Milk, School, Gymnastics and the bed time battles

Boy oh boy, time to catch up once again.

School is slowly picking up speed along with work-work and with that free time is at a premium. Not to mention one of my new years resolutions was to try and make the effort to visit with more friends outside of whatever is currently occupying my time. This has been nice too, as I've enjoyed two parties in two weeks - little miss social. Not to mention two play dates, Elly's school, gymnastics and all the other stuff we've crammed in.

So what's been going on?

Milk is on the out.

Elly has always had some degree of eczema. Generally it's been under control and she's never really complained about it. It's flared up from time to time, but I never really gave the cause much thought. In fact, I never really did any sort of investigation as to what the cause of her eczema was, I just more or less put cream on the really flared up patches when the time called for it.

Well, unfortunately it REALLY flared up a couple weeks back. Her torso, all her 'hot spots', legs, shoulders, back, front - everywhere pretty much was red, dry, itchy, scaly and irritated and she was complaining and scratching constantly. Having been to the docs before I pretty much assumed that if I went I'd just get a prescription for the cream she's used in the past that has and continues to relieve the discomfort, but would't likely get anywhere near resolving the cause.

While visiting a local health food store in search of St. Frances Deep Immune to try and help keep our family healthy through the winter months with school and illness everywhere; I asked the clerk about anything they may have for eczema. The clerk shared her personal experience with her milk sensitivity that lead her to have issues with eczema her entire life. A little tired of the bad rap that milk has been taking with pretty much any and all naturopaths taking anyone and everyone off milk, I was tempted to tune out. Between the dairy and the gluten, refined sugars and all the crazy nut and other allergies, I just didn't want to think that our house would have to consider adapting and reducing milk. We are a dairy, white bread, full fat kind of house. We like our carbs with a side of carbs and cheese and milk..... well, Elly and her Dad love their milk. Me, I love my dairy, but rarely drink milk - which may be why we didn't see signs of any sort of milk intolerance in Elly when she was an infant. Given that I didn't consume it a ton, she didn't get it.

So why now? Why blame the milk?

I had literally been thinking lately that Elly's milk in take was off the charts. Like seriously ridiculous. She was drinking it like water and given that she only drinks milk and water, it was pretty significant. Even enough that others were noticing too. So between her increase in milk consumption and the pretty significant onset of eczema it was a fair thing to consider a little diet change in our pursuit to being itch free.

We have tried the rice milk and the almond milk - neither of which have passed the test. The only thing I've managed to do is scare Elly off of any milk in our house, so now she only drinks water. Even if I split it, she claims it's not right. Which she's kind of right because we've also taken the opportunity to drop our milk of choice to 1% from 2%.

So after a week with strictly reduced milk intake, but not complete dairy elimination we have seen a great improvement in her skin. Her Belly has nearly all cleared up, while the spots that were worse are still on the mend and improved by 50% or more.

The clerk at the store made a comment about eczema only being the external reaction to something internally that was much more significant - so with that we continue to try and reduce the milk intake because if the mess we saw was any indication of something worse on the inside, our poor kids insides were in rough, rough shape.

This week not only saw the demise of milk, it also saw the introduction of "school" into our child care routine. Mondays and Fridays Elly attends her new Montessori school and she's doing GREAT! I want to say she loves it, but I don't think we're quite there yet. She definitely is enjoying it though. Both days her end of day reports were very positive and the teachers are very optimistic about her transition into the routine. She sits and enjoys circle time, she talks with her new friends, she eats well and she participates.

Friday she had one pee accident, which the teachers say was likely due to distraction while playing. Her only challenge seems to be sleep. The first day she slept for 30mins before a kid in another room woke her and her second day she didn't sleep at all. However, I'm told that she laid in her cot for an hour or more quietly without bothering anyone and just 'rested'. There's no denying that this kid knows what she's supposed to do when it comes to nap/bed time - more on that soon.

We also enjoyed our 2nd gymnastics class this week. I was high on excitement from the class last week and feared disappointment this week. Fortunately that was NOT the case. Elly is seriously LOVING it and so am I. I totally want to take gymnastics again. It's only been 25 years, surely it must just be like riding a bike - right?

This week we had some slightly modified circuits from last week. Just enough to switch it up, but not enough to throw the kids off. 

This air floor was a big hit as you can clearly see. I can't believe how much air she's actually getting. Mind you, it was a pretty bouncy floor and I think I coulda got some pretty good height if I let myself really giver - lol. I had to take it easy though given the fact that this is after all for her, and not for me.

I've counted us pretty lucky that Elly hasn't been much of a climber. Sure she climbs a little, but really she never really understood the power and the value of using her feet to climb and not her knees. This little exercise is sure to bite us in the butt down the road, now that she has learned some basic climbing principles.

Hop Scotch was lost on her, but she enjoys these little lumps that she needs to walk across and often likes to attempt the first one on her own, but it quick to look for the hand of support.

The balance beam circuit is a fun one too. There are 3-4 beams that they have to go across. Elly is good for the first two, but is kinda over it by the 3rd and never made it to the 4th this week. The thing with her, is that she doesn't just want to walk a straight line. She wants to jump on it, crawl on it, big step and little step on it. She does enjoy it though.

And Jumping... anywhere and everywhere please.

Hooray!!! This really captures pretty much the entire hour of class right here.

Saturday after gymnastics I needed an activity to keep her busy. I recently read about making  your own "cloud dough" on another blog, so I thought I'd give it a go. I think giving her anything to make a mess with would have been fine. Although the cloud dough was a pretty big hit. It got pretty messy and took a little extra effort with the vacuum cleaner to get it out from the cracks in the hard wood, but it all cleaned up. However, I should warn anyone who opts to make this and not put down some kind of mat on their floor - beware, it really gives a little coating to your floor and makes it a little slippery. I should mention for those interested. The recipe is simple - 8 cups Flour. 1 Cup Baby Oil. It's like playing with a really soft play dough/sand cross.

Hard at work.

A little pre-bedtime snuggles... 

Closely followed by the bedtime meltdown, crying fits, and pleas to pee, poop, get water, eat or any other strategy that she thinks might get me to stay in her room, at her side, preferably in her bed all night long. Fortunately, while she has her fit she stays in bed. She seems to know that getting out is crossing the line.

She is without a doubt testing her boundaries. Night one was the biggest test on my nerves. Fortunately, it was just one night. Now I'm aware of her tactics and we've got a counter plan in place.

Oh yes... one last thing. A little collection of pictures and video from her play date today. We are so truly blessed to have found such a great group of Moms and kids to grow up with.