March 16, 2009

Note from me: I thought I had posted this to the public but realized it was only in draft form..sooo here it is now.
We had a very unexpected, yet expected death in the family last week. Daddy Jay, Eddie’s 94 year old grandfather died. I say unexpected, yet expected because although he was older he was doing well from what we had heard. So, last week we traveled to Balmorhea, TX which is out in West TX about 8 hours from Dallas for the funeral. I was very concerned about how Elyssa would do at the funeral viewing and at the church and I had just cause to be concerned. We did not predict the weather very well and thought it would be a lot cooler than it was. We went to the viewing on Wednesday and I had Elyssa in a long sleeve dress. Well little miss was miserable and very warm and while I was in one room and she was in another room with Daddy, she decided to take off her clothes and was running around in her tights and diaper at the funeral home!! Although everyone thought it was cute and was laughing at her, I was appalled! I tried to put her dress back on her to which she responded with a beautiful “tantrum”. I had a pair of sweats / and a t-shirt in my diaper bag that I carry as “back up clothes” and managed to get them on her without much trouble. So instead of the beautiful velvet dress that I had for her to wear that day, she was running around in no shoes, UT Sweat pants and a t-shirt!! Then to add icing to the cake, daddy took her outside with him to visit with his Uncle Wes and allowed Elyssa to run all over in her bare feet playing with the puppy dogs outside! I went out to find them about 20 later and she was filthy!! I could not believe her at all, but I guess what should I have expected from an almost 2 year old right? Well luckily it was time for the afternoon break and we headed back to our hotel for the break and 6-7 people came back to our hotel with us and had some dinner. What did we have? Bar-b-que of course, remember I did say this was west TX! Elyssa took a much needed nap while we all sat around and ate. When she got up, it was time to go back to the funeral home, so I just changed her into a comfy pant set I had for her and called it done. I was not fighting with her to get “dressed up” again! After the evening viewing we went to Walmart where I bought her a comfy , cute spring sun dress to wear to the church service so she would be happier and more comfortable. The church service was not to bad. Nana and Pop sat behind us and she played , climb over the pews during a lot of it, but at least she did not cause a scene. She did ok at the graveside also, except she did not understand why she could not be out running around during everything and why she had to sit on mommy’s lap. It is so hard explaining these kinds of things to her, kept telling her “shhhhhh” and putting my finger over my lips…she just did it back to me in response to me doing it to her. We drove home on Thursday after the funeral and I thought it was going to be an uneventful trip, but about 3 hours from Dallas Elyssa decided to puke all over the back seat and her car seat. I have to say this is probably one of the grossest things that can happen. Why you ask? Because although I cleaned up as much as I could, I changed the baby clothes, and wrapped all the dirty stuff in 2 plastic bags, the SMELL does not go away and you are trapped in the car with the smell of puke for hours….yup, that is how this trip ended up. No, she is not sick, it is all part of her reflux problem and drinking to much milk. Fun huh?

Well she has stopped eating altogether again. It has been a downward spiral for about 3 weeks and now she has stopped. Her new trick now, if you try to give her a bite of one of her “preferred foods” , she will gag herself till she pukes!! I have decided that my daughter will be bulimic before she is 4!!! I have no idea how she learns this behavior or why she is doing it. I wish I had answers. I have talked to her therapists and they have decided that it is best if we put her on the waiting list for the inpatient program at the hospital. I hate that it has come to this but Elyssa will not eat food and we have to do something for her to fix this. I think the waiting list is about 4-6 months so we are in the waiting game now. She is still going to therapy and feeding frenzy till a spot is available. I just hope it does not take that long. This is just really, really very frustrating for me.