Daughter's Hair Becomes Long Enough for Pigtails: Mom is Thrilled

Eric's been complaining of stomach aches for a couple of months now. I won't go into too much detail, but he seemed to be spending an awful lot of time in the bathroom for a kid with almost zero fiber in his diet. So, I hauled him into our doctor. She didn't think it was anything to worry about, but just in case she did a bunch of blood tests for Celiac Disease.

Thursday night she called with some pretty surprising news. Eric tested positive on all the celiac tests she ran. The tests weren't just a little out of range, they were highly abnormal. She's referring us to a pediatric GI, but I know what this means. The GI may want to do an intestinal biopsy to confirm the results. But the bottom line is that my little pasta guy must get off the gluten. Forever.

Celiac cooking is a bit of a hobby of mine. One of my dearest friends in the world has Celiac Disease, and I don't think I've cooked a special meal in the last few years without at least making mental notes about whether or not I could serve it to her. I've had a million conversations with her about it, so I am very familiar with cooking for her. I've made her chocolate mousse pies with nut crusts, and cheesecakes for special occasions. I am a good cook (my friends and family at least pretend to love my cooking). So taking the gluten of what I serve my family will not require a lot of modification.

But Eric does not eat my cooking. He won't eat any meat, vegetables, rice or potatoes. So, that leaves us with dairy and fruit. Our first venture into GF pasta did not go so well. Three bites last night and then he wouldn't touch it for lunch again today.

We're in for a long haul. He did help me make a gluten free cake for a party we're going to this afternoon. Then he helped me decorate it. Maybe he'll help eat it. He did enjoy the frosting quite a bit.


It's my first gluten free cake. It's a Passover recipe that uses potato starch instead of flour. It's kind of like a lemon-orange angel cake. And I absolutely covered it with a pretty fabulous lemon butter cream frosting. Isn't it pretty? Hope it tastes good too. I'm bringing it to a party and I haven't decided whether or not to tell anybody it's gluten free or not. Hopefully everybody will just say YUM and not notice...

I can hope? Right?

Baby Sings While She Should Be Napping

I think the headline really says it all. Eric's sleeping, but K seems not to have gotten the memo about nap time. I really need one!

Can somebody give her a copy of the 2:00 PM Nap Memo when you have a chance?

Thanks,

M

Daughter Learns to Walk: Mom Gets Nostalgic (but not too Nostalgic)

Kaylee is walking for real. I remember this transition from before, but this is different. This is the last time I'll get to watch my own child learn to walk. It's been a long haul with K. Eric was a biped well before his first birthday. Kaylee will be a walker just shy of 14 months. She can walk on her own quite a bit now, but still like to walk with me, her hand tight around my finger like a tiny blood pressure cuff. She squeezes so hard, the blood rushes to the tip of my finger. But she is steady on her feet now. My hand is for reassurance, not for balance. But suddenly today, she has shown a preference for walking, when yesterday a crawl would do to get from point A to B. She can get up off the ground by herself, but it's not easy and now she gets mad when she falls instead of just crawling where she wants to be. She is often frustrated. But this is expected.

We went off to Sacramento Field today. They have a small play structure, just perfect for the under two set. She got herself up the stairs and down the slide with no intervention from me other than cheering.

I like this phase. I am not sorry to leave the newborn phase behind. The older my kids get, the more fun they get. Sure I like the tiny baby phase, but I am so much more comfortable with these sturdy, funny, opinionated children. Eric is becoming a wonderfully empathetic and smart kid. He takes his sister's hand and helps her walk across the yard. He builds complex patterns out of legos and train tracks.

Every phase with these kids has been my favorite. I suppose in about ten years, it will be shot to hell as I start cowering in my room, wondering what this hungry, smelly perpetually grouchy teenager is doing in my house. But I'm still hoping that will be my favorite phase as well.

One can dream, right?

Woman Lives Life and Forgets to Blog About It

I went to my college reunion last weekend. You can see me on the picture on the reunion home page. I'm the blond one with the blue top. I saw a lot of old friends, not as many as I had hoped, but it was very good to see those that were there nonetheless. One dear friend was very ill. Another seems to have dramatically chickened out. Not sure why, but I think it's time to give up on that one. It's hard for me to let old friends go. I probably give people too many chances to show they no longer give a shit whether I live or die. Perhaps I'm a sentimental idiot, but I do feel a lot of the friendships I made in college should have persevered. I have no shortage of wonderful friends now, both from before, during and after college. But there are a few missing links that leave me wondering what the hell I did. Their disappearances and brief reappearances and subsequent distancing have left me baffled and hurt. It's not a major thing. It's just like a mental ingrown toenail that lives in the back of my mind. Of course, I'm too grown up to ever discuss this with them. That would be messy and only lead to humiliation. So, I just let the toenail be. It gets better every year, and hopefully it will go away.

Jeesh.. I usually don't blog about this kind of thing. I wanted to talk a bit about the reunion itself. I was the only straight person there with a spouse. Perhaps 36 year olds with husbands don't go to these types of weekends. But I thought it was odd that I was suddenly in the minority, unlike in my "real" life, I live primarily amongst other breeders, similarly coupled. Perhaps I was the only mother who's kids were old enough to be left with their Dad for a weekend (I'll get to that later). But be that as it may, I was the only one who answered the question: what do you do? with "Mom. I'm a Mom." I said I was thinking about graduate school, which I am. But thinking is not applying or taking the dreaded GRE, which I doubt I'll be able to do anytime soon.

I expected to come home from my weekend away to chaos. But I walked in the door and the house was FREAKING SPOTLESS. Why is Rich a better stay at home parent than me? Why? My only consolation is that I was a much better housekeeper when I first quit than I am now. And I have focussed most of my energies on cooking, versus cleaning. And I'm sure that no cooking took place during my weekend away.

But I'm very lucky that Rich gave me the time to myself. It was a big deal for him to step up like that and I love him for it. He's a very good man. Even though he had nothing for me on my birthday. (sulk) He got me a pile of rocks. Granted, I wanted that pile of rocks, but I wasn't expecting it in lieu of something shiny or something good to read.

Today is my 37th birthday. My mother decided it was time for me to get some real dishes. So, she took me to the local potter in Shelburne Falls and we picked out general colors we liked and gave some guidelines on patterns, etc and told the potter to go to town.

I am thrilled. We did not do wedding china. We registered at Crate and Barrel and their china sucks. It was all bland and ugly and totally not worth $50 per place setting. So, we got some stuff we liked at the Mikasa outlet. So, this will be our wedding china. It's a totally extravagant gift. But, my mom pointed out, it's my birthday present, my christmas present and my graduation present (should I ever go for that Master's degree...) Nobody else in the world will have a set quite like it. Hopefully the potter'll make it by the end of the summer.

Kids are doing great. Kaylee is finally walking, lurching around, falling on her ass like she's supposed to with a giant grin on her face. Once she is steadier on her feet, I'll feel more comfortable taking her to places like Revere Beach, where the water is shallow and fun to splash in. Eric is steady, and as predictable as an almost 4 year old can be. He's an absolute delight most of the time. He's been working magic with legos and Brio train tracks.

So, that's the news from the last couple of weeks. Nothing too exciting. Just steady. And I'm 37. Which is a lot closer to 40 than I thought I'd be by now.