Monthly Archive

Ok, not a real one but we saw this on my aunt’s blog and thought it was fun:

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I try to make a habit of periodically backing up our pictures and important documents to an external hard drive.  As I was doing so a few days ago, I came across this video of Katelyn that I had totally forgotten about.  We had just gotten home from church and BriAnne made a pb&j sandwich for Katelyn before putting her down for a nap. She was apparently a little more tired than we thought!

Our family normally enjoys good eye health, but this week has been a little rough in that department. It all started with a phone call to BriAnne on Monday morning from Katelyn’s preschool teacher. Apparently, the kids were looking at seashells (learning the letter “S”).  After Katelyn’s turn to hold the shell she said her face started feeling itchy and she rubbed her eye, getting a piece of seashell dust in it.  The teacher said it would be best for BriAnne to come pick her up because her eye was starting to swell up and Katelyn was starting to freak out. Poor BriAnne was right in the middle of a transaction at Costco while simultaneously trying to keep Ethan contained. She hurriedly finished and rushed over to pick her up. She called me on the way over there and I just kept saying “seashell dust? how bad can it be?” Well, at the end of the day we’ve decided that somehow, someway our little girl is allergic to seashell dust.  Not seashells, just…seashell dust. She’s played with lots of seashells in her lifetime and has never had a problem. Her eye swelled completely shut for a time, and the whole right side of her face broke out in a rash, the exact same thing happens when she pets animals:

BriAnne asked her what she needed to feel better and almost without hesitation Katelyn responded “a chocolate ice cream cone!” They had to drive to 3 different places (the first two only had vanilla) but finally found a chocolate one at Arctic Circle.  That, a day watching movies and a good night’s sleep seemed to clear things up nicely.  I guess we’ll be sure to avoid seashell dust when we are at the beach on our Disneyland trip in March!

Ethan’s eye situation didn’t catch us off guard like Katelyn’s did – after 7 months it was finally time on Tuesday morning to get Ethan’s tearduct tube removed.  Boy, are we glad! It hasn’t been a problem for him until about the last week, when out of nowhere it started irritating him quite a bit. The procedure itself was maybe 10 minutes, but of course like any kind of medical related anything it takes far longer than that when you factor in the time spent in the waiting room. At the end of it all though, he was a REALLY good boy throughout the process and his eye has been perfect in the day and a half since the operation.  Here are some pics of this exciting eye event:

5:30AM came quickly, and we always HATE HATE HATE to have to wake our kids up for anything!

In the waiting room:

In another much smaller waiting room, but this one had toys:

And after the operation.  His eye was a little swollen but not nearly as bad as we were expecting – it was really swollen and bloody when we first saw him after the tube was originally put in, and that’s all we had as a reference.  He wasn’t even grumpy even though he hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before!

Being a curious dad and a) wanting to see what the thing looked like that’s been riding around in my son’s head for half a year and b) wondering what a $1k piece of tubing looks like

…I asked the Dr if he could bring it out afterwards so I could see it. Much to BriAnne’s chagrin he actually did bring it out (in a **sterile, clean, unused* urine cup of all things).  To be honest I’m not actually sure what to do with it now, I already took it to work to show the guys, and it’s just sitting on the dresser in our room now. Clayton, don’t worry – I’ll be sure to bring it along on our next Diet Coke run.  Other than that I guess we’ll have to make a spot for it in his book of remembrance (when we get around to making one)