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A week ago Ella developed a round white spot on her upper left arm. It was a little dry to the touch so I treated it with lots of cream several times a day. The spot still hasn’t gone away.
A few days ago I noticed that Ella now had a similar white spot on her left cheek as well as several small ones on her back. I posted a query on our adoption agency’s post adoption web group about these spots and got several responses. Some of the diagnoses they had received for their children’s spots were: a type of fungus, eczema, or an allergy to milk and milk products.
This morning Ella and I went to the post office to buy stamps and visit my friend who is the postmaster there. Lupita (short for Guadalupe) is from Mexico and my main resource for all things related to Central America. She took one look at Ella’s spots and told me this is from the sun and happens to people with dark skin. They will fade with time.
This made the most sense to me; Labor Day weekend we spent most of the three days in my son’s swimming pool or running around outside. Although I put 50+ SPF waterproof sun screen on Ella, I didn’t reapply it frequently enough I guess. I also remember that she had a couple similar spots when we were in Israel where she also spent a lot of time outdoors in the sun.
Searching on the internet I found a skin condition called “tinea versicolor” that can be treated with anti-fungal cream. I am trying to get into one of our very busy local dermatologists who happens to be Hispanic; hopefully she will settle this riddle and give me something to treat those nasty white spots.
Now on to toddlers’ clothing. This year when I went to purchase Ella long pants, I noticed that most of them didn’t have sewn in elastic in the back. This has been replaced by, and I kid you not, the same system my maternity pants had a millennium ago. You know, the pants have a button on either side of the back of the waistband, the elastic has button holes and you adjust it to your child’s size.
Sounds good in theory, but here is the “Catch 22.” Even if you adjust the pants before you put them on your wriggling and antsy toddler, you may have to make them bigger or smaller if you are off on your size estimation; surely this doesn’t happen just to me. It is not easy to slide the buttons in and out of this elastic which shrinks and scrunches up after wash. And what do you want to bet that these buttons come off with a gentle tug of a thread?
More Info on Skin:
you wouldn’t think they would put buttons on kids pants….. everything goes into there mouths! They will go back to the old system, just you wait and see.
resale shops to the rescue!