The Loftis Family

When I was a little kid I lived in Pennsylvania, the steel capital of the world and home to the Amish.  One day while grocery shopping I spotted some Amish ladies and started saying (ok, yelling) rather loudly “they’re witches mommy, they’re witches.”  Of course the women understood that I was little and didn’t know better, but never the less my mom was completely embarrassed.  I’ve heard that story told so many times and never thought I’d have a moment like that…until today.

I took the girls to Costco this afternoon and while walking through the produce Amelia spotted a woman wearing a big gardening hat, you know the type with a wide brim that almost swallows your entire head.  Amelia immediately starts saying (ok, shouting) “the lady with the big hat is a bad lady, she’s a very bad lady mommy.” Over and over.  It was all sorts of awesome.

So here’s my wardrobe lesson of the day: if you’re wearing a big hat, be it an Amish hat or a garden hat you will look like a very bad lady/witch to a toddler.

Today is Amelia’s first day of school.  Unfortunately she woke up swollen, but what else is new lately.  We’re heading for an EKG tomorrow and an allergy panel next Wednesday.  We’re praying for answers and resolution.

All of the icky stuff aside…Amelia was SO excited and went right in and sat down at her chair to have a snack.  I’m so proud of her!  She insisted that her picture be taken with Juliet (that’s my sweet girl), but mommy insisted that she have some pictures taken alone too.  It’s a nasty day here so we didn’t get great smiles or anything, but they’ll do.

For posterity sake…here’s Amelia last year on her first day of school.

A year later…yep, I put her in overalls this morning on purpose.

Just a little bit of fun time with my girls over the last few weeks, shopping, baking, wearing buckets on our heads and relaxing together.  I love having two girls.  Amelia loves her little sister and I think Juliet is becoming enthralled with her big sister.  She smiles when Amelia is around and she stares at the “homage to Amelia” on the family room wall (ie: my photo wall). Life with two is sweeter than I could have imagined.

Amelia is learning opposites and to differentiate between sizes.  She’s pretty much fascinated with all things that move right now, bugs, trucks, planes, etc.  She loves to point out if a bus is a long one or a short one, if a truck is a big one or small one, etc.

We went shopping at the outlet mall recently and there are these little rides scattered throughout the mall.  I think she climbed on at least 2o of them while we were there.  Her favorite was the little school bus followed closely by the firetruck.  She loved them so much and wasn’t thrilled when I called her to leave.

I bought the most ridiculous shoes for Amelia, they’re pink, with tattoo designs and they’re bedazzled…yes, they’re crazy, but cute.  I was poking around online and Amelia was looking over my shoulder.  She saw them and said “oh mommy, I love them!”  I couldn’t resist buying them when she was so excited.  Here’s Amelia and her spiffy new shoes….

I figured that since I haven’t posted as much lately that I’d do a few pictures of each girl in their own post.

Here are a few from Mom’s birthday celebration and the gift the girls made for her.  Juliet’s footprints make the stripes and Amelia painted the blue star field and used white thumbprints to make the stars.

Three of Grandma’s 4 girls helped her blow out the candles on the cake made by Aunt Melanie.  The picture of Amelia and Keira will forever haunt them, it’s most definitely blackmail material.

Here are some of Amelia’s swollen face pictures from the last week and from her CT yesterday….yes, she sleeps with her eyes open normally, but not quite that much.

Here are some from our adventures hanging out and venturing out and about. Disclaimer: she picks her own clothing and gets dressed these days which means she is 100% responsible for how she looks, not me!

Amelia’s CT came back normal!!! YAY!!!  That rules out some pretty scary things, like a tumor.

I spoke with one of the pediatricians and she has ordered some blood work to look at Amelia’s kidneys.  They want to rule out kidney issues and then they’re going to look at doing an EKG and consider other auto-immune disorders.  We’re still hoping and praying for a simple solution.

We appreciate all of the thoughts, prayers and support as we work to find a diagnosis and solution.

I need some blog writing therapy.  Today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  I was the hardest day I’ve ever had being a mommy.  Balancing a newborn’s needs with a toddler going through medical stuff is just plain hard.

In case you didn’t know, Amelia had to have a CT scan today due to the continual swelling she’s experiencing with her face.  The swelling until yesterday was only on her right side, now it seems we’re having issues on the left too.

We arrived at Texas Children’s Hospital today at 12:00 as planned.  We checked her in and she go a nice pretty bracelet to wear.  We were taken to a holding area…it was a zoo.  We saw so many people come in an out during our time there, countless babies crying and there was zero rest for any of us.  Every time the baby fell asleep another baby could shriek and wake her up.

They started an IV shortly after we arrived because Amelia was going to have contrast during her CT.  We asked about sedation and were told that they wanted to try it without first.  My first thought was REALLY, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? I know my child and I know there’s no way on God’s green earth that she was going to allow them to VELCRO her to table, make a lot of noise and ask her to stay still for 5-10 minutes.  I’m 30 years old and I wouldn’t want to do that for 5 seconds much less 5 minutes.  How in the world would they expect her to do it?

So, about 15 minutes after we arrived they took her back.  I was thinking heck yes, they’re fast here.  About 3 minutes after that they were back in the room, no dice.  Amelia screamed like a banshee, flailed and did exactly what I thought she would do, she acted like a 2 year old.  So, we were going to have to sedate her after all.  Mommy knows best.

We sat, we waited.  I nursed the baby 8,000 times.  We played peek-a-boo in the curtains. We played hide and see in a 10×10 area.  We read every book they had.  We played every game on both of our phones.  We watched videos.  We sat there for 3 hours waiting and wondering when they would come and get us.  They pretty much forgot about us.  Dustin went to the front desk and asked for our nurse.  Someone came in a few minutes later and before we knew it they were sedating her.

It took 2.5 times the normal amount to sedate my super duper strong-willed kiddo.  That part was awful.  Watching my child fight it, mumble, moan, cry out for me and then finally give in made me cry.  I hate this, I hate that we’re having to do it and I pray that we never have to again.  I thought the worst was surely over.  I was wrong.

They took her back and the test took maybe 5 minutes to complete and she was brought back in the holding area.

We finally started stirring Amelia about and hour after her CT.  She was out of it so it took some time.  We got her to drink (more like spill juice on herself and splash some in her mouth) and we got her alert enough that the nurse would take her IV out and let us go home.

We were ok until we took that juice box away.  WW3 broke out and lasted for over an hour, the amount of time it took us to get most of the way home in rush hour traffic and rain.  Amelia screamed, kicked and fought us with every bit of her strength.  It’s like the worst temper tantrum you’ve ever imagined times a thousand.  It was awful.  I don’t ever want to see her like that again.  On top of it Amelia’s antics woke the baby up so we had both of them screaming together for a bit.

She went from screaming one minute to laughing for a few seconds back to screaming.  She was nuts, she was not our child.  We couldn’t comprehend much that she said and didn’t know how to help her.

Just as we turned off of the highway it was like someone flipped a switch.  All of a sudden we could understand what she was saying, she was no longer crying, she was normal again…mostly.

Amelia still couldn’t walk.  It was like she was really drunk all evening.  She fell twice, once into the end table and once into her bookcase in the hallway.  She bonked her head both times and of course cried and cried.  She got some extra snuggles and songs this evening at bed time and we expect that she’ll be back to 100% after getting a good night’s sleep.

All in all it was a pretty yucky day.  We’re praying for results soon, for a simple diagnosis, for an easy fix.  We’ll see.  For now we’ll pray and hope that our little girl is as perfect as we think she is.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but I just had to share this one….

Amelia was laying in bed with me last night and lifted my shirt to look at my belly.  She got used to doing it each night while I was pregnant to feel the baby so it’s not unusual. Here’s how our conversation went…

Amelia said to me “Mommy, what are those?”(pointing at my belly)

I responded “Those are stretch marks.”

And Amelia proclaimed “I don’t want those on you!”

To which I responded “I don’t want them either!”

Silly girl gave me all of my lovely tummy stretch marks (ok, poison ivy swelling at 32 weeks did) and there’s nothing I can do about them other than pray that I never get more.  Thankfully I didn’t get ANY with Juliet, yay!

Maybe some day there will be a magic eraser for them.

I have finally finished a few of the outstanding details in Amelia’s room and took pictures of the transformation.

Here are the before pictures…just after cleaning out the room. Yep, nice boring shade of builder beige like the rest of the house.

And here are the after pictures. Amelia told us she wanted purple and that’s what she got!

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