(upbeat music)
(lighthearted music)
- Good morning, everyone.
It is a very sun shining, happy day right now.
Lots of stuff's going on.
Jessica's gonna get her hair done.
She's trying something new today,
and I totally don't understand it,
but I'm excited to see what happens there.
I have an allergist appointment,
and I'll give you a quick little update on my hives.
They're still there.
Not much has changed.
I haven't done any of the immunosuppressant stuff yet.
I don't think we're going down that route.
We're gonna try another medicine
that didn't work before again,
I think, I have to talk to my allergist about it today.
They're still here.
They're still really itchy.
They're still affecting my life in a not pleasant way,
but I'm trying as often as I can to
just sort of push through the itchiness
and not let it affect me in a negative way.
And part of that's doing stuff
like what I'm doing right now,
which is playing with Rue in the backyard.
You got the fish.
Can you drop it?
Good girl.
Uh-oh.
She loves that fish.
Among the many other things that we're doing today,
Bailey has some blood work that needs to get done.
- Hi.
- So she's got some school work here.
She's gonna do that in the car
on the way there and in the waiting room.
She's been getting hives also.
Not as many hives as me,
but we're trying to just not let those hives
take control the way they have with me.
You can see on my legs.
Very hivey.
Hivey these days.
And while we go do this, Luke is doing his speech therapy.
And then I think he also has
occupational therapy today too.
So just, it's one of those busy ones.
One of those busy days.
- We're gonna go to Starbucks afterwards.
- Oh, are we?
- Oh yes.
- Okay.
- And then I'm gonna watch a pitch meeting while I'm there.
- Yes, Bailey has a hard time with needles.
- I definitely do.
So I like to watch pitch meetings.
It's basically where he's pitching something like a movie,
but he keeps revealing all the plot holes,
and it's really funny.
- Anyway, here's Luke in speech therapy
while we go get some blood work.
You don't wanna see the blood work part.
- [Speech Therapist] You ready for panda?
(Luke babbling quietly)
Let's say dada.
- Dada.
- [Speech Therapist] Duh-pa.
- Bah-bah.
- [Speech Therapist] Panda.
(Luke babbling quietly)
Duh.
There you go, there you go.
See what's inside.
There's something good in there for you.
You and Duncan played with this last time.
(gasps loudly)
What?
Look, Duncan!
- [Jessica] There it goes.
- [Speech Therapist] Wah-wah.
- Wah-wah.
- [Speech Therapist] Wow, wow!
- Wow, wow.
- [Speech Therapist] Whoa, whoa!
- Whoa, whoa.
- [Speech Therapist] Whoa, wow.
- Whoa, whoa.
- [Speech Therapist] Nice!
Mama.
- Mama.
- [Speech Therapist] Momo.
- Momo.
- [Speech Therapist] Me-mo.
- Me-mo.
- [Speech Therapist] Nice!
- Okay, we've just finished at the labs.
Bailey got her blood taken.
Not all of it, she still has some of it.
(Bailey giggles quickly)
How did it go today?
- Good!
- Yeah, it went pretty well.
She handled it really, really well.
Bailey's usually pretty skittish around needles.
Today, no problem.
- I love this place where I got it.
My blood drawn.
- Yeah, this place does do a good job
at making sure that everybody's comfortable.
One time they even, like,
took the kids into the back room and showed them
the centrifuges and things to to collect the blood samples,
and prepare the blood samples for the lab.
Cool little place.
What are you getting at Starbucks?
- Probably a pink drink.
- All right, we're back home now,
and Luke is doing his occupational therapy outside.
And I'm here with Parker,
he's doing his science.
- Science!
- Science.
(Parker yells excitedly)
- And he's learning about electricity,
so we're gonna learn what conducts electricity today.
(lighthearted acoustic music)
Okay, so now you have two electrodes.
That's what these are.
They're exposed,
and we can put them into a glass
of water and record our results.
Any electricity passing through?
- Nope.
- All right, let's record our results.
Now we're gonna pour salt into our water.
- It's my least favorite sound ever.
- [Christopher] Salt?
- No.
The sound of the salt coming up and coming down.
Like the lid.
- Okay, we get our salt water.
Oh!
You see it?
It's lighting up.
You see it?
- It's barely.
- Okay, and I brought some other things for us to test too.
Balloon.
Okay, I'm gonna write balloon on here.
- Who doesn't wanna try the balloon?
- Okay, so put the balloon there,
and ready?
- No.
- No?
It does not light up with the balloon.
- I wanna try this, 'cause I know it's not gonna work--
- Okay, so cork.
Nope, that's a no for cork.
- [Parker] Do this?
- [Christopher] Okay, soda can.
- It's not a soda can, it's a La Croix can.
- Okay, La Croix can.
- I totally thought this was gonna work.
- It does work, it does work!
Nice.
Okay.
- So the best thing turns out to be the La Croix can,
then it was the salt water,
and then nothing else.
- Anything you wanna say about electricity?
- Electricity makes your computer go.
So thank you electricity for letting
the computers go so that we can watch this.
(Parker puffing quietly)
(balloon squeaking loudly)
- Science!
- Yeah.
- I have some really big personal news.
That's gonna sound super basic to some people,
but for me it's a big deal.
This is me, this is my hair.
Let me show you my hair.
It's very fluffy and frizzy,
and it's brushed out curls right now.
So I have very curly hair on the bottom down here.
Boop, boop, boop.
You can't really see it, it is brushed out.
And then I have pretty straight hair on the top.
And this is my texture that I've
always had throughout all of my life,
including pregnancies and all that.
It didn't really change that much.
I've learned a lot about my hair over time,
because it's, you know,
it's my hair, it's me.
And it's kind of a big hassle and a bother.
There have been goods and bads,
like things I've learned to embrace and love about it,
but definitely things that have also, like,
annoyed me for my whole life about it.
And I have always dreamed of trying
something called a Brazilian blowout,
where they basically remove the frizz from your hair.
Doesn't mean that all texture is gone.
It's not like a straightening treatment,
but it does remove the frizz from it.
And it's supposed to make it so that my hair
will blow dry and all that way faster.
And I'm gonna get one, I'm gonna do it.
(giggles quickly)
And it might be terrible, I don't know.
Just don't tell, I don't.
It's happening.
It will already have happened.
It's happening today, will happen before you see it.
Like, you can't say anything to change my mind here.
It is happening.
I have thought about this for years,
and always chickened out.
And I spoke to a hair stylist last week.
We talked about the pros and cons.
She looked at my specific hair and said,
okay, you're approved for this,
because it doesn't work for everybody.
It's not like the be all great
solution for everybody and everything.
But she thinks that I'm a,
she said a good candidate for it,
which means, oh,
you've got frizzy hair, girl.
You've got frizzy hair!
At least that's how I took it.
But I'm very excited.
I wear my hair up in this mom bun almost all of my life,
just because it's so inconvenient.
There are gonna be people out there saying, like,
no, no, no.
Do the curly girl method first!
And I have done that.
I've done it.
I really loved a lot of things about it.
It taught me a lot about my hair that I did not know,
even though I thought I knew everything.
So I will say it.
I know there are even more things that I do not know,
including this!
I've never done this.
So I want to try it.
I might love it.
What if I love it?
I hope I love it.
So I'm really, really excited.
I have not even,
I don't think I've had a haircut
since before Teddy was born.
Like I think it's been almost a year.
I think it was like last May, which is it's May now.
So I think it's been just about
a year since I even got a haircut.
I don't give myself consistent haircuts.
My hair is like it's natural color.
You can, let me see.
You can see little grays are popping
through at my 39 years of age.
So my hair is very untreated,
and I really need something that's low maintenance,
like my lifestyle.
And I'm hoping that this is that solution,
and I'm really excited about trying it.
So I'm gonna go do that now.
It's gonna be my big mom moment.
I think I'm going to cut it a little bit too,
just because it's been so long.
I've gotta have some pretty rough edges, right?
So that's gonna be happening.
I put it on Instagram recently that I was,
like, gonna do my eyebrows this week.
And I think a lot of people thought that that meant
that I was gonna do something really fancy with them,
when I just meant like I haven't
even tweezed them in a long time,
so I was gonna kind of get them waxed.
I'm not even gonna do that now,
but I'm hoping at some point in life I get around to that.
Like, this is a full brow,
my full natural brow is flowing like this.
So that's all I meant to anybody who was wondering.
People were like, oh my gosh,
you're gonna get, like,
eyebrow tattoos, or micro bleeding or something?
And I was like, no.
No, no, no.
I do basic eyebrow maintenance.
But I haven't even done that.
It hasn't happened.
I've been very much mom life the last eight months or so.
Teddy still really doesn't sleep at night,
and he's very much with me all night long
because Christopher is dealing with his hives,
and we're trying so hard to get him to get
as much rest as he can while his body is
dealing with this big thing that's happening to it.
So I have been about other people,
like solidly for the last eight months or so.
And I'm just gonna take this couple of hours.
I'm like, am I gonna drink some water?
Like, these are the things as a mom.
Oh!
Spa day!
Because I'm gonna spend two hours in a chemical chair.
So I don't know.
But I'm hoping that I'm gonna come out of it
with things even easier for me to deal with me,
and then I can focus even more on other people.
And dogs, Rue's at my feet right now.
And dogs!
You too, little angel.
My little cutie doggy.
Huh, Rue.
Yeah.
- All right, I am at the allergists now.
I'm actually not sure what we're doing today.
Typically I would be getting a shot of DUPIXENT,
but that hasn't been helping me.
So we might try going back to XOLAIR,
or we might not do anything.
They might just look at me and go like, I don't know.
I don't know what to do with you.
None of the medicine seems to be helping me,
but when I try and go off the medicine, my lips swell up.
So maybe they're helping me in a way that I can't see,
and it's just, if I wasn't on medicine there,
I would just literally turn into a human hive,
and that was it.
I don't know.
I know I'm not approaching this very,
like, hopefully,
but so far I've been going to the allergist
and to other specialists for months.
It's been almost a year of this
and I still don't have any answers.
I don't know.
We'll see what happens today.
I'll let you know in a little bit.
All right, I'm done with my allergist appointment.
We switched things up.
I'm back on the XOLAIR.
This will work, I'm hoping.
I'm hoping this will work.
Hope with me.
Just hope with me.
Anyway, I'm gonna go back home
and help Faith out with the kids,
and then Jessica's gonna come home with new hair.
I can't wait to hear about her experience with that
and see what her hair looks like.
I need a haircut.
Look at this, look at this hair.
It's longer than it.
It's long.
I'm not gonna get a Brazilian anything,
but probably just a regular haircut for me.
(calming music)
Bailey's taking a cooking class online tonight.
It involves chopped onions.
But don't worry, she's got a plan.
(upbeat acoustic music)
- Here it is, we did it.
We did a thing!
So this is it right now,
but I feel like this is day one.
The stylist did this.
They're always gonna be better than me, okay?
She's definitely more skilled than I am.
I don't know, stylists.
I'll buy all the stuff and work really hard,
and I'll never do as good of a job,
like, doing a blowout as they do.
But I will say she didn't take as long doing this.
So we'll see.
As far as the process went, it was fine.
It was like some chatting.
I had my mask on because that's how I go out anyway,
and I was really kind of glad I had that,
'cause I know there's like a lot
of stinky stuff you can inhale.
I didn't have any sort of like protective eye stuff,
and that was fine.
I think there was like once or twice
I got a whiff of it near my eyes,
and I was like, oh,
that kind of stung.
But like, it didn't go near my eyes,
so I don't think it was like,
it wasn't a problem for me.
As far as going into my hair itself,
there were times when it was really stingy,
and I didn't say anything.
I was like, I'm cool.
I'm cool.
Because it didn't bother me.
Like, I knew that there could be a feeling of stinginess.
And I think having that knowledge,
it's not like I was scared.
I wasn't like,
oh my gosh, I'm in so much pain!
I was kind of like, you know,
I kind of like this.
(giggles quickly)
I was like, oh,
something's happening.
Like I know something's at work here.
And the stinging's totally gone now, by the way.
Like, it felt like it,
it wasn't heat activated stinging,
which was I think the thing that
was a little weird about it.
I think it was a feeling I felt before when doing something,
like if you have your blow dryer on too long or something.
I don't know.
I don't know how it would how,
like, what it compared to,
because it was definitely something I'd felt before,
but it's just like my scalp stung for a period of time,
and then it was fine.
And now it feels totally fine.
Don't feel stingy.
Don't feel ouchie.
My hair itself feels very soft.
Maybe a little thicker than when
I go to a salon and they blow it out.
I feel like when a a salon does it,
usually it feels so soft that it's like thin, thin.
And I feel like right now it
feels just kind of healthy soft.
It doesn't feel like very,
very, very soft and thin,
but it certainly doesn't feel bad.
It doesn't feel,
one time they did my hair where I bleach dyed it.
I had it blonde when I was in my twenties,
and that felt really different.
I was shocked by how coarse it felt.
And then since then I haven't done any dying to my hair.
And this feels like normal hair to me.
Like soft, normal hair.
I think the real question is going to be
what does this look like when I
wash it myself and air dry it?
That's a big question.
I'm really curious about that.
And then when I wash it myself
and use my blow dry brush on it,
which is like a,
that's kind of like my fast
and easy way to blow dry my hair.
I definitely can't wait to do those things,
and see what happens.
That's the big test.
To me, like,
anybody can go to a salon and get
a great blowout from their salon person,
but not anybody can recreate good hair easily.
So I'm hoping that that's what happens,
is that I can now, not even get it like this.
Like I don't care.
It doesn't have to be super straight or anything.
I just want it to be like manageable hair.
That's my goal.
Because so far, my hair is very,
very, very hard to manage.
It takes a long time,
and I just don't have that time in my life.
So I'm really hoping that this will simplify my life a bit.
I can't wait to update you guys too,
because that was something I was really looking for.
I was like, I wanna see what happens after you wash it.
Like, what happens then?
And what happens a week later?
What does it look like?
So you guys will be seeing that process.
I'm really excited about that.
(upbeat acoustic music)
- [Christopher] What are you making tonight, Bailey?
- Cheese and cranberry sauce pasta.
And in case you were wondering
why I was wearing goggles earlier,
it was so that I could cut the onions.
- [Christopher] Did it work?
- It did.
- [Christopher] Oh, so that's a tip for people at home.
- Wear goggles
- [Christopher] Swim goggles, if you're cutting onions.
- [Bailey] Yay!
(Duncan laughing quickly)