As I would have said in high school...RANDOM!

I have several small and random things to add to the blogosphere today. They are probably unrelated and not very coherent, but that's how I roll when I was up YET AGAIN last night in the middle of the night for reasons The Boy has yet to disclose to us, his exhausted parents.

First: I took away word verification from the comments, so now you should be able to comment with greater ease. I have been hearing from several people that they commented, or tried to comment, here, but could never see their comments, and I certainly never got their comments. So we're going to try it this way. I had the verification on because I was getting spam, but you know what? I have to approve every comment before it appears anyway, so if I get spam, I'll just reject it. SO THERE, SPAMALOT! Now please, comment away.

Also, what I had for lunch today:

COWBOY CAVIAR! This is just one of my all-time favorites, and SO easy to make, but I always forget about it. In fact, I've been meaning to make it for about a week now and just got around to it this morning, so my cilantro just barely made it. Actually, I had to throw some of it out, or else it would be much greener...I love me some cilantro!

I got this recipe from my wonderful mother-in-law and it is really simple, as I mentioned. I was going to post the recipe since so many people have asked me for it, but when I went to make it today, I couldn't find it! So I fudged a little...it still turned out really well. I also found out that if you Google "cowboy caviar" you can find about a million different versions of this delicious treat. Here's the one closest to what I actually did:

RecipeZaar Cowboy Caviar Isn't that a fun name?

Anyway, I used regular red wine vinegar, less olive oil, double the cumin, and no avocado. And I only had grape tomatoes, so I just cut those up, which turned out really well. I'll post the REAL recipe if I ever find it, but in the meantime, I'd just like to add that you can have this on top of your salads like a salsa, eat it with tortilla chips, rolled up in a tortilla, in a pita (obviously) or just with a spoon, or any other way you like it! It is yum yum yummy, hot, room temperature, or cold as well.

Now for a nod to the artless segue. Remember when I mentioned some family came up to help us clean house and get over our month-long illnesses? That would be my Uncle Robert and cousin Kyle. But did we mention that Kyle is known as The Baby Whisperer? I don't think he's ever met a baby that he couldn't charm in under five minutes. This picture was taken literally about 10 minutes after Robert and Kyle walked in the door:


James just grabbed some toys and books and ran over to his lap and said, "UP!" And if you know James, you know that he tends to be cautious and observe the situation for quite some time before choosing to trust a new person or a person he has not been around much...but not with Kyle! He jumped right in and they had a blast.

Kyle also mentioned that he might come to Raleigh for college...so I'm thinking he should graduate a year early so we will be in town at the same time and he can be our personal Baby Whisperer. Otherwise, he'll probably arrive in town right about the time that Ben graduates. BOO!

In other news, there is an author of some parenting books who calls herself the Baby Whisperer, but that is a Wicked Lie and you must stay away from her at all costs. Seriously. James wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole, and rightly so.

Tomorrow I have both Ty-Ty and Zachary...and Friday we have Ty-Ty again...so I probably won't be back until the weekend. See you later, alligators!

Photoshop is broken

Well, I had several photos to share with you tonight, but because I can't get Photoshop to work, I can't re-size my pictures. And because my internet connection is...tenuous at best, I can't upload more than one picture in its original, apparently gigantic, form. So here you go:

This is a picture of our silly boy during the Sick Month. MORE THAN ONCE during that time, we would give him a bath, and then when we went to sit in the recliner to rest for a minute after the intense physical effort it took for us to bathe him (see: Month of Sickness and Incredible Fatigue), he would simply fall asleep.

Who is this child? you might be asking yourselves, if you know how many sleep troubles we have had with him. But never fear...the night we took this picture, he did fall asleep in my arms at about 7:45, but then he woke up when we tried to transfer him and (gasp!) add a diaper...and then didn't go to bed until 10:30.

Oh well. At least he's cute. =)

But really, things are going fairly well right now. Just trying to clear out my photo cache but am finding it hard with the stupid internet and stupid photoshop.

Tomorrow, more about the vegan-ism, as it is much more like a new word that I heard recently...flexitarianism. And hopefully more pictures! Good night~

At least my stomach is happy

So I just wanted to take a moment to let you all know that I am eating extremely well right now and I forgot just how delicious and fabulous the homecooked vegan meals that we cook are.

Yesterday for dinner, I ate a homemade black bean burger, on a bun with tomato, lettuce, and ketchup (the organic, aka the "real sugar" instead of "high fructose corn syrup" stuff...SO superior). It was delicious. BUT...it was even better today for lunch when I had the burger chopped into pieces, in a pita, with some roasted red pepper hummus. Yum yum yum! And James ate a TON of it, so I'm not the only one who thought it was perfection.

And then for dinner we had my absolute favorite and incredibly easy slow cooker veggie stew, with cranberry muffins that I just made for the very first time. And can I just say they are AMAZING? Because they really are.

I wish I had taken pictures. But I was too mesmerized by the deliciousness.

I feel so satisfied now. I forgot how unsatisfied meat food dishes leave me sometimes. Mmm vegan.

Have I piqued your interest or subverted your paradigm yet? No? Well, then stay tuned! See you next time...

Saturday Night, No Fever...Yet

Things are going all right here. We had some help from family last weekend, and are FINALLY feeling mostly better now. We even had Tyler four days this week, and lived to tell the tale!

Here's a pic I snapped tonight for your viewing pleasure. The boy's feeling pretty happy, in case it's not obvious...


We're still worn out and somewhat swamped, but things are gradually improving. I'm going back on the vegan diet in the hopes that that will help clear up all this sickness, so I'm sure there will be plenty for me to tell you about that experiment soon!

Sadly, I don't think the boy can live without cheese, and I know Ben doesn't want to live without meat, so it looks like I'll be going it alone....again. More updates on the new diet and many other events and pictures soon. Love to all~

People keep promising me that it ends

But last night we were up with James until 2:30. That is, he didn't GO TO BED until then.

And here I am, up at 1:30, because of incessant coughing. I cannot lie down without severe coughing. Even without lying down, I am coughing pretty frequently. Oh, and my blood sugar's low again, so I guess it's good I can't sleep.

Except I am so unspeakably exhausted.

Argh!!!

The Universe Hates Me Update

So the reason that I posted such a depressing post last time was that it was four in the morning...on the second of now four nights in a row of James having a middle-of-the-night 2 hour stretch of not sleeping. As anyone who has experienced this before will attest, that feels like the end of the world.

But also? There is a lot of stress circulating around our house right now. Please pray or wish or incant or whatever you do that we will have a clear path ahead of us, and that it be one that is good for us all. Right now we don't know what that is, in so many ways. I don't mean to be cryptic but there are just a lot of ways in which we are floundering, and I don't want to go into them all. Some are too personal, some are things we don't want the Internets to have free reign with. But hopefully we can elaborate more sometime soon.

Anyway. Yet another reason I feel like the Universe hates me is that this is the fourth weekend in a row that we have a brand-new illness. Therefore, not only do we always feel like poo, our house is nasty, about a million times worse than its usual disorderly state, because we are always too sickly to feel up to cleaning it. So...pray for cleaning fairies?

And also...with this illness comes a very rough and deep cough. In fact, tonight right after dinner, I started coughing so hard that I coughed some of my food up, which of course then gagged me and then I threw my entire dinner up.

Awesome.

Please, Dear God, Please

Universe, I really can't take this.

Would you PLEASE be nice to us? PLEASE let everything go smoothly for a little while? PLEASE don't make sure that you kick us when we're down? PLEASE give me a chance to recover from every tough and mean thing you've dished out in the past couple of years?

Because right now I think you hate me. And it's making me crazy.

STOP IT!!!!!

Snip snip snip!

I know I have been remiss in my blogging duties. I know you won't blame me, knowing what you do about my life's busy pace and my daily struggle to get enough sleep and take care of my diabetes.

But you might be scandalized at what has happened while I was busy not blogging. James' hair went from looking like this:

to this:


HE GOT HIS FIRST HAIRCUT!

Well, sort of. He politely declined any sort of snip in either the front or back. And by politely declined, I do in fact mean screamed bloody murder. But luckily he was okay with having the hair above his ears trimmed.

He even deigned to point out his ears for the camera. This is unheard of! Before the haircut...who even knew they were there?

You learn something new every day.

Emotional barometer

I admit that lately I've been feeling like this:

instead of my usual chipper self, which looks something like this:

But just in case you weren't quite sure...with a face like this to love,


most of the time I still feel like this.


(Well, minus the ginormous booger. And the nasal gouges from baby fisticuffs. But you get the point. I've been complaining a lot and things have been tough, but at the same time...we are truly blessed.)

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse...

Tuesday was REALLY rough on me. I had Zachary from 12-4, and of course Tyler from his usual 8-5:15.

I just felt stretched apart. I was a Gumby.

And then came Wednesday. No Zachary this time, but James was really upset basically all day, wanting to be held--ALL DAY. Nothing like a 10-pound baby in the left arm and a 27-pound toddler in the right to throw your back out. By the end of the day, I was about to cry with relief that it was over.

And then there was Thursday. It was a great day! I had all three boys again, but this time Zachary came in the morning, from 8 to 12. Olivia came over to play, I think, and the day just seemed to fly by. I knew I wasn't going to be taking care of any children besides my own on Friday, so it felt like the weekend. It was great!

But then...

At about 4:00, James got really upset again when I was feeding Tyler. He cried for a few seconds and then threw up. This has happened before in the last week or two. Therefore, I just attributed it to the same old causes as before: 1) congestion from James' persistent cold and 2) adjustment period with Tyler.

Then Ben came home a little early. I stayed home with Tyler, waiting for his mom, who was stuck in traffic, to arrive, while Ben took James to get some bread to eat with our dinner. (Usually we make our own bread, but it had been A. Long. Week.) They came back inside within just a couple of minutes, and James had thrown up all over himself and the carseat and the car.

Oh yes.

This is our log from Thursday night:

4:oo p.m. threw up, small amount, normal
5:00 threw up, very large amount, full of food
5:10 threw up, small amount, food-ish
5:15 threw up, bright yellow
5:25 threw up, bright yellow-green
(at this point we called the doctor)
5:40 threw up, bright green
5:50 threw up, same
6:05 threw up, same
6:15 threw up, same
6:30 threw up, same
6:45 threw up, milky (had just attempted to nurse)
(at this point we FINALLY got the medication from our stupid, STUPID, worthless pharmacy)
7:00 threw up again, bright green
7:20 threw up
7:45 threw up
8:15 threw up, milky (another desperate nursing attempt)
8:50 threw up
9:45 threw up
10:45 threw up
11:55 threw up
12:20 a.m. threw up
2:20 a.m. threw up

And James couldn't sleep in the bed, so Ben and I had to take turns sitting up in the rocking chair with him all night. So, basically, that was the worst day EVER. Until...

5:00 p.m. Friday: Ben has just cooked dinner (pancakes) for an extremely exhausted crew. We've taken James to the doctor and it's been pronounced that we did an amazing job keeping him well-hydrated through his spew-fest, and that it's most likely gastroenteritis brought on by loads of mucus from his cold, or maybe food poisoning, or, you know...whatever. Susan's blood sugar is a little low, and she starts to feel like she's melting...so she crams down some pancakes...just before bringing them right back up into her lap.

OH JOY!

Luckily, I didn't puke as often as the J-man did. We already had the medication, that really helped! But it was pretty horrendous. AND THEN...

11:00 p.m. Friday: it's Ben's turn!

So, actually, Thursday evening through Saturday evening, those were the worst DAYS ever. But luckily, we have a great friend who came over and helped us take care of James for a couple of hours on Saturday so Ben and I could sleep it off, and I'm happy to report that It, whatever It was (though certainly not gastroenteritis or food poisoning), has moved on to Its next victims.

Watch out, though! I've noticed this thing is making its way through my friends in the blogosphere...you know, those with whom I have NO physical contact...some of whom live far, far away from me...so you could be next!

That's what's up with us. How's your day been, so far?