Pumpkin Patch and more!

Last week I took the boys to a local pumpkin patch. I had been trying decide if I was up to doing it by myself and finally just decided, the heck with it - let's go. We went to a smaller one that a local church puts on and we went on an overcast morning which worked out perfectly. There were not too many kids there so it made it easy for me to keep up with the boys. They had a make-shift train and a hay ride and several bouncy houses - just enough stuff to keep my boys entertained for an hour or so. The boys LOVE bouncy houses but usually there are so many kids in them that they really get "bounced" around. They had most of the houses totally to themselves most of the time so they loved it. After our trip to the pumpkin patch we hit Cosco for a couple things and enjoyed a foot long hot dog lunch complete with a free cookie from the bakery - what a great day :)

So back to my difficulty in doing crafts with James while John-Mark is around. Here is what I configured so that James could play with his play-doh for a while:As you can see John-Mark was trying very hard to get in on the action. Not the best solution but it worked for a bit - until John-Mark started realizing he could scoot the chairs out of the way!
Lastly, we have been dealing with James' face break outs for a while now and I am SOOOO frustrated! I took him to an allergist a couple of weeks ago and they did several allergy tests that came back saying he has a mild allergy to eggs, strawberries, nuts, dogs, and CHICKEN!! The first four things weren't a big deal because we have stayed away from those but the chicken threw me for a loop. What didn't show up was dairy which I feel certain he has had reactions to - so no more chicken for a while and we're staying off dairy as well. Unfortunately it seems things have gotten worse since we went! I feel like we got nothing out of that visit. He woke up two days ago with his face worse than it's ever been and we're feeding him only what they said. Sooo, we have put him on a pretty limited diet until we can get it totally cleared up and then start reintroducing foods and see what causes reactions. He's basically eating turkey, green beans, peas, bananas, grapes, and apples/applesauce. This is no fun but I am ready to get to the bottom of this and I feel like the dr's have no better ideas than I do so this is what we must do.
Luckily James face doesn't bother or itch him and he loves when I put lotion on him - he also loves to do it himself, as you can see from the above picture :)