I'm falling even more in love with you...

One decade ago today, Jim asked me to marry him.   One decade.  I hope the fact that ten years still seems like a long time, is proof of my youth.   I remember when I was six or seven years old, I overheard my grandpa say "It was only ten years ago." And I was truly flabbergasted someone could combine "ten years" and "only" in the same sentence.    Now, I too can toss out a flippant "a mere ten years ago Jim and I got engaged."  Except that it does feel like a really big deal.

I can't believe I got engaged so young.   It was such a big decision to trust to my 19 year old self.   The current me would be terrified to make such a life altering call, I'd agonize over it all, and probably have lots of mental hoops I'd check off to help make sure I wasn't making a mistake.   I love that I got to fall head over heels in love, and get swept off my feet without annoying pragmatism or doubts  (and that it had a happy ending. heh).  I literally would have moved heaven or earth, lived under a bridge, eaten cabbage and water, and worn a potato sack for the rest of my life if it meant being with Jim.   Since we had such a strict courtship, and lived across the country from each other, I still wake up and marvel that I got so lucky.  It made me grateful for what I have.  Not that I'm recommending an arduous mating process that involved four parents (with conflicting opinions), and a long list of rules that changed and morphed on a weekly basis, but it did carry the unexpected side affect of making both Jim and I eternally stoked at being together.  Ten years later we're still all:  We get to hold hands! and kiss! Awesome!  

 Jamie and Robbie have been playing with trains together.  It is so darn cute.  I can barely stand it.  Right now Jamie and Robbie are BFF's and Charlie is the odd man out (poor thing).  I wonder if it will change as Robbie gets older, or if personality-wise Jamie and Robbie are more compatible (poor Charlie again).  I think being the middle child is mind-bogglingly difficult, and I'm worried I'm going to botch it all up with Charlie.  But then again, I say that from my lofty place as eldest, first born, and queen of my siblings.  *wink*

The bend in the road

Yogurt making was an abject failure.  My sister makes it sound so simple.  Just 1,2,3...done. Easy peasy... if you're Liz.   I swear everything like this is easy for her.  I, on the other hand, was not cut out for yogurt making, bread making, or anything like it.   I was doing fine with the yogurt up until the part where I was supposed to keep the mixture at 100 degrees.   It's so cold in my house (we keep our thermostat at 64), the yogurt kept dropping down to 70 degrees, so I'd turn the crockpot on and heat it up to 100,  then it would get cold again, and I'd turn it on again.

And yeah, there are only so many times I can successfully remember to do that before the unicorns in my brain distract me and I forget.   I inherited the curse from my mother, who got it from her father.   Jim doesn't always believe me, but I actually don't have the worst case of it.  I have siblings who have far more terminal cases of absent-mindedness. Truly.

Anyway, all that to say, I didn't just destroy the first batch of yogurt, but the second and third batch as well.  That takes talent.  And I think I proved it's going to take something a lot more foolproof than a crockpot for me to make yogurt successfully.

Charlie was so disappointed about the yogurt (which we were going to add to our diet after the 30 days).  I tried to console him with apple patties and roasted carrot fries.  At least mommy can cook, right?  



Girls and boys are so different.  Since I teach a class of all girls (5-7 year olds), but am a mom to all boys, it's always adorably awesome how different the two can be.   I counted it a huge success yesterday, that we got through a study of the Renaissance artist Durer without any tears.   Heaven forbid anyone make so much as a teensy mistake or it's drama on the high seas.  They all try so hard to be perfect.   Jamie on the other hand comes out of his class with "Great day mom! I only got two warnings."



We do a kids Bible story hour with some good friends.   Jamie and Charlie adore these girls, even though I think the girls get frustrated sometimes with my sons lack of knowledge.   I mean, how can Jamie and Charlie not know what a barbie is?  But the tables turned when Charlie whipped out his lightsaber yesterday and both girls gasped.  "What is that?"  My kids stared at them in disbelief.   What kind of dull life would it be if we went so much as one day without a good riveting conversation about whether or not Darth Vader is in heaven?  When we got to the park yesterday after CC, my kids not only had on their cloaks and lightsabers...they also provided their own theme music.  Which meant I made a smashing entrance with our picnic lunch to the Ramsey-boy beatbox version of the Imperial March.

We finished our Whole30-food-elimination-diet-cleanse-thingy today.   I feel oddly ill at ease about tomorrow.  I've gotten used to cooking this way, and feel kind of overwhelmed at where to go from here.   I didn't tell Jamie today was our last day, but at around lunch time he must have suddenly figured out it was the 30th, because he's been an unending stream of chatter ever since then.

"Mom. CHEESE.  We can have CHEESE.  Won't that be amazing?  CHEEEEESE!"
"Oh man, and cereal!  We can have cereal.  Don't you remember how delicious cereal is?"
"You know what I want for breakfast?  Burritos.  I think I could eat burritos forever and ever."

I don't have the heart to tell him he may never get to eat any of those things on a regular basis again.  But truth of the matter is, I don't really know what was triggering his ADD and dyslexia.   Cutting everything out was the easy part.  Adding stuff back in seems like it's going to be a lot harder.

But hey, at least my kitchen is clean again.  And we did it!  We ate nothing but fruits, vegetables and meat for 30 days!

The land of nothing.

Jamie today asked me "You know what my least favorite thing is in the whole world?".   This is a loaded question because there are endless lists of things in the world that aren't to Jamie's satisfaction.  "Nothing."  He said. "Oh," I beamed "You like everything?"  (what a happy grateful boy, yay for all those talks we've had recently about selfishness)

"No.  You have nothing to eat!"
"You never feed me!"
"Whenever I ask what I can eat for a snack, you say 'nothing'."
"I hate 'nothing'!"

Oy vei.  Yes.  I can see those lessons are working well.   I really do feed my children, despite their constant complaints that I give them NOTHING.    Jamie and Charlie had eggs, sweet potato hash browns, bananas and sunflower butter for breakfast.  Slices of turkey, spinach, and chili pumpkin seeds for snacks. For lunch they had roasted carrot soup, homemade chicken nuggets, and sweet potato gnocchi with roasted red pepper bolognese sauce.  For dinner they had panang curry loaded with vegetables, served over cauliflower, with a big spring greens salad, and massive slices of watermelon. These are not starving children!  I'm about to go mad trying to feed them, and instill gratefulness into their ornery little souls. 


Robbie on the other hand, couldn't be more happy at this stage in his life.   When he was born, he was so good, so easy going.  Then that went out the window when he decided all baby gear were really torture devices handed down generation to generation from the Spanish inquisition.  Slap some primary colored paint on it and call it an exersaucer.   He was not to be fooled.   Most mornings you could find him hollering at the top of his lungs from the depths of his baby toys and bouncer, while I cooked his older brothers breakfast.  It's really rough being third born sometimes.   But now he's been released from prison, because he can crawl!  He circles around the kitchen island, emptying tupperware cupboards and ripping apart anything he can get his hands on.   I am thrilled.  He can empty all the drawers he wants, as long as he gives me two seconds to do math with Jamie.

The boys are fighting a lot lately.   It's tricky, because they're both at fault.  Jamie eggs Charlie on and on, until he pushes him just a little too far, and Charlie gets mad.  But Charlie can't just start crying.  No, he has to check and make sure I'm within eye and ear shot, and then he lets loose a bloodcurdling scream that would convince the worst hearing aids that someone was being murdered.   I come bounding to the rescue, breathing evil mommy fire in Jamie's direction, when Charlie wails "Jamie touched me on the elbow."  

So I got out a big basket of clean laundry and declared a new punishment.  Whenever Charlie screams, they both have to fold laundry.  So far it works like a charm.   After three or four bouts of laundry folding, I was sitting on the couch nursing the baby.   Jamie and Charlie were playing Jedi with their lightsabers and Charlie inevitably got whacked a little too hard, and started screeching at the top of his lungs... but only for a half second, before he threw a panicked look my way and clapped his hand over his mouth.  Jamie "kissed" the booboo and promised not to hit so hard.  Both of them were whispering and giving me worried looks.  I'm ok with this arrangement.  Anything that makes me the bad guy, and keeps them on the same team, growing closer to each other is fine by me. 

My goal for Mondays are: 

Complete all of Jamie's school assignments.
Cook healthful meals and keep the kitchen clean.
Prepare everything for Classical Conversations.
Have the house clean by the time Jim gets home.

I asked Jim to judge the result, and my skills ranked a 7.5 today.  School, food and CC got done (thank goodness).  Unfortunately, the house was only kinda clean, and the kitchen was a hazard zone... BUT I was madly cleaning it when Jim walked through the door, so hopefully that counted for some points.   I think I lost some points though, for being cranky.   Which is a bummer, because the whole point in crossing a million things off my to-do list, was so I could relax and enjoy a pleasant evening with my awesome husband and kids. 

Thankfully a kiss made everything better. 

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. 

Jack Sprat Could Eat No Fat

We moms are crazy excited about growth percentiles.  I don't know what it is.  We all tell each other it doesn't matter.  The doctor tells us is doesn't matter, that they really only looking for healthy patterns, etc.  But heaven forbid we leave a doctor's appointment without finding out what the height and weight percentile is.    I especially look forward to Robbie's appointments, because he's so fat and sassy.   When Jamie was a baby, all we ever got was complicated, depressing information.

I made Robbie a doctor's appointment last Friday, because he was having trouble getting over a cold, and had relapsed with a fever.   I just wanted to take him in and get his ears and lungs checked,  so I was a bit surprised when they launched right into his 7 month, well-baby check up.   My luck with good appointments ran out, and our skinny genes struck again.   Robbie dropped from the 65th percentile for weight, to the 10th percentile for weight, which sort of concerns pediatricians in general.   Doctors want to make sure you aren't...you know...feeding your baby slim fast and diet coke.   Personally, I opt to feed my baby something worse.  Homemade baby food.  Nasty stuff made from things like parsnips and sweet potatoes.   The horrors.   But seriously, they were upset about the homemade babyfood.  Said it wasn't fortified with iron.  Ah, I told them, but I do fortify my babyfood with iron.  I cook his veggies in beef  bone broth, and puree spinach into his applesauce.    Nope, not good enough.  If it ain't in a box or jar, sitting on a grocery shelf for at least three months, then it ain't good enough for a baby.   Real food is dangerous stuff.  Best to stay away from it.

We compromised with testing his iron levels....which were not just normal, but fantastic.  So take that.  Score one for mommy.   Really, it's my dad's fault... and maybe Jim's brother Jordan... we have some skinny DNA in our family.  It's on both sides of the family.  I can't fight genetics no matter how much coconut oil I sneak into my kids food. It's not my fault.  I do feed my children a lot!   So the stats are (in case I'm looking for them later...someone remind me they're on my blog):  At seven months Robbie is 28.5 inches long and 16lbs 11 oz.   He is one long little dude with a small head and chubby thighs.  (I don't care what the doctor says, this kid does have chub).

I lost the next round.  I was trying to delay Robbie's vaccinations, but got a little freaked out when they got mad at me for endangering every child in the waiting room.  Between that, and the CPS paperwork they said they had to fill out (standard procedure),  I handed over my baby going "take him, just please do whatever you need to do."   I'm not militantly anti-vaccine...I just wanted to wait until he wasn't so little, but apparently that is a cardinal sin at this practice.  Thankfully the whole experience was more traumatic for me than it was for Robbie. 

It has not been the best week in the Ramsey household.  We lost some chickens last night to a bobcat.  Jamie's favorite pet chicken Heather, was one of the victims. Jamie made the discovery early this morning, and somewhere in the onslaught of pure Jamie emotion, my sleep addled brain turned on my phone to record him.   I know I shouldn't laugh at him, because honestly, I was pretty upset about it too, but this is a good example of how life is with him all the time.   The highs are high, and the lows are low. 

 

He's playing baseball this season.  Tryouts were on Saturday, and he was so excited.  Can't wait until the season starts. 

Damn the Dam

The meeting of the dogs went well today.  Nelson is so cute, even if he did poop all over our puzzles. 

Jamie and I had a nerd-argument over Star Wars.  Specifically, Jamie blames Luke Skywalker for his father Darth Vader's death, while I'm pretty sure the correct answer is, the mortal blow was from Emperor Palpatine's blue lightening.   But as Jamie pointed out, if Luke would have just gone ahead and switched to the dark side, like his destiny was supposed to be...then the whole kerfuffle with the Emperor never would have happened.  And aren't children supposed to obey their parents? 

Uhhh...yes.  Yes, children are definitely supposed to obey their parents unless their parents ask them to do something wrong?  Is that the right answer?   I feel like I could answer questions like that so many different ways, I'm never sure which way is the best way. 

Like the word "dam" and "damn".  Try explaining the difference to a very literal first-grader.   We finally resorted to pictures.

There's a framed Bible verse in our kitchen that says "Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin."  Jamie never really paid attention to it, even though I'd read it to him occasionally, and then one day he gasped in horror when he saw the reference,  "James 4:17"  and realized it was his own name.   Now, he sort of skirts by it cautiously and sends furtive glances its way, like it's some sort of judgement of God upon him personally. 

Charlie asked me tonight if kisses last forever, or if they fall off.
I have no idea!  Because my first thought was...of course they don't come off!  Kisses last forever.  And then I thought...what if you're kissed by someone you didn't want a kiss from?  Then you'd definitely want to think those kisses wear off.  So I told him whenever he felt like he needed more kisses, he was free to come get them from me any time he wanted.   I love my wee little boys.   I love that I can still cover their soft little faces with kisses.  I love that my kisses are still magical, with special healing powers that cure everything from skinned knees to offended souls.   What am I going to do when they're gangly teenagers?  Ack! Perish the thought. 

3,2,1...Blast Off.

     My poor-pity-me-moment for the day, is my hands are so chapped and dry, they're cracked and bleeding.  My nails are broken down past the quick and some of them are are bleeding at the nubs.  Washing dishes is a painful affair, which is bad because there are a looooooot of dishes right now.  I had no idea how much I'd come to depend on processed foods.  Take ketchup for example.  Normally it takes you 30 seconds to throw it in your grocery cart at the store, and you're done.   The next time you're at home and need ketchup, it effortlessly appears out of the door on your fridge.  Magic I tell you.   I have no factory food fairies working on my behalf anymore, so to get something as fanciful as ketchup, I have to juice an apple, grind spices, and mix tomato pulp together in a bubbling reduction until it resembles something my children will agree to dip things into.

    The kids finally came out of their food strike stark, raving, starving.  Jamie ate three hamburgers today (veggie burgers in lettuce wraps, loaded with avocado and tomatoes), a whole cucumber, two bananas, an apple, grapes, a bag of pistachios and a small container of sesame seed butter.   For dinner he happily downed piles of and piles of cauliflower, mushrooms, onions, chicken and sweet potato.   Charlie wasn't far behind him.  I'm going to have to go back to the grocery store at this rate.   It's mind boggling, because they wouldn't have touched this food a week ago.  Now they're fighting over who gets bigger second helpings. 

Robbie didn't poop yesterday for the first time in his entire life.
Every diaper change, I stared worriedly at his empty diaper, like an empty beach before a tidal wave.    This morning.  Still nothing.  I changed his diaper, got him dressed, buckled him in his carseat, and left for school.   Sure enough, stuck on the freeway in rush hour traffic, I hear a rumble from the back seat.   There's nothing you can do of course when that happens, except pray that you still have a back seat when you arrive at your destination.  It was one of those epic diapers that every baby has in their career.   Today's was definitely one of Robbie's top five.

I hate weeks that start at 100mph and weren't preceded by a relaxing weekend.  I feel like we have been on the go, go, go  too much, but I'm not sure how to slow down.

Here's the play set Jim put up on Saturday. He's in the bathroom right now building me a diaper sprayer after just walking in the door from work at 8pm.  Then we're doing our crossfit workout with the homemade medicine ball I rigged out of some duct tape, a walmart bag, and the kids old trick or treat pumpkin.  See?  Way too busy.