Stuology

Here are some things:

I didn’t get a good photo, but last week Ada was running outside at school, tripped and broke her fall with her face. On the sidewalk. She came home with a good sized fat lip and some pretty scraps on the front of her face from her nose to her chin. As clumsy as Ada is, I’m surprised she hasn’t broken anything yet. There is only a small scab left underneath her nose.

I grew up with extremely bad hayfever. July and August were particularly horrendous months for me. I couldn’t go outside without instant itchy, watery, swollen eyes, constant sneezing, a runny nose that itched so bad I wanted to rip it off my face if I could mange before my congested sinuses exploded. And this was while taking allergy medicine. When I moved to Lawrence, they improved somewhat, but it was still the case that when I went outside in July and August, I had to cover my nose and mouth with Kleenax to not suffer the instant torture before I could get back into the safety of air conditioning. As I got older, it subsided. Now I notice in July and August, but it is so manageable that I rarely even need to take medication for it–until September of this year. It happened last month while I was either making dinner or eating. My eye started to itch. And then the other. And then they got red and swollen. I popped some Benedryl and eventually it went away. Then my nose started itching. And running. It has been doing this off and on for about a month. It was so bad this week, I had to not only pop a Benedryl, but shut all the windows and turn on the air conditioning to filter out whatever was making my eyes swollen and itchy even though the weather didn’t warrant having it on. I’m also speculating that Ada’s constant runny nose and sneezing fits are caused by the same thing^*.

And for my third mention of Ada, she is still awake. I can’t get her to sleep. I decided to pull her out of the room with James because she keeps singing. This isn’t a horrible thing, but Ada still hasn’t learned volume control. I want James to at least sleep the entire night. We are having a slumber party night. I make a bed on the loveseat for Ada and a bed for me on the sofa, and we sleep in the living room.

I knew I could stretch this out.

*I also have bad eczema, the “bad” label comes from the fact that it gets so bad that my skin will bleed. Both of my children suffered from this when they were born, and while Ada hasn’t any problems in a while, James still has small troubles with it. I learned during their eczema treatments that infants who have bad eczema have at least one parent with bad hayfever, and that they are likely to also develop hayfever. That and the fact that Ada keeps rubbing her nose along with the sneezing is what I’m basing my assumption that she may suffer my same fate.