My Sweet La-La

I think it is about time for an update on my sweet adventurous middle child! Miss La-La finished 1st grade this year and did great! Her reading skills exploded this year and it has been so much fun to see the world of words open up for her.

La-La LOVES babies. When she sees one, she aches to hold it. She is so sweet and nurturing and I think this desire to hold and cuddle babies is just a part of that nurturing personality she was born with. Even if the baby is almost as big as her, La-La still wants to hold it!

La-La's desire to hold babies has been a small source of conflict at our house. She gets really mad at me because I feel like our family is complete but she wants a baby in our home really bad! When I say babies cost a lot of money she says she will save all her allowance to help pay for diapers. I tell her babies wake up a lot at night and are a lot of work. She argues back that she will get up to help at night and that if I home school her she will be home all day to help whenever I need it. She sees me looking at the kids baby pictures and she comments on how cute babies are. Then she tells me how fun it would be to have another baby and take lots of cute pictures. I'm telling you, the girl has come up with every argument possible! Thankfully, friends from church let her love on their babies so I am off the hook, for a few minutes at least!

La-La has beautiful curls. I have always wanted curly hair and had countless home perms growing up trying to get soft perfect waves. So mother nature decided to be cruel and give my dream hair to my daughter! Only problem with La-La's hair is the bottom layer is really curly while the top is just slightly wavy. She has always wanted long hair so we have just been doing short trims to keep it healthy.

I was having to pull her hair up everyday because if we left it down, it would get stringy and look nappy because of the straight top and curly bottom. It just did not lay nice! So about a month ago, I talked her in to going short. I told her she could leave it down more, it would look better and it would be curlier. She agreed and I could not be happier. She loves it too and that is what matters most!

I love how much thicker and healthier it looks!

For many years La-La has been plagued with random skin issues. She will break out in hives for no apparant reason. We did allergy testing which came back clear. It appears to be a psycho-somatic reaction to stress. If she is sick, she might get hives. If she is worried she might get them or if she knows I am really worried she will get itchy. Her skin seems sensitive to bug bites but not detergents and cleaners. She also reacts strongly to poison oak. At one point she had it on her arms, face, and legs. It took close to a month to clear up and that was after buying just about every product available to treat it! I bought her special organic soap designed just for poison oak. We used over the counter and prescription strength cortizone cream. I bought Tecnu which is an expensive product just for poison oak. I gave her benadryl at night and zyrtec during the day to try to stop the itching. I was worried she was going to get an infection from scratching so much! Then we added an herbal supplement called antronex which was not cheap but it did seem to help. As of today, she seems to be clear of the itchy welts but we think the cats are bringing it in so who knows when she will break out again!

Remember six months ago when my little lady sprained her ankle? It took several months before it felt good but even then, she would favor it when she ran and it was still not 100%. Well Friday she managed to re-sprain it pretty good.

I was running errands when the nurse from the day camp La-La was attending called to say she was hurt. I was skeptical as to how bad the sprain was because La-La can be a little dramatic but when the nurse said it was swollen, I was a little more worried. Once I got her home, I checked her over and it was indeed quite swollen and very painful.

I feel so bad for her especially now that it is summer and she wants to be running and playing but is limited in her activity options. Dr Daddy thinks she will need some physical therapy to get it healed correctly. I just hope and pray she is not doomed to a life of weak ankles!