month of discoveries

Over the past few weeks, we’ve learned some new yet important things about Berkeley.

1. She is allergic to pine nuts.  At Patrick’s sister’s wedding dinner a few weeks ago, one of the items on the menu was a tortellini pesto dish.  Berkeley took a few bites and said that her throat was hurting.  Then a couple minutes later, she started puking!  Immediately, my mind flashed back to earlier this year when we had pasta with pesto at home and the exact same thing had happened.  At the time, we thought she just had a little stomach bug, but now after two identical incidents with the same kind of food, we are pretty sure that the pesto is the culprit, and since she has basil and olive oil on a regular basis, it’s GOT to be the pine nuts!  Thankfully, now that we know, this is a pretty easy thing to avoid!
2. She does not need glasses.  At her four year old check-up back in April, her pediatrician told us that her eye screening was abnormal and that we needed to take her to an eye specialist.  The doctor said that quite often the specialist will find that there is nothing wrong, but we needed to have her eyes checked just to make sure.  Given that neither Patrick nor I have the best eye genes, we were trying to prepare her for the fact that she might need glasses.  (I got glasses at the ripe old age of THREE!)  So we finally had the appointment and after all the dilating and eye chart reading, they determined that Berkeley’s eyes are just fine and that she does NOT need glasses.  Do you think this was good news for Berkeley?  I sure thought it would be, but I was clearly wrong.  The whole rest of the day, she was whining to me, “But I wanted to get glasses, Mom!”
3. She can withstand a serious head bump.  A couple weeks ago, Berkeley took a huge fall down the stairs in our house. She and I were both at the top of the stairs and she started walking down right in front of me.  On the second step, she somehow slipped and started tumbling down the stairs, somersaulting, rolling, and flipping all the way to the bottom.  I was running right behind her but she was moving too fast for me to grab her.  It was one of the scariest things I have ever watched-- I snatched her up at the bottom and held her on my lap for a long time while she cried and cried.  After the whole Natasha Richardson incident, Patrick and I were very nervous, so we called the pediatrician and she walked us through signs to look for and told us to wake her up every four hours at night.  We were told we had 48 hours till we’d know for sure if she was going to be okay.  I was completely stressed as we waited out those two days, but she gratefully made it through without so much as a bruise!
4. She reacts strongly to poison ivy.  Our yard backs up to a small wooded area that separates our property from a church behind us.  A long time ago, someone pointed out to us that there was some poison ivy back there, so we had told the girls not to run around in the woods, but I guess it had been a while since I’d reminded them.  A little over a week ago, I found K & B in the middle of the woods chasing each other and about a day or two later, Berkeley’s entire face was broken out in what looked like horrible hives/rash.  Since then, the rash has cleared up on her face and neck, but has spread to her legs, stomach, and rear end.  If we can only get her to stop itching and spreading it all over her body, we’ll eventually not have to lather her up in hydrocortisone cream every couple hours!

What new things will we learn about Berkeley over the next few weeks?

And since I’m so behind in posting pictures, here’s a picture of Berkeley on her last day of preschool for the year (way back in May!) with her two great teachers, Miss Kristi and Miss Cindy.