Eczema

My son at about five months developed fairly bad eczema.  His skin looked terrible and it took a long while for it to calm down.   We put on lotions, prescription cream, gave him Benadryl when the itching was bad and hoped he wasn’t as uncomfortable as he looked.

For the most part he’s grown out of the eczema, although it flares up if he eats something he has a reaction to like peanuts.  My daughter had the most beautiful, alabaster skin.  There was talk of albinism from some people what with her white hair and light skin.

As the children got older, the roles have reversed.  My daughter seems to have perpetual dry skin.  She has patches of eczema and hates to have lotion put on her.   My son has pretty darned good skin for the most part.  He still has outbreaks from time to time, but they’re regional and clear up quickly.

Hopefully in the next few years they’ll both grow out of the eczema.  I hear it’s not uncommon to fade as children grow up.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is clearly a man.   We sat him down on the toilet tonight because it was clear he needed to go.   He called out from the bathroom: “what can I do while I’m on the potty?”  I asked him if he’d like to read a book and he immediately said that would be fine.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got sent to bed (almost) without dinner.   She was having a hard afternoon.  Things just weren’t going her way.   She was overwrought about several things that made no difference to an adult, but were earth shattering catastrophes to a child.   The final straw was when she didn’t get the seat she wanted at the dinner table.   She got so upset she took her friend Madison’s dinner and dumped it out onto the table.   I hauled her upstairs and said she couldn’t leave the room and she wasn’t having dinner.   When my husband got in a bit later I told him he could “overrule” me and let her have dinner, thus playing the good cop role.   It took my daughter almost twenty minutes to stop pitching a fit from the doorway of her room.   And don’t even get me started about the Brussels sprouts fit she had when she finally got to have her meal.