Hey! LOOK!! It's new post!!

It's been a while, I know. I just haven't really been in the mood to blog. Not a whole lot to blog about, I guess. I could have posted some cute pictures, but I'm a terrible mother and let the battery run out on my camera and have yet to charge it (same with my phone the last couple of days, so it's best not to try to call me on my cell phone in the very near future).

My mind has been consumed with many other things. I'm itching to start homeschooling "for real". Stephen just seems to be so ready and asks to "do school" every day. For now, he's content to do the workbooks I've gotten him (I got a ton for a quarter a piece the other day at a garage sale), but I'm afraid he's going to get bored with that and quite frankly, I've been bored with that for a while. I just don't like workbooks. They're fine for one or two subjects in addition to other kind of learning, but as the sole form of "school", it just irritates me. And I can't believe he's actually been happy with them for as long as he has. Anyway, I got some Bob books at another garage sale a couple weeks ago. He's already read through almost one entire box (11 out of 12 books). So needless to say, I'm ready to "take it up a notch". It's just the money that's holding me back. I keep half-joking/half-warning my family that I'm going to buy a bunch of cheap tins and popcorn and wrapping paper, mark it up 150% and sell it to them as a "fundraiser". Public school kids get away with it, right? Stephen's been busy earning himself fishing poles and transformer voice changing helmets. You know, the important stuff.

On the Zachary front, I sent away his, um, samples on Monday to have it tested for gluten-intolerance. We should have the results in a couple weeks. I'm anxious to know. Just when we seem to get his eczema under control, he has a flare up. And with each flare up, there's more rash. When he flares up, his eyelids (top and bottom) are bright red, a little swollen and scaly. He looks so sickly. But he's not acting it. He's his funny, goofy, stubborn self.

Marc-Adam is growing too fast for his own good. Yesterday, somehow, he pulled up on the side of the breakfast table and pulled a whole cup of milk down onto himself. I put the cup there for that exact reason...to keep it out of his reach. I had no idea he could pull up on the table. When I peeked over from the kitchen to see what he was doing, all I saw was too tiny hands "white-knuckling" the side of the table and I knew what was coming. It was kinda funny (since I wasn't the one soaked in cold milk). And now I know we have to be more careful. He's also gotten very one-track-minded and has started to show a temper. When he wants something, he wants it NOW and gets M-A-D if anyone gets in his way. The standard "redirection" form of discipline that's supposed to be appropriate at this age doesn't really work on him. If I do get him distracted from the "no-no" it's only for about 30 seconds before he's back to it again.

Next week, we're heading back to my parents while Sweet Hubby finishes his last two weeks of his training. That should be fun. It's like a little mini vacation for me.

What else? Anything else you'd like to know that I could blog about??

Getting much closer...

So I bought a new gluten-free bread mix this weekend, Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Wonderful Homemade Bread, really hoping it would put me closer to my search for the best GF bread. I was finally able to make it this morning. And then my breadmaker broke. The one I just got and have used three or four times.

Long story short, I heart Sunbeam now because they are sending me a brand new one free of charge.

But I still had half-mixed dough in the broken one. I wasn't really sure what to do, but I scooped it out and let it rise and bake in the oven. Much to my surprise (because the dough tasted like dirt....not that I know how dirt tastes) it's actually pretty good. The texture is right-on which is what the problem has been with all the other breads. They were hard, dry and crumbly. But this is soft, moist and chewy. It still tastes a bit like dirt, but hey...slap on some cashew butter and jelly and the 2 year old probably won't notice.

And in mac and cheese news...DeBole's Rice Pasta and Cheese tastes just like the processed orange stuff that my kids love. Except it's not orange. It took a little convincing to get them to taste it after the "Penne and Chreese" incident, but once they did, they inhaled it. I've also found a recipe for chicken nuggets using polenta as the breading. I thought it was just okay, but again, the kids inhaled it.

So, fortunately, were not having to eat tofu and sprouts which is what I was mildly afraid when we went on this diet.

The Bullet Point Post

I have several things I've been meaning to blog about for a few days, so today you get the condensed version all of it in one big bullet point post! Please contain your excitement....

• For those of you that keep up with BooMama, you know how she was raving about Monk & Neagle. Well now I know what she was raving about!! I got one of their CDs that they were giving away! We listened to it last while I made dinner and even the kids were dancing along. I love this CD. I didn't get a real good chance to sit down and listen to the lyrics, but the melodies are just so cool. It's exactly the kind of music I adore and it's an awesome mood-lifter. Their CD is due out in September, so be sure to keep an eye out for it.

• I'm still unsure if I'm going to participate in Shannon's Dog Days of Summer Giveaway. I have nothing of interest to give away. I have until tomorrow I guess to get my rear in gear. I might come up with something.

• And in gluten-free news...I'm still on the hunt for the perfect GF bread. I have a few recipes I'm looking at, but the other day when I visited my friendly neighborhood Kroger, they didn't have some of the ingredients that I know they had when I was there the last time....stuff that I've seen in many of the recipes. So I'll see if I can make do with what I have. We tried Bob's Red Mill "Hearty Whole Grain" GF bread mix....let's just say that I'm now calling it the $4 experiment. It was not at all very good (of course, I'll admit, that human error probably didn't help) and the kids couldn't tolerate the texture. Stephen's words, as he was spitting his only bite into the trash, "Mo-om, it has NUTS in it!" After that Zachary wouldn't come anywhere near it. On the bright side, I think he's looking a little bit better. Here's what his knees looked like this morning:

• And here are some pictures of his feet from the first day and again this morning....we've had some ups and downs (I think his scratching is just a habit now), but there is definitely some improvement. The first picture is the first day, second is today:
  
  

• Given our new "lifestyle", I've been spending much more time in the kitchen. I already make all of Marc-Adam's baby food, which is time consuming all by itself, but now that I'm making almost everything else from scratch, it's alot more opportunity to really screw things up (which I'm prone to do, hence the name of the blog). So in the last 24 hours, I've spilled a mixture of water, oil, cider vinegar and eggs all over the new paint job on the cabinets and all over the new floor, I spilled a pot full of water all over the electric stove (and on the cabinets, rug and floor) and as I typed the beginning of this post, I forgot about the sweet potatoes steaming on the stove....and burned the cr@p out of the bottom of the pan (and probably ruined to potatoes) and made the whole house smell. The smell woke Stephen up...his room is at the far end of the house and the kitchen is at the other end of the house. It really stinks. And the bread I mentioned earlier? It might have been better had I put it on the right setting in the bread maker and NOT forgotten about it overnight.
  

• And because Alison asked--the kids and I were working on a little mini-project about rain and clouds the other day. After finishing, Stephen said he wanted to give his to Daddy. Zachary piped up that he wanted to give his to Auntie Alison (my best friend). Since she lives too far for us to give it to her (and since mailing it would destroy the idea) here it is:
  

• It's Blustery, The Cloud, in case you can't tell or it just looks a little creepy. Hey, he's 2.

• Marc-Adam is now crawling totally on hands and knees. And today he learned how to make motor boat noises. He's also starting to pull up in his crib which is going to require that his daddy lower the crib mattress so that mama can actually sleep without worrying that baby is going to take a header out of the crib.
  

And that concludes the exciting bullet point post.

Before and After

So this is our fifth day of Zachary being gluten free. We've hit a few bumps here and there and yesterday I started feeling really discouraged after I think he ate a little rice/oat puff off of Marc-Adam's tray. I'm going grocery shopping sometime this weekend, and I think I'm only going to buy GF and I'm going to give all our "normal" food to the food pantry that our church assists. I'm just too obsessive and worried about cross-contamination (it seems I'm going to have some trouble finding things for Marc-Adam that are GF, but we may have to compromise there until he's repertoire of food has expanded a bit more). But we've seen some progress. His eczema is actually starting to heal up and his whole personality seems to be more even-keeled (he's always been a little dramatic and his mood swings were terrible for him only being two).

I tried to pass off "Penne and Chreese" (yes, you read that right, it's not a typo: "Chreese") as mac and cheese....the kids were having none of it. It was awful. And it made my house stink. And I'm so not impressed with the selection of bread that we have, so now I'm on a mission for the best GF bread. Preferably store bought and preferably under $5.

I thought I'd post some befores and afters so I could see them side by side and to "journal" our progress. Here's the day we started GF (the backs of his knees):



And here's first thing this morning:

So what do you think? I think his legs actually looked better yesterday and they don't look as pink in person as they do in this picture.

I'll post some more befores and after tomorrow.

A small dose of validation

Tonight at dinner, Stephen was raving about dinner--one I just kind of threw together. He went on and on about how I make the best dinners and how tasty they are. Then he said this:

"Mama, you are the best best BEST mama a child could have."

Ah, be still my heart. Of course, if I had put any thought in to dinner he would have said, "No thank you."

And on a gluten-free note, Zachary hasn't seemed to notice the difference in his diet. He inhaled about 3 bowls of his Gorilla Munch cereal (Stephen had a couple bowls, too, as did I), enjoyed his PB&J on homemade GF bread and slurped up his rice noodles at dinner--which, if you ask me, tastes exactly like rice as we know it only long and skinny and, well, noodley. He didn't seem to notice or care.

The Great Gluten-Free Experiment

We're experimenting. Zachary's going gluten-free. Among other issues, we can't seem to get control of his eczema. We've narrowed down a couple of allergies, and since we've cut his allergens out, his eczema still isn't' much better, and I actually think it's spreading. We had the older boys tested for celiac disease 2 years ago, but I've read that the test may be inaccurate for kids under 5. So this is kind of a last ditch effort to get control of his eczema. For right now, it's just Zachary that's going gluten-free, but if we find that this seems to make things better, the whole house will go gluten-free so that home will always be a safe place for Zachary to eat. If this doesn't work, there's only one more thing that might. And, well frankly, I'd rather have the whole house go gluten-free than have to do the one last thing that might work.

So we've gotten together a sort of "gluten-free starter kit" (thanks, Mom!!). Some cereal, cookies, crackers, pasta and bread mix among a few other things (and a bread machine which makes me so very happy). What I really need and I'll be experimenting with is a recipe for gluten-free chicken nuggets. All will be right with Z's world as long as he can have PB&J (although, we use cashew butter for him now) and chicken nuggets with ketchup. And Aunt K, I'll be e-mailing you soon because I have a few questions.

I'll be updating the blog with our progress just to keep a record of how things are going. Wish us luck!!