Other Good News!

Our insurance has agreed to cover the Naturopathic Dr. and the Psychologist!  It took us a while, but we had our pediatrician write a letter as well as the Naturopathic Dr. explaining her need to be covered by these types of Dr.'s.  So ask and you shall receive...  It's a process but you CAN get what you need if you are persistent enough I guess!

Worry Dolls

So the princess met with Miss Brigitte today, we like to call her our "family helper".  As far as we know it went well, we weren't in the room with her so Brigitte will meet with us next time to tell us what she observed.  She gave her these little worry dolls:

"WORRY DOLL LEGEND - There is a legend amongst the Highland Indian villages of Guatemala: "If you have a problem, then share it with a worry doll. Before going to bed, tell one worry to each doll, then place them beneath your pillow. Whilst you sleep, the dolls will take your worries away!"

As soon as I got home she showed them to me and told me all about them.   They are these tiny little wire dolls wrapped with thread.  I already stepped on one on the floor.  Lovely!  I told her to keep them safe and away from baby brother so he doesn't eat one.
You can find them here on Amazon!

So Ya Had a Bad Day...

Little girl had her Kindergarten screening today.  She was being tested for early entrance since she missed the cut-off by 4 days!  4 DAYS!  How annoying is that??
So she had to be tested.  It took about an hour, and when she was done she came skipping along to tell us about kindergarten.  She said she might have forgotten some letters and some numbers, but I told her that was ok.  I really wasn't sure how she would do testing in, and heard only about 20% get accepted.  But she's super smart, what difference can 4 little days make???
Well, unfortunately they called pretty quickly to tell us she got into "Kinder-Kid" but not Kindergarten. Kinder-Kid is still kindergarten but they only offer it at certain schools, and the class sizes are smaller and closer to her age group.  So she won't be attending the school of our choice, with all of her other little Aztyke pre-school friends, but she will still be starting K in the fall.  It's just really frustrating that because she missed the cut off date by 4 stinkin days, she was required to know all this material that half the kids already in kindergarten don't even know.  Ridiculous educational politics at work again.
To add to our frustration, the husband came home later and noticed some pretty nice new bald spots in little girls brows.  She said she was tired and went to her room and that's when she did it.  Her fingers were taped but she managed to get ahold of the tiny new hairs anyways. I told him not to feel bad, it's going to happen a million more times and we just have to accept that.  Eyebrows or not, she's still my pretty little princess! 

Miss Brigitte

So the husband and I had our first visit with the psychologist the other day.  It was just us, she will meet the little princess later.  We feel like we've know this lady all our lives!  What a great conversation we had about our families, nutrition, fitness and neurotransmitters!  I'm glad we found a therapist who agrees with our treatment with the naturopath, and agrees that this will play a huge roll in helping control this disorder.  She is very excited to meet her next week, I mean, who wouldn't be?  She's such an awesome little girl, I wonder myself what's going on in her little head sometimes.  It will be interesting to see what Miss Brigitte thinks of her sparkling personality! 

Farmer's Market Produce Box

I love going to Ahwatukee's Farmer's Market!  We got soooo much stuff last time for $23.  I almost didn't know what to do with it.  Never going to Fry's for produce again!

Winter Produce Box

What Does Food Allergy Have to do with Anything?

A few people have asked, ok, so you found out she has a dairy allergy... what the heck does that have to do with pulling eyelashes out???  It all has to do with our neurotransmitters.  I'm sure you've heard this before, but more and more we are learning how most of our health is regulated within the GUT.  I'm not even going to try to pretend I know everything about this, so here is a link to one of my favorite sites that explains it perfectly:

Stop Pulling Hair Out

Just Got my Mind BLOWN!

Little girl had the NEAT test today.  (Natural Elimination of Allergy Treatment)

It was an amazing experience.  Basically what they did was have her hold on to this little metal wand with one hand, and as the Dr. clicked on different foods on her computer, she touched her finger on the other hand with the probe to detect any energy from her body that indicated if she was allergic to these types of foods.  After going through quite an extensive list we found that she has a reaction to cow's milk, cheese and eggs.  She then took this "problem energy" and collected it into a vial of water.

Hold on... it gets better:
So they tape the vial of the bad energies to her wrist and told me to stand behind her without touching her.  I was to hold out my arm, and resist the Dr. pushing it down.  Ok, so I was pretty able to resist her pushing.  Next she had me hold on to her wrist with the vial and this time she was able to push my arm down much easier!  Fascinated!  I made the husband try it too.  We both looked at each other amazed yet puzzled.  How in the world????
The Dr. explained to us how these problem energies are making her body weak.  We could actually feel the problem energies through our own bodies!   
Using these problem energies she created a "medicine" vial which she then added to her wrist as well.  She had to keep it on for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes we repeated the test with the husband and both times he was able to resist the Dr. pushing on his arm.  
Needless to say, the medicine vial balanced out the energy of the problem vial.  This is all way over my head but this is how I understood it, I hope some Dr. doesn't get on here and bash everything I just said, haha!  I did my best to retain the information given :)
So for now we are to keep her off of dairy basically, and see the Dr. again in about 2 weeks.  We are still battling with the insurance company to get these visits covered, but the naturopath and the pediatrician are doing everything they can to help.  We also finally have appointments with the behavior therapist later this month so there will be more to report from that department!  

We're Not Alone

Did you know that 1 in 50 people are diagnosed with trichotillomania?

And those are just the people who actually know what it is and realize it has a name.  My husband just spoke to one of his best friends yesterday and found out that he has been pulling some of his facial hair out from the neck area for years.  He didn't know there was a name for what he was doing.  I'd be really interested to see if he decides to change up his diet and if it has any effect on his urges to pull.  I hope he doesn't mind I'm using his story but this whole thing is just fascinating to me!

Confession:  I am also a “cheek biter”.   I bit the inside of my cheek the whole time I was writing this.  I don’t even know I’m doing it sometimes until the damage is done.  I am also changing my diet along with my daughter in hopes that it will help me as well.

We have the NEAT test on Monday, I can’t wait to see what we find out.  Stay tuned!!

Whoopsie...

So we had a busy day today... went to the waterpark and wore out the kids for a couple of hours.  When we got home it was nap time and quiet time for everybody!  The husband had to run an errand, the boys went down for naps, and the little princess was watching a movie in the playroom.  I took advantage of this rare time and figured I'd wash the grime off of me from the day at the park.  As I was in the shower, I thought "Shoot!  Put new bandaids on her fingers ASAP"  Obviously they came off from being at the waterpark all day, and she was now tired, watching a movie... prime time for pulling.  But she has been doing really good lately, maybe it's ok???
Husband gets home as I'm getting out of the shower and I hear him talking to her in a very frustrating voice.  I knew it.  I knew exactly what he was angry about.  I immediately intercepted, we can NOT be upset when she has an episode of pulling.  I grabbed her and hugged her, she was clearly upset and started crying.  I fought back the tears too, but I just hugged her and hugged her and told her that it's ok.  I told her that her brows are going to grow back and she's going to want to pull them again and again, and lots of other little girls just like her do the same exact thing.  When I looked at her brows it had appeared she really only pulled maybe 3 little spots... it wasn't that bad.  I told her that you can't even tell (they are so practically naked anyways!) and that I will fix them with a little makeup before we go to the birthday party later. We even got to put some lip gloss on :)
I think I did an ok job recovering the situation quickly.  I reminded the husband that we can't have a negative reaction in front of her when this happens.  I couldn't help but get the feeling he was upset that I didn't put the new bandaids on right away, and reminded him that we can't blame ourselves when these set-backs happen.  The bandaids are only a temporary solution anyways.  If this is something we are really going to have to deal with when she's older she will learn that all she has to do is take them off to pull if the urge is that strong.  She's already done it once! 
Anyways, a quick makeup job with some sparkly lip gloss and off to the birthday party we went without a hitch.  She had a blast at the party and I'm sure she didn't even think of it the rest of the day.