The Birthday Girl: 2 Years Old

Cassidy's Two!

The Checkup:
Weight: 24 lbs = 20th percentile
Height: 32 inches= 10th percentile
Shots: flu vaccine, Hepatitis vaccine. She would have gotten the Prevnar 13 vaccine, but she had already gotten that one from her immunologist back in March.

We got the okay to try to decrease and then stop her breathing treatments. We are decreasing her dose to 0.5mg of pulmicort each night for two weeks, and then planning to drop to every other night for a week or two before stopping all together.

Along with this we are working on eliminating her night time bottle. Doc said she doesn't care if she keeps the bottle if it only has water in it so her teeth aren't damaged by the milk. We'd like to eliminate it all together. Since her weight percentile and height percentile are holding, we got the okay to switch to 1 or 2% milk rather than whole. We've started mixing 1/2 water and 1/2 1% milk for her bottle. So far she's not losing interest at all. I think it's more of a comfort thing than a milk thing, so we'll see if she wants to keep it after it's all water.

Favorite foods:
Black Olives. She LOVES them. Sometimes that's all she eats for breakfast or dinner.
Chocolate. In her milk. In M&M form. Pretty much in any form.
Edemame. She likes to work those soybeans out of the shells.
She insists on trying any sauces, dressing, etc that are on the table during dinner. She usually shakes her head no and squints her eyes while trying them, but continues to dip her food in them afterwards.

Least favorite foods:
Meat of pretty much any kind.... except fish and other seafood. She likes scallops alot.

The Eye Patch.

aka "Chocolate Eye". This is now part of our nightly routine. After dinner, Cassidy gets a trail mix of sunflower seeds, raisins, raw coconut, and dark M&Ms along with her chocolate milk and we usually watch Sponge Bob (her favorite cartoon) with her eye patch on. She usually is willing for around 20 minutes, and is even able to get up and play a bit without ripping the patch off. This is usually her only TV time. Sometimes she prefers to watch various email greeting cards with dancing bears, etc on the computer. Regardless, she's using that weaker eye for all the work.

Potty Learning:

She tells us whenever she is going pee-pee while she's doing it, but not before.

She denies going poo-poo with everything she's got while squeezing, turning purple, shaking her head, and saying "No" in order to avoid that trip to the changing table.

She's becoming more aware of and dislikes when her diaper is poopy, refusing to sit down... but still doesn't want to go to that changing table.

She's showing interest in sitting on her potty chair, and enjoys reading her potty book while there, but doesn't seem ready for the process yet.

Honestly, I'm not quite ready for it either.

"School."

Cassidy moved up to the next classroom when she returned from her August break. She now has a more "structured" day. Less free play, story time in a circle, and colors, numbers, and shapes of the week. Even more exciting for Cassidy is that she gets to play on the "big" playground for 45 minutes in the morning and afternoon. She's adjusted to her new class well and within the first week she was talking a lot more. We are understanding her better everyday.

6 days after the checkup, she came down with a high (103) fever and another stuffy nose. So far, she's not wheezing. The fever finally quit after a day and a half and now she's just got nasal congestion. Today she was almost her normal self, just a bit irritable. Tomorrow she'll go back to daycare. I'm hopeful that we can continue on our course of reducing breathing treatments.