2.5 Years

I can't believe how big Hailey is getting - can she really be 2.5? She's got such a little personality now. She can be fiercely independent, demanding to do things over (such as shutting the door and strapping her top strap) by herself. She shows strong perferences, such as wanting to only watch "The Aristocats" over and over again. She usually plays and shares well. She is affectionate and sweet and still very much a mama's girl. She eats anything you put in front of her, but it is difficult to get her to eat more than a few bites before she is down from the table and running off. I love watching her run, play, and explore.

She had her 2.5 year appointment last week and she was 28.6lbs and 36 inches. They measured wrong - I measured her for her costume last week and she was 37 inches - but with everything else going on at this appointment, her height was the least of my concerns. As I have posted on here, we have been battling eczema. Not having dealt with this condition before (and with no friends who have dealt with it either), I figured everyone who had eczema just had a bad case of it. Still, I bumped up her 2.5 year appointment from this week to last week because I was getting concerned. She wasn't sleeping well and it continued to get worse. I tried everything they had told us but nothing was helping so that's why I bumped up the appointment. The doctor was not happy when we got there. She said that was the worst case of eczema she'd seen in 5 years. Basically, she made me feel even more awful than I already felt about her eczema, even though I have been doing my best to battle it back all summer long with little to no help or instruction. The allergist says one thing, the pediatrician says another, and neither tell me what to do in between these bad patches. It's beyond frustrating and then getting treated like a bad parent for not bringing her in sooner (we had just been at the allergist, by the way) was even more frustrating. After conveying this all to the pediatrician, she did soften, but I still spent the rest of the appointment feeling horrible that I didn't realize how bad it was. We made an appointment with a dermatologist and then she gave me very specific instructions on how to battle the eczema back, which I appreciated. She also gave us 4 medications to help. I hate medicating my 2 year old but she is miserable and this is a short-term solution until we talk to the dermatologist. Hopefully the dermatologist will have some new ideas.

At this appointment, we also talked about Hailey's speech, which is borderline. She is being recommended to First Steps to see if she qualifies for speech therapy. I hear her do things like count to 10 (minus 7) and I think I'm over-reacting. Then I hear other kids at playgroup talk and I'm concerned again. I think the referral came in part from Hailey spending the entire appointment talking to herself in jibberish and in part because I hesitated when she asked if I could understand 75% of what Hailey says. Either way, I suppose it can't help to check her out so we will be making an appointment for that soon.

The last concern for this visit was night terrors. I think Hailey has been having them - 4 or 5 times now she has woken up just screaming inconsolably with her eyes closed. Trying to soothe her makes it worse as she is shrieking and thrashing. The only thing that works is to get her to open her eyes by standing her up. Once we do that, she immediately snaps out of it. The doctor agreed that it sounded like night terrors and said that if it became an every night thing, we should start interrupting her sleep an hour past bedtime. Hopefully it doesn't get to that point.

Other than all the concerns, the doctor was very impressed with her physical abilities, both gross motor and fine motor. She was also impressed that Hailey is daytime potty trained and how she eats. I was hoping for a little bit better news when it came to my concerns but we are on the path to help and this appointment was a good first step!