
2 0.71-3.50 Positive
3 3.51-17.50 Positive
4 17.60-50.00 Strongly Positive
5 50.10-100.00 Strongly Positive
6 >100.00 Strongly Positive

Big fat bummer. Although it doesn't change anything we're currently doing to manage her allergy (avoidance, epi pen on hand), it just means that she's much less likely to outgrow her allergy before she enters kindergarten, where she'll be in a much less controlled environment than her peanut-free daycare. I know there's so much more awareness these days, but that still doesn't ensure her safety. If someone could tell me without a doubt that she won't have an anaphalactic reaction to peanuts, I'd feel better. But there's no way of knowing, so I picture the worst case scenario and get all mama bear scared for her. :(

At least we haven't had any scares (knocking on all kinds of wood here!!) or problems with avoidance, and the boys are still really good about looking out for her, so she's got lots of people around to protect her. Fingers crossed for a legit downward trend soon though!

#snOMG. Over it.

It's almost freezing and raining/wintry mixing out side. The northern part of our county had pretty bad ice, with trees down and power out, so what was a 3-hour delay turned into another school cancellation. Luckily Adam was able to take the boys to work with him and Lorelai's daycare was open on schedule so I got to go into the office. Much better than the cancellation on Tuesday due to ice, where I had to take 4 hours worth of conference calls from home plus do the rest of my work, with 3 kids to keep quiet in the background all day. Yeah, they watched two movies that morning.

Needless to say, I'm SO over the cold and inclement weather. The sun and its warmth need to make an appearance, because my mood is taking a hit. Or that could be the fact that I've been watching what I'm eating so I'm pretty much in a constant state of hangry. Or both. Oh, and that's probably why blogging has taken a back seat these days. I've got several posts to share, but haven't been the least bit in the mood to write. #sorrynotsorry.

Anyway...in the spirit of catching up, and hopefully saying an offical goodbye to winter weather, I feel the need to share our snow day from three weeks ago. And I have to document this for my own memory later, since it rarely snows like this in NC.







Unlike the last snow day we had, this one wasn't hyped nearly as much. Oddly enough, it turned out way worse. On Feb 12, Adam went to work in the morning to one of his properties an hour away. School closed early, and it started snowing right when I got to the bus stop at 12:30. I talked to Adam and asked him to make his way home. He said it wasn't bad out and he'd leave soon-ish. By the time the bus pulled up at 12:40 and we headed to daycare to get Lorelai, snow was sticking to the sides of the roads. I pulled up to daycare at 12:45 and made a frantic call to Adam to get his butt home ASAP. By the time we left daycare shortly before 1pm, a full dusting was covering the roads.



Adam did make it home safe and sound, although it took him a full 3.5 hours, and he couldn't even make it back to his other office to drop off his co-workers. They ended up hanging out at our house for a while until their husbands could come get them. Although all things considered, he made remarkable time compared to my mom, who took the same amount of time to go SIX MILES (!!!!) to her house. CrAzY!







We got 4 inches of snow in 4 hours, and then some, totalling what I guess was 5 or 6 inches by the time the sleet and freezing rain came rolling in overnight and throughout the next day. Luckily we didn't lose any trees or power.





We were basically snowed in for 2.5 days while school was closed, but it was actually not bad at all. I didn't mind that snow--in my mind, it was one last hurrah for winter before warmer temps rolled in. Hahahaha, fooled me! We've had a couple of warm days since then, but winter keeps.coming.back. A 50* temp swing in the course of 24 hours is just ridiculous.


Spring, where are you??

Go home, winter. You're drunk. I need some spring in my life.


70* on Sunday, 20* on Monday. UGH!