Simple activity from the "Teach Me To Do It Myself," a Montessori book by Maja Pitamic. George liked this activity very much, and was very good at it. He did spill quite a bit with tipping the bowls, but I had that in mind and the baking sheet worked beautifully... though it still got out of that too! ;) It's best to do this activity in the kitchen and not on carpet if working with water with food coloring in it! All the activity consists of, are two containers, one with an object (such as water, beans, beads), and a something like a spoon to transfer the object (water) from one container to the other. George liked to make it more complicating as he went along by using two spoons and pouring from one spoon to another and also pouring straight from one bowl to another. Let's just say his hands are purple now, but it was fun and I was able to get some laundry done in the process. Looking forward to trying some more activities in the book! Thank you Sis for handing your books down!!!
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Thanks to George peeing down the heat vent, with me shrieking "NO!", George and I found our first bug to put in his critter creek bug observatory that we bought yesterday with Nana. George and I had been spending time outside today trying to find a bug to put in it, but without success. It was rather nice being outside in the sun and breathing the fresh air, but I admit I had some reserve looking for bugs when I go out of my trying not to look for them! But this is Montessori and I want the best for my son, so we're catching bugs here!!!!!!!!
It took me swallowing my fear, and putting the duty and welfare of teaching my son the "Montessori way," to help me catch that darn spider. The tube to catch bugs in is small and doesn't give you much space between you and bug, so I really swallowed that fear! Well, I accomplished my mission and George got to see his "bug" (yes, I know Spiders fall into the arachnoid category). George had the time of his life :) Saying goodbye to "his" spider was not easy, and tears as big as the Pacific Ocean spilled from his and down his cheeks. I ripped his dearest possession and pet from him, when it was time to free Mr. Spider and it was really hard on him. After a bottle of Vitalyte though, and some story time, all was back to normal. Yes, it was really fun, but I look forward to the day when George can catch the "creepy spider" (as he called it, with a smile), himself! I long for the days of catching lady bugs, but know that day is far off since snow is in our not-so-far future. Until then! ;) If you ever need to relax or ever want to feel the most de-stressed you have ever been in your life, just put your baby to sleep on your chest! Her soft steady breathing, warmth and the smell of her sweet baby scent will trigger the most massive amounts of de-stress chemicals in your brain. I guess you can call it built-in drug-like opiates your own body makes! I didn't even realize the stress I was carrying around all day, till I put Emilie on my chest for a nap to ease her gas pains. The relaxing effect of your sweet baby asleep on your chest is so deeply calming. So, so relaxing! I'm happy Emilie is growing into the sweet little girl she's growing as, but I will miss her being this small and cozy!!!
This morning for breakfast we made muffin cupcakes! Ok, I was planning on biscuits or something, but George was insistent on chocolate chips, so this is what we ended up making! George really wanted to just eat the chocolate chips straight right then and there, but was comforted that he would eventually get some! I looked at what a muffin base looked like, with Scott's mom's recipe for Apple Cinnamon muffins (so I wouldn't be too far off the marker), and it turned out rather good! Granted, no butter... or milk, but still really good! They turned out very wheat-y since it was whole wheat, but still sweet with the chocolate chips. I was able to feel like I was indulging with eating them, and at the same time, without killing my body with straight sugar! A good feeling :). George seemed to really like it too, and had three! You know your cooking is decent if your toddler will eat it ;) George is my professional tester in our household. He has more of a "safe taste" and not exploritory, so if it's too "out there", he'll let me know too. For the basic "out there" foods that are good and healthy to eat, I just comfort him and let him know that it is indeed food and good for you, and he calms down and can most often buckles down to eat it (if he doesn't hate it). He really is a good eater :) "Emilie Love, CupCake Muffins" 1 Cup flour (stone ground, whole wheat) 2 tsp Baking Powder 1/4 tsp salt 3/4 C sugar --- 1 egg 2/3 C sweetened Vanilla Almond Milk --- 3/4 C semi-sweet chocolate chips (dairy free) Combine dry ingredients and whisk, then add dry ingredients and mix together with spatula. Then fold/stir in chocolate chips. The muffins aren't too sweet themselves but the chocolate chips give them the main sweetness! If you like really, really sweet, try adding more chocolate chips. Spoon (good sized spoon) one good scoop of dough, for each muffin, into mini muffin pans (ex. Martha Stewart mini muffin/cupcake pans). Bake at 350 degrees ferinheight for 12 minutes. Poke with fork to see if done and take them out and enjoy! They make around 1 1/2 pans worth. Ok, second night with 4-5 hours of sleep, I'm getting to be an irritated, and a depressed mess. At least I got a four hour streak right? Dairy free worked fine, but changing our diet completely to Greek Mediterranean was a disaster, I have no idea what went wrong. Sure, Emilie isn't screaming bloody murder in sheer pain, but she does have gas pains and they're quite uncomfortable. Scott and I had quite a bit of intestinal issues ourselves. The Mediterranean diet is suppose to be healthy, but there's loads (and I mean loads!) of olive oil in all the recipes to the point of starting to make me sick. I feel tired too (maybe because of no sleep?). I'm also not eating enough carbs or protein with so many vegetables. How do Vegans survive??? I'm not eating enough calories for myself, let alone 600 extra needed to be producing milk. I'm back to searching the web high and low for recipes, and unfortunately, none that are Greek. Epic Fail. Here I am writing a blog at 5am (woke up at 3:30) because I can't let myself feel the coziness of bed under the warm crisp covers, because the moment I get under them, I will wake Emilie by them it seems, and she'll feel the pains of gas start to circulate. So thus I sit here on my computer, seeing the sky gradually lighten as I ponder what on earth I've done wrong. The only conclusion I can make is to eat the most unhealthy American diet I can (like I did)... with no dairy.Apparently what gives mom gas, gives baby gas. Emilie, I'll get this done for you, I am so, so sorry. George, I'm sorry I'm such a crabby mess, I need to be better for you! * Breath * Cope * Survive * Can you tell who is who? Both are pics of them at around 2 1/2 months!
Put your guesses in the comments, writing their name and side that they're on! I'll write who is who next Sunday! If you call or write me I can tell you too ;) After much work, Scott/Daddy, got the chicken coop built! ...and after much work we got it out and up in the yard. Scott did an incredible job getting it up, even in the process of the three front legs braking, but once the coop was up, he got them fixed in no time. A word of advice for others who wish to build a gigantic coop? Start building it outside where you want it ;) Tipping off the trailer is not as easy as saying, done! George had a blast playing in the truck as the whole transfer went down, and quickly found the electric seat controls. Once daddy started on the chicken-run part of the coop, he was going Up-down, up-down on the seat continuously. It was pretty fun to watch :) At the moment, the chickens are nice, warm and cozy in their coop as our winds have gotten up to 55 miles per hour. Yep, Daddy built the coop well. Scott never ceases to amaze me on how good he is with his hands. He's built us our first book shelves as a married couple, a dishwasher frame with fantastic shelling, support beams and shelves for the kaiaks and camping gear in the garage, and now he's building the world's best chicken coop! He's found a new passion for working with his hands and not only does he love it, he's great at it. Being great at math, he makes fantastic diagrams and gets the measurements right the first time too. Yep, my husband is amazing. :) After the pediatrician visit, complete no dairy has been hard. Before the "hard core," the was at least my friend butter and I going through it together... My friend had told me it was the whey protein that baby's were allergic too (and theres no protein in butter!). Though that's true, there's multiple different things in dairy that one could be sensitive too, and that's why the pediatrician told me to say goodbye to my friend butter. How does one cope when you loose such a big 1/3 of your diet (yes, it was actually about 1/3 of my diet)? Dark chocolate and coconut milk ice cream make it just bearable, now that I've gone though a painful detox. Yes, dairy is addictive! Read this article I found, by Dr. Sara Gottfried, a Harvard-educated physician! It's true it's true, please believe me!!!! Click here ----> Kicking the Dairy Habit: Why It's so Friggin' Hard I was so confused why I'm was going from withdrawal from DAIRY, and was so thankful someone validated what I was going through!!! Also, I'm not telling people to quit dairy, but if your a breastfeeding mom who's addicted to the stuff and has to quit because your baby is suffering, I feel you! I think dairy is great, I LOVE it, and it has tons of calcium and we need calcium. Other foods are fortified with it though, so we can survive. Almond milk, Hemp milk, Rice milk all are fortified with Calcium and that's what our pediatrician recommended to me to mix in to get my calcium. Sadly, I'm suppose to stay away from soy too, because if your baby is dairy sensitive, theres a good risk your baby could be soy sensitive too. After I get everything out of my system, I can experiment with one thing at a time to see how Emilie reacts (only in the morning or else she could have massive pain all night...) but I'm on square one and will have to wait another two to three weeks from the last pediatrician appointment (I was going crazy with butter...). On another note, I'm eating dairy free ice cream, so I'm very happy I don't have to give ice cream up completely!!! I admit, it's not as tasty as real ice cream, but after a third of the way through I got use to the taste enough to really enjoy it. It's super expensive though ($6 at Albertsons), yeah. With eating out my options are pretty limited too. To our delight though, there's a Greek Buffet and they serve tons of Vegan and also dairy free dishes with lots of meat! We were going to go to our favorite place called Yummy Buffet, when we realized all my favorite dishes there had dairy. I got super depressed and then Scott remembered his favorite Greek Buffet. Unlimited lemon chicken soup, Saffron Chicken, Gyros, and shredded carrot-coconut dessert, and I was in heaven. The plus side with all the change is that there's a lot more room to eat healthy food. Take away a third of your diet, and it's surprising what else there is to eat. I hear that a lot, when one goes Vegetarian too, but I personally believe Vegetarianism is not healthy, though I do believe in eating meat sparingly (unless you're pregnant, then I think you should eat away a it, as I was instructed by my midwife). Anyway, sorry for the boring post about dairy, you can skip it and move on to reading about my amazing children, but if your reading this sentence it's too late and you've probably already read this whole post! Sorry! *wink* Yesterday, after much effort to get him to take a nap, George decided not to have a nap. I made sure we spent an hour trying, and that he could take up his nap time by resisting if he wanted to waste the time. Of course if he fell asleep within that hour I would have let him have a full nap though ;). Anyway, as success slipped though my fingers as he walked away, I said, "Ok, if you don't have a nap now, there will not be one later." Well, I held to my guns and no nap that whole day. Nap time had been tempting too originally, since he went "child zombie" on me by going hyperactive from being over tired. Oh, I love my little bugger. :) Well, I gave him a bath at 7:00pm (he went for 20 minutes) and then read him two stories while he drank his Vitalyte, till Emilie started crying and needed tending to. George drifted quickly to sleep as I worked on calming Emilie. It was amazing. Scott got home 20 minutes later, and we got in some cuddling in front of the TV with our show Covert Affairs. George fell asleep at 7:40pm and woke up at 7:40am sharp! A perfect 12 hours. Before he slept 10 hours at night and had a 2-3 hour nap. Balance restored!
Tonight I did the bath routine again, but this time included Emilie with the bath. She absolutely loved it! Getting out of the bath, not so much though. The pediatrician wants her to fall asleep by herself and not nursing, but that wasn't possible this time. When she gets over colic and gets the dairy out of her system, I'll see if I can manage feeding her, giving her a bath, and then just laying her down to sleep. I'm sorry though, I can't let her "cry it out" if she's uncomfortable, I'll make a way to make it as gentle as possible for her. I wouldn't be able to let her cry it out in good conscience (though I understand that for some moms, in order to be a kind mom, they have to in order to get any sleep). Anyway, George went to sleep just before 8:00pm again tonight, and so I assume he will wake up just before 8:00am tomorrow morning. So nice. Now if Emilie could get on a schedule, that would be pretty good! For now, I'll just aim for making dinner between 5-6pm and bath around 7:00, and everything will hopefully line up! Things work out that way at times. :) Emilie had her first appointment with her new "specialist" pediatrician, past Tuesday, and we absolutely love her. We went with her because Emilie was having bad colic and wanted some support after Emilie gave us a scare with an ALTE (apparent life threatening event) around two weeks ago. She had stopped breathing for a short while and was unresponsive but came to before the paramedics and Scott got home. Seriously, Scott was 6 minutes away when I called him before 911. Her doctor (family practice doctor, who's had 45+ years of experience) suspected it was because her carbon dioxide was depleted with so much crying (you know how you get light headed when you hyperventilate?) and that it took awhile for her body to build it up again, so it just stopped breathing. It's amazing how our body's protect us, but by golly, that was scary. Anyway, our new pediatrician was amazing and very supportive. We'll be going with her from now on. The office and the staff combined make it the most family friendly clinic I've seen in my life. Everyone is like family, and they're totally cool with kids being kids. George tested this to the max by having an accident all over the floor and a toy. When we put him on the phone to keep quiet while the doc looked Emilie over, she completely shunned that telephone! "If kids aren't poking around and making noise, they aren't being kids," she said! She's awesome. We must have taken up at least an hour, as she gave us parenting advice, coaching, and helping us understand dairy sensitivity. Yep, we're pretty sure Emilie is dairy sensitive. Apparently it's not just about cutting out the milk protein, it's about all the dairy. No more Ranch dressing, ice cream, milk shakes, cheese, yogurt, or even... butter. She said the sensitivity sometimes goes away around 9 months, and that I can try an "ounce" of milk then, but do it in the morning, so I don't scream bloody murder and curse her name at night, lol. She has a great sense of humor too. Emilie and George are in good hands :) |
Ms. MaryJust one of those average amazing moms... Cause you know, mommy = amazing. Archives
January 2017
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