Shayla’s Third Birthday

I thought about doing a combined birthday party for Shayla and Easton because I think Shayla is old enough to get it and enjoy it this year, but I just didn’t have the stamina to do all of the planning involved, so we had a quiet little celebration at home. We had been telling her that her birthday was coming up for quite some time, but that it was after my birthday. So the day after my birthday, so woke up and said (literally right when I woke her up), “Today’s my birthday!” I was so sad to tell her that she had to wait one more day for her birthday. All day long she kept asking when Daddy was going to come home so she could eat cake and open presents. The girl doesn’t really have a favorite dinner. Sometimes she really likes something, then the next day she won’t eat it. I tried to make something for dinner that I thought she would like (though I can’t remember now what it was). Whatever it was, we still had to fight her a bit to eat it. Thankfully we didn’t have to threaten to take away the cake (we couldn’t have done that to her on her birthday anyway). The nice part about having our birthdays close together is that David made a cake for me on Monday and we just kept the layers separate and had a “brand new” pre-cooked birthday cake for her.

She still didn’t really get the whole blowing out the candles thing. Well she did, but she was barely blowing, so I just had to blow at the same time to make her think that she blew it out.

Blowing

Yay! I did it!

Immediately licking the frosting off the candles


 

This video of her is trying to blow out the candles

Shayla blowing out candles

Presents are always the most exciting of course. She always loves opening them, even if she’s not quite sure what she got.

“Can I open up my presents yet?”

She got more of the Disney princesses to go with the Little People Princess Castle, more dress up, Little People A to Z zoo (which was fun for her since we had just gone to the zoo a few days before), some more food for her kitchen, a cash register, and some Leap Frog books. She enjoyed the haul. It was hard to convince her to go to bed that night.

On Sunday we had our birthday celebration with my family. My parents had gifts for her, and then I saved one gift for her to open there. I got her a doctor’s kit at the last minute because she loves watching the Doc McStuffin’s TV show. She was using her necklaces as a stethoscope, and she would get frustrated because she wanted me to put it on her, but I couldn’t clasp it (which meant that it would fall right off).  Now she gives all of us at least one check-up a day (including her dolls). That is the first thing she wants to do when David walks in the door.

This was the best picture I could get of her holding the doctor’s kit. She could not figure out how to flip it over so we could actually see what it was.

When I took her to the doctor for her 3 year check-up, she was excited. She willingly complied with everything that he asked her to do. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this in the past, but the last few times we have been there for Easton, she will go right up to the doctor, and stand really close to him. One time she had her hand resting on his knee. She won’t really look at him or say anything. It’s the weirdest thing, because she isn’t like that with anyone else. He said other kids do that too, but it’s just really weird for her. Maybe he just has some sort of vibe.

Shayla is a very sweet little girl, with a very stubborn streak. She can be the best little helper when she wants to be. She likes to pick out plates, bowls, and spoons for her and Easton at meal time. She also helps me load the plates and silverware into the dishwasher. Some water spilled on the floor the other day and so she was grabbing all my clean rags out of the drawer to try and help clean it up. She loves to help me cook, but what that really means is that she loves to lick off all the measuring cups, spoons, beaters, rubber spatulas, the second that I put them down. It doesn’t matter whether I am done using them or not, and it really doesn’t matter how disgusting the individual ingredient might be (vanilla…no! no!). It’s a constant battle trying to keep certain things out of her mouth. It is funny how much she loves these things while we are cooking, but when it is all mixed up as a meal, then suddenly it’s very yucky and gross.

I still haven’t really figured out how to get her to help clean up toys. Cleaning up toys to her means that you start playing with them.

I asked her the other day what her favorite food was (to see if she really even had any idea). She told me it was soup with cheese and sour cream. The latter two items are the important part. Cheese and sour cream. She loves toppings, she loves dips: hummus, ranch, salsa. It doesn’t even matter how hot it is. She doesn’t like onions. If the meal has onions in it, then she refuses to eat it (which is just about everything in this house). She can tell as soon as it hits her mouth. I’ve gotten to where I puree them so that most of the time they are too small to be seen. She loves just about any breakfast food: pancakes, muffins, scrambled eggs, oatmeal. She loves yogurt with nuts in it for lunch. You really just never know with dinner.

The girl is still not potty trained. I have no idea what to do differently. She will not poop on the potty unless she is really motivated. New toys are about the only thing that motivates her. But it really has to be every time, and I can’t be giving her new toys that much. I am thinking I may need to go to the dollar store and pick up some cheap things and maybe she picks out of a box or something. She won’t tell us when she needs to pee. I just have to be diligent about taking her every 2 or 3 hours. Even then she tells me she doesn’t want to go. One funny thing she always says when I ask her if she needs to go poop, she says “No, just peep.”

She has told me a few times in the last few days: “I got married in the temple last night.” When I asked who to, the first time she told me Easton, but the other two times was to Jesus. Lucky girl.

We had some pistachios (which Shayla loved). I was trying to get her to open them by herself. She tried for a second, then she told me “I can’t do it, when I get bigger, then I can do it.”

One other cute thing she did recently was while I was making dinner. I think I had some music on and she was standing in front of the oven where she could see her reflection and she was just dancing away. Then she started doing exercises: “Mommy, I’m doin’ squats, now I’m doing my core (and she lays down), now I’m doing my cool down.” She had me cracking up. If I wasn’t covered in food, I would have grabbed my camera. She went on for quite some time doing this. She really loves dancing and wearing pretty dresses. I’m going to try to get her in a little ballet class a friend in our ward teaches. I think she will just absolutely love it. She may not be very good, but she will definitely have fun.

Whenever I ask her a question, and the answer is yes, she answers “Ya-yeah.”

We are happy to have this little girl in our home. Her beautiful smile can brighten any day, and we love her.

Zoo

I’ve been wanting to take Shayla to the zoo for quite awhile. It can be pretty costly, but I found a buy one get one free coupon, and kids under 3 are free, so we waited until the last possible weekend before Shayla turned 3. We went to the Wildlife World Zoo and Animal Park. It is much smaller than the Phoenix Zoo, and someone in our ward told us that it wasn’t all that great, but we actually thought that for our kids, it was pretty good. It is a small zoo, but it wasn’t nearly as busy as the Phoenix Zoo is, and small is nice when you’re walking around with little kids. Everything in the Phoenix Zoo is so spread apart. That and the animals are always hiding in corners, so you are lucky to see them at all.

Ducks were the first thing we came upon, and Easton just thought they were great. He was pretty angry when we decided to move on.

The next thing we saw was a white tiger. Not sure I have ever seen one of these before.

There were lots of different kinds of birds. We saw some macaws, and one of them started talking to us. “Hi.” “Hi bird.” Shayla thought that was pretty fun.

The reptiles were pretty interesting. There was an albino crocodile (or alligator, I can’t remember which).

This alligator was pretty awesome though. We were just inches away from this guy. You can see Shayla was a little concerned. He was big.

Shayla got to feed the giraffes, and she really enjoyed that.

I think our favorite part was they had this section with just tons of little kangaroos hopping around. You can feed them and pet them. They are actually quite soft.

They had a petting section for the tortoises as well. By this time, Shayla was getting more comfortable with the animals and she’d just walk from one to the other petting them.

Next up was the petting zoo, which she obviously loved. There was a goat that jumped up on a lady’s back while she was bending over. It had everyone laughing pretty good. I’m not sure she knew what to do.

Here’s a cute little video of her petting some animals and getting attacked by a llama:

Shayla at petting zoo

Easton really liked watching the fish in the fish tank.

 

This was about the point in the day where the breakdowns were happening. We were all hungry, Easton hadn’t had a nap, and we had been walking around for awhile. We made it through most of the zoo, but skipped a couple of exhibits because it was time to get the kids home. I would say our first trip to the zoo was a success. I think this zoo is perfect for small kids.

New Eyes

Well, I kind of forgot to post about this, and I’ve got a couple more recent posts to add, so I’m going to try to make this quick.

Right after Easton was born, we decided to go ahead and try for me to get LASIK. I had gone through a fiasco trying to get contacts and they were $360. I was tired of having to pay that, and had never really found a prescription that worked right for me, so a lot of times I could hardly see. I went and did a consultation at Southwestern Eye Center. They freaked out because I had just had a baby (less than week before), and saying I couldn’t do anything because my prescription would change, blah, blah, blah. All I wanted to know was whether or not I could even qualify for LASIK and how much it would cost so that we could set aside the right amount for our FSA. They finally consented, told me I did qualify, but I would have to get traditional LASIK because of my prescription (which was fine because it was cheaper anyway). So we set aside the FSA amount for 2012 and had to wait until I was done nursing Easton.

Fast forward to about August, and I go back for my next consultation with Southwestern Eye. This time they tell me they would have to talk to the surgeon before giving me a final answer. Well someone calls me back and says yes, I can still do traditional LASIK, but because I have thin corneas and such a strong prescription, that if it didn’t work the first time, they may not be able to do an enhancement. Well, that seems a little pointless (and risky) to me. She suggests maybe PRK instead, but that the healing time is longer. I was pretty confused because I felt like I was getting a totally different answer than before. So I decided to get a second opinion from Barnet Dulaney Perkins Eye Center. They tell me right away that although I could do the traditional LASIK, that implantable contact lenses are going to be a much better option for me. I asked about the PRK since that was what the other place suggested, and they tell me “No, bad idea in your case.” So basically what BDP tells me is that I would do implantable contact lenses to correct for the nearsightedness, then most likely I would need LASIK on top of that to correct the astigmatism. It wouldn’t be so risky doing it this way because they wouldn’t have to cut down as much of the cornea because the prescription would be a lot less at that point. I’m feeling a whole lot better about this plan, though not excited about dragging it on. But then they tell me the price, and it is over twice as much as LASIK alone. I ask if there is some sort of discount, and they cut off $1000. Still double what we had set aside. I temporarily set up a surgery time.

So then we have to make a big decision: we either lose what we set aside in the FSA, or we just fork up the extra money and be done with this once and for all. Since there was no way to get the FSA money back, we decided to go forward with it, though had I known from the beginning that it was going to cost that much, we never would have done it.

Over the next week and a half I met the surgeon and had a bunch of testing done to make sure that everything was healthy and safe for me to go ahead with the surgeries. At the end of that week I went in for the first part of the surgery: cutting flaps for the LASIK. I can’t say that I enjoyed it. They have to cut the flaps for the LASIK before they do the implantable contact lenses because it puts too much pressure on the eye (or something like that). You heal pretty fast, but you have to do lots of eye drops, which are a pain and no make-up.

So a week later I go in for the implantable contact lenses. I was pretty nervous. You are actually in a surgery center that looks like a hospital room, they hook you up to an IV and drug you up to relax you. You also get lots of numbing drops in your eyes. The Dr. was really good, and explained everything as he went along. It’s weird, but it wasn’t painful. I went home and slept for a few hours, then had a follow up appointment the next day. My vision was drastically improved, but as the days went on it kept feeling like it was getting worse and worse. I could function, but not very well. It took me a couple of weeks to be able to get glasses, so I was quite frustrated with not being able to see (and getting headaches from squinting all the time).

I had to wait 6 weeks I think to be able to do LASIK. LASIK does not appear to be nearly as big of a deal as the implantable lenses. You are sitting in a room with a ton of other people waiting and waiting to go back. Each person is in there for probably about 10 minutes. The whole process is just very weird and uncomfortable. When I got out of there, my eyes hurt so bad. It was hard for me to even open them so that they could do the check up right after. They wouldn’t stop watering either. The whole drive home was pure torture. It hurt so bad that I was starting to get nauseous. I felt much better after I was able to sleep, but it took awhile to fall asleep because they were still hurting quite a bit.

They next day I could see pretty well, but over the next few days, I could tell my vision was getting worse. When I went in for my check-up, they told me that it will continue to improve, but I wasn’t feeling too confident. They made me wait a couple of weeks to get a new prescription in my glasses. Then I make the long drive out there to pick them up, and the lenses didn’t fit in my frames, so I had to wait another week. The worst part is the in betweens of not being able to see clearly. (That and dragging the kids with me to probably 20 different appointments, and the 25 minute drive each way). They finally believed me that my vision was not perfect yet, and I got scheduled for an enhancement, December 28, the day after we got home from CA. (And 4 months after my first surgery).

LASIK the second time was pretty much the same as the first. Wait forever, then weirdness, then a lot of pain. They could tell afterwards that I was in a lot of pain, so they gave me extra numbing drops, which really did almost nothing at that point to help the pain. The first time around, I thought the pain was normal, but by the second time, I could tell that she was a little concerned. I can tolerate pain quite well, I’ve had two children with no drugs, so it’s not like I’m a wuss. I’ve asked a couple of other people that have had LASIK, and they didn’t have as much pain as I did. Maybe my eyes are extra sensitive (which would explain why contacts always made my eyes so tired).

When I went for my follow-up appointment, my vision was 20/20. Hallelujah. Sometimes I still struggle reading things that are small and far away. I’m not sure if that will continue to improve or not. At this point, I’m done for now. If it gets worse in the future, I will get it taken care of. I must say this whole thing has been quite the ordeal. Pretty much anything with my vision is always an ordeal because it is so much worse than the average person. But, I must say it is sure nice not to have to take contacts out at night, or put them in in the morning when your eyes are super tired, or you are camping and can’t seem to get all the little dirt particles out of them. So, now that all is said and done, I’m happy with it. That is all.