Don't Hit the Potty!

I have had so many ideas for posts that I no longer know what to say. So I'll say a little bit of everything:
Ben, Happy Birthday! Enjoy your last year of the 20's...you are yet young. Although in many ways it doesn't seem like you are my "little" brother any more. At some point in the last couple of years I ceased to feel like your "big sister" and instead I simply feel like your sister, an equal and comrade in sibling-ship. Does this make you older or me younger? I hope you have had a wonderful year and enjoy many to come!

Dad visited with Sandra recently, and Mom came shortly after. I was afraid when we moved here that we wouldn't be near anyone so no one would come to visit us. Instead we are ON THE WAY for everyone and we get one-nighters with lots of traveling relatives. Way fun!

Inga loves school, and she's good at it. Her teacher told us last week that she and another girl are the top readers in the class. That's pretty amazing, since she only really learned to read around a year ago and boy, did we struggle to get there! But when she got it, she got it.

I was telling Lena that I would love her no matter what, trying to hint around the idea that no matter what she looked like or what parts she might be missing this in no way affected my devotion to her. She wanted to know if I would still love her if she got her legs chopped off. I assured her I would. Then she asked about her ear. Of course, I would still love her. I got enthusiastic and asked her what if her nose got chopped off? She gave me a horrified look and said, "Oh, no, Mommy, then all of my boogers would fall out!"

Big huge topic of the month: should we have a sixth kid? It's Fall, and as Ben K. can attest I seem to start adoption paperwork right before Thanksgiving (and call him with the onerous request of picking up my Ohio marriage license from a usually over-crowded Department of Public Health or some such important location), so out of habit I am starting to think toward that direction. No answers yet. Just lots of questions. And yes, there is a specific child in mind.

Annie, thank you for the awesome letters! I haven't had time to write back, but the kids loved them and I loved my birthday letter. You have an amazing way with words. I can't wait to see you at Thanksgiving!!

Mandy asked if I got my quote at the top of the blog from a forum. Umm...what's a forum? Since I don't know, I don't think so. But I did steal it off someone else's quote on their website. It was authored by anonymous, according to this person. I like the quote...I want to have that attitude, and most days I achieve it (at least usually I have to take a shower the next morning).

There is a port-a-potty at the end of my driveway. They are re-paving our whole area (called Hernwood Heights) where we live and the workers chose our little neck of the woods for their loo placement. The problem is that they put it right opposite our driveway, so when we back out I almost hit it, every time. I have trained the kids to remind me by saying, "Don't hit the potty, Mommy!" every time I start to back out of the driveway. So far, I have avoided spilling the contents of the port-a-potty all over our little dead-end street. When the tractors finally made it to our part of Hernwood this morning I was all happy. Surely they would be finished with their project soon and not only would we have a newly paved street with a more level sewer connection but I would also no longer have to be worried about inadvertently destroying state contractor temporary toileting facilities. They did move the port-a-potty this afternoon before they finished for the day...and left a large bull-dozer sort of thing with a caterpillar attached to it...right across from my driveway. This is much bigger than the Tardis-sized toilet box. I must now put our van through several contortions to get out of my driveway--that is, if I remember to do so instead of simply plowing into the thing before checking in my rear-view mirror.

Alex is a hot dog

Alex goes to sensory integration therapy, and for the first time our insurance is actually covering it. This comes at a perfect point in our lives because he has been having a hard time recently. I think it is because he is putting all of his energy into learning the things we are doing in school, and his focus gets tapped out, and then he starts acting "sensory", as we call it. I am learning a whole new level of parenting.
At his sensory therapy lessons he spends an hour getting all of the sensory input he craves. It is amazing how much pressure he asks for...way more than I as an adult would ever be comfortable with, and sometimes more than the therapist feels she can safely give him. They come up with all sorts of ways to work with him, but the cutest is the hot dog. He dresses up as a hot dog, and they squish him in a huge bun-pillow, and put long yellow and red sandbags on top of him (mustard and ketchup) while he listens to a song about being a hot dog. The amazing thing is how still he becomes when he feels all enclosed and weighty. He gets a certain look in his eye, as if he is going far away. Usually he is fine for the next several days after therapy, and then he steadily falls apart until his next session. The therapist says it is fantastic that he is able to benefit from it for that long...most kids are falling apart again after less than a day. Her comment reminds me that there are so many reasons that Alex is a great kid--and I enjoy finding them out, one by one.
Inga's teacher has cancer. (Stay with me--this is actually related to my "Alex" topic, but you have to read on to the end.) For a while her doctors were uncertain how far it had spread, but now they are saying it is contained and if they perform a total hysterectomy she should be fine. Her surgery is scheduled for the end of October, so my little girl will have substitutes for a month. I am so glad this teacher's prognosis looks so good...she is a wonderful teacher, a fantastic person, and a friend of mine from church.
Another friend of mine also has cancer...melanoma. Of course I cringe when I hear that, especially around this time of year. She had a mole removed that turned out to be cancerous, and not benign. But it had not yet had time to spread, and so the doctors think they got it all and she should be fine. She sent out an e-mail to all of her friends letting us know the good news, and encouraged everyone to get any suspicious moles biopsied earlier rather than later. She was very insistent about it, since an early biopsy had probably saved her life. But I did not mind the authoritarian tone she took because she had every reason to warn me, and guess what...I'm going to go get a suspicious mole biopsied.
This is how the cancer digression relates: My son has FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). I love him fiercely, but I also have to stand by and watch every aspect of his life, especially his schooling, be affected by the choices his mother made while he was in utero. I have every reason to warn those I love to totally abstain from alcohol during their pregnancy, and if you compare my situation with that of my friend who has cancer, I should be able to take an authoritarian tone with my warning. But I hesitate. Social drinking is just so...fun. Who am I to spoil someone else's good time? And people can quote outdated medical articles stating that a little alcohol will not hurt the fetus. There are plenty of them out there, and doctors who still believe this is true. Who am I to argue with that? Except that I have lots of more recent articles I can refer to that prove that just one drink a week can affect the brain of a developing child. But no one wants to hear it. It's unpopular. It's hard. And people have been drinking during pregnancy since alcohol was invented. So they tell me that my sources are not professional. The Surgeon General, however, agrees with me, and the Center for Disease Control website states:

When a pregnant woman drinks alcohol, so does her unborn baby. There is no known safe amount of alcohol to drink while pregnant and there also does not appear to be a safe time to drink during pregnancy either. Therefore, it is recommended that women abstain from drinking alcohol at any time during pregnancy. Women who are sexually active and do not use effective birth control should also refrain from drinking because they could become pregnant and not know for several weeks or more.

Please listen, and spread the news.

How could you not?

OK, surely someone would comment on that last blog, I thought. Cute pictures of little children playing a game that Anne Marie in particular loved when she was in her youthful prime...Jennie actually admitting that she doesn't mind a sport...how could my family resist commenting? At least something like, "How can an armless kid be a goalie? Did she let any balls through?" or "You guys sit on a blanket when you watch the games? Really? Why don't you get regular folding chairs like all the other cool parents?" But nothing. Is anybody reading this?!
(dramatic pause for nose-blowing and pathetic sighing)
Boy, glad I got that off my chest.

Inga: "Are those bugs male or female that suck your blood?"
Me: "You mean mosquitoes? Female."
Inga: "So if they get some of my blood in them, that means we are half-sisters!"
Me: "Hmmm..."

Soccer!

Sometimes I forget how much I thought I would hate this part of life: the soccer mom part. Inga, Andrei, and Elena are all in soccer and they each have practice 1-2x per week and games on Saturdays. Each team requires each family to volunteer for snack shack or information booth, and each team requires each family to bring a snack to at least one game for the team. Oh, and you have to watch your kid play soccer out in the sun where there is no mercy from the heat and you have to somehow seem knowledgeable about what your kid is doing out there on the field while your other kids are driving you nuts with their antics. Of course I would hate this. But...amazingly...I don't. I love to see my kids working hard toward a goal with their team, I love to see them push themselves to keep going even when they are exhausted and I especially like it when they look like they actually know how to play this game. Because I never did. I remember going to Anne Marie's soccer practices (most memorable moment: I bit into a Star Crunch chocolate-y thing and got a mouthful of little worms and eggs and never ate another one again), and although I love Anne Marie (please let me make that clear), I hated watching her practices. Hated it. I recall thinking I must be receiving some sort of sisterhood points for caring and that is what helped me through it...but I swore I would never put myself through it again, so my children would just have to learn to live without sports. And then I married Dan. And found out that when it is your own kid out there, everything changes.


Oh. And it is really easy to get sunburned. (Like the shirt? It doesn't fit Dan, so he gets to enjoy it on me :)

Quotes from Petry dishes

Dan and the kids were driving home from Inga's soccer practice when Dan looked in the rearview mirror and saw a beautiful sunset in progress. "Look, kids," he said, "the sun is setting!" Elena had not heard him, but looked dutifully behind her along with the others. She turned back excitedly. "Look, Dad," she exclaimed, "a pink moon!"

"I...I...I Fuppaman!" --Sam, saying 'I'm Superman' (it sounds much cuter when you can actually hear it)

"Go tell Daddy he has good taste," said I.
--"But Daddy is not a hungry person," said Elena worriedly, "and we don't eat him!"

Elena is working on the alphabet. Because she is still transitioning to English (she was adopted shortly before she turned 4, so she is still working on it), she does not always hold onto concepts based in language very well. This means that anything to do with reading takes a little extra work. So we are starting with the names of the letters of the alphabet, and we are working on A and B. For some reason she cannot remember the name of the letter A, no matter what we do. After working on it for a few minutes today she looked up at me in exasperation and said, "Wow, Mommy, these are the hard letters!"

The fan in our bathroom stopped working today. Elena and Andrei were the ones to discover this, and they were very concerned about it. "Mom, the air in the bathroom is broken," Elena came running to tell me, "so we need to buy a new house!"

Bridge

We got together with some friends last night and played bridge. Actually, we taught them bridge. It seems like no one in our age group plays this game, but it is so great! So we are spreading it around in our generation. Or trying.
I'm sure you are not asking this, but I'll pretend that this is the question you asked: how did you get together with friends when you have five kids and no money in the bank because somebody at your husband's school decided teachers don't get paid over the summer and then wouldn't get their first paycheck for the new school year until the end of September? Well, we took our kids over to our friends' house and put them to bed there. Cheap. Easy. Fun. Not to mention our friends were impressed because they have three kids and they didn't feel like they could do that sort of thing if they came to our house because their kids just wouldn't be comfortable. So does the fact that my children will easily sleep anywhere mean that we are a flexible, fun-loving and easy-going bunch or does this mean that my children are rootless and adrift? I'll go for the former.
School starts on Tuesday, and when I read Jaime's post about her refrigerator being transformed by school lunch food I laughed because the same thing has happened over here! I am having the hardest time finding healthy enough food, though, because after going through the whole elimination diet thing I read labels on everything and then put it all back and you can't do that when you are trying to pack a lunch that must last safely through half a day AND doesn't break the bank.

Eliminating my diet

We have just finished our elimination diet experiment. This is a diet where we only eat from a short list of "safe" foods for a week or so to clear our system and then each day after we get to try one of the eliminated foods and see if it causes a reaction. It took us three weeks start to finish, and our whole family did it together.
We had a lot of friends asking us why we chose to do this diet, because none of us are suffering from some unknown food allergy that causes our quality of life to be horrible (which is the only reason anyone else would ever do this). I did it simply because I've seen the way wheat and milk have affected Alex and I wondered if we weren't all affected by a few foods in some way or another.
So...I learned to really like brown rice, organic turkey, and yams. I like rice milk better than soy milk, which is too bad because it was twice as expensive. I learned that I don't handle red meat well, and really shouldn't eat sugar. Especially not 10 sugar cubes in one sitting, which is the way we were supposed to experiment with it during this diet. Ugh. We also tried high fructose corn syrup, straight from the bottle, which is what is in pop and all sorts of candies and...well...everything. None of us reacted to chocolate, which surprised me because I thought I did, except that in order to test pure chocolate we had to eat the baker's kind (which is awful!) and so maybe what I react to in the chocolate is really just the sugar. We all reacted to red dye #40 -- that was an awful day.
I learned a lot about what certain foods do to you (did you know that wheat contains a high amount of toxin, and after going on a diet like this for awhile and then testing wheat you can actually taste it?), and talked to a lot of other people about their own food issues. I learned a lot, and lived it while I was learning it, and now it is over and I see food in a whole different way.
I felt really good while I was on this diet, and only had two days at the beginning where I felt odd and very hungry (all the articles I read about this diet said we should expect to "detox" during the first couple of days), and I lost ten pounds (legitimately, Mandy, not just the initial water weight Dad was talking about) without limiting my food intake at all. Now that I am done with the diet I am having a hard time eating the things that I used to eat. I look at wheat with suspicion. Anything with high fructose corn syrup in it makes me shudder. Food that looks unnaturally red is automatically off limits for anyone in my house...we even switched to Tylenol no-dye and GNC children's vitamins to avoid the evil #40.
So my grocery bill has soared, because it is much cheaper for everyone in the food industry to take food straight from the fields and do all sorts of unnatural things to it so they can package it to last for years. I am sure I will get over this as soon as someone puts something in my path that is tempting enough to lure me out of this food-snobby ditch I am in, but for now it is actually pleasant to feel good all the time. The most amazing thing is that I don't have any food cravings whatsoever. I'm sure if I were living with Mandy she would cure me of that immediately :) I haven't eaten a single chocolate chip cookie in a month!

This is a picture of Pavel trying milk, in the form of homemade whipped cream (made with local farm honey) and strawberries!