Day 40: Easter Eve

He is risen.

He is risen, indeed.

Thank you for reading this journey with me. I promise it won't be too long before the next post.

Day 39: Good Friday

I heard Bach's St. Matthew's Passion on KUSC on the way home from work today. What an appropriate piece to play on Good Friday. The first section is ominous and dark, haunting voices singing all in E minor, and after five minutes of music, it ends on a surprising E major chord. It shocked me, as I don't regularly listen to this monumental piece. In that moment, I felt just a glimpse of what's to come. You can't understand light unless you've experienced darkness. I think that's what Good Friday means- experiencing darkness even for a semblance of the amount of time that Jesus did on the cross. That E major chord reminded me that in this dark moment, there is hope, that Jesus overcame death and was ultimately triumphant. But it took three days, and this is only the first.

Day 38: Tea Party

C's belly was all red again today. Her teacher at school told me that there are cats around the school yard that may hang out there at night. I wonder if that has something to do with this flare-up. So I guess we are not out of the woods yet, but she is still generally so much better than last week.

Tonight Paul was at a meeting all day so I was working at home in an empty house. Pretty quiet and strange. It is his concert season now - he'll be two trips to the east coast in the next two weeks. Gah. I am rescheduling students left and right and my head is spinning.

The girls played tea party tonight - it was pretty cute.

Day 37: Easter Traditions (or lack thereof)

Having kids, I give all the holidays a little more thought. What do I want them to remember about this holiday when they grow up? What is meaningful about it? What will excite them and make the days and months of an otherwise monotonous calendar year go by with a little more fun?

Easter is always a confusing one for me. I did not grow up with Easter hams and baskets full of candy. I maybe got a chocolate bunny from time to time, but I feel like my sister ate most of them. We dyed eggs once in awhile, but my kids don't yet have the motor skills for that yet. Everywhere I look, there are bunnies and eggs and all this stuff that I feel very little connection to other than the fact that most of it is cute. I told E that this Sunday is Easter Sunday.

She asked, "And what do we do?"
"Well," I said, "We celebrate that Jesus is alive."
She thought really hard about it and then asked, "Do I get a balloon?"

Last year at church, they had balloons for all the kids. She was so excited to get a purple one, her favorite color, but she let go of it by accident while we were walking to the car, and it flew away. I remember that she looked down at her feet to find it. Paul and I chuckled about that, but then she burst into tears like a long-lost relative had died.


Here are the girls on Easter last year - it feels like eons ago. Maybe we'll try to create a new Easter tradition this year.

Day 36: Normalcy

Today all the daycare teachers couldn't believe how much better C's skin looked. One of the teachers  even said that she wants to get the new lotion that C is using! It was a remarkably normal and productive day - I got lots of work done in the morning, didn't google anything about eczema all day, and Paul and I had a nice lunch date at our favorite Mexican neighborhood diner.

I'm just hoping her body will continue to respond well to the new treatment - trying not to count my chickens before they're hatched. Continuing to feel so grateful that today my baby girl is happy, active, silly and just being herself. Taking each day as it comes.

Day 35: Cesar Chavez Day

Today daycare was closed because of Cesar Chavez Day. If we did not live in LA, I would have never known it was Cesar Chavez Day. Although I have to say, I did not notice anything different about today - did not hear about any parades and we still got mail. So I have to admit, I kinda rolled my eyes that daycare made it an official holiday, but our hard-working staff deserve the day off and I really enjoyed being home with the girls and taking the day off from work.

Well, here was our day in photos. We started our morning by the girls sleeping in(!) until about 7:40am, which was a world-record of some sort. I don't know what the occassion was; I guess they knew it was Cesar Chavez Day also. Plus they were tuckered out from our trip to OC yesterday for a birthday party and lots of festivities. So we had a nice slow morning with some TV time, and then headed out around 10am.

We went to our neighborhood indoor playground called The Awesome Playground, which I love because it is just one big room with toys and I can sit and look at stuff on my phone while they play amongst themselves. It's all baby safe and is usually not very crowded. They have dress-up costumes there, which C was into today. Also, check out how beautifully pale C was today! I cannot believe how quickly her eczema is clearing up.  She was playing so happily today that I now realize how accustomed I've become to her discomfort. When normal play is an unusual thing, I guess you know you've been through something tough with your kid.

 Costume change time.

 The table service at this joint is amazing.

This car is not going fast enough!

 During naptime, E (with her extremely sharp eyes) spotted a box in my closet that had her flower girl dress for Uncle Danny and Auntie Kristen's wedding. I got it on a pre-Easter sale that Macy's was having, though the wedding is not until October! To clear up her confusion, I had to explain several times that being a flower girl does NOT mean you dress up as a flower.

 Some afternoon playtime in my studio.

 They love sitting together in this chair.

 Again, C showing off her unusually non-blotchy skin.

 After dinner, ending the day with some home made popsicles.

Overall, it was a lovely day. They are playing so well together lately, and are quite the pair in all the funny ways that they interact. C constantly copies E, but E tries to copy C too because she knows that C is copying her. It's a precious relationship that makes me feel so glad about having them close together, despite the fact that I really remember nothing from that sleep-deprived first year.

Day 34: Swept Away

C continues to improve. She was in a fantastic mood today, and there were very few moments that she was scratching her usual places and saying, "Owie." Her skin seems like it's healing before my eyes. A few days ago, it had the texture of what I imagine elephant skin feels like - rough and sort of wrinkly. Today, by the time I got her out of the bath and applied the new Shikai Borage Therapy lotion on her, I felt less and less of that rough, wrinkly texture. There was barely any red on her back and torso. I am really amazed. This girl is healing.

I can't explain how much joy I feel just seeing her do her thing. Running around the house with her hands spread behind her back shouting, "Airplane! Airplane!" or playing dress-up with her sister. I haven't seen her this happy for what feels like a long time. And though she still has her tough moments because she is just a toddler, there's a lightness and a sweetness in her demeanor that makes me feel like she knows that she's getting better. I think she also senses the attention I've been putting on her lately, as she has been more clingy to me the past few days, which is a first. She's been insisting that I take her out of the car, that I hold her more than Paul, that I put her to bed. Meanwhile, E has adjusted by insisting on Daddy more often than she usually does, which is also a first - she has always been more attached to me. It's sort of a refreshing change for all of us.

Tonight, when I put C to bed, I sang her "Sanctuary" and she just kind of collapsed onto my chest. Then she suddenly looked up at me. We just stared at each other for a long time, and she smiled and put her forehead on my mouth for me to kiss it. I just melted into a million pieces with affection for my curly-haired little girl, wanting her sweet spirit to burst free into this world and shower it with as much goodness as she's put into my life.

I think I've started to lose myself a little bit in this whole eczema ordeal. In case you can't tell, it's really consumed me lately and I am sure you're tired of hearing about it. I hope I can distance myself from it a little bit this week if C continues to heal up. It's all I want to talk about with anyone, mostly because I feel that there is some kind of injustice for all the kids out there who suffer from eczema and just get prescribed steroid creams. Sometimes I get swept up into causes where I feel there's some kind of ignorance or oppression represented. I feel for every kid out there who has been stuck in this endless cycle of scratching. Our allergist told us about a baby that came to him from Japan. His mother had dressed him in a onesie and safety-pinned the arms of the onesie to his side so he couldn't move his arms to scratch himself. Once they unpinned his arms, he began scratching and would not stop, so much that by the time the appointment was over, he was bleeding all over his body. The itch was too unbearable. I feel so sad for all the kids with severe eczema out there. I hope they find the right healing and treatment too. In the meantime, I will try not to get too carried away in all this. I am just so grateful that God is meeting me in this 40-day journey, that he is showing me His strength and answering so graciously.