To all two of you who actually read this thing, I'm sorry it's been so long since the last post. There are two reasons: first, for Christmas Kayley's awesome parents gave us a new computer that doesn't work with dial up internet, so we had to upgrade to high speed. Second, I was a little nervous about following that literary masterpiece I lovingly call "Don't Stand Underneath When They Fly By". (C'mon, you have to admit it was pretty good.)
Christmas was a sad time for our little Allie-bug. Remember the incessant crying and profuse puking that I wrote about a couple of months ago? Well, they never really went away completely, there was just sort of a lull between attacks. About a week before Santa's big day, she started up again and for a while there she stopped smiling and laughing altogether. If she wasn't screaming, she would just look at you with a blank look in her eyes. Kayley was already worried about Allie's coughing, but as time passed she wasn't able to help, she slipped more and more into basket case-ness. We ended up taking Allie to the doctor a couple of times over Christmas break. The first time they ran a bunch of tests for stuff like RSV and pneumonia, and they even put her in an MRI machine, but they couldn't find anything. The second time our normal pediatrician wasn't there, so the on-call doctor (who Kayley liked better than our normal guy) said it was probably just acid reflux. He thought that when the stomach acid came up it would drain back down into her lungs (ouch). So he told us some things we could do to help, and thankfully they worked. Now we have our big, toothless grin back (as evidenced by the picture above)! Well, not entirely toothless. She has two that are coming in now.
Claire had a good Christmas haul. Her favorite presents were a new princess bike and a Radio Flyer red wagon from Grammy and Grandpa Throop, although she was a bit disappointed that she'll have to wait until spring to ride them. Also, our big girl turned four this month! Some mornings she'll wake up and tell Kayley,"Mom, guess what! I'm still four!" The picture above is from Christmas Eve when the whole Buchannan family gets together to open new pajamas. She is doing her "I Love My New Jammies" dance.
Kayley is doing great! She has been going to a class every Thursday night for about four hours so that she can get her reading endorsement. She comes home beat, but she's happy to be working toward it, and we're all proud of her.
With the new year, I got called to be the gospel doctrine teacher in our ward. It's funny. When we first moved into the ward I thought I might like to try my hand at teaching gospel doctrine, but got called to be advisor and secretary to the young men's program, which I did not want to do. Still, I knew that the Lord was just trying to get me over my general dislike of adolescent boys, so I did it. After a year and a half working with them, when the bishop called me to teach Sunday School I asked if I could still be young mens secretary. Unfortunately he said no.
