catching up

i had a bunch of cute things to share. Unfortunately I forgot most of it! I will share some pics that are cute. I tried making a video of Jedidiah sitting, his new skill, but our camera is messed up. It won't let us download the video to our computer.

We have a bunch of head hunters here. There is a reward of $5 per siting that leads to the "capture" of each enemy. That enemy being black widow spiders. We didn't see any last year so I thought we were going to be in the clear. But not so. Isabella has made 15 bucks so far! One of them was on the outside of our house near our back door. The other two were near the house. I read up on them. I think we are seeing a lot of them now because they are looking for a new home. Once a female black widow finds where she wants to build her home she doesn't leave her web. You will also find her upside down in her web as well. Interesting stuff. The good new is that they are not agressive, and very rarely lethal. But non the less dangerous!

I had Isabella take the picture of Jedidiah all messy. This is a very encouraging sign....making messes! The fact that he didn't ever want to touch his food, and when he did he would freak is a sign of his reflux. This was the first time he decided to dig in and explore. So I let him! It might of helped that he didn't care for the meal. Otherwise he eats his food right up.




We have put ourselves in isolation. Jedidiah had been losing some weight due to many colds back to back. It has been VERY frustrating. So we decided to not go anywhere for a month. No church, no library, no park, no grocery store.....As hard as that is we have been rewarded with the fruits of our sacrafices--He's gained weight!! In the past few days he's gained 6 oz. We are very pleased and will continue with what is working.


Isabella and Moira have their year end testing next week. This will be Moira's first year of testing. I thought Isabella would grumble when she found out that testing was next week, but she is excited about it. She says she likes reading the stories and seeing pictures of animals.



I've been making small changes in our diet. I personally would really like to go cold turkey and switch right over to eating mostly raw foods, but no one else is with me :-) So I felt that doing something would be better than doing nothing at all, and that eventually we would make our way to eating mostly raw. The girls really love the whole wheat pancakes

I make, but I hated that we were drowning them in 'toxic' syrup. So I started making some froit toppings to put on. At first they protested, but eventually they caved and ate it, and lo and behold they like it! Their snack time has been healthier as well. I would really like to do away with store bought yogurt. It's toxic as well. Anything with that much sugar is toxic. I want to start making my own yogurt. Then their bodies can actually benefit from the good bacteria.



Well Little Man is supposed to be napping.....notice the words 'supposed to'. So I will have to write more later.

A Devo wanna be. Actually this is what happens when you leave the baby in Daddy's care :-)

Both Flannery and Saoirse could tell you how to put a feeding tube in a baby amd explain how you use the tube. I'm praying they won't have to use that information in their future.

I suppose people would look at us strangely if the girls took their dolls out in public. Their dolls all have feeding tubes! I took some pictures but they didn't come out too well.

A heavy heart...

My words escape me. I am not sure how to say it in a way that makes it ok....because it's really not ok. My Babci (my grandmother) passed away this evening. I have a ton of thoughts running through my head, but they can't seem to get out. So I thought I would make a list of all the things I remember about her.

Pop. (for you southerners, that is what northerners call soda) She always kept a large selection in her frigde, and if not she would always tell us where to get it, on the basement stoop.

Pajamas, we could always count on some awesome new jammies for Christmas. I always loved them.

Slippers of papchas (not sure how to spell it, but the Polish word for slippers). She always wore her slippers in the evening getting ready for bed.

Then there was the stickia (another Polish word for dish towel). Doing dishes with her.

I remember staying overnight one time and my sister and I getting in big trouble for talking in bed!

Sitting on my grandparents porch, trying to catch a summer breeze. She would be calling out to her neighbors who would be passing by.

Bobcageon (spelling?). Where we went almost every summer as a kid. We would have a cabin and then there was Babci and Dziadzi's (Polish for grandfather) cabin. It always seemed to smell of coffe. I remember her making fish there. Sitting around the bon fire, as the adults chatted away.

Then there was the time that she came to take care of us while my Mom went to the hospital to give birth to my youngest brother, Ryan. Tracy and I were about 10 and 11 years old. And as you know at that age a person posseses all knowledge :-) Babci didn't do anything right! Well we didn't think so anyways. We kept telling her we didn't do things that way, we did them this way, and I think she got a little tires of hearing that as I remember her telling us that while she was there we would be doing it her way :-) I seem to remember calling my Mom at the hospital and asking her WHEN would she be back?!?

She always cooked great food. I am thankful that I have her pierogi recipe and her pineapple squares recipe.

Of course she coined the phrase, " you're so bootiful"

She said the word 'thousand' as 'tousand', it always bugged me out when she did that :-)

Her playing cards. The adults would play cards in the evenings at gatherings. And of course they had to speak Polish half the time so that you didn't know what they were saying.

Well I am sure there are a bunch more, but it is late, the kids are still up (except Little Man). I need to get them off to bed as they were up early today.

Amazing feats,banana ice cream for breakfast and chicken pullups

Now there's an interesting title! Now for this amazing feat. My immediate family members will totally understand why this was such an amazing feat. Three of the girls needed allergy medicine. We got pills for Isabella and liquid for Flannery and Saoirse. Well I go to pick it up at the store. They only had Isabella's med and it was like 75$!! Whoa there! Thankfully it was because they didn't have our insurance info. So Jerry went back the next day to pick up the other girls liquid med and I told him it should be about 30$. Well it was like 150$. With insurance! Ok, so it's all the same med, just in a different form, and so our insurance won't pay for it. So I told the pharmacy to give me pills instead. They asked how they were going to take it, especially the 3 year old. I told them I would put it in applesauce. We get home and I put it in the apple sauce but Saoirse wouldn't take it. Flannery said, here give me mine. I told her how to put the pill in her mouth, follow it with a sip of water and swallow it all. Saoirse says, I want to do that too. Ok, i thought what is there to loose, but one of her pills. I give it to her and you would have thought she had done this before. Sip, swallow, she giggles, and runs off to play. Now I am still standing there almost with my jaw to the ground. If you have ever seen me take one pill, you would understand!!!!

Chicken pull ups are something new around here, sort of. It's not a recipe though. Saoirse came up to me the other morning and was mumbling something about chicken pullups. What? I aked her if she needed a new pull up as she is potty training and we have switched from diapers to pull ups. She says no, gets all frustrated and keeps talking about chicken pull ups. So i ask her if she wanted to eat some chicken, to which she just got more frustrated. Finally Moira chimes in that she wants one of her new pull ups (I bought a new package before we have used up the old one. The new ones have Tweety Bird on them). Moira said that Saoirse thinks that it's a chicken! Ha, ha! Ok, then chicken pull ups it is.

And for banana ice cream. We have really cut back on the amount of tv/movie time the girls have. They are obviously going through withdrawls as they asked to watch one of my videos called Rejuvenate with Serene. It's about eating raw and it has Serene showing you how to put some recipes together. One of the recipes is for ice cream. The girls kept bugging me to make it. They had asked to watch the video a few more times. They like to pretend they are doing a cooking show as well, when they are watching it. I told them that any raw food recipe that tries to mimic a cooked food recipe does not taste the same. That doesn't mean it tastes bad, but it's not the same. So I warned them that I would make the ice cream, but it wouldn't be the same. First I made a "chocolate sauce", which Saoirse really loved, the other girls didn't seem to like it much. Then for the ice cream. Frozen bananas, soem vanilla, a bit of milk (just a tiny bit), whirl it up in a food processor. They LOVED it. I made myself some (I can't have milk) with some bananas, water, vanilla and some almond butter (like peanut butter, but made with almonds). OH MY!! It was divine! Mind you I have only had some ice cream (made from soy) twice since Jedidiah was born, since I cant' have milk. This ice cream we made was awesome. This morning I didn't have time to eat what I've been eating for breakfast, as we were trying to get out the door to Isabella's soccer tournament, so I made some of the ice cream. Hey, it beats the normal breakfast fare!! It's actually great for you. :-)

Jerry took some really cute pics of Jedidiah the other day. I'll try to put them up later.