The Pot of Gold

Our baby crawls!  He's been scooting for over a month now, and pulling himself up on things, but a few nights ago he got a look on his face (that was scarily similar to the look his stubborn father gets), and finally figured out the proper knee/hand combination that propels babies forward so conveniently.   So now he's happy, but the rest of us have to scramble to remove legos, sweep floors and otherwise behave more civilized than we otherwise would have.

We're four days from being done with our crazy, insane food-intake-plan (they need to come up with more synonyms for 'diet', that don't carry all the negative connotations).   It doesn't seem fair to call such good food a "diet".   We can basically eat anything that wasn't invented in the last two hundred years.  I feel like a medieval queen.  "Bring out the roast parsnips, and butternut pudding! There shall be feasting tonight."   Except I'm both the queen, head cook, and scullery maid.  Ahem.

I got into a fight with a coconut today, and won.   Coconuts are such intimidating things, and they definitely look out of place in a grocery store on a cold, wet January day.  But they were only one dollar a piece, so I thought...what the heck, I'll try one.   Instead of ogling the candy and snacks in the checkout line, I googled "how to make coconut milk from scratch" on my phone.  Turns out, you can go all Sioux on a coconut... Vegan style.  I butchered that thing to pieces, and used almost every scrap of flesh and fat off it.   Out of one coconut I got three cups of coconut milk, one cup of coconut flour and coconut kefir that I accidentally tossed (oops).   I even made the coconut shell into a bra (just kidding...although I feel like a true respecter of nature would feel I was remiss in not doing so).

I wouldn't go through all this trouble of whacking coconuts over the head with a rolling pin if I didn't see a huge improvement in Jamie.   One day last week Jamie accidentally ate something he shouldn't have, and he was switching his letters, and skipping lines.    He was reading all his "h's" as "e's" and all his "w's" as "h's".   A book that was easy for him a week ago, was suddenly the most arduous task in the world.  It was awful.  And pretty much describes how school normally is.  I love Jamie, and I love his personality.  I wouldn't change one iota of him.  But if all it takes is a diet change to keep  him from crying through phonics, then I think I'm kinda willing to make that change.   I say "kinda" because when I say "all it takes" I really mean, a huge chunk of time and money.   But he's so much easier to teach when he's not eating additives or gluten! Ergh.  It's hard.