Crying over milk, spilled or otherwise, just milk. Just a heads up, I may be using the blog to vent through some of the emotions I’m dealing (not well) with since learning of my many food allergies. I know things could be worse and blah blah blah, don’t really wanna hear all that right now. So, if you don’t want to hear me whining about what’s really going on with me, then please do feel absolutely free to ignore any future food posts.
For those of you without Facebook who may not have heard, (long story cut short) I have been allergy tested not only for environmental allergens, but also for foods. No big surprise, I reacted positively to many types of allergens: dust mites, cats, dogs, grasses, molds, trees, weeds, and fungi. I also responded to tomato, cantaloupe, peas, green pepper, carrot, coffee, peanut, coco bean, and lactalbumin–a protein in DAIRY! And the only treatment for food allergy is avoidance, so… that is a lot for me to learn how to avoid. I’m really struggling with trying to figure out what I’m left with. I’ve started to make a list of things that I can eat, but they don’t easily turn into any meals. In a fit I drove to Hy-Vee’s health market to try different expensive milk substitutes and to check out other dairy substitutes, only to find that non-dairy cheeses and vegan butter use pea protein. I bought four different kinds of non-dairy milk (coconut vanilla, almond, almond vanilla, and rice) and while the rice is still chilling in the refrigerator because it did not come chilled, I tried all the others and…literally stood crying over milk. Yuk. I feel like such a baby.
For some reason I really thought that I had updated the blog with pictures from the first day of school. It’s a tradition, you know? But I guess the instant accessibility of Facebook is kind of leaving the blog behind. Still, I don’t like to put too much on fb, and I feel (justified or not) that I can write more freely here on “OUR” blog, so I will try to continue updating here as well as fb.
Jacob started 7th grade this year. The schools in Ankeny are broken up K-5, 6-7, 8-9, and 10-12. Ankeny is also in the process of splitting into a two-school community, the Hawks and the new Jaguars. There are now two 6-7 and two 8-9 schools, and next year there will be two high schools. Jacob is not particularly happy about this because he says that most of his friends are now Jaguars and he is still a Hawk.
Elise is now in 5th grade–her chance to rule the school, and start band! She plans to learn the clarinet, but so far the only thing I’m hearing from her about is how bothered she is by having to share her one and only recess with the 1st graders–specifically her little sister!
Cameron has begun 4th grade and is now taking his turn with the recorder. He has the same teacher Elise had last year (and last year he had the teacher she’d had the year before)!
Elena, as I mentioned, is in 1st grade now. She had all-day Kindergarten, so the school routine is really nothing new. She has started to receive homework and reading assignments though, and while its not too hard for her, it definately is more work for me that I hadn’t prepared for.
Soooo I really haven’t kept my promise from New Years to blog more often (obviously)! Here it is August already! But my dad said I really ought to blog about our day so…here we go!
I hope that everyone had a lovely holiday season and is making a smooth transition back to their normal daily lives. We enjoyed seeing everyone that we were able to connect with over the break, and really missed seeing those of you that we were unable to spend time with and hope that we will meet up again soon. Thank you to everyone that was organized enough to send us cards and photos! I am sorry that I was really not on top of things this year! 2010 really kept us pretty busy and 2011 seems to be off to no slower a start!
I hope to soon add a thoughtful letter with our holiday photo for friends and family, but as always, I am running late. So for now, just a quick shout-out to all my beloved blog readers. Happy New Year! I hope it finds you well. I look forward to a full new year of virtual communication with you all! 
Today Jacob turns 12. It amazes me how much he’s grown and changed since birth. He was a sweet baby, a charming toddler, a good boy and is quickly becoming a very impressive young man. I love him and am proud of him, can’t say too much, I get all blubbery. 
Please, enjoy with me the cuteness that has been Jacob thus far.
Ten years ago I welcomed Josh’s grandma Jean to our green house in Muscatine. She arrived around 10 am and we went to Wal-Mart with little Jacob in tow. While picking up groceries for the next few days I became very aware of the recurring tightening of my very pregnant belly. That evening, back at home–Josh now home from work at the bank, we had spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner. Kate came to visit and while grandma Jean helped put Jacob to bed, Kate started keeping a written log of the frequency and intensity of my contractions, hoping to convince me to let her take me to the hospital. Around 11 pm I finally decided that if I wasn’t going to the hospital yet then I’d better try and get some sleep. About 1:30 am I woke to snowfall and knew that I’d better get a move on and I worried that the late hour and slick roads might be a bad combination for Josh to drive after only about an hour of sleep so I called my dad and he rushed us both up to the Quad Cities while grandma stayed behind with sleeping Jacob. After hours in a non-room waiting for a vacancy we finally got rolled into a room around 4am. Sparing all the more graphic details, by 4:35 the pain of labor gave way to an overwhelming experience that I have heard others describe as a glimpse of Heaven. A beautiful baby girl now resting on my chest, pain replaced with a feeling of softness, the glaring lights in the room now a kind of ethereal glow, the sweetest smell filled the room the like I have never been able to describe. From this heavenly sweet place she came to us and quickly the chaos of life restored, screaming baby, noisy nurses, messy dressings, hospital sights and sounds. But that moment of heaven is the memory that stays with me, and so has it been raising Elise. Chaos peppered with moments of sheer bliss. Anger, and joy. Frustration, and enlightenment. It’s hard to believe its been ten whole years. And so, we are celebrating the birthday of our daughter Elise–beautiful, smart, thoughtful, aggravating, generous, creative, talkative, willful, loyal, persistant, great-big baby girl Elise.
Now, anyone who knows Elise at all these days must know of her great infatuation with wolves. They have become the focus of many of her school papers, research, fiction, and illustration, the main characters in the books she reads and the games she plays, graphics on the clothes she wears and stuffed toy companions lining her bed frame. She gets so excited about wolves that she has convinced the other children how cool they are! So, when Josh and I learned that the shopping mall nearby had live wolves that you could see and pet (2 Timberwolves, an Arctic Wolf, and a baby Cougar), well, we knew just what to do for Elise’s birthday!
She didn’t love that they were caged, and perhaps being face to face with them made the reality that she herself was in fact NOT a wolf more obvious, but she said she enjoyed the experience.
I should’ve known something was up last night when Elena crawled up into my lap with a blanket and fell asleep while we were watching a made-for-tv holiday movie. (Gotta love the Hallmark channel!) I mean, it was only 4:30 and she NEVER naps! But it wasn’t until the kids were eating at 6:30 that Jacob noticed the huge welt on Elena’s back. I am still not sure how he saw it (she was wearing a long sleeved shirt and long jeans!) but he sent her to show me and then I discovered a rash of welts all over her lower torso and up her sides and a huge red patch on her left shoulderblade! Of course Josh was out of town and I had a little panic attack because Jacob went right to “poisonous spider bite” etc. But I called my friend Melissa who assured me that it sounded just like hives with which she has had much experience. So I gave Elena some children’s Benedryl and she went to bed early. This morning however, when I tried to get her up for school, she looked like this:
She had it all over her arms and legs too (but those pictures aren’t as interesting ) so I took her to Urgent Care this morning and learned that it is in fact just hives, but they’ve prescribed some stronger medicine to help her be rid of them quickly. We have no idea what she may have come into contact with that caused them, but here’s hoping it doesn’t happen again!
My internet connection was not working yesterday so I could not post this then. We had a pretty busy week leading up to Halloween. The kids (and Josh) got to wear their costumes to dance all week, and we went to the trunk-or-treat/chili cook-off at Josh’s church on Thursday. It was the last week for soccer (which was supposed to end the previous week but they decided to make up for the week the games got rained out). Jacob went camping with the scouts Friday night, and then we had soccer games, grocery shopping, a Halloween party, trick-or-treating, and a baby shower! This year, for the first time, our little family chose one theme for all of our costumes. Since we really enjoyed watching the Avatar: the Last Airbender cartoon together as a family, we each chose a main character. Here are a couple photos from the cartoon so you can see some of the characters we were based on.
I didn’t get to take pictures the first few times we were dressed up, so some costume elements are a bit less impressive in these photos than they might have originally looked, but we had fun and I think overall they worked out great.
Uncle Iroh, Sokka, Katara, Aang, Prince Zuko, & Toph Thrap
Uncle Iroh, Aang, Sokka & Katara, Prince Zuko, Toph
in character
The bridge to the spirit world
“Sokka” holding little “Dinah”
Katara in Wonderland
The Haul
The Sort
Trying to capture “the Avatar State”
(the arrows glowed in the dark, but I couldn’t get it in a picture, still thought he looked cute in this shot)
The Crash
Our schools don’t do “Halloween” anymore. The kids still get a party, but now they have it the week before Halloween and call it a “Fall Party.” They don’t get to wear costumes to school, but they still get snacks and games and time off from the rigamaroll of learning. Anyway, Cameron’s teacher sent me some pictures from his Fall party, here are a couple I found particularly funny.
