Streaming

It's time for a list post to get all caught up......

• Blaine was home from work three days this week, giving us five days at home.  It was such sweet relief for both of us.  He's been working OT for maybe a month now?  We are both burnt to a crisp from a lack of down-time.  It felt so good to be together.
• We can now put swollen lymph nodes and a second degree burn under our parenting belt.  Both Jamie, within a week of each other.
• The lymph nodes: right under the left side of his chin and creeping up his cheek.  Red, tender, inflamed and hot to the touch.  The only other sign of sickness was intermittent green goo from his nose and swollen tonsils.  Other than that, the boy was raring to go.  We weren't even sure if he was sick for awhile at the beginning (Truen waking up with a sore throat confirmed that it had to be something).
• The burn: on the back of his right hand and pointer finger, burnt on a hot stove pipe.  The poor little fella.  We immediately ran his hand until cold water and then applied lavender oil, which took the heat and sting out.  He's been mostly fine ever since.  Since it is at an odd angle, I've fashioned a bandage with non-stick pads and duct tape.  He had two big blisters which have since broken.  Things are tender, but we are amazed at how fast it is healing.
• I am mid-process in healing another cavity.  Strange, but true.
• It was a deep crevasse in my lower-left back molar; the deep part down below was black.  When I first noticed it, it was just a crack but then it got progressively darker and sensitive while eating until I eventually realized it was a cavity.  (It sounds so dumb, but it is the second cavity I've ever had so it took me awhile to catch on.)
• When I healed my first cavity (a brown, tender smudge on an inside molar), I followed Ramiel Nagel's advice: limit sugars, limit carbs, increase good fats, cod liver oil and butter oil (otherwise known as grassfed ghee), grassfed or wild meat, etc.
• This time 'round, I am generally eating like that anyway, so all I did was double my calcium supplement and more than double my cod liver oil intake (I also intermittently remember to use magnesium oil and just got some grassfed ghee to start taking butter oil again).  
•  I know I don't usually take enough cod liver oil (I base my recommendations off the WAPF guidelines) and I have been pregnant or nursing now for the last NINE YEARS.  Holy smokes.  That is a whole lotta output.  My teeth are showing the signs.  I've been taking, seriously, probably a couple of tablespoons per day.
• I don't know if teeth can regenerate, or what . . . but I am so serious . . . the crack is closing.  The black has lightened until is barely even noticeable and the crevasse in the tooth . . . is almost gone.  Un-un-un-un.  I feel so relieved.

 

Four brudders

• I realized last week that I don't have a pumpkin picture for you this year.  We didn't even carve anything!  Oh dear.  Our own pumpkins were a bust this year and we weren't able to go to the pumpkin fest at Blaine's parents' church (they did it on the last weekend of September this year and Sept. is out for us due to food preservation).
• The picture above was taken at Falls Park in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  We make the trek down there once a year to pick up our beef quarter (or twice a year, if we fly out of FSD) and I swear, we are like tourists.
• Last year we did the Sculpture Walk downtown and this year we went to see "the falls".  The boys beg for me to take pictures wherever we go.  It's kind of embarrassing, but I oblige them with a tender heart.
• I was out in the garden yesterday, picking the last of our collards, kale, parsley, and celeriac.  We had a night down to 4 degrees F and all these hardy specimens were still alive and edible.  Amazing.
• Jamie, Eliah and Blaine were napping while I was outside, but Diego and Truen came out with me (I made them, heh) and I noticed that they hovered and bounced around me wherever I was.  The sweetness, it hurts.  They literally want to be with us at all times.  I hope I am good enough for them.

 Halloween this year:

Diego was a frog, Jamie a bumble bee, Truen a lizard

 And the cutest little baby schicken ever.

• I'm really feeling the burn of four children and the intensity of the baby year.  I'm trying to remember that time is fleeting and to savor the days, but it is very difficult at times.  And that is putting it lightly.  I realized this morning that I feel like calling uncle.  UNCLE!!  This is hard.
• The biggest reason is the lack of down-time.  We all go to bed together, so that is out.  Nap and Quiet Times usually correspond, but a good number of the days my meager hour is diminished to 20-30 minutes, usually due to one kid or another waking up and needing me.  I also usually like to get up earlier than the boys to assure a quiet morning, but at the beginning I needed to sleep in with the baby to ensure adequate rest.  And now....?
• .......Eliah is waking up anywhere from 5:45 AM - 6:45 AM.  In other words, TOO EARLY.  Holy smokes.  He's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed too, totally happy and bursting with energy, ready to bounce out of bed for the day.  So lounging around and nursing for, say, an hour or so while I doze is out of the question.
• UNCLE.....!
• I'm working on cultivating happiness and gratitude though.  I've just accepted my "quiet mornings" with Eliah.  I know I will look back at them with a certain fondness.
• I am also working at maintaining a happy home.  I don't want my own selfishness to color my children's memories of home.  Stress or discontent or irritation.  They all exist, but I want the outcroppings of those feelings minimized so as not to allow them a foothold in our lives.
• Say it and think it and live it.  That's the way it happens.  It is a constant process of working and re-working.

QT is over, so I'm done for the day.  Word from the mutha.