rainy days

the rain has set in here and we have had a couple of slow days.
friday we got up and zaven had a playdate with eleni. sadly we learned that she and her family are moving back to california. bummer.
then we met chris for lunch at tito's, a mexican place.
got zaven's ice cream on the way home. he chose vanilla soft-serve with green apple flavor burst.

zaven's hives continued. friday he woke up with a bad case, i gave him some benedryl. and that set subsided. but another round came on and they were on his face and his hands and ankles were swollen, so i called the dr. again and took him up there. they were getting worse with each round. we saw a different dr. in the group and she decided to put him on a 5 day course of steriods.
she also explained that 90% of the time you do not figure out what is causing them. she did not feel that there were caused by a food allergy, so if that is right, then that is good. we started him on his medicine but another round came on and was worse again. he was fairly miserable and had a hard time sleeping. he was very red and swollen. his whole back was covered. really his whole body. but we made it through the night. this morning he was pretty much in the clear. but after a few minutes i noticed some new ones coming and this time his face was the worst. there were hives over both his eyes and he was cranky! but chris was doing a 10 mile run for the Crop Walk so we got up and headed into newport to cheer him on. this was a small event so the cheering section included zaven, nell and me. after seeing chris at the 4 mile marker we walked down to the ocean breeze cafe, to get muffins. they are supposed to have the best muffins in town. they were tasty. we walked over to a ball field and saw the opening day ceremony for the little league. not particularly interesting. and then walked back up to the church to see chris finish. by that time zaven was throwing fits about every 5 minutes. so we headed home, at which point i called the dr to inquire about using benedrly to help with the itching. she said we could, so we did and it has been much smoother sailing since. i think the steroids are starting to work and he just went to bed hive-free! first time since tuesday. hopefully we will not have to deal with that again. ugh.
i spent a lot of time up in his room cleaning and sorting through clothes.
i have a box of hand-me-downs for berk and chas.
like i said, it is rainy here so we laid pretty low and had bbq for dinner.
chris and i are going to watch blood diamond or bable tonight.

nell continues to do great. she is able to roll over at will and yesterday proudly rolled over and over to get to a laundry basket she wanted to grab. she was very pleased with herself. she loved being in the baby bjorn today for the walking around.

i am trying to get on top of the laundry. and get the house cleaned up.
time to switch the laundry over. good times!
le

ps i will spare you the photos i took of the hives.