Only 360 More Days Until Christmas!

I know this because Grandpa Don kept a close count for us starting Christmas morning. We had a wonderful Christmas and it was so nice to enjoy it with my parents here and not just ourselves alone. I know some people really like that, but not me. All my Christmas memories are of lots of family around, otherwise it feels like something is missing.

Our morning started about 6:30am when Alton woke up. We were mean parents and made him stay in our bed until 7am. Then everyone else started to wake up so we headed downstairs. Alton and Alayna's reactions were textbook of course. Avery could only take in one gift at a time. The first thing he saw that Santa had left him was a garage all set up with cars ready to drive all over. He headed straight for that and stayed there playing until we finally tried to get him to notice his other gifts. That didn't really work even though almost every gift he got had four or more wheels or else was a book about four or more wheels. Pa Pa (my Mom) ended up opening most of his presents. Rob decided that half of them were to be rewrapped and regifted on his 2nd birthday which is January 17th.

When presents were done, we headed to the kitchen for a big breakfast (or at least it was to us), then about two hours later, we ate a big lunch. Yes, I did have meat at this meal, a large organic beautiful ham. I have really fallen off the wagon lately. We stayed around the house the rest of the day just relaxing and eating and eating.

The next day we headed out of town for a trip to D.C. We wanted to take in some of the sights and just get an overall feel for the place. Because we did not want to risk another $100 parking ticket (which by the way, I got out of), we opted to take the metro. Of everything we did that day, that would have by far been the most amusing experience to any spectator outside our family. We were stressed out just trying to purchase the little fare cards out of the vending machine thing. Then going up the escalator with 3 kids, a stroller and everyone holding their coats, well that was fun in itself. By far however, the biggest challenge of the day was getting on the metro itself. It got there pretty quick after we were standing there waiting for it. The doors open and people get on really fast. The kids hopped on first and I followed with Avery in the stroller. The metro is not particularly stroller friendly. We walked aways down the length of the car bumping people as we went trying to find seats. There was only one. Alton sat down, the doors closed and off the metro went. This left Alayna and I grabbing onto whatever we could. Everyone seemed to be looking at us. We were the only ones standing and so I felt as if I had messed up somewhere. I probably did look a little silly clutching the stroller and bracing myself with one foot about 12" behind the other. I looked behind me to see my Parents and Rob happily riding along about 3 yards away. I didn't know that the metro would stop every two minutes and that more and more people got on. I soon realized that standing was a normal thing and that grabbing on to bars and hanging over the people sitting down is also quite normal.

About halfway through the ride, Avery decided that he was done sitting in his stroller and began wriggling and fussing. He is by far the wiggliest child I've ever had. This called for a pass the kid to the other parent while riding the metro scenario which meant I had to actually talk; which by the way, no one really does on the metro except for the guy wearing the ski hat with the ponybob on the end who had been carrying on a conversation with himself the whole way. I raised my voice to get Rob's attention and everyone not wearing an iPod began to watch us attempt the pass. We accomplished this fairly smoothly. Avery was happy and our ride was soon over.

After making our way through a couple of Smithsonian buildings, it was time to go. This time, feeling that I was now metro savvy, and able to sit in a seat, I actually enjoyed the ride back. I felt pretty proud of myself until I watched the calm and collected woman who did not speak english, get on with her four children and very large stroller. She did not have three other adults to assist her like I did either. Oh well, someday that will be me after I get a few more rides under my belt.

The Tooth Drama Continues and other Amusing Ditties

No, the tooth is not out yet, but I have to give Alayna credit for her cleverness. What she craves the most is the actual visit from the Tooth Fairy. Having watched plenty of videos with fairies and stories with fairies, to have an actual fairy visit her room will top a visit with a Disney Princess. The tooth isn't going anywhere for awhile, so Alayna crafted another way to lure the Tooth Fairy to her room. She created a fake tooth from paper and intends to place it under her pillow. The Tooth Fairy will visit tonight, but when she/he realizes there is a fake tooth under the pillow, he/she will reward Alayna with a fake dollar in the form of Monopoly money. The Tooth Fairy happens to be male in our household. He divulged his plan to me and seemed very pleased with himself as he ran off giggling like an ornery boy. I found it funny myself, but did my best to temper my reaction when he was around so as not to encourage his orneriness further. It would not be long before I was his next target with him being out of school for 19 days and finally having some free time on his hands.

There are more amusing stories to relate about Alayna. I realize that she is more often the topic of my blogs than the boys, but let's face it, she provides way more material than they do. I had an interesting conversation with her today. She asked why she only had two presents under the tree. I told her because I was not done wrapping and shopping yet. She then asked if she was only going to receive 6 presents and explained that this would not be a satisfactory Christmas if that were all she was to receive. I then reminded her of the children that we did shoeboxes for. We participate in that ministry every year and the kids really enjoy it. I asked Alayna why she should get more things than them as they might only be getting what was in the shoebox that we filled for them. She said,
"Oh don't worry. Santa will bring them lots of presents because they are poor."
"No, Santa will only bring them two. (This is the standard amount in our house not including stockings). How many presents do you need for this to be a good Christmas?"
"Oh, about 20, " was her reply.
"Really, 20? Why should you get more than the shoebox kids?"
"Well, they got about 20 presents."
"Would you be happy just to get pencils and notepads if you got 20 presents?"
"Yes," was her reponse.
Does this mean I will wrap up 20 pencils for her? No. She'll just have to be happy with what she gets and honestly, she will be having a decent Christmas, so she's just going to have to deal with it. I think most parents realize (especilaly the more kids you have) that indulging your children with everything they want, not only spoils them, but you have to find a place to put all that stuff and it really stresses me out. I am always frantically going through their rooms each year before Christmas to give as much stuff to Goodwill as possible to reduce clutter and just stuff.

The Loose Tooth

Alayna has been waiting for this day for a long time, having watched her older brother start loosing his teeth shortly after age 5. She has been six for a month and only just now having her first loose one. Just two days ago I could barely wiggle it. When she showed it to me, I off-handedly told her to wiggle it whenever she thought about it and promptly forgot about it...or at least I tried to. You see I liken children having loose teeth to pottytraining. It is not a pleasant circumstance. That is because my only experience in dealing with these "teeth on the go" has been with Alton. To this day, Rob and I are completely traumatized by each little tooth that had to come out. Alton would never let us even look at them and the screaming fits and drama that followed when the tooth absolutely had to come out because big teeth were coming in behind them left Rob and I in need of a vacation. Of course his reactions probably stem from the fact that with his first loose tooth I ended up pinning him to the floor and yanking it out with some floss. I don't recommend that route.

Anyway, things are different with Alayna. She has but one thought on her mind today and that is to get that tooth out at all costs. She is driving us nuts. Rob and I are both squemish about pulling and she is begging us to do so. We are not cooperating (I don't think the tooth is quite loose enough) and so she is taking things in her own hands. I had told her the story about how my Granddad pulled my first tooth with the door slam method and how we never did find that tooth. She was at it bright and early this morning with her floss tied on the tooth and trying to slam the door to her room. She must herself be a little uneasy, because door slamming is one of her mastered skills, but the tooth has not come out.

Her brother is now involved and they have tried all manner of bizarre methods. The funniest one has been the alkaseltzer rocket. Alton learned how to make these in Science and admittedly, Mom and Dad have enjoyed setting them off as well. Alton's idea was to tie one end of the floss to the rocket and the other to the tooth and then launch. As far as I know, this wasn't a go. I've also seen them with a hula hoop going down the stairs and a Polly pocket car over the side of the bannister. At any rate, they are having fun. I'm sure the tooth can't wait to get out of there for all the abuse it is having to suffer.

Newer Blog

Okay since my natural health blog got way more response than any of my family blogging, I guess I will make it a little more regular, but not here at the fam blog.

So my new blog has just birthed a newer blog
go to http://www.allnaturalarmymom.blogspot.com/ for all the natural health stuff and stay here for the family stuff. I'll keep a link to the new one from here, but not a link to the family blog from there.

Definition of an Infection

Today, I'm feeling inspired to take a slightly different direction with this blog. I promise this won't happen too often, but every once in a while I will have to satisfy my desire to impart helpful knowledge to whomever will listen to me. With this being prime time for ear infections, I thought this would be a great time to blog about infections in general.

Wait! Don't stop reading! While a blog on infections may sound boring or even disgusting, sometime in your life you will have to deal with it if you are on the SAD diet (standart American diet) which most of us are. Unless you are eating mostly raw, there is a great chance that you will have to deal with an infection of some sort during you or your child's lifetime. So before you run to the doctor for such and such antibiotic perscription, hear me out. I'm going to say something shocking now: "There is another way. You don't have to use antibiotics to get over any type of infection." Hmmm....I should probably post some legal disclaimer about now so that people don't come after me and try to lynch me over the internet! Okay, so we'll just say that this is my own experience and you will have to make your own medical decisions. Don't end up on your deathbed with an out of control infection and say that Traci told me not to get treatment. The simple fact is, that an infection usually cannot and should not be ignored. I'm just suggesting a healthier, natural way to go about it.To start, I'm just going to define an infection and hopefully take some of the ominousness out of that word
An infection is just an overgrowth of bad bacteria. I'll repeat that. An infection is just an overgrowth of bad bacteria. I don't know how much everyone out there knows about their body's flora, but just know that you have it growing everywhere and that there's good guys and bad guys involved. One or the other has the upperhand usually and your health is greatly affected by them. This is a really simplistic explanation and I'm not going to bore you with all their different names and types, but what you need to know, is that diet affects who's winning the war over your body. For instance, the bad guys just love feeding off of mucous and sugar, refined carbohydrates, and putrefied and decaying meat. "But I don't eat putrefied and decaying meat" you say, well that is a whole other blog topic. When you're faced with an infection, what you need to do is battle the bad bacteria.

Doctors choose the pharmaceutical antibiotic route. Certainly, they have saved countless lives with this method, however one of the major downsides to it, is that it wipes out the good and the bad bacteria alike. I like to think of your body's flora like a lawn. You want to keep the weeds out. With antibiotics, you are wiping out all the weeds, but also most of the grass too. Now we all know, that when soil is bare, it's not the grass that's going to naturally shoot up and take over, it's the weeds. So it is very important, if you have used antibiotics to sow some grass seed afterwards so to speak. More on that later. In fact, this blog is going way longer than most blog readers' attention spans and I still have three school subjects to get done today, so I'm going to cut it off here and come back soon with Part Two of "Infections."

This and That

Before you read on, watch the video below (if you're wondering why my videos are not good quality it's because I'm using my cell phone to video until Sony comes up with a driver that will work with Windows Vista). I posted this video because I thought you'd like to see what our homeschool days usually look like....

yeah right! The reason I even videoed this was because there was a block of time for about 2 minutes when I sighed and said, "Ahhh" if only our family school room were always this peaceful. I won't be able to post a video of what it's really like because I'm too busy running circles around the table helping each kid and putting out fires. Either Alton is waiting on me for a spelling test or needs help pronouncing a word in Latin, or Alayna needs help reading a word in her instructions for her math worksheet, or Avery needs help with his "school work" which is playing with Play Doh in his highchair every single morning. He insists on being seated there and "working" like his big bro and sis. This works out pretty well, except that he wants to switch colors about every three minutes! We don't mix the colors at our house, but maybe we should now that I think about it because then they would all be that ugly brown color and he wouldn't care about switching! That is just our morning routine. The kids work on the things they can do themselves...sort of. In the afternoon while Avery is napping is when I do lessons. I really can't expect him to behave during our study of Colonial America, or sentence diagramming.