Road trip: Shire Style

 My brain is full of helping verbs and egg tempura, as I get ready to launch myself into another school week.   I feel like the Holidays though, are lingering around my ankles, refusing to let go no matter how many times I look at the big fat "2013" on the calendar.  Jamie for sure, is still in denial.  He keeps managing to find rogue wise men, and accidentally forgotten ornaments which he pulls out with a triumphant  "Look mom!  Does this mean it's still Christmas?".   Ahhh....sorry son,  now eat your green smoothie and finish your spelling test.  

Charlie is channeling his inner Mohandis Gandhi this week, and staging a food strike.  I thought Jamie was going to be my hardest challenge on this no-sugar thing.  But Jamie knows no guile.   He's as stubborn as hell, but once you've got him won, he rarely looks back.  I wish somebody had told me this about him as a baby.  You know, like in the owners manual that was supposed to come with him out of the hospital, instead it took us years to figure it out.   Charlie on the other hand is more reasonable on the surface, but plays the long game.   He didn't pitch a huge fit like Jamie did, but quietly started stashing treats around the house like a squirrel.  When that didn't work out for him, he still didn't argue, he just refused to eat.  And he continues to refuse to eat anywhere close to his normal food consumption.   A little piece of fruit here, a little handful of lettuce there.  Thankfully, a fair amount of meat has been casually consumed when he thinks no one is paying attention, relieving some of my worry about him starving himself, but on the front he remains in an iron gridlock against me.   His too little and scrawny for me to hold out on him much longer, so I hope he gives in soon.

I love having all boys, I really do, but I look at Robbie and just know he's not going to be easy either.  Oh sure, he looks perfectly innocent now, with his chubby cheeks and bright blue eyes.   He sleeps well, eats well and poops well, which I'm pretty sure is the Holy Grail of babydom.   But he gets that Ramsey glint in his eye, and sets his mouth in a little stubborn straight line that tells me I'm in for it in the future.

We were up in LA this weekend for a board meeting for Guatemala Deaf Ministries.   Not typically how I'd choose to spend my weekend, but lots of good stuff happened.    I cooked most of our food ahead of time, and packed it up in a cooler with us, so we wouldn't be a pain in the butt to host.  I made up a recipe of Paleo chili that I thought my chili-hating-husband would eat, and lo and behold... it was a huge hit!   I'm posting it here in case anyone needs and easy low-carb dinner idea, and to remind myself what I did.

Paleo Vegetable Chili

• 1 lbs ground beef
• 2 large onions, chopped finely
• 1 poblano pepper,chopped finely
• 2-3 zuchinni finely chopped
• 2-3 carrots finely chopped
• 1 tbl ground cumin
• 1 tbl garlic powder
• 1/4 C. chile powder
• 2 cans  tomato sauce
• 3 C beef stock
• 2 tsp 100% cocoa powder (the bitter unprocessed kind) 
• Salt and pepper to taste

Saute meat and onions together until meat is cooked through, add the rest of ingredients and cook on low for several hours until the beef stock cooks down and everything gets thick and blends together like chili.   We served it over baked sweet potatoes. 


It rains so little in Southern California, I sometimes forget what the color green looks like. Real green... Not the manufactured sprinkler kind, but the luscious rolling hills kind that you see in Lord Of The Rings.    Too bad our kids live in the age of electronics, and left their old fashioned parents to enjoy the view outside the window. 

God, please make it rain cookies

    I gave Charlie lessons tonight, on how to eat something you don't like.   I thought it was a skill that came naturally for all kids, regardless of nationality, race or culture...but apparently my kids missed out on the valuable life skill of plugging your nose and washing vile stuff like eggplant or mushrooms down your throat with copious amounts of liquid.

Charlie has been testing me right and left.  I don't know why I ever thought he was the calmer of the two.  Right now he's worse than a teenaged girl.  The expressions on his face are never the same for more than two seconds in a row, and God forbid you piss him off.   I'm sure it's just a combination of holidays, grandparents syndrome, and his extreme angst over this diet change, but it's exhausting.  It feels like we're disciplining him and training him round the clock.  

  Tonight during family devotions (which we still haven't figured out a good routine for), Charlie prayed that God would please send cookies and normal food again.  

 Charlie thinks he's the hulk.  As in THE INCREDIBLE HULK.   But he's a superhero that still loves to cuddle with his mommy.  Of all my children, he's the most likely to come up behind me, wrap his arms around my neck and whisper how much he loves me. 

The nice thing about the foods we're eating, is Robbie can (and does!) eat everything.  The kid is a regular garbage disposal for anything he can get his hands on.   Jim and I were reminiscing about Charlie as a baby, and how he ate everything too.  What happened?  Jamie, was so picky and neurotic about food as a baby, that his occupational therapist said he was likely always going to have food hangups with textures and stuff  (that's right, he already had a OT at 9 months old).  But now, he's the less picky of the two.   Charlie, who ate like a football player with a starvation complex,  is the food weirdo.   His fork has to be just right,  his food has to be arranged in a particular fashion,  it has to be even, it has to be separated properly...the list goes on and on, otherwise he has a complete meltdown.    It's driving me crazy. 

Robbie is crying.  Poor kid is exhausted today.  I woke him up early because I had to go to work today, and Liz watched the kids.   She's such an awesome sister.  Here are our "babies".   I think Nelson is much better behaved already than Robbie, but Robbie doesn't eat holes in my kids shirts (yet). 

Why cloth diapers are a deal with the devil.

It's been a blustery winter day.  Jamie and Charlie are doing a lot better with the regiment of antibiotics and breathing treatments pumping through their bodies, but they were cranky, cranky, cranky.

My children have lost all their negotiation skills.   Months of having their aunts and uncles wait on them hand and foot, and now that they're left to their own devices it's dog eat dog.  Seriously, they're like wolf cubs, tumbling all over each other.  There was even some biting today (a heinous crime that hasn't reared its ugly head around here in some time).   This afternoon they were building a mega train city, and I finally had to divide the tracks evenly, and have them build two separate tracks.  Of course, then they wanted to go back and forth between each other's cities, so we had to build a connection between the two.  Commerce proceeded fine from then on, until the bigger brother started coming over whenever he wanted to, so they had to implement a fence and border with permission protocol to come across. Go figure.  This is why politics are always the same...whether you're children or giant countries. 

Robbie woke up from his nap in such a state of adorableness, I couldn't help but cover him in kisses and take his seven month picture.  His nursery makes me happy every time I go in it.  It's like a peaceful haven in my otherwise crazy house.  I also love seeing all my soft, fluffy, beautiful cloth diapers folded and ready to go in the changing table.   A changing table!  I feel so spoiled to have one after changing the diapers of five siblings and two children without one.

I wish I didn't like cloth diapers...I really do.  I feel like a smoker who thought they could stop any time, but can't.   I started cloth diapering thinking, "oh, I'll just try this for awhile and see what I think."  The problem is, they suck you in.  The first six months of a baby's life, it is so simple to do cloth diapers.  Babies are exclusively breastfed in the beginning, and their poop and pee is practically the same thing except the color.  You just throw those bad boys straight in the washer, with some special detergent and a little disinfecting tea tree oil and it's all good.   Really, it's that easy.   And then the horrid day comes when they eat their first peach, or pear or whatever, and it's all over.  You lay your bouncing, happy baby on the changing table, open their diaper, and things are never the same again.    You can't just dump them in the washer anymore.   Things like "toilet dunking" and "liners" and "diaper sprayers" start to enter your vocabulary.  It's awful.   I tell Jim "I'm switching to disposables!", but then I find myself standing in the disposable diaper aisle thinking...

1. The stench.  The smell of disposable diapers is awful after you've been cloth diapering for awhile.  Sure cloth diapers smell bad too after your baby has used them, but they smell like poop and pee.  Not poop and pee mixed with a spray paint factory.  
2. The crunchy plastic.   When your baby's bottom has been gently swathed in bamboo velour and the like, it feels plain wrong to slap industrialized plastic/paper/gel on their private parts. 
3. They're ugly.  It's hard to buy what essentially looks like paper towels and put them on your baby, when you have a huge assortment of brightly colored, and cute printed diapers waiting to be used at home. 
4. The cost.  This is really the clencher.   I always forget how expensive disposable diapers are until I come face to face with the cost, and am horrified.   Besides, it doesn't really matter how cheap the disposables are...they can't beat free.  

Free, soft, natural, beautiful diapers waiting for me at home, and I wonder what possessed me to walk down the disposable diaper aisle in the first place.  So I go home, and look at the giant pile of poopy diapers that have to be...dealt with.  And I want to turn around and run straight back to walmart for disposables.

That's how I find myself rinsing off poopy diapers outside, in the dark, and it's freezing.   I think I've certifiably lost my mind... until I see this nice beautiful stack of diapers and think.  Ah, I love cloth diapers!  Gah...It's a deal with the devil.

Mister, I'll make a man outta you.

I'm a mean mom. Today Jamie forgot to feed the chickens and was falling asleep in his bowl of scrambled eggs, so I launched into a lecture on responsibility so eloquent and vehement it was on par with Henry The Fifth's St. Crispins day speech. Then I made him do extra work, just to prove a point. Then I felt his forehead and realized he had a fever. Poor little son of mine. But did that get him out of doing school? No.

It's the bane of homeschoolers. While other kids get snow days and sick days, kids who go to school at home would have to be facing some pretty serious weather problems if they couldn't succeed at getting from their bunkbed to the kitchen table. The puny after affects of last week's cold wasn't going to stop us, so to school we went! Jamie sniffled and dozed, while I prodded and cajoled. Charlie wasn't much better. They were sick all last week and I was just done with the whole sick thing. Done with the whining. Done with having three kids hanging off me at all times. Done with getting up two dozen times in the night (and I wish that was actually as hyperbolic as it sounds... I'm good with getting up two or three times a night...it's when it passes six or seven that I start to get really cranky)

But as today wore on, I started to think maybe it was a little more serious when I caught Charlie batting at invisible flies around his head. "Do you hear that mommy?"
"The dog snoring?"
"No...the bugs."
And every time I turned the vacuum on, he clapped his hands over his ears and started crying. Not a good sign.

Jamie sounded like a tuberculosis patient and between the two of them, I didn't get much done except realize they needed to go to the Doctor. I wasn't successful. Insert a ton of drama with their pediatrician and their insurance...and we finally sought help from our beloved Aunt Patti who came to the rescue. Charlie has a double ear infection and Jamie has a chest infection.

And so now we're all nebulized and medicated. Feverish little bodies are tucked into bed and prayed for, and I'm crossing my fingers that tomorrow will be better.

Nom-nom-nominative

We're going to have to start using leaves from the avocado tree in the backyard for toilet paper if I don't get to the store soon. I tried to go today, but one napless baby, two tired little boys, and too many errands meant I didn't make it quite that far. At the point in time all three of them were crying, and I accidentally wrestled my evil-minded grocery cart into the derrière of a well padded woman, I realized it was time to call it a day. Nobody wanted to see the Ramsey's out and about anymore, and I was tired of apologizing for all the stupid things I was doing.

The boys are struggling with some sugar cravings... We all are (ahem). I was standing in the check out line fantasizing about the almond joy bar in front of me when I remembered I don't even like coconut. That's when I noticed the boys sitting unawares on the germ-infested floor, ogling the candy selection. Now, we're not a sugar-happy family. I can't bake, I never make desserts and there are four containers of expired ice cream in our freezer. We have our food vices (like my soup addiction) but too many sweets is not among them. So, it was super surprising to see Jamie and Charlie studying a display of candy like it was a Lego catalog. I got to practice my "no-you-can't-have-candy" speech in the store while my children whined and begged, which I've always secretly judged other moms for doing. I told them their stomach was tricking them and it didn't really want candy... It was asking for good food. I got home and Jamie ate four scrambled eggs, and two pieces of celery and then passed out on the couch. I guess he really was hungry...and tired. Charlie cried the whole time Jamie was eating his snack. I seriously don't know what to do with that child.

I'm so glad feeding Robbie is a lot more uncomplicated. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all the same. Always prepared, always healthy and always the perfect temperature. Why do babies have to grow up? Of course I say that, but really we all love watching him grow and do more things every day. Today he tried to choke on an apple at the park, and he kept knocking off a framed list of posted rules at school today (proving that his days of chilling in the ergo while I teach, are over). Fun, fun.

A mom in my class got a picture of me teaching today. I'm including it to prove to future-Jamie that despite him hating school, I really do try to keep it interesting. Despite current fashion trends... I really don't go around usually with Kleenex taped to my shoulders and an apple on my head. It was a mnemonic device to remember Latin noun endings. I pinned it to my knees, so it should be in my head for life now.

The candy wrapper on my foot was for "nom-nom nominative". Get it? Candy is nom nom.

...yeah, I clearly still have sugar on the brain. Sigh.

A spoonful of sugar helps the Monday go down

Mondays are not sustainable around here. As in...something's gotta change. I'm not terribly good at puréeing cauliflower, while teaching Jamie how to make fresh water out of saltwater, while nursing a baby, while Charlie empties every drawer and cupboard in the house looking for his pretend pet snake.

Tomorrow is our first class day post-holidays, and our classical conversations stuff is scattered hither and thither. I was collecting targets for tomorrow's review game and was super impressed by how many I was quickly locating, until I realized the boys were taking the same ones out over and over again. Doh.

They were having too much fun to stop at such minor thwarting, so they upped their game to giving all my classroom supplies to Robbie to eat, breaking my pointer and covering the the kitchen floor with little pieces of eggshells for that nice crackle sound effect that makes you feel like you're walking across a floor of crunchy cockroaches.

Robbie is not allowed to walk until he is at least fourteen months... (and not just because this house is hazardous for his health) I don't have time for him to be mobile yet. As it is, today he somehow finagled his way underneath the rocking chair in his room and then couldn't figure out how to get out.

It was the kind of day that needs chocolate, but I stayed strong and didn't break into any of the decadent stuff Jim put in my stocking. Thankfully, the evening took a turn for the better. My husband makes everything ok (often just by his presence), I am however scheming on how next Monday can be less... Hair-pulling-inducing.

Also, I finally found a snack Charlie will eat! Roasted acorn squash seeds, which Charlie has dubbed "tiny chips". So it wasn't exactly the sugar he wanted, but whatever makes the begging for junk food to stop, makes me happy.

Veggie Hangover

Recording and journaling this new year has not been as easy as planned. I pictured myself sipping tea after the kids were in bed and enjoying a short time of reflection... Instead I find myself furiously pecking these musings out on my phone through a brussel sprout induced haze.

Years ago my parents thought it would be wonderful to go on the "Daniel diet" where we were supposed to eat nothing but fruits and vegetables for a month or whatever Daniel did. Normal people call that a vegan diet... Add primordial meat in and you've got the "whole 30" thing we"re doing. Back when we did the Daniel diet, our whole family fell immediately ill. The whole herd of us were crawling around dizzy, light headed, and throwing up. My dad declared the Daniel diet "finished" after a whopping 24 hrs. I swore I would never do that to my kids, but that was before I spent frustrating hours trying to get Jamie to sound out "c-a-t" while he went, "look mommy, coyotes! ... Do you think Darth Vader really became good at the end? How can you tell he's not pretending?....listen to me pop my elbow...can water kill you?... does God exist in the Avengers?... don't let Charlie touch my crayons, he's got cooties like a girl, only worse... etc etc etc.     His brain switches subjects so fast, I can barely keep up...add my gentle (not) motherly (if yelling counts) prodding to get his school done, and... Oy.   We needed a new plan of attack.   And this is how I ended up today with my carb-sugar craving body FREAKING out over my oh-gosh-why-can't-I-have-noodles existence.   And yes...just like with the Daniel diet of yore, we've all thrown up today.  It's been barrels of fun. 

Sprinkled with moments of hilarity watching a new human taste various foods for the first time


But enough of the bright spots, and on to more whining.  Laundry!  Mother of Mt Vesuvius bless us all.   Why do I do this to myself?  I put off washing clothes until the eleventh hour, and then I cannot catch up.  Also, my nomadic family has been in and out for the last four months, which means my house is a giant archeological dig featuring The Summervilles.   A sock here...a shirt there... pillows...blankets...sleeping pads...magazines...deodorant... all creeping out of everywhere.   I've been studiously ignoring it up until now, because there's no reason to get upset over something one can't control, but oh oh oh...now I've got sick babies, and school starting, and my house is in tatters.  And not the type of tatters, that can be fixed easily either. 

Speaking of broken things.   I'm posting a picture of the elephant Jamie made, because I'm sure it won't survive his childhood, as it can't be pressed into a memory book, but I think it's adorable and want to remember it.  Her name is Elefante, because Jamie continues his lifelong preference of calling a spade, a spade.  But as he pointed out, he muchly prefers the Spanish "f" vs. the obnoxious English "ph=f".  ("elefante" being one of maybe five Spanish words he knows thanks to my little sister Julia).

This peppermint tea is fantastic. Maybe this day wasn't so bad after all.