Vacation so far

The kids behaved excellently driving up to Minnesota. We got on the road at 6pm last Wednesday and drove almost 350 miles before stopping in Eddyville, Kentucky for the night. We stopped in St. Charles (my childhood hometown) and drove by my old house (wow, it looked small!). Then we stopped in St. Peters for lunch at the Pasta House (my favorite where I ate cavatelli and their famous salad) before meeting my cousins Erica and Emily for a few minutes before getting back on the road.

The kids even took naps as we drove through Missouri and Iowa!

We arrived at Todd's Mom's house around 8pm Thursday night after a full day of driving. You can see the kids being sweet and hamming for my iPhone camera here.

Owen lost his other top tooth the next day. He likes sticking his tongue through the gap now because he thinks it is shaped like a heart

Can you tell he is proud of these missing teeth?

We are headed Up North later this morning. Still need to do breakfast with Todd's Mom and then stop at his Uncle's house to visit for a little while. The weather does not feel like summer. It is windy and 65 outside. Thinking it really needs to warm up for us for the rest of this week while we are relaxing and fishing!

Vacation!

We are are now on the road to Minnesota. From our driveway to Todd's Mom's driveway, it is exactly 1000 miles. Which equates to sixteen hours of fun in the jam-packed minivan. The DVD player is hooked up and plenty of Disney movies are packed. As are the coloring books, crayons, story books, bicycles & helmets for the kids and then all of my bead & jewelry stuff on top of our suitcases of clothes.



I am hoping we get to Kentucky tonight, but that is dependent on me staying awake. Although Todd and I split the driving fairly equitably, I am the night driver because he has a harder time seeing well after the sun goes down.



Really looking forward to seeing Todd's family, hanging out with friends, fishing, reading and sleeping while we are gone through the 4th of July! I am already missing my torch and know that by the time we get back, three weeks will have passed since it was fired up. But even more, I am already missing my kids. They are staying behind to be spoiled rotten with love by the grandparents for three weeks. Right now, my CountDown app on my iPhone says it is 32 days before they come home.

Double Helix & Etching

These two are not friends. I learned this the hard/unfair way. Went from this pretty cool, metallic worry stone with the shiny, metallic and bumpy top




with this pretty cool back with great color variations




to this blah, matte black with ridges on top (sniff, the metallic, mirror-y blue is all gone & won't ever come back)



and this muted back



I suppose it's not that bad, but it is still a disappointment because I felt the original was so much cooler. Guess that's what happens when something sits too long in front of me without getting listed right away in my Etsy shop. And this one sat for a second attempt at a photo session because the first one seemed to show nothing but dust on the top of this bead (a routine problem I seem to encounter with most black beads that have not been etched).

My Girl Is No Longer Allergic to Peanut Butter!

For the first time in 3 years, my Chloe ate a peanut butter sandwich and did NOT break out into hives. We tried it first when she hit the two year mark, as was recommended by the pediatrician. We waited another year before trying again, but had the same results. Red rash spreading out around the mouth. The same from eating pineapple.



I made a mental note to self that I'd take her in for allergy treatments when she got older, but that timeline moved up much faster than I had planned when she broke out into hives and stayed in a body suit of hives (in spite of benadryl doses every 4 hours) for over two and a half weeks. Chloe's school didn't realize that when they switched to a different brand of fruit cocktail that it had pineapple in it. This was also the same week that the school switched fruit punch juice brands and whoops! the new one had pineapple.  She ate that fruit cocktail with the aforementioned pineapple on the same day that her teacher cut up a fresh pineapple and stuck it in a dish on one of the class room tables in Chloe's 3 year old classroom. Of course all the kids left it alone, as three year olds are not prone to touch anything new. At their height. Nor did they touch everything else in the room afterwards. Because that's just not what three year olds do. They stand back. And look. But they don't touch.

Chloe's hives disappeared after bedtime, but reappeared at school. They disappeared on the weekends, but reappeared shortly after returning to school. Benadryl got rid of the hives at home, but did little while she was exposed to the pineapple juices all over her classroom. School was great. They moved her to a different classroom. Two of the teachers did a top-to-bottom cleaning of the room (baseboards and chair rails included) and the owner even had the carpet steam-cleaned. It was at that point that I realized we didn't need to wait until Chloe got older to treat her allergies. And not by the well known practice of allergy shots or oral meds that many pediatricians or allergists prescribe.



So let's jump back in time six years....one of our friends would practically sit in a fetal position on our couch with her eyes swollen shut within 15-20 minutes of entering our house (as bad as that sounds, we only had two cats and I PROMISE the cat hair did not cover our furniture or carpet!). She was just extremely allergic to cats. Janice started seeing a doctor about her allergies and asked us to give her a glass baby food jar full of our cat's hair. Off to her appointment she took it and was treated through accupressure and cured by the next day. Six years later and she still has no problem coming to our house and staying for hours without even a sniffle.



When I was pregnant with Chloe, some of my food allergies worsened. I couldn't eat any orange or red fruits or vegetables without having my lips blow up larger than Angelina Jolie's on botox. Seriously. Strawberries, tomatoes, cantaloupe, carrots....they all made my lips swell and tingle before going numb. And I had always been allergic to animals, although that didn't stop me from having cats and ferrets. Or petting the random horse and trying my darndest to not touch my face or eyes before washing my hands because then I would be on the fast route to having my eyes swollen shut. I also had more problems with acid reflux (gotta love the big belly pushing everything back up), although PF Changs Kung Pao Shrimp had long been an instigator of that. I started seeing Dr. Andrea Robbins for allergy treatments and within weeks had all of my food allergies cured. Gone.

Dr. Robbins doesn't use needles. Nor does she prescribe medicine. She uses NAET, which is an accupressure treatment that eliminates allergies. An IgG blood test (it detects antibodies in the blood to 100+ foods for the basic test) re-confirmed my food allergies that she diagnosed through muscle testing. The treatment is simple in that accupressure is used along the spine while holding a vial of the allergen. Gatepoints (similar to pressure points in location) are massaged on the arms and legs. Then an avoidance period of 24 hours ensues. For the treatment to be successful, it is best to not only avoid eating the substance (or breathing it in, if airborne like pollens or animal dander) but also avoid touching it. A return visit to her office would confirm if the treatment succeeded. I am five years away from those appointments and do not have any allergic reactions to the foods I was treated for and I can smooch any animal I want while holding them to my face and telling them how cute they are. I can also stuff myself full of PF Changs Kung Pao Shrimp and not have any indigestion. That. Is. Huge.



So this is the treatment process Chloe has gone through over the past couple of months. It has taken longer because I live/work farther away from Dr. Robbins office and am lucky when I can get Chloe in once every week (cause she had a TON of allergies that showed up on that blood test!). The ELISA scoring scale on the IgG blood test has foods under 0.199 scored as a zero, 0.200-0.299 as a 1, 0.300-0.399 as a 2 and greater than 0.400 as a three. She had ratings of 3s on egg yolks (0.845), gluten (0.894), milk (0.490), peanuts (0.435), wheat (0.919 OMG!) and many others. As of yesterday, Chloe is no longer allergic to eggs, wheat, yeast, sweet potatoes, oats or PEANUTS!

This is a longer post than I had intended, but I received quite a bit of curiosity about it on facebook, twitter and always in conversations I have had over the last five years. If you're interested in finding a doctor close to you who uses NAET, you can look here. Or you are welcome to ask me more about my own experience. This has been life changing for me (my Mom would be happy to tell you how miserable I made myself throughout my childhood/teenage/adult years petting every animal I met, even though I knew my eyes would itch and swell and my nose would stop working to the point I could only breathe through my mouth) and now for my daughter.



So I will end on this note. As I made a peanut butter and honey sandwich for Chloe yesterday, she stopped me and asked "What if I don't like the peanut butter?" I gave her a taste; her eyes widened and a smile slowly spread across her face before saying "YUM!" She ate that peanut butter sandwich all gone. There was no rash. And there was not one hive. Not one!

How to Get that Ring Out of Your Drain

Ok, not my normal blog post, but I thought the video was nifty with a great trick!

New Jewelry

Todd took care of the kids for a day so I could spend all morning & most of the afternoon last Sunday at Wendy's house. I had a great time hanging out with Wendy and she even made me breakfast & lunch (the avocado, tomato, cheese samich on toast ROCKED!). The bonus was the bag of snickerdoodles that she sent me home with, although I was admonished to share them. So not right.

I only ate one of the cookies on my way home and shared most of the rest of the cookies over the next few days.

Letting Go & Moving Forward

These past two months have been filled not necessarily with an inner turmoil, or even a deep sadness, but a slow coming to terms with saying goodbye to old hopes and dreams and moving forward to new goals. Since the time I knew Todd was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with (and that was very early on in our dating timeline) and I knew I wanted to have kids, that number was always three. Three kids. A very different dynamic than the only childhood that was my experience growing up.

Todd happily agreed to two and while he said he was open to discussion for a third, I've always known he was really just humoring me. Todd was one of two kids and with us having both a boy and a girl, I know he was more than happy. He teases that I don't want him to ever retire when I talk about a third and when the kids are being misfits, he is quick to jump on the opportunity of my extreme frustration to ask "So you really want another?" But the farther we have moved from the stage of diapers combined with my increasing love for playing with fire and my decreasing motivation to get yelled at on a daily basis with my real job, my wants and desires have shifted.



Our kids are 4 and 6 years old now. We are well past the sleepless nights of feedings, diaper changes and sore boobs from nursing. I also miscarried once before getting pregnant with each of them and not sure I really want to go through that again. So now that I've gotten over the past, I'm beginning to look forward. Financially, we are moving into a much more comfortable position. Getting Owen out of daycare last year helped tremendously. Moving Chloe into the state funded Pre-K program this fall will be another bonus. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to be able to melt glass all morning/early afternoon and then be able to meet the kids at the bus stop to help them with homework and play the rest of the day. To not rush through making dinner to have enough time for baths & story time before throwing them in bed would be so wonderful. I wonder....what would it be like to not rush through every evening?



All of this has been going through my head over the past few months, but the decision to move forward with our two kids and no new additions felt really permanent when I gave my good friend Wendy the kids crib, all their bottles and other baby paraphernalia, as well as all of my maternity clothes that have been stored safely in the top of my closet. I was absolutely thrilled to be able to pass along so many things that I held close for so long, that have wonderfully good memories to someone that I care about and who's friendship I highly value. Much easier than hauling these things out to the driveway to sell to complete strangers in a yard sale or dropping off at Goodwill. But still difficult giving up old hopes & dreams to make way for the new.



And to add insult to injury, I am coming to the realization that I need reading glasses. I never had problems with seeing up close until I had lasik surgery two years ago. I wouldn't change that. Lord knows not a day has gone by that I don't give thanks for being able to see beyond my nose without glasses or contacts. But my near-vision has slowly deteriorate, but changed significantly within this past week. I go cross-eyed trying to focus clearly on what is right in front of me. Today, my lovely husband handed over a pair of his reading glasses to me and welcomed me to his world. Sigh.

He's toothless!

Well, not really. But might as well be for as excited as he is because it is the FIRST tooth that has come out of his head. Owen first noticed one of his top front teeth was loose two weeks ago. And then the other top front tooth loosened up a week ago....that is the one that came out yesterday afternoon when he was at summer camp. Apparently this tooth was in a hurry and didn't want to get beat out by the first loose tooth.



When I was putting him to bed last night, he wondered about how much money the Tooth Fairy would leave for him and asked me to make a prediction (yes, my 6yr old said prediction). He wondered about the logistical aspects of the Tooth Fairy's entrance...is she like Santa where she comes down the chimney? Or is she like a ghost and comes through the windows. Owen ruled that out quickly after deciding ghosts aren't real.

He asked what would happen if he was still awake when she came 'because he's been staying up late. As late as Mommy & Daddy' ....so he says. I told Owen that if the Tooth Fairy arrives at a home where the child is still awake, she leaves and goes to her next job. His eyes widened. But that boy stayed in bed. It was the first night in months that I did not hear him get out of bed to read books or play with his pokemon cards on the floor.

Todd and I are betting the other tooth comes out soon. By the time we head up to Minnesota in two weeks, the boy will no longer be able to eat corn on the cob!

Coming Attractions to my Etsy shop

I've been busy making new beads with the new glass that arrived last week. Here are pics of some of the sets that I will be listing soon in my Etsy shop starting the evening of 6.10.09.

Christmas in June

UPS brought Christmas in June for me on Friday of last week!

A thank you note, candies AND goats poo!

Ten pounds of glass all wrapped up in two bundles with saran wrap.  A little frit in some baggies.  And more mud (YAY!  I was running low!)

All unwrapped & ready to be put away in my glass cabinet for replacement colors and next to my torch for the new colors to try out!

 

I bought several new Double Helix colors that I haven't tried before, but I only played with Gaia.  She is pretty!  In rod form, she is a dark transparent green....but get her in the fire and she does all kinds of fun things!  Below you can see what she does on top of clear, on ivory and encased under clear.

And on a black worry stone under layers of clear.  This one took me close to 45 minutes to make.  It is bigger/heavier than any of my others and I really like the shape, as well as the rainbow texture on top.  

Can you tell I was in heaven playing on my torch all of Saturday afternoon while Todd watched the kids?  Wendy even came over and played on the torch with me, which was really nice to have her company!

I spent all of Sunday morning & most of the afternoon at Wendy's making jewelry.  Pics/blog to come of that later!