It's spring! So, let it snow!

It's been freezing here in Olympia, and we've seen snow fall for the past couple of days. Today we took the kids out to the mountains to play in it. On the way, we saw a man whose car ran out of gas as he was turning in to the gas station. This is on a rural highway, so he was stopped in the middle of the highway and still had to cross oncoming traffic to get to the gas station. Dave saw him and knew we couldn't just leave him there. We turned around after finding a turn around spot about 2 miles up the road, and got there just before the man (who looked mid-60s or older) was about to push the car across the road. During rush hour. There was only maybe 30 second breaks in traffic, so we're glad we got there before he started pushing! Dave hooked him up and we drove him across the street to the pumps. We could barely get across in time in our truck. I'm so glad we got to him when we did! There could have been a really bad situation. I'm so surprised nobody stopped to help him until we did!

But anyway, you're reading my blog because you want to hear about my cute girls and their antics, and to see their pictures. So, here you go. Lacy's thing has been tiny stuff lately. Like, I'll give her a snack of sugar snap peas, and she'll find the smallest one and say, in her best motherese, " Oh, so little! So cuuuuute!" And she'll fawn over it like it's a baby.

And Rose said "delicious" today. Her language skills are blossoming lately. I'm sure in 6 months her speech will be almost fully recognizable. She's also a stubborn little kid. I think it's a second child phenomenon. I was trying to keep her from climbing on the table and tap dancing, so every time she did it I would take her off, scold her, and let her know that was not okay behavior. She did it a few more times, until she realized, "I'm not supposed to tap dance on the table. Hmmmm, what can I get away with?" So, she then started simply sitting on the table. This continued to the point where she would just put her bottom on the table, then just one cheek, until she finally stopped completely. That's my girl, seeing how much she can get away with.

And snow pictures from today!


And our family Easter picture. Not that great, but it'll do.
I don't have a single family picture with either of the girls smiling. So scowls will do just fine. Especially since they were probably crashing from all that sugar by that point!

One of those days

I woke up this morning with a terrible stomach ache, so as soon as Rose was done going potty and getting dressed, I turned on the TV and laid in bed while she watched. Eventually Lacy joined us. I think I finally got out of bed around 9, about 1.5 hours after Rose awoke! I've done my best today to keep up in the house, but I'm not putting any extra effort into it. Just a load of laundry, dishes, and meal planning today, thank you. I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon, so dinner's in the crock pot. Thankfully, Rose went down for her nap at about 11:15 and is still snoozing, so I was able to get everything done that I needed to. And now that dinner's in the crock pot, I will have a nice relaxed evening when we get home. Thank goodness the house was immaculate yesterday, or I don't know what kind of state our house would be in!

In other news, I've been working on the restoration of an old autoharp that Dave picked up at a school he was demolishing almost a year ago! I finally refelted all the keys, but now I need to get them back in the stupid thing. There are all these springs, and I am having trouble getting them in without messing everything else up. I am using a popsicle stick to press the springs down while I put the key back in, but even that method is proving to have some problems. I will work on it again tonight and hopefully I'll have a working autoharp tomorrow for the family to enjoy! That is, if I'm not in bed the second the girls go to sleep.

Hard workin' man

Dave was looking forward to finishing up the job he's on this week, getting done Wednesday or Thursday, having about a week off, and starting his new job next Wednesday or Thursday. It's a really intense job that he'll be on, working 12 hour days, 7 days a week for the next 3 months. The work is hard, but it's work he likes doing. Plus the commute is great-- it's in Centralia, so it's really only 30 minutes there and back, compared with his usual 2 hour commute every day that really drains him.

Well, they called him today and want him to be a lead on the job, starting tomorrow. This leaves him in a bit of a moral dilemma, because his carpool partner's clutch went out in his car, and then he'll be leaving the crew high and dry without him. On the other hand, with a man short, they will be able to get more hours out of the job and earn more money.

So, Dave will most likely help his carpool partner get the stuff for his car and install it so he won't feel so guilty about leaving him like this. If Dave doesn't start tomorrow, they could select someone else as a lead, and Dave doesn't want to give up that opportunity.

I hope everyone had a great Easter! I'll post later today with pictures and an update of how our day went.

We've been so busy!

Sorry for the lack of updates this week! I've been busily sewing up the girls' dresses, and they're finally complete! We had a very busy day today, starting at 7:30 with a delivery of organic garden soil, Easter egg hunt at 11, getting the mower to the repair shop (which took a lot longer than it should have), moving tons of soil to the garden boxes, dying easter eggs, buying stuff for the baskets... it's been a really full day! But so fun! Since it's after midnight, I'm going to just share a bunch of pictures, mostly from today, but some from earlier this week. Enjoy!

This picture makes me laugh so much. Dare I say it cracks me up?

Lacy enjoys helping her dad in any way she can.



I have a room full of toys, and this is what they play with?
We made Easter-themed sugar cookies earlier this week. Both girls enjoyed decorating the cookies.

Well, Lacy enjoyed decorating the cookies. Rose enjoyed eating the icing.

Some of our lovely cookies:


My sister Leslie and I got together for a sewing day earlier this week. Rose and Leslie's son Cooper really took a liking to each other. Awwwwwww, aren't they cuties?

Easter egg hunt in my sister's neighborhood this morning:



On our way home, we took a long time at the mower repair shop. Lacy got bored, and put on one of Dave's headlamps, and tucked in a flower. She's such a girly girl!



Moving all that dirt! We got 5 yards of tightly compacted garden soil.


After working hard in the garden, we came inside to dye eggs. It was a lot more work than it was worth! And now some of our wood wall is stained yellow. Hopefully we can sand it off.

Lacy's favorite egg (purple of course)
Rose was very difficult to handle during this process. She so wanted to be involved in everything, but made huge messes and cracked eggs all over the place!

All done!

It's amazing...

what the word "lawsuit" will help you get done. Today, the girls were supposed to have their appointments with their dentist at Evil Dental. The office manager called me this morning and said that perhaps this wasn't working out, and that they would fill out the paperwork to have us be seen at another dental office, at their expense. Woo hoo! So, I ran with the girls to pick up the paperwork at 9:30, and got to the new dental office at 10. It's a pediatric dental office, and the guy's been doing it for more than 20 years. He was a complete professional, and very, very good. He was able to look at every single one of Rose's teeth, and recommended we put her under so we can do all her teeth at once. He also gave me a gel to put on her teeth every night in the meantime, which will stop the cavities in their tracks. Why this stuff wasn't given to me months ago, I have no idea. She will be worked on in the hospital sometime in May (they only get two hospital days a month, so that's the soonest they could get me in). But the good news is, no more teeth will have to come out! Yippee! I'm beginning to suspect if I had been seeing a good, established pediatric dentist from the get-go, she wouldn't have lost any teeth to begin with. As for Lacy, she has an appointment next month to get two fillings taken care of. She won't have to lose any teeth, either. It's a sedation appointment, but won't require any numbing. I'm so relieved! He was so reassuring, competent, and at ease with the kids. His office staff were excellent, as well. They had just as many people in their waiting room as at Evil Dental, but he was able to take them all back and work on them. He also had special benches designed specifically for doing the knee to knee-type examinations, without any fuss. I did spend a lot of time today feeling badly for how I treated the staff at Evil Dental, but Dave reassured me that I have done nothing wrong, and that I am only being an advocate for my children. That's my job, after all, and nobody else is going to do it. Situations like this are why I quit my job in the first place.

We had a great Irish dinner tonight (although I'm not really sure how authentic corned beef and cabbage are). I made soda bread, and slow cooked the corned beef all day. I added the cabbage about two hours before I took it all out, and it was absolutely perfect. Yum! We had brownies for our FHE treat. Our activity tonight was planting seeds, and we talked about how Heavenly Father wants us to have a garden. We are getting soil delivered on Saturday, so we will be doing a lot of the beginning phases of our gardening this weekend. We are getting 8 yards of compost. Hopefully we won't need to get any more compost next year, since I have my nifty composter going in the backyard!

I just spent an hour decluttering, and I'm tired. I'd better get to bed-- it's Story Time tomorrow, and I don't want to sleep in!

Hiking

We went hiking yesterday as a family and had a great time, except for when Lacy fell off the boardwalk into the mud. Thankfully, the branches were pretty thick below her so she only got a tiny bit dirty, though she did get a nice bruise on her cheek from the fall.

Before the fall, Lacy had to have a walking stick like her dad's, and a backpack, too.

At the beginning of the walk, Rose was restrained in the moby wrap, not my coat. The best thing about it is how versatile it is, and how small it is, so I can carry her in a variety of ways, and when she's done the carrier doesn't take up much room since it's just a piece of fabric!
Rose at the end of the walk! Yeah, much slower, but she burned off some energy that way.

After the fall, Lacy insisted on being carried.

I love this one-- You like Lacy's princess backpack?

Abandoning the diet

So after two weeks and virtually no change in Lacy's eczema, bed wetting, or behavior, I've decided to pull the plug on our total elimination diet. In the past few days, Lacy's eczema has actually gotten worse. We're going to eliminate soy for a while, because I suspect that she may be sensitive to it. And if that doesn't help, I might eliminate all gluten for a while. But from now on, we're doing one at a time. I'm glad we did it, because now I know what she's *not* sensitive to. And since she's had blood allergy tests, I know she doesn't have common allergies to things such as dust and mold. She's going to a dermatologist this week, so I'm really happy to have all these allergy tests out of the way so I have something to talk to the doctor about. Hopefully we can be on the road to curing Lacy's eczema!

Are ya kidding me?

So yesterday morning was the Big Day... dental day for both girls. Lacy had a 7 am appointment and Rose had a 10 am appointment. I asked my sister Leslie to babysit so I had to get up at 5:30, get Lacy up and ready, get Rose's shoes and coat on, and get out the door by 6. Plus I had to bring lunch and snacks since we're doing our elimination diet. Rose didn't wake up until I put her in the carseat! It was pretty funny.

I get to Les's house around 6:35, shove the baby in the door, put a carseat in her car, jump back in the truck and rush to the dentist's office. We check in, and the front desk person says, "Oh, I'm so sorry-- we tried calling you this morning but you had already left. Dr. Aragi is sick today and you'll have to reschedule your appointments. How does July 8 sound?"

What??? Are you kidding here? Because Lacy has been waiting for this appointment since it was originally rescheduled in NOVEMBER. Yes, NOVEMBER!!! And she had waited several months for that appointment, too! She's been waiting like a YEAR for these cavities to be filled!!! If she has to have teeth pulled, I am going to be so angry! Dave is talking seriously about a lawsuit, so if that is the case I may have to make my blog private during that time, but we'll have to consult an attorney to find out if this blog will be a problem or not. I may not be allowed to talk about this subject at all.

I called the Union to find out if our paperwork for the new insurance has been received yet. So far, it hasn't been entered in, so I'm going to call tomorrow. If they get it before this weekend, we will have new insurance effective April 1. Yippee! I may actually have competent dental care finally!

I'm considering going another few days before I start overloading the girls with the possible problem foods. Lacy's eczema still hasn't cleared up totally. Dave really wants me to get the show on the road, but I'm not quite ready to start. Lacy is dying for some dairy and some chocolate.

What I've been doing instead of blogging...

It's not done yet, but it's close. It needs a zipper and a hook and eye, and I need to fix the hemline. Other than that, it's done! Lacy is absolutely in love with it since purple is her absolute favorite color (but she still roots for the Cougars over Huskies any day of the week! What a good girl!).

And on Sunday, we found the girls doing this after church:

Tomorrow is an early day, so I have to get to bed. We're leaving before 6 am to go to my sister's, drop off Rose, take Lacy to the dentist, return to my sister's, take Rose to the dentist for a 10 am appointment (her filling that she just got on Saturday came out!) and deal with two woozy kids tomorrow all day. We're starting phase 2 of the diet on Wednesday, overloading on dairy first.

We saw Dave's aunt today briefly. She had a long layover in SeaTac so Dave's dad picked her up and visited with her. She wanted to see everyone, so Big Dave suggested a restaurant. I said that we absolutely cannot take the girls out to eat because of how strict this current diet is. I know what is in the food I make, but I can't be 100% sure of anything I don't cook, especially if it doesn't have an ingredients list. We ended up going to a restaurant that is owned by a friend of ours, and we brought our own food for the girls with the owner's permission. What a nice guy! We had a nice, if brief, time visiting, and were glad we could come up with a solution.

More dental issues!

A few days ago, I noticed a chunk missing out of Rose's front tooth, the one that was just repaired a few weeks ago. It looked like a piece of the filling came off or something. So I called the dentist, who said, "Well, fillings don't just come off, so I'm sure it's nothing, but I can take a look at it if you want." I set up the appointment with a scheduler, who didn't have anything until the 17th at 5 pm. What a crummy time! I scheduled it, because the next appointment was in April, and we should have our new coverage by then (hallelujah!). Well, we weren't comfortable with waiting two weeks almost for an appointment, so Dave called up yesterday to speak with the dentist, who wasn't in. But we scheduled an emergency appointment for today instead.

Today's appointment was at 10:15. We arrived right after 10, and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, at about 10:45, they called Rose back. Dave went with her, and Lacy and I waited together in the waiting room. I could hear some major screams coming from the back, so I knew they were fixing the problem (probably nothing my foot!). Rose came out with a nicely repaired tooth and was very tired. She has been sleeping soundly for about 45 minutes now. Actually I spoke too soon. She just woke up. Darn!

Yea! My garden boxes are done!

This morning I went out running errands with the girls, leaving around 11 am. I had a lot to do, and I didn't get it all done. Bummer. Before leaving, I had Lacy "write" my folks a letter (they're on a mission in Germany). Then we went to the post office and Lacy picked out flower stamps to buy. I must say, going to the post office on a weekday is really convenient! I didn't have to wait at all. Then we went to Target, JoAnn's (where I saw two former coworkers), and finally I dropped off a bag of stuff at Goodwill. I love to purge!

When we returned home, I was surprised to see Dave's car in the driveway. He had mentioned the night before that there might not be work for him the next day, but he hadn't called me to let me know he was off early. He worked for about an hour but got paid for four hours. Gotta love union rules! He doesn't have work tomorrow but has work Monday. I'll be so glad when winter's over and work picks up again. He's actually going to be working a big job starting April 4, working 12 hour days, 7 days a week (every other week will be 10 hour days we found out) for three months. He will work this job every year as it is a recurring job.

So not only was I surprised to see Dave, I was surprised to see that he had finished all my garden boxes! I have four, two of which are quite small, but big enough for a nice garden this year. Hopefully we can add two or three more for next year. We just won't plant any squash this year! That's what having friends with acerage are for (thanks, Emily!). We will plant cucumbers, though, because I just love cucumbers. I already bought some lemon cucumber seeds.

Oh, and today is another successful diet day! We did so good today! And by "we," I mean Lacy and Rose, because I just ate a Ding Dong and some mint chocolate chip ice cream (just one small scoop that was full of air).

Breakfast: rice pudding (Lacy had it at 10 when she woke up!)
No morning snack for Lacy because we were on the go! Lacy kept complaining about being hungry. Rose had some cucumbers and apples when Lacy had her breakfast.
Lunch: spaghetti with rice noodles
Snack: soy crisps that were in the shape of hearts (oh, cute!), bananas, cucumbers, and apples
Dinner: Rice and beans (Haitian style) with broccoli and carrots and grape juice

Tomorrow and Saturday will both be challenging: we have people coming over for bar-b-ques both days! We can't even use regular seasoning salt because it has wheat and citric acid in it, so it makes life more complicated. I'm not sure what types of side dishes I'll think up. This salad sounds good, but I'll have to substitute the lime juice with something... probably vinegar I guess!

No cheating today!

We did it! We got through the day without a single cheat on our diet! I even made up my own seasoning salt because Johnny's has citric acid and wheat in it. Basically I started with a fourth of a cup of salt, and added everything in my spice drawer, and ended up with a seasoning salt that tasted pretty good!

My friend Emily gave me a tip: perhaps Lacy was having so many cravings because she needed more protein. Of course! So I focused on making sure she got a little more protein in the morning.

So here's today's menu:

breakfast: rice pudding, made from yesterday's coconut rice. It's so easy to make-- equal parts rice and (rice) milk, margarine (I used about 5 T) and sugar (I used xylitol since sugar is not allowed, and xylitol is not the same thing, plus it's good for your teeth!) To add protein, I put in 1/4 c. soy protein powder.

snack: bananas and cucumbers

lunch: mashed potatoes and gravy (made from tapioca flour, margarine and fresh chicken broth) and leftover chicken from yesterday.


snack: apples, cucumbers and soy crips

dinner: grilled pork chops, barley primavera (with red wine vinegar instead of lemon juice) and green beans. Unfortunately, I used purple prairie barley, which cooks at a different rate than pearled barley, apparently, because it was still chewy and pretty much inedible. Yuck. I can't believe I wasted 4 cups of beautiful, beautiful homemade chicken broth for that.

My chicken broth is the easiest thing, for those who are afraid of making their own: I take a chicken carcass and neck (I only buy whole chickens so I can get the carcass), add vegetable trimmings that I have collected over the last week or so, a couple bay leaves, peppercorns, salt, a couple sprigs of thyme, and put it in the crockpot on low overnight. Next morning, you have the most gorgeous broth imaginable. So easy! I don't pay money for broth now, when I can get it for free from scraps I would otherwise compost!

I think Rose's teeth might be deteriorating because of a vitamin D deficiency. It totally makes sense to me. I probably didn't get enough during pregnancy because I was pregnant over the winter and she was born in mid spring, and she doesn't get it in anything because she refuses to take her vitamin and breastmilk is the only kind of milk she drinks, and that sure ain't fortified with vitamin D. So I guess this is a lesson learned. I send Lacy and Rose outside every day for a couple of hours to play in the backyard now, to help them get that vitamin D they need so much. It's great because I can work in the kitchen and see them playing, so they're doing their thing and I'm doing mine.

It looks like Rose's repaired tooth is taking a turn for the worse, and the dentist can't see her until the 17th. I think I might call and talk to her again tomorrow, because I am really, really concerned and I don't want her to have to lose another tooth when we just went through this already.

Thrice Cheated!

So after I caught Lacy cheating twice today, I caught her later with a pink (food dye!) lollipop (sugar!), two major no-no's on our diet. Anyway, we have had a slightly better day, meal-wise.

Breakfast: oatmeal and honey/rice milk

Snack: Apples on the way to story time, bananas and soy crisps on the way home from story time/grocery store

Lunch: Leftovers

Snack: Terra chips, soy crisps, pineapple, and apples

Dinner: Raspberry chicken with coconut rice (slightly modified to fit in with dietary restrictions)

No dessert tonight, and now it's 8:15 and the kids are going to bed. Tomorrow we're having rice pudding for breakfast, which I will make from the leftover coconut rice and with xylitol! Yum!

Cheater!

TWICE today I've caught Lacy cheating on her diet. Once she ate a donut and denied it (but still had chocolate on her teeth) and another time she snuck pepperoni out of the fridge and went to my room to eat it. I've been more creative with snacks, but it's obvious she's having some major cravings today.

Naughty Lacy

Lacy was really naughty today. I decided to bribe her with stickers. She got one right away in the morning, and was allowed to get one at Rose's nap time if she was good until that point, and then one again when her dad got home. She stayed with the one original sticker. Ugh.

At one point, she came into the living room with an opened razor knife (!!!), saying "This draws on the computer!" After picking my jaw up off the floor, I quickly took the knife from her and told her, "you're not allowed to touch knives!" Later, I discovered a nice little scratch on our brand spankin' new 21 inch flatscreen computer monitor. It's less than an inch long and you can barely see it, thankfully, but oh my gosh that could have been baaaaad.

She was sweet up until that point, and got put in time out about 5 times today. I have no idea what got into her today. Maybe because she was hungry? I don't know. I just can't put up with her attitude many more days-- she's been kind of crabby like this for a while. I think she keeps waking up too early and needs about an hour more sleep a day. She got about 11.5 yesterday. Please, please, please sleep in tomorrow.

Mom, I'm hungry!!!!!

That's all I heard today out of Lacy's mouth! I could not get that kid enough food. I caught her once eating a corn chip and made her spit it out, but other than that, our diet went well today. I really had no idea how hard snacks would be! I usually give them pretzels or graham crackers and some cheese or something, today snacks were pretty lame. I'm going to try to find some stuff for tomorrow.

Anyway, here was our menu today:

Breakfast:

oatmeal with rice milk and honey

Snack:

Apricots, almonds, and orange bell peppers

Lunch:

Potato pancakes

Snack:

Apricots and almonds, followed by "I'm hungry! I don't like that!" Then I cut up a pear, cooked some rice noodles, and threw on some leftover spaghetti sauce. That was the most popular snack today HANDS DOWN. They ate that up so quickly! I also cut up a pineapple at that point and they got to eat that as well.

Dinner:

Chicken curry (recipe courtesy of Rachael Ray with some substitution to make diet-friendly) with rice noodles, veggies and pineapple

Dessert (FHE night, dessert is obligatory!):

Dairy- and Egg-Free Sweet Potato Custard
To make: whisk together 1 1/2 c rice milk and 4 tsp tapioca flour. Add 1 1/2 c. sweet potato puree (recipe originally called for pumpkin, but Dave is allergic), 1/2 c. honey (recipe called for maple syrup, but I didn't have any and honey is on a 1:1 ratio with syrup), 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp pumpkin pie sauce. Place in baking dish and bake at 375 for 45 minutes.

The best thing from today: The delicious potato pancakes! I mashed up some potatoes, added some flax egg substitute (1T flax+3T water simmered together per egg) and green onions, and pan fried on the stove in some dairy-free margarine. YUM! The only downside, it took over an hour from start to finish.

The worst thing from today: Dessert. Yuck. It was supposed to be a custard, but it didn't set at all, it just reduced down and was slightly less firm than pudding. I ended up spooning it into dessert cups and refrigerating it, but when we ate it, it had too much spice in it. Oh, it was gross. But pretty!



So, right now I'm trying to come up with a couple days' menus. I have breakfast covered (thank you, oatmeal!) but everything else I'm entering a whole new world. All I have to say is, I really hope this diet gives us some answers. I will be most disappointed if we start back at square one when this is all said and done. On a positive note, Lacy's red rings around her eyes are almost gone! I'm not sure if it's the Elidel or the change in diet, but either way, it's working! Yea!

And a couple pictures of the kids:

Rose's new mug:
Lacy helping make the "dessert"

Elimination diet: Lunch???

I haven't had any trouble so far coming up with meals for breakfast, snacks, and dinner, but I'm at a loss for lunch! I think I might have some Chinese rice noodles that I will cook up and make something with that the kids might like. For those who are wheat/dairy free, what do you serve for lunch?

Sometimes...

Sometimes, I'm just so thankful it's bedtime. Especially when it's an early bedtime night.

Nightweaning, day 10 (is this the end?)

Yea! We made it 10 nights of nightweaning! We really have two more nights to go, because I stretched out the second phase a couple days due to Dave returning to work. But I couldn't have chosen a more ideal time to work on nightweaning! Last night she woke up crying and took a while to get back to sleep, but I managed without picking her up, and it only took about 10 minutes to get her back to sleep, and I didn't feel bad because I was attentively helping her. I my rare episodes of desperation where I allowed her to cry for a while, she ended up throwing up and making me feel like a terrible mother. This way I was able to achieve the end goal of nightweaning while still feeling as though I am an attentive parent! Yea! Win-win!

And today is officially day one of our diet! Lacy has done really well, but hates the rice milk. Too bad she won't get any cow's milk for a few weeks! Actually I spoke too soon-- Lacy came out to me with chocolate in her mouth. I have no idea where she got it from! Dave is making her spit it out. Poor thing, no chocolate for her, but it's for the best. The diet is actually not a gluten free diet, but is an elimination diet where we take out many common allergens, and after a week add each allergen in massive amounts to determine her allergies. We are limited to rice, oats and barley as our cereal grains, for fruits we cannot have citrus or fruits canned in syrup, we are allowed all vegetables except corn and peas, most meats are allowed, but no over processed meats or smoked meats like lunchmeats, ham or bacon, or dyed meats, for beverages we can have water, single herb tea with honey, or grape, apple or pineapple juice. Snacks are going to be a tough one-- we have have potato chips, rice cakes, or raisins, and for miscellaneous foods we can have honey, homemade vinegar and oil salad dressing, sea salt, pepper , and homemade soup. It limits a lot foods, but because we don't eat a lot of processed foods, it's not going to be much of an adjustment, other than no dairy and no wheat!

We do this diet for days 1-7, and then for each day after that we keep the diet the same and add massive amounts of 8. milk 9. wheat, 10. sugar 11. eggs 12. cocoa 13. dyed foods 14. corn 15. preservatives 16. citrus 17. peanut butter. And if we observe no reaction, we can add that food back into the diet. And we're looking for subtle reactions in heart rate, demeanor, etc, that can indicate an allergy. This is the second diet suggested in Is This Your Child by Doris Rapp.

Today I did a diet-friendly meal that didn't taste yucky! Here's what we had for dinner:

HAMBURGER SOUP

1 lb. ground beef 1 (16 oz.) can tomatoes 2 med. onions, chopped 2 med. carrots, chopped 2 stalks celery, chopped 1/3 c. pearl barley 1/4 c. ketchup 1 tbsp. instant beef bouillon 2 tsp. seasoned salt 1 tsp. dried basil 1 bay leaf Brown ground beef and drain off fat. In large saucepan, stir in remaining ingredients and 5 cups water. Bring to boiling, reduce heat and simmer 1 hour. Also can be cooked in crock pot. Brown ground beef and drain. Add ingredients to crock pot and cook all day. Other vegetables can be added like shredded zucchini.

I substituted the ketchup (not safe for diet because of HFCS) with one can of tomato paste and I increased the barley to 1/2 cup, and I used purple prairie barley instead of pearled, which is much more nutritious than regular barley because it doesn't have to be stripped of its nutrients by pearling.

Nightweaning, day 9

Last night went okay. It was the first non-pick up and rock back to sleep night. I woke up sick and tired this morning, so much so that I didn't even make my bed! I did cheat a little last night and nursed Rose around 5:30. At night, I just get so dead tired that I can't even function, and to pair that with a crying toddler makes it miserable for me!

Today we decided to delay our elimination diet and go visit some friends, Parker & Kim and their cutie daughter Leia, who is just younger than Rose. We had a great time with them, and Dave was able to help them with some mold abatement in their attic. That's Dave, he's a specialist in abatement! He was glad to help. The girls did really well, even Rose who refused to nap all day, except for a 15 minute catnap in the car on our way to dinner. The girls were both asleep on the way home before 8, and have been sleeping pretty hard until Rose woke up just a few minutes ago. Good thing we brought their jammies to Kirkland!

OK, I am totally obsessing about homesteading lately. My most recent sub-obsession is that I want to raise all heritage animals and grow heirloom plants in our garden. I figure it's the way I can save the earth, protect rare animal breeds, and serve my family, all in one fair swoop! I am currently loving on the Randall-Lineback cattle now. They are an all-in-one breed: milk, meat, and oxen! Plus they are beau-ti-ful! Wouldn't they be absolutely stunning if you drove by a bunch of these cattle grazing? Hopefully I can get my hands on a few when we buy our 200 acre farm!