dotty

Happy birthday, Baby Dot! Most amazing two years of my life.

It’s been approx. 900 years since I actually updated my blog with anything personal. I miss writing here, but seem to lack the time and motivation to do so properly.

Baby Dot
She’s going to be 2 very soon and probably not so much a “Baby Dot” anymore. TWO YEARS OLD! I know people say this all the time, but where did the time go? Seriously? I so clearly remember just giving birth to her.

She’s been in school 2 days a week now since January and completely loves it. She is the kid that gets dropped off and never cries. She runs, is trying to jump and talks in sentences when she spirit moves her. She expresses her wants and has those famous 2-year-old tantrums when she doesn’t get what she wants. Has almost all of her teeth, save for 4. Can count to 5, loves animals and is just plain happy. Best thing of all — she tells us she loves us now! It amazes me that I took part in creating such a lovely person. I pretty much live each day to hear “I love you, mama”.

Still allergic to all the same things and has been visiting with Awesome Allergist to monitor them. She did an oral challenge for wheat (means she ate it at the hospital in measured doses), which did not go well. She had a bad reaction, but it didn’t require a hospital stay. We’re still slowly introducing new foods. A latest favorite is strawberries. She is limited, but is a healthy kid regardless.

I still struggle with feeling extremely angry about the food allergies sometimes. Which is really kind of dumb, but I can’t help it. I feel like I’ve been robbed. So many things that are taken for granted — we can’t take her out to eat or to anyone’s house and just let her eat the food there, I can’t go on a vacation without first knowing what the food options and grocery stores are there, I can’t let well-meaning friends make her anything without sounding like a psycho about how it was prepared. Social gatherings are really tiring and not that much for us. It’s just really isolating at times.

The Rest
I was finally made permanent at my job about a month or so ago. That means more hours, though still part-time. I am loving it and feeling like this was definitely the right decision. Because of this, BD will be starting school full-time very soon. I feel nothing but positive about it. Remember how scared and worried I was about sending her there? What a difference a couple of months makes. She actually HAS had an incident involving her grabbing someone else’s cup at school recently. They did everything correctly, called me and I walked right over to make sure everything was ok (and it was).

Biggest new — we sold our house and bought another one! Our house sold after 2 days on the market, which is just utter insanity. Then we had our new one picked out within the week. I’m so excited to have a little bit more room in the new house. Going from 2 bedrooms to 3 will make a huge difference for us. AND we’re both going to be super close to where we work, so no more long commutes and wasted time in the car.

Ok, I’m done.

This painting was my gift for Mr. Dotty. I highly recommend. They did such a good job!

Holy dusty blog, Batman! I have been totally neglectful. So much to update on in my life. But, that’s not what I’m here for today.

Niki invited me to participate in a children’s book exchange. It’s one of those deals where you send a book to the first person on the list, then add your name and send it out to 3-6 other people. You will then, in theory, get around 36 books if it all works out. I already sent out my book, so I’m looking for people who want to participate with me. I loved children’s books before I had BD, but now I have even more of a reason to build a nice collection for her.

Who’s in? Email dot [at] dotty.us or leave a comment!

I have harped a lot lately about health insurance. I never had a reason to worry about it until I had a child who needs twice a year allergy tests and lab work, which are extremely expensive. Not to mention the impromptu visits to the ER and the doctor when she has an allergic reaction to something. Add on top of that, my own oral surgery last year. I thought we had excellent health insurance, until we actually needed it. Doing our taxes this year was physically painful after I added up how much we paid out of pocket for health care.

This is a great article in Time, if you’re so inclined to read about how much our health insurance system in the US completely SUCKS:

When we talk about health-care reform, we usually start with the problem of the roughly 45 million (and rising) uninsured Americans who have no health coverage at all. But Pat represents the shadow problem facing an additional 25 million people who spend more than 10% of their income on out-of-pocket medical costs. They are the underinsured, who may be all the more vulnerable because, until a health catastrophe hits, they’re often blind to the danger they’re in. In a 2005 Harvard University study of more than 1,700 bankruptcies across the country, researchers found that medical problems were behind half of them — and three-quarters of those bankrupt people actually had health insurance.

Bankrupt? And being insured???? Is that not completely insane?!!!! Something is very, very, VERY broken.