church blog

I've had the opportunity to write for a women's blog for our church. We are really growing the Women's and Mother's ministries at our parish! You can access the general blog here.
The post I wrote is here.

We hope you read it and share it with other women and mothers.

I hope to contribute more, when time permits. I'll let you know when I do!

Laughter is the best .... when it is from a 2 year old.

Clark has a very funny sense of humor. His favorite joke right now is pretending to sleep. He will put his head down and close his eyes. Then he'll spring up and say "WAKE!" He will also put food on a fork, lay the fork down and say, "sleeping!" and then lift it and say "awake" He does it with animal crackers, upright they are "awake" and he'll lay them down and shout "sleeping" He thinks it is hilarious. His other favorite joke right now is fake choking. That's every mother's favorite thing right? Geeze. The kid will take a big bite of food and make a choking noise. I'll react appropriately towards my choking son. He will then shout "faking!" Which is what I said incredulously the first time he did it. "You were faking?!?!?!" The main problem with his "faking" is that he now also chokes more often. He is really cramming food in his mouth nowadays. I see other kids his age doing it, so maybe it is a developmental milestone. The kids that have good enough supervision survive to reach the age of 3, right? Today we watched The Jungle Book. This kid thought it was the funniest movie of all time. He laughed so much at it. I know Baloo is funny, but that's not what he loved the most. He loooooovveeed the snake! He thought every scene with the snake was hilarious! Notice how this picture loaded, but none of our family pictures will. I'd fire Google, but I already have this blog established.

March updates about everything.

I'm really busy lately, so much so that I'm really sad I'm not keeping this blog up to date. I feel bad that Iris won't have as good a history written out for her infancy. We are benefiting from the history though, and take glimpses back at what Clark was doing at this age. I was invited to write for our church's women's group's blog (English teachers, Do I need all of those apostrophies?). It is http://womenofstraphael.blogspot.com/ if you'd like to check it out. I don't have that much time to post there either, but I did get one in a few days ago.

I have been having a hard couple of weeks adjusting to having these two kids. It was hard to admit while it was hard. Now I feel better, and I almost can't stop talking about it. It makes me feel better to share, I guess. I've been focusing on eating well, getting sleep when I can, and on Clark when he is awake. He is a very independant boy, but he is at a critical developmental point right now and he needs lots of guidance. Every few months I realize my old parenting tricks won't work anymore. I need to develop a new skill set. I have probably needed to develop this new set for a while, but with the baby and the pregnancy, it has fallen by the wayside. I was being lazy, and everyone said it was ok, but now I need to step up and be the parent he needs me to be. Realizing this has helped me.

We have also been given the gift of a free night. Tom's best friend from high school, Mike Farmer, moved up here in September. We have been spending a lot of time with their family, wife Kathryn, and son Owen. The Farmers (Kathryn) have taken Clark for the night. I had a free afternoon. Tom will be home and we will have a free evening, a sleep in morning, and pick Clark up when we feel like it on Saturday. I am already so relaxed. Having two kids is way harder than one! Even though Iris is as easy as Clark was at this age (see paragraph above) Clark is a challenge for us right now. Plus, he is exhausting, and we aren't getting as much sleep. It is hard to see yourself less loving and patient then you know you COULD be if you just had a little more rest.

Another help for us has been a Mother's Helper. I sent an add out in our neighborhood list serv. I got an 11 year old girl to come over to our house and clean up. She picked up toys and socks and unloaded the dishwasher. It was amazing. Our house looks beautiful. She was just here for an hour, and I paid her $5. Now our house is tidy, and I didn't have to do it for once. She will be coming once or twice a week to help out. She will help tidy, and also play with Clark so I can get some Brio Birth work done, blog, or take a nap! She just came once and I love her already.

On the Iris front, she is fat and happy. She had her 2 month check up and she looks great. She is above the curve for height and weight, just over 14lbs already! She has a spitup/gagging/projectile vomiting problem, but it isn't affecting/effecting (English teachers?) her growth (14lbs!) so it isn't a big deal. I just feel bad for her when she is so visibly uncomfortable, and then I'm covered in spitup. Its a lifestyle issue, not a health issue. I have elminated gluten and dairy and caffiene from my diet (but not chocolate!!! They'll never take my chocolate!!!). and it helps A LOT, but she still has periodic issues.

Clark is happy, healthy, vibrant, energetic. He loves colors, counting, the ABCs, songs, books, trucks, cars, airplanes, helicopters, balls, etc. In some books and for some songs, if I leave out words he can now add them in. He is at a really fun, and also challenging age. Me and some friends are going to start a co-op preschool. We are going to start in a few weeks. We are just going to meet once a week - but we are excited about it. It is a fun experiment. We were thinking of putting him in a sports camp this spring/summer - but with everything else going on, we are busy enough. This fall he might play "magnet ball" (toddler soccer) with his friend Will Clark.

Tom is happy. He got an ipad (Thanks Ray!) and will be "facetime" chatting with family members soon. He is in Physical Therapy for his back, and it seems to be helping. He has had lots of back problems in the past 4 years due to a very tiny fender bender which totally messed his back up. He had been going to the chiropractor, but with our new insurance the PT was cheaper, and they do some adjusting too. He has another publication coming out sometime in the near future. It is the last paper he will be on from his heroin days. When it is published, maybe we can post a link here. He is flying RC helicopters frequently, mostly at the request of Clarkiekins.

I just started running again, and plan on getting a double jogging stroller in the next couple of weeks. It is Springtime, and that means running. It makes me feel so good, I'm excited to be out moving my body again. I will also start teaching my new Brio Birth classes soon. I have one couple due in May. I am doing a private class with them and I hope I can help them have a really good birth experience. It will also give me a chance to review the new curriculum. It is really, really good. Even more exciting, Iris and I are featured in the workbook. There are two pictures of us nursing in it. It is really exciting to be in the book, and to also have this incredible new curriculum that just blows what I had been teaching right out of the water. I have many pregnant friends right now, and I'm glad to be sharing it with them too. I hope I can start attending births as a doula whenever Iris is a little bit older.

My cousin Jordan was here last week. We did some fun stuff in the city and hung out around the house. As I mentioned last year, she is the best house guest. I have figured out why. She doesn't mind lounging around our house and being lazy (unlike our mothers who always have to be busy) and she is highly competent in childcare and she doesn't mind it when I boss her around. So if you would like to be a good house guest for us, please take my orders, play with Clark when I'm not bossing you around, and in the rest of your time sit around and do nothing and enjoy it! no, no, no. please be yourself, but these are the reasons we really love it when Jordan comes to visit! She's the best!

Our future looks bright. We have upcoming visits from Tom's bestie Ian, and his beautiful wife, Kelly. Then I am some one's sponsor for confirmation at the Easter Vigil. Then we are going to Ft. Lauderdale for a BEACH (conference) VACATION! We have a visit from the lovely Monica Janzen, and then Tom's parents will be here in mid-June for a conference and for Iris's (English teachers??) baptism June 19th. All are welcome to join us for the baptism!

Happy Birthday Clark!

Clark is 2 now. We invited a slew of people, but then Clark got sick. He had a cough and runny nose. So, being good friends, we called all the invitees and told them about his illness. A few friends stayed home and a few of our working moms came without their kids, since they didn't want to keep their kids out of daycare if they got sick. Although we missed some of Clark's friends and photo ops, it cut down on the crowd inside our home and worked out quite well. In the future we might try to have birthday parties at another location so we can fit more people in our home. We made gluten free cupcakes and had a taco bar. Since it was a few weeks ago, I don't really remember anything else. It was fun though, and a good time was had by all.
I don't know why the picture uploader isn't working, but it makes me not want to blog as often. I'm sorry. At some point, I will try to upload photos from the event.

Damn you, gluten!!!! GRRRRR

About the time I fully weaned Clark, he developed a persistent diaper rash that wouldn't go away no matter what we did. This was in October. He still has the rash.
We tried every kind of ointment, salve, and cream. We also did a huge strip of our cloth diapers, washing them profusely, boiling them in hot water to rid them of potential yeasts or infections. The rash persisted. We switched to disposables, yet nothing changed.

In addition to the diaper rash, he had a rash on his face as well that would never fully clear up.

At some point we thought it might be a food allergy. We began eliminating foods from his diet one at a time to see if there was a difference. Raisins, apple sauce, eggs, cheese, rice. I mean, there weren't that many things he actually ate!!! (or still eats for that matter!)

A phone call to Nana revealed that Aunt Monica (Tom's sister) had had a wheat allergy when she was a kid (which resolved by about 5 years old). Our swimming instructor mentioned that wheat might be an issue, and another friend brought up an allergy to wheat as a culprit for this type of thing.

As much as I didn't want to eliminate it, we had tried everything else and the face and the bottom were still bright red. We stared with goldfish, the toddler staple food.

As soon as we eliminated them, Clark's bright red cheeks began to return to his normal pale white. Then we looked for other wheat products: breads, cereals and crackers, gone. His face almost completely cleared up, but still his bottom was red, and he wasn't completely face-healed either.

We learned that it isn't just wheat - but gluten that is the problem and gluten is EVERYWHERE! Not only is it in obvious things like products made with wheat (breads, cereal, crackers), it is used as thicker in soups, starches in box mixes for foods (Jambalaya mix, for example), it is used as an anti-coagulant in spices. Also, if a factory processes something like wheat crackers and then a gluten-free product like rice-crackers are run on the same conveyor belt, then they become cross contaminated and can make a gluten sensitive person sick. It is in oats, wheat, bran, barley, rye... It is a pain in the a$$, for real.

The thing is, the more we eliminate it, the more his bottom heals. Since October, he has never been 100% rash free. Even when it is flesh colored, there are still bumps. Every time we get close to having a healed baby bottom, we will find yet another source of hidden gluten.

We went to McDonald’s (horribly, unhealthy choice, I know) and I ordered Clark a plain hamburger patty and french fries. He got a rash. Oh, they add a whole bunch of junk to the meat - and one of the junks they add is a wheat based filler to keep it chewy. Oh, and the french fries are fried in the same oil as onion rings and chicken patties and other stuff with breading.

So we have been sticking to home, but still, we find sources of Gluten to poison our little boy. When we get together with friends, Clark will eat cheerios off of the floor, or get a goldfish from a friend. Parents will hand him muffins or other foods before I can tell them that he has an allergy. Part of this is my fault, as I've always been very relaxed about his eating - happy that he would eat anything - so people know that I (used to ) don't have limits.

It is like he needs a shirt or hat or bracelet to wear when we go out that reads:


So, we try to be hyper vigilant and keeping him home helps. But we've found that playing with play dough, even with careful hand washing afterward, may be giving him problems as well.

In addition to Clark, Iris may be presenting with a gluten sensitivity. She began spitting up profusely a few weeks ago. I mentioned it to a friend who asked if Clark had done the same thing. "Clark spit up like crazy," I answered, "but he had an allergy"


Well, I wasn't fully convinced, nor committed for about a week. However, every time she struggled after nursing and then spit up I thought about it. The morning of Superbowl Sunday, I committed. Since then, I've been on a gluten-free diet as well. Luckily I know a lot more than I did when I started Clark on it. We also have a pantry stocked with G-free items (as well as gobs of gluten-full items that Tom will have to eat, or we'll have to donate). So it hasn't been as hard as I though.

Iris's spit ups have been minimal throughout this time, but I wasn't sure if it was a coincidence or the gluten. Today I did a gluten-challenge. I had wheat cereal for breakfast. A hamburger on a bun with onion rings (from TGIFriday's, not McDonald’s) for lunch, and more cereal later, and a chocolate croissant.

Tom and I were having a conversation at about 9pm. I said that she hadn't spit up, so maybe it wasn't gluten. I was optimistically thinking of clearing out some of the glutenous objects in our freezer and pantry. Tom did say that we should give it another day to confirm, since it could take awhile for my body to break it down and make milk with gluten in it. About 30 minutes later precious, beautiful baby Iris confirmed the worst. In a violent upchuck that fully soaked a thick, absorbent burp cloth, my shirt, and 1/4 of the boppy we were using, I realized that NO, I would not be eating those gluten items in the pantry. So for the next year at least, it looks like I'm gluten free too.

The good thing about this is that it is easier to keep Clark safe if we are eating the same things. I'm also learning more about being gluten free, and learning more food options as I eat a wider variety of things than Clark does. I, for example, learned that if I want a fast food hamburger - Wendy's has gluten free burgers since their burgers are ALL MEAT, and some stores have a dedicated fryer for french fries, but I have to check by location. Also, frosty's are g-free. yay!

Having some friends that are G-free has really helped, and I found this incredibly helpful yet terrifying book by Elizabeth Hasselbeck called the "G-free Survival Guide". It is really opening my eyes, and if I read too much of it, I'm too afraid to buy anything to eat, or put on lotion or makeup or shampoo my hair (sexy, I know, but easy for a new-mom to forsake).

Tom is thinking of joining us, but he might have to wait until he clears out our pantry and freezer.

In conclusion, gluten sucks, and it is everywhere, and it is making my kids sick. =P

Children learn what they live

We've had a very ill winter so far. Clark found this nasal aspirator today. He brought it to Iris and proceeded to "suck" her nose while shouting "nose, nose". What a good big brother.

LMNOP