At school and at home, we shush J to sleep. Recently, she has started shushing her dolls and Ah! Eeh! when they go to sleep. She can’t quite figure out how we make the shushing sound though, so she purses her lips and blows on her finger.

She dances now! With her feet! Not just the arms back and forth that all children seem to develop, but a little pittery pattery of her feet. She’s so excited and cute when she does it!

On Tuesday, I had her tested for food allergies. The diapers at school have just been unrelenting and we’re trying to get to the bottom (no pun intented) of it. They did a skin test for a number of things (I’ll try to remember to scan the results tonight). Basically, she came up as maybe mildly allergic to: oats, oranges, tangerines, and fresh whole milk. However, the doctor tested tangerines and fresh milk on his own arm, and had a stronger reaction than she did. Apparently, when you’re an allergist, and someone brings in something to be tested for that they don’t already have a baseline on, you get to be tested for it as a control. So he recommended cutting oranges because that’s easy to do, but keeping milk because dairy is so important. He also recommended a blood test, since the skin tests have a 50% false positive rate. I originally agreed, but the more I thought about it the more I feel like we’re subjecting J to a number of medical procedures of questionable value. The EEG, I think was necessary. The hospital trip for constipation was not (even though my doctor’s nurse line sent us there.) The skin testing, debatable. We needed to know if she was clearly horribly allergic to something, and she isn’t. The blood test to confirm… just ugh. They would need to pull blood from her arm. We did that when she was a year old and she was very good, but honestly, I can’t bring myself to see it as necessary. I talked to the allergist and he agreed that a very well kept food diary would be good enough. So no blood test! Her diapers have been pretty normal the last few days anyway.

Speaking of medical procedures, I got my flu shot yesterday. As usual, they put a bandaid over it. I left the bandaid on, and when J saw it she got very excited! I told her it was a bandaid because I got a shot, and she pulled her shorts up to point to her thigh where she gets her shots. Dad thinks it was coincidence, but she kept doing it until I said, “Yes, that’s where you get a shots and then a bandaid!” and then she clapped. Then she did it a couple more times, and then switched to pointing to my bandaid and clapping. Maybe she was trying to tell me I was a very brave girl, and that she knew that hurt but she promises it will feel better soon and help keep me and other babies healthy?

The only other new thing I can think of (aside from some new words! All birds are ‘duchhhhhhh’ and trash on the floor is ‘chhhhh’) is that she has started blowing kisses goodbye. She puts her hand up to her mouth and then goes “WAH!” as if to make a big kissing sound. She does it a few times, though the “wah” sometimes never comes or sometimes she forgets to move her hand. Nevertheless, it’s obvious and cute. She’s so sweet and patient.

Oh! And new signs: Please and thank you!