We had a wonderful, cozy Christmas day yesterday. Last night as we were all getting ready for bed, I grabbed my oldest in a hug ( Goober) and pulled him into the chair with me for a snuggle. Somewhere in the recent past, he's gotten too old for snuggles with Mommy and it makes me sad. Every now and then, though, I get him down and "waller" him ( as my Grandpa used to say). As I sat there hugging him, I was startled by how big and filled out he's gotten as of late. While it saddened me a little that he's growing up too fast, I was also so thankful that he's growing.
Goober's always been very small for his age ( we called it "wiry" to give it a positive spin).
He didn't start out that way, though. His birth weight was 7lb.5 oz. Very respectable for his parents, who were both in the low 7 lb. range. I had a very uneventful pregnancy and birth with Goober, but our official introduction into parenthood after his birth was a trial by fire. I was young- 21. My husband was 20. During our stay in the hospital, people kept referring to my husband as "your boyfriend" or "your partner". No matter how many times I found the guts to correct them and say, "my HUSBAND" and show them my rings, it kept happening. I would seethe silently for a few minutes and then forget about it and enjoy my baby. I was also questioned endlessly about our decision to not circumcise our son. No matter how many times I said, "no, we chose not to", someone else would always come in and try to convince me otherwise. I had opted to have my baby room in rather than be left in the nursery. I woke up once to a nurse quietly wheeling away his bed. I asked, "where are you taking him?" She said, "Oh, I'm taking him to be circumcised, I'll bring him back when it's all over. He'll probably just want to sleep". I sat straight up and said, "NO, YOU ARE NOT!!!". I shocked her and myself.
As we were preparing to take him home, we were told we needed to take part in a "class" before we were allowed to leave. Again, I was annoyed, but we quietly complied. We sat down and looked around and realized all the other participants were very young teen moms, some alone and some with the fathers. During the class, we were "taught" how to wrap, change and burp a baby, among several other very basic things. I was thinking, "wait, you think we're too stupid to know how to change a diaper, yet you're letting us take these babies home and trusting us to keep them alive?!". Whatever. We got through it and went home.
Almost immediately, I realized something wasn't quite right. Goober had been born with a beautiful complexion, yet a day or so after we got him home, he began getting horrible patches of eczema all over his body and he would get red bumps all over that spread if I rubbed them. He also turned into a miserable baby. He would begin to nurse and then begin crying and fussing. As a result, it was a constant cycle of five minute nursing sessions. I hardly left the room. Soon, he would cry from hunger, but begin pushing me away with his little hands in misery. At his well child visits, I told his pediatrician I suspected food allergy. She scoffed and said, "everybody thinks their baby has a food allergy. He has colic" and proceeded to give me all the horrible, worthless advice that doesn't work for "colicky" babies. We endured it for five miserable months and then one day, Goober when on strike and refused to nurse. We both spent the day crying. Finally, in desperation, I dug out the little can of dairy-based Similac the hospital sent home and made up a bottle. As I was going to give it to him, some dripped on his chin, which immediately turned red and puffy with hives everywhere. I dumped the bottle in the sink and called my husband at school ( he was in college at the time) and told him to pick up some soy formula on the way home. I was at the end of my rope, and so was poor Goober. When my husband brought home the formula, I made up another bottle and dripped some on his skin to see what would happen. Nothing. I gave him the bottle and he took it all. It was amazing. Afterward, he let out a contented burp and dropped off into a deep sleep- the first time ever. Almost overnight, he turned into a different baby.
I'm a vegetarian. With my husband in college, finances were tight. As a result, we recieved WIC. Since I was a vegetarian, I received extra vouchers for dairy and peanut butter. I relied heavily on dairy and peanut butter for protein. Those were my prime suspects for food allergy for Goober. By the time I was finally able to convince his pediatrician to refer us for allergy testing, I had two more suspects- egg and chocolate (I gave him scrambled eggs on his first birthday and he reacted immediately before he even got any to his mouth). I discovered the chocolate when I found him sitting behind the end table gumming a Hershey's kiss after Christmas. He was covered in hives and wheezing. The allergist was doubtful when I gave him my list of things to test for, but obliged and tested for a myriad of other things as well. He reacted very strongly to the four I had mentioned and to nothing else. After testing, he said Goober's reaction to peanut was so strong it scared him. Dairy and egg, too. He sat us down and had a very serious talk with us to help us understand just how dire a situation it could be. We listened and took everything to heart. We walked around in a daze for a few days and then got busy reading labels and compiling a "safe foods" list and I got busy creating recipes using alternative ingredients.
Finally confirming his allergies and justifying my worries ( I was known as a paranoid mom) wasn't the end, though. Even after we finally eliminated all possible allergens from his diet, he continued to dislike eating and struggled with horrible reflux. Even if we were able to get a decent meal into him, more often than not, about five minutes after eating, it would all come up. It wasn't normal spitting up, it was projectile vomiting an impressive distance. We would begin all over again, praying something would stay down. Between his hatred of eating and the throwing up, we considered it a good meal if we were able to get two or three good bites into him and have it stay down. I broached the reflux with his pediatrician and once again, got dismissed. She did, however, lecture me about his weight ( 19 pounds at a year and a half) and proceed to instruct me that I needed to give him WHOLE milk and lots of cheese and dairy to "bulk him up". I stared at her and reminded her that dairy was potentially deadly for him. She blinked a few times and consulted his chart. "Oh. right. Well, give him lots of fattening things, then. Chips and french fries and syrup and ... ". Was she serious?!
I had been making his baby food all along and decided to play with some recipes using foods with HEALTHY fat and calories to help bulk him up without resorting to processed junk.
His favorite became mashed bananas with avocado. I tasted it once. Awful, lol, but he loved it! .
I would also add olive and flax seed oil where I could and added brown rice syrup to his cereal.
He was obviously a very healthy child. He didn't have the constant colds and infections and problems other babies seemed to get regularly. He was very active and obviously curious and bright. However, he wasn't "bulking up" fast enough for the pediatrician's liking and she referred us to Riley Hospital for Children to see a specialist. Now, I thought they were finally going to address his reflux. We got there and were taken to an exam room. In walked a Dr. and a Dr. Goober was examined, pronounced to be severely underweight and we received a very serious lecture that the slightest breeze would push him over into "failure to thrive" and were basically accused of child abuse. Now, silly me, I always thought that diagnosis was reserved for weak, listless, pale children. I was cross-examined and even asked if I was "withholding food" because I thought my baby was "too fat" At this point, I'd had enough and said, "of course not!" and launched into everything we'd dealt with up to present. I again pleaded with someone to address his reflux ( after all, we were at the best Children's hospital in the region) and again got the brush-off. They decided to have me talk with a nutritionist "to help you know how to feed him". She was the first reasonable person we'd talked to and actually listened. I explained his food allergies, aversion to food and reflux and how I tried to work within those confines. After, she sighed, patted my hand and said, "honey, you're doing everything right, there's nothing else you CAN do". Finally! I bawled and we were finally able to go home. Nothing accomplished except getting the "experts" off my back. On the way home, I reflected and thought over the past year and a half and somewhere between Indianapolis and Lafayette, I grew a backbone. *I* know my baby, I love my baby and I am the only one who will make sure he's taken care of. If I don't stand up and make sure that's what happens, the fault is mine. When something is wrong, I find the courage to insist until I'm listened to.
Goober's reflux eventually settled down; though, to this day, if he runs around too much or jumps around too much, he throws up. I'm guessing it has something to do with a weak muscle in his esophagus, but since he grew out of throwing up after eating, no doctor will check it out.
His aversion to food, though, lasted a good eight years. He had always just been a poor eater, and as a result, very small for his age. He willingly eats all kinds of vegetables and prefers healthy food, but he just wouldn't eat very much. We had resigned ourselves that he was just always going to be small. He's always been extremely healthy, just small.
Until about two years ago. Something happened and my nibbler turned into a bottomless pit. If it's not nailed down, it gets eaten. If his brother or sister didn't finish their portion and there's none left in the kitchen, he'll eat theirs. If he has two servings and is still hungry, he'll ask for a banana... or three. It's come and gone with his growth spurts, but has recently revved up into high gear the last month or so and he's turned into an eating machine. I still get teary sometimes watching him happily mow through more food than my husband can eat. It's still amazing to me. As his appetite has grown, so has he. At an astonishing rate. Some days, I swear he goes to bed taller or more filled out than when he woke up that morning. He's outgrowing clothes left and right. Some parents might be frustrated, but I'm thrilled.
I guess I hadn't realized just how much he's grown until last night. I couldn't be happier.

Horse Crazy

I have known girls in my life who were absolutely obsessed with horses. They tend to be a "type". Rugged country girls who live, breathe, and sleep horses ( I was going to say "eat", but that just seemed wrong). They almost always live on the outskirts of town, if not in the country and if they don't have their own horse, they have access to them.
My little girl seems to be following in that tradition. For as long as I can remember, she's been horse-crazy. She was born in town and until a year ago, lived in town, but she absolutely loves horses. When we moved to the country and our neighbor we share the property with had a horse, I thought Princess was going to lose her mind. Unfortunately, "Lady" the horse is old, cranky and set in her ways. She only gives you the time of day if you have an apple or carrot for her. Then, she grudgingly walks over, strettttches out her neck and takes it delicately with her teeth all the while maintaining enough distance so that you couldn't possibly pet her. She sticks around for a minute to see if you have more, then tosses her head and snorts, dismissing you, and trots off.
Princess was heartbroken at first at being given the brush- off by the object of her affections, but she continues to admire her from afar, staring out the window for long stretches and watching Lady graze in the pasture. Hopefully, one day, she'll have one of her own to love, but in the meantime, she's amassing an admirable collection of horse paraphernalia. She receives ponies and horses as gifts, horse books, pictures of horses. Whenever she gets any money, it gets spent on, you guessed it, horse stuff. Most recently, she used her Christmas money to buy a stuffed horse. She tied a string around its neck and it has become her constant companion. Although Princess's Daddy is of the same school of thought as my Papaw ( "horses don't provide a service and you can't eat them, so they have no place on a farm"). They do have some that are barely bigger than a dog, now- surely he couldn't deny something so cute and less than three feet tall? I'd bet it would still eat less than our cat! :)

Ewwwwww, Boys!

It wasn't until I had my daughter that I realized how truly disgusting boys can be. My first two being boys, it was all I knew. Still, I had an inkling that mine might be a little more, uh, gross than your average boys.
When Goober was three and a half and Crash was one, I baby-sat for my neighbor's girls. Because of that, I would buy cheap cereal from Aldi for them to snack on in the afternoons. A favorite was "fruit loops". One day, I was trying to get caught up on housework while the girls played outside and Goober and Crash were "napping" ( or, rather, supposed to be napping). I began smelling a not-so-pleasant odor. Sniffing, I ended up in front of the boys' room. I heard whispering and giggling. Mentally preparing myself, I entered the room.
There stood Crash, covered in neon green polka dots. Paint? Where did they get... Ohhhh.
Anyone who's ever gone to change their child's diaper after they've been eating something with lots of food coloring knows that shade of green. Goober stood holding a small pillow, with the ruffle wrapped around his fingers. The best explanation my three year old and one year old could give me was that Crash had "gone" and budding picasso Goober had decided to utilize it by taking the ruffle of a pillow, dipping it into the "palate" and painting his baby brother. Of course, in the process, he had gotten it on himself, the bed, the floor, the walls, some toys... . You just can't contain art. I spent the afternoon gagging as I cleaned them and the room up. It wasn't the first, or the last. I've gone through a lot of bleach in the last ten years... . Things have definitely gotten better. They've finally learned to appreciate the "yuck" factor of poo and have stopped using it as a medium, but they've discovered many other ways to gross mom out.
Just yesterday, they managed to do it again. I was rolling out pie crust in the dining room and Crash came in laughing like a maniac, jumping up and down and yelling, "He did it! He ate it!!!"
Being the dummy I am, I said, "ate what...?!".
Crash giggled and said, "he ATE a fruit fly!!!" ( every time we buy bananas we get the stupid things).
I stood there with my mouth open and said, "he did not!".
Crash giggled again and said, "Yeah, he totally did!!!".
Goober came in grinning and said, "yeah. I did- I figured protein is protein".
I started gagging. I never in a MILLION years would've thought he'd be the one to do something like that. :P. I stretched the truth a little and said, "please don't eat fruit flies, they have diseases" ( things you never thought you'd say #2,879). Whether they do or not, I don't care. I know house flies are petri dishes on the wing and to me, fruit flies are guilty by association. Goober had the good grace to go pale and say, "Oh, I didn't know that". I said, "the next time you're hungry, would you please just grab some carrots?" Hysterical laughter.
I can't help but wonder if God isn't preparing me for something big. And gross. Maybe when World War III breaks out, I'll be put in charge of bed pans and dressing gangrenous wounds. Maybe it's just so that when they're all grown and catch their little boys hurling poo diapers around their bedroom or snacking on caterpillars in the back yard and call me in a panic, it'll be my turn to laugh :).

Waltzing to Europe

I home-school our three kids. Even when I was working two full-time jobs, it did not take as much out of me as this does. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE it- I love having a say in what my kids are learning- and making sure they do, but some days, it's a real marathon in emotional and mental endurance. However, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I adore the curriculum I've chosen. It's very time-consuming, but my kids are soaking it up, and having fun doing it.
One thing I absolutely love that came with our second-grade curriculum is "Geography Songs", by Larry and Kathy Troxel. It's basically memorizing geography by setting the list of countries in each section of the world to music. The song always corresponds to the geographical area. For instance, we just finished the Middle East. They're not only learning about that particular area, they're being exposed to the traditional music, reading about their culture and traditions and learning about how that particular country and people interact with their country and people today.
This week, we're beginning Europe. The focus being on Western Europe. The song is a very catchy waltz tune - one two three, one two three, one two three, one... Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, (one two three), Austria Belgium and Netherlands (one two three), France and Mon-a-co, Ger-man-y are allll in West-ern Eur-ope!!!
Often, the kids learn it after just one listen. I wake up with it in my head in the morning and I hear the kids singing it all through the day. Now, it may not mean much to them now, but I do know that one day, they'll hear about something happening in Germany and go, "wait a minute..." and have a better understanding of where it is, what the people and culture are like and it's relationship to the countries around it than a lot of public school kids. I've learned so much more home-schooling my children than I knew before. I think that schools in America have been too nation-centric. I remember focusing hard on our own country and never really even touching on others. I came out not knowing much, except that they existed. Now, I'm all for my kids learning about their own country, and they do, but I think it's a very big mistake to be so self-centered. Our kids will grow up to be adults- some of which may very possibly have careers that deal with other countries and cultures. I think we should at least have a base knowledge. People in other countries have a much better grasp on it than we do.
One thing I've been a little slack on this year with Crash that I made time to do with Goober is to make a point to look up and make recipes from that particular region/country. For example, when Goober was in second grade, We made falafel and a minted carrot dish when we studied the Middle-East. I think this week, it'll have to be something with sausage and sauerkraut ;).

Hindsight is always 20/20

I have wanted a digital camera for as long as there have been digital cameras. To be ready at almost any time to capture "moments" and to record videos without all the hassle of tripods and cords, etc... . Before we got our camera, we would buy the little disposable Kodak or Fuji cameras, use them, and then put them aside to be developed "when we have the money". For YEARS. We have a box full of film that needs to be developed. I'm pretty sure we even still have wedding film to be developed. Our babies' first birthdays, milestones, everything are locked away in those little disposable cameras in the box in our closet. When we finally got our digital camera, it was a huge deal for me.
Pictures are very, very important to me. I treasure them. To hold a picture and be flooded with memories that might otherwise be lost to time is precious to me. I love pictures of ancestors, pictures of my grandparents when they were my age, pictures of my parents as babies, and even our goofy family portraits from the 80's. To me, more heart-breaking than being without a computer or internet access or an immediate way to communicate with family and friends hundreds of miles away was the thought that all the pictures I've uploaded might be lost forever.
I got hit square in the chest with that fear today when a certain busy child picked up a piece of metal from a science kit and thought, "hmmm, that USB port looks like a GREAT place for this random piece of metal". The child inserted the metal, wiggled it and the computer went, "POOF" and went black and quiet. After my initial disbelief that this child had done something a TODDLER would do and my anger that such an expensive piece of equipment might have been lost to such a careless, random act of "duh", I remembered all the pictures and videos I'd saved over the last two years on the computer and froze. I sat on the couch and mourned for I don't know how long, kicking myself over and over for not backing up our pictures. How could we have left something so important to us to chance? Then, I picked up the phone and called my husband at work. I said, "do you want to know now or when you get home". That's not code. He knows that means one of our offspring has done something not-very-smart and that it was serious enough that I couldn't fix it myself. He sighed and opted for "now". I told him and he grew silent. Then, he went through the various stages of emotion I had and finally, settled on resigned as I had done. He hung up with me to do some research to see what might have happened to the computer internally and what might be done about it.
We got on with our day as best as we could here, with the guilty party on lock-down in his bedroom except to do school and eat. I was making dinner when he walked in the door, rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He hadn't found much helpful information online except that to call in an expert from "The Geek Squad" STARTED at $199.99 and went up from there. Nice. To attempt to recover information began at $300. We both looked at each other and mentally kissed our pictures good-bye. He hauled the tower to the dining room table and began taking it apart. I left the room and went back to making dinner. The taking apart of expensive equipment- even when already broken- makes me nervous. Pretty soon, I heard him fiddling around, hooking the wires back up and not two minutes later, I heard the "chime" that signals the computer has been started. Trying not to get my hopes up, I walked into the school room and sure enough, he'd done it. He's not sure exactly WHAT he did, but he did it! I don't need to know. What I DO know, though, is that we begin backing up those pictures and videos tomorrow. Maybe this was just the scare we needed to stop messing around and just do it. While the guilty fiddler is definitely grounded for the next week, I suppose he might have done us a favor, in a round-about way.
One thing's for sure. Life in our house is never boring.

And Another from the Archives:

Well, you already know the set-up of their bedroom at night. Two baby gates in the doorway- basically a free-range enclosure for their parents' sanity. The back-story of how it came to be that way isn't so much entertaining as it is frightening. The people who owned our house before us had apparently used the boys' bedroom for an office. It had a half-bath and plenty of storage space in and above the ample closet. The windows looked out on to our pretty, quiet street and it caught the morning sun beautifully. The owner was somewhat of an interior designer and the door to the room was a beautiful old one- with glass panels. It concerned me a bit when we made it the boys' bedroom, but we told ourselves we would put a solid one on as soon as we could. One night when Goober was three and Crash was still in a crib, I woke, not knowing why but feeling uneasy. Pretty soon, I realized I heard Goober crying, but he sounded odd. I jumped up out of bed panicked and opened my door. In the dark, I could make out his shape, walking around with his arms feeling, waving like he was scared and searching for something. I got to him and realized there was glass all around him and he was bleeding. Goober was our one child to have night terrors and had a tendency to sleepwalk. It was the scariest thing we'd ever seen as young parents- your child crying and inconsolable, eyes open, but looking right through you. As the night terrors had tapered off, we had relaxed a bit. Apparently, Goober had been in the middle of a night-terror and had started to sleep walk. When he encountered the door, he had begun to pound on it and bang his head against it. It shattered, leaving him with lacerations on his forehead and arm. I think we sat at the dining room table with him for five minutes with him whimpering and frantically feeling around while he stared straight through us. When he finally "woke up", we got him dressed and Josh ran him to the ER. We were SO blessed it wasn't worse because it could've been. He got two stitches over his eyebrow and his other wounds were glued shut. He's only sleepwalked a couple of times since, but seems to have grown out of it, thank goodness. But, that is the reason for the two baby gates in the doorway that play into quite a few of our "adventures".

Here's one from the "they did WHAT" family stories

There was a time about six years ago when Goober was three, Crash was one and I was pregnant with Princess. I was tired. All. The. Time. Two very busy little boys in diapers and I was the size of a house. I will never forget the morning I woke up to hysterical giggles. Anyone without kids ( or with "normal" kids) would smile and think, "how precious!" Not me. I came slowly into consciousness, my fuzzy pregnancy brain trying to comprehend.
I hauled my giant eight-months pregnant self out of bed and waddled to my bedroom door. I opened my door and was greeted by a winter-wonderland scene in my dining room. It took me a second, but I realized my ENTIRE house was engulfed in a cloud of baby powder. Why-oh-why did we have to buy the "economy size"?! I walked across the dining room and living room to the boys' bedroom. Back in the day, we had two baby gates stacked on on top of the other to make about a four-foot tall fortress designed to keep our very nimble monkeys in their room at night. We always ran a fan for "white noise" to help them sleep since their bedroom was right off the living room. Well, in my addled state, I had apparently left the diaper bag on the shelf in their closet. Not easy to reach for your average three and one-year-old, but we're talking about my kids. Apparently, they'd woken at the crack of dawn and spotted the foreign object in their room. Anything out of the ordinary deserves their undivided attention. Goober had apparently pushed his toddler bed over to the closet and stacked toys until he could reach the diaper bag.
After apparently squirting a pretty good amount on his baby brother ( Crash was white from head-to-toe), he had discovered an even more FUN way to use it. The fan was on high, blowing out through the baby gate. You can guess the rest. An economy bottle of scented cornstarch can cover an entire 2,000+ square foot house in a fine layer of powder pretty efficiently. I was cleaning it out of the cracks in the wood floor for WEEKS. On the plus-side... my house had that bath-time fresh smell for just about as long. I was still finding it in cracks and crevices when we moved three years later.

Well, almost two years later...

I created this blog, posted a couple of times and then dropped it. It's been nagging me in the background all this time and a friend just gave me the kick in the seat I needed to pick it back up. So, here we go! :)
I am now 31, Goober is now ten, Crash is seven and Princess is six. They're still at it, too. I will try my very best to remember to write down our adventures as they happen.