Eye appointment

Yesterday we had an eye appointment to make sure that Ayla's eyes are still not affected by the arthritis. I may have mentioned this before, but with the type of arthritis that she has (extended pauci-articular) she is susceptible to developing inflammation in the eye as well as the joints. If eye involvement is going to occur, most children will develop eye disease within 7 years of the onset of arthritis. The term for the eye inflammation is called uveitis. The inflammation rarely causes any symptoms such as blurry vision, pink eye, squinting , or pain. Since few or no symptoms are recognized, her eyes must be checked on a regular basis (every 6 months) before the eye is damaged and causes changes in vision. The damage has potential to cause cataracts, increased pressure in the eye, or serious damage to the iris. To check for this, a slit -lamp exam has to be done. This consists of putting your chin and forehead onto the back of a microscope, while the Dr. looks in your eyes through the other side. Of course Ayla did not go for this so we had three people holding her down . One person was holding her head, one was holding her eyes open and I was holding her arms and legs still. Thank goodness it did not take long and everything checked out okay. I am hoping that as time passes, this will get a little bit easier. At least we have another 6 months before we have to do this again.

Since Ayla had a bad afternoon, I decided to take her to Target so she could get out for a little bit. Of course we went to the toy section and of course she went straight to the baby dolls. She was so funny, there was this wooden baby center there that she absolutely loved. It was like a changing table, a bathtub, highchair and bed all in one.... she kept saying she had to put her baby to bed and I could not get her to leave. The other funny thing was that she picked out this little tiny baby no bigger than 5 inches I would say and she was just holding it and patting it and putting it in the bed, I could not get her attention away from this baby care center

UNTIL........

she saw THE CHAIR. Okay there was this chair beside the baby center that caught her eye. It was a saloon chair for baby dolls. It was little, and it came with a hair dryer and curlers. For some reason she was fascinated with this chair. She started carrying this chair everywhere, she would sit in it and then she would put her baby in it. Well this went on for probably around 30 minutes because we were waiting for Daddy to meet us. When John got there I told him about the chair and the baby etc.....I told him I had never seen her play with a toy like this before. So....... we tried and tried to get her to leave the chair behind because after all we had spent most of our time at target in the toy section. So after a brief discussion, I decided that she did not need this chair and we would just distract her and leave the chair behind. Okay this did not work, she started sobbing and she would absolutely not leave her chair. So of course daddy said oh just get it for her. There was not a price on it so we thought it could not be that much and besides Ayla hardly ever asks or cries for anything when we go shopping. So just picture us walking through target, Ayla with her chair in one hand and her little tiny 5 inch baby in the other. She would not let me hold the chair or put the chair in the buggy. She lugged that thing through target and everyone was laughing at her. Of course I happened to have my camera in my purse and I had to take a picture. It was so funny. So needless to say Ayla got her $23.00 plastic baby doll hair styling, saloon type chair . Enjoy the pictures!!