Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Scooby Doo time

Both of the kiddos have been sick for a couple of days now. We have been tucking in and staying cozy. The kiddos have a deal with me that we can rent Scooby Doo when they are sick so we rented a couple yesterday. They used to have an issue with the Scooby Doo thing and were obsessed with the topic. For our own sanity we put limits on it... The sickness idea is working well!

I have been up through the past two nights giving nebuliser treatments... I am so tired! My oldest son moans with every single breath when he is sick. He really can't control it. He does it all through the night too. when he was a baby he would moan for about half an hour before falling asleep.. every. single. time! My mom thought that it was crazy and she had never heard a baby do that before. As he grew he only does it when he is sick. It has driven the nurses/ doctors/ patients crazy if we have had to go for treatments at the hospital... especially when he starts to scream and panic every time he feels a bit of a drip from his nose.





So the poor kid. He feels so incredibly shitty. He has moaned through two nights now and that has kept me awake besides having to be up to administer the meds. In the day, in between the moaning on every breath ( you know... I may be exaggerating ... in the day as I am listening now it is only about half of the time) his stims get worse... stim number one? Humming!!!! On every other breath!!!! So I hear a moan... and then I hear a little ditty.... then a moan.... then a little ditty! OH. MY. GOODNESS!!!!!!!!! I truly am trying to be compassionate. I love that darn kid. But truly I am losing my mind! On top of it I am getting sick too.



It is nowing again, and windy. I need to call the fire chief and see who has a backup generator. Where we have to go to use the nebuliser if the power goes out. I have some emergency med backup but it just doesn't work well for us for some reason.
Hoping the kids will just sleep most of the day... heres for wishing right?!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Circus family...


Well, we used some of older sons learning investment from the homelearning program to join a kids circus arts class. What a fun course. I need to bring the camera next time! We are on a mission to learn how to juggle. My little guy would love to try contact juggling. I have been on a mission to make as much equipment as possible. We only had one set of juggling beanbags that we were sharing so I dug out the scrap fabric bin( I save scraps of old clothing and such from when I was making recycled waldorf inspired dolls) and a needle and thread and whipped up a set for myself. I think I will make my littlest guy a set with a piece of furry cowprint fabric that I have tucked away with no imaginable purpose... maybe a leather set for my hubby? A fun no cost project! I used some very old rice that was in the back of the cupboard for years and years that noone really liked. So I guess that i cost pennies! So we have been just hanging out cozy at home with another winter cold... determined to learn how to juggle!

Monday, January 19, 2009

Paw prints!


Went for a beautiful sunday walk yesterday in the sun. Walked through the orchard and down through the marsh in search of panderosa pine needles. I have had an itch to try out making a basket. I have to wait on other natural basket making supplies until the other seasons! The snow still hasn't melted much out here... it is -5 right now... and has formed a really hard crust over the top that you can walk on top of. We walked to the old coal hills and did some boot sliding down the sled runs. The bald eagles are around right now and we have been seeing a lot of them. They are hanging out in the tree stands at the end of the road chattering back and forth. Lots of beaver tracks out there! We brought the animal tracking guidebook with us to see what prints we could find. There were TONS of cougar tracks! We found some tracks and some scat running down the side of our house.( 5 feet from the front door!) I know that they are around here and all, but it is still a little village and don't usually get them right in town. Supposedly they had reports of one around last month and they had the cougar hounds out. And I get teased by people for not letting my kids explore the woods out back by themselves!


Wednesday, January 14, 2009

This is what I have been doing for the last week...








I started with a huge basket of raffia....









Plaited and plaited and plaited. Almost 20 metres !





Ok. Very dirty mirror. Sombody went Pollock style on it with a toothbrush by the looks of things! It was the only pic that captured the shape of it well though. Perfectly functional hat for a fair red head me thinks!

Now I have a request by my youngest for a sun hat that is the same shape of a hat he loves already. I think that it is a Peruvian style of hat... I am not sure what it is called. I am going to give it a go though... he looks ao darn cute in that hat. Super labor intensive though!!

Throw in a pic of the boy while I am at it... he has gained one and a half pounds in the week since we cut out dairy. Hooray!

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Sigh...

We took the step a few days ago to finally cut dairy out of my youngest sons diet. I have known for ages that he can't tolerate , say, a glass of milk. I only use rice milk or some other gluten free alternative to cook with and for him to drink/ use in cereal. My dad cannot tolerate any gluten OR any dairy. I was hoping that we would get away with only gluten free.The other day he had a bowl of yogurt for breakfast ( remember the pretty yogurt cake?) and he got those purple circles under his eyes ( they usually have huge bags anyways) and got really moody and had a pee accident. He used to pee his pants every time he had a glass of milk and that was why we cut it out in the first place.
So it has been three days so far and he has been on an emotional roller coaster. He is super itchy with eczema spots on his torso and has been licking non food things.... I could hear him though from the bedroom this morning and in the past 24 hours he has been talking non stop. He has a pretty significant speech delay and doesn't talk a lot usually. He is even phrasing things in a completely different way.
So we see movement... this is a good thing. Usually in my experience this means that we are on the right track.
The only scary part for me is that even though I have always known that he shouldn't have dairy I was terrified to cut it out. He has real sensory issues and has a general aversion to food. He hates sauces or jams or syrups or condiments of any sort so I can't easily add calories. He is significantly underweight. About 36 pounds at just over 5. He is just barely on the growth chart at all. I try try try EVERYTHING for this child. I am already constantly in the kitchen in order to feed everyone a gluten free diet. We buy a vegan meal supplement for 70 bucks a container to make smoothies for him and soup them up to be high calorie. Our grocery budget is over half of our take home pay a month. I am super creative and try everything in the book to make sure he is nourished. The darn kid never stops either , so if we manage to have a good food intake day he manages to burn 4 times the amount running in circles all day.
I am stressed about it.
This weekend I made coconut yogurt from scratch. Delicious by the way!!!!! It got the thumbs down. I even made a frozen yogurt out of it thinking that maybe if it was in ice cream form maybe he would eat it. Nope. I made almond milk ( from scratch) ice cream... also from scratch with dark chocolate pieces ( landlords brought a christmas gift basket yesterday with it in there) and pecans.... finally a winner! He has supplemented every meal with it since! Nothing like using the ice cream maker and hauling in buckets of snow to run it on. Tonight I made a "parmesan" topping with roasted cashews , nutritional yeast , braggs and special salt all ground up and in a shaker. It got eaten! Small sucesses!
So I am praying that part of the underweight issue is because of poor absorption because of the casien issue. Crossing my fingers that he will gain rather than lose weight. I have no idea what we will have to do next. The ped had hinted at tube feeding a year or so back. In the meantime I am trying the best I can to plump this kiddo up a bit. Unlimited nuts and snacks are always there... now I am resorting to putting extra fats and oils in all of his portions. I hope this will work.

Friday, January 2, 2009

$5 Craft

I went on a search today for some raffia... They usually carry it at the dollar stores. I use raffia a lot at home. Everything from gifted preserves, birthday presents and even woodwork pieces and things get decorated with the stuff! I like to incorporate natural seed pods, spices, twigs or wildflowers into my gift wrap and raffia is the perfect binder that goes with them all! For about a dollar a bag, you can't lose!

I used the last of mine up last night after I came across a book at the library on making raffia bags and hats... both of which are useful to me! Especially something I could design myself to take into the bush for wild crafting and wild edibles! I was excited to try to make something cool... The dollar store was out of it , so I had to venture into the Sprawlmart. For some reason seeing someone buying 10 bags of " hay" ( so they called it) made people stare and snicker. Then I went to the local crappy supermarket... the one that sells very few veggies and mostly junk food. I thought that I would have the most luck of finding a rainbow array of kool aid to try to dye some raffia with. ( I kind of go all silly in the head when I find a new medium to work with and have a billion different things I want to make with it right away) I thought that I could make a cool basket for the playroom to keep math manipulative's in or something. I didn't know if the kool aid would work but of course had read that people use it for play silks and wool and such. I have NEVER bought kool aid in my life. There I was in the line up with my handful of every type of the stuff available... and this super crunchy couple comes up in the line behind me... and rudely guffaw to each other and roll their eyes! lol I guess they assumed that I was going to go home and have some sort of koolaid binge or something!

When I got home I boiled up each little bundle with a package of the dye. It smelled like candy and hay. Still better than henna though! ( my poor family and my constant experiments... I rendered pork fat for the past day so we had to deal with an awful porky odor all day previously) I let each one sit for ten min or so in the hot water and then rinsed and lay it out on newspaper. It turned out great!!! The " ice blue" colour left a little to be desired, but in all I am really happy with the results!