Last week we babysat Ada’s friend Alice for the afternoon.  Alice and Ada are almost the same age.  Alice is a few weeks older.

We played outside a lot.

Toddler face-off!

(Ada has a fantastically over dramatic frowny face she always makes, and lately it’s been even more dramatic by the addition of eye rolls with the frown and pursed lips.)

Alice tested out Ada’s new scooter.

Rosie played with her friend Hannah who lives down the street.

Bubbles were so exciting, and also something to fight over…

Rosie taught Ada to make this face, but I think it’s so rude.  I’ve been trying to teach them not to do it.  It’s usually accompanied by the stomping of a foot and a snort.  I hate it!

That is not the sort of attitude I want my little girls to ever have.  I don’t know where Rosie learned it.  She just started doing it one day and believe me I am quick to put a stop to it each time it pops up, yet it persists…

(Ada isn’t sun burned, her skin just flushes easily.  She’s actually considerably more than tan Rosie, Tyler, or me.)

Duck Face tastes everything.

Willow.

Pouting because it isn’t her turn with the bubble wand.

Duckling anatomy fail:  Big head and tiny little arms!

I am obsessed with Amish and Old Order Mennonite bonnets.  I totally have one in adult size too, and sometimes I wear it.

Funny adorable Alice:

That’s Alice’s uncle there behind the rocking chair, who was adopted from Eastern Europe a few years ago.

My chubby toddler drinking her “molch” as she calls it.

How do I keep running out of time to post here?  I love writing down thoughts and sharing pictures on my blog, if not for any other reason than I enjoy looking back at it years later.  I’ve been doing this for quite some time, since maybe 2002.  I’m too tired to look back and check the date of my very first entry, but it’s been years!

I can’t seem to catch up on anything lately.  I need a pause button.  Or maybe a part time nanny, and while we’re at it I’ll also take a house cleaner and heck, why not a butler too.  Oh and a professional dog walker would be pretty awesome.

Wait.  Then I wouldn’t really be living my life.  I’d just be directing it.  I might have time to post on my blog, but I wouldn’t have much to blog about.

Ah, well.  Conundrum.

I’m over tired and rambling.  Tyler accidentally woke up Ada at 4:30 this morning when he came home.  Tyler then slept until I woke him up to leave for work at 3 in the afternoon.  I feel like my eyeballs are melting in my skull.  I really need to go to bed.

But first, before I go cross eyed, I’ve got to share a couple things.

I met Rachel, a long time blog friend, today!  She has two daughters just a bit younger than Rosie and Ada.  Her daughter Ella and Rosie had a blast playing together at the park.  I think she’s the sixth person from the blog world I’ve met now.  Kind of thrilling. Who wants to meet up next?

(Rachel I hope you don’t mind if I post these pictures!  Feel free to steal them if you want any of them.)

It was super windy and kind of cool today.  I think the girls had fun anyway, despite Rosie not making it out the door with her coat.

Why does Rosie look so very old here!?  (My children are both huge compared to their peers.)

What an awesome “cheese” face!

They really liked that thing.  I think I need one in my backyard.

The sun was blinding today!  Too bad it wasn’t warm at all.  We’re even supposed to have a freeze tonight.

After playing on the playground we walked down to the edge of the lake to look at the geese and ducks.

The water level was abnormally low and there were way less birds than usual.  I’ve never seen the water that low before, it was weird.

We stepped down onto a spot that should have been underwater, but it was now a dry dirt bank.  Ada ran over and scooped up a baby duck.

She’s always trying to pick up wild birds because she thinks they are just like her pet chickens, domesticated. Usually of course the birds all fly away and she is dismayed.

This time the duckling didn’t run away.

See how small it is in comparison to Ada?  It has no feathers at all, so it must have just hatched in the past few days.

Nothing is wrong with it, it’s just tame.  Very, very tame.

Why is it so tame?  I think it was abandoned by someone.  An Easter gift that peeped too loud and pooped a lot.

Really, if you saw this giant toddler running at you, arms outstretched, grinning a la Darla from Finding Nemo…why in the world would you not run for your life?

Not only did it not run, when I put it down it hid underneath of me.  Then it wanted to follow me.

It was cold outside, windy, and there was no mama duck in sight.  No other baby ducks around.  I looked nearby on the lake and no other duck was worried about this poor shivering peeping ball of freaking adorable cute fluff.

WHAT ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?

Rosie named it Duck Face Amos.

It’s in a rubbermaid tub under a heat lamp, snuggled up in pine shavings at a nice toasty 100 degrees, basking in my living room.

Either my kids will remember they had an awesome childhood, or they will tell their therapist how crazy their mother was when they were growing up.

Tonight Duck Face Amos fell asleep snuggled up on Rosie’s shoulder by her neck.  When it was time to put Duck Face Amos in the brooder so the girls could go to bed Ada insisted on singing the duck her own version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which is something like this:

Twankle twakle little star, how I wonder who you are.
Up above the noodle so high.
Like a farm in the sky.
Twanke twankle little noodle star
Har har har har har har har.

“Good night Duck Face!”

And she kept blowing it kisses.

I die of teh cute.

Anyway, it was great to meet Rachel and her family.

I wish you all lived closer so our girls could play together!  Rosie loved Ella and has talked about her all night, even calling her by the correct name and not Emma. Haha.  Rosie tried to make us name the duck Emma too, and when I said no she picked Duck Face Amos.  Thinking we might have to change that once we can tell if the duck is male or female in about a month. 

Now, I have to go watch my one trashy TV splurge (16 & Pregnant) and go to sleep before my eyeballs really do melt in my skull.

Tomorrow I’m going to share some of the Easter pictures.  Egg dying first.  Then maybe the next day I’ll share the actual Easter day pictures…

If I survive.  Must force self to go to bed now.  I’m such a procrastinator.

Ok. Saving this.  Really.

That farm house already has a contract on it.  It’s an offer contingent upon the sale of the offerer’s house.

Extremely disappointed.  Might have to go curl up in a ball and cry somewhere.

The real estate agent said we could trump their offer if we could buy the house outright, but we’d also need to make an offer contingent upon the sale of our house and…yeah.  Unless the contract currently on it falls through and some kind of miracle happens re: the sale of our house, then it’s looking like moving to the beautiful land with the awesome barn is not happening.

This is depressing and frustrating.

I feel like we’re on the precipice of something big happening.  Some kind of major positive change.  But I don’t know what that will be or how it will come about.  I do know that we can’t continue living here for too much longer.  There’s just not enough space, the rooms are so small and there is no storage.  I want to have a third child and already there’s no place for Ada to sleep.  If we put a bed for her in Rosie’s room then the girls won’t have any space to play.  Argh.  Don’t want to think about it.

Once Tyler is hired on (in October, God willing) we will make enough money to get a bridge loan and be able to move and then sell our current house while vacant, which will be easier.

That means I need to plan this year’s garden for my yard here…hmm…it’s almost that time!

This afternoon Rosie and Ada went to a birthday party for Rosie’s friend down the street.  Rosie was so very excited to go to a birthday party!

Rosie and the birthday girl, Hannah.

Cake!

Pure excitement, with a hint of sugar high.  Love it.

Chatting family members…

Rosie gave her friend a stick horse for her birthday.

Pretty birthday girl!

Eating of cake.

Playing in Hannah’s room…

Very cute baby!  She was about six months younger than Ada.

Miss Rosie with icing all over her dress.

Saying goodbye and petting a stray cat, who has decided he lives there.

Ada playing outside in their yard, delaying going home.

Fingers crossed those pretend seeds grow with a little watering!

Note: The first half of the entry (the writing) is about Ada’s stomach virus, and poop vs. my food allergies.  If you’re eating or that offends you, you may want to skip to the cute kid pictures below.

 

Ada had her first stomach virus on Wednesday.

She woke up at 5 in the morning and burped then choked a little, and spewed.  Thankfully it was all breastmilk, but still.

She threw up all morning and all afternoon.  It was so heartbreaking.  She kept begging to nurse, and I would let her nurse for half a minute then take it away, and then she would throw it back up and sob for more milk.

I was getting worried, but around 5 in the afternoon she had some pedialite and it stayed down, and she got color back in her face and got up and started jumping on the bed.  It was like a weird horrible 12 hour virus.  Same thing Rosie had a few months ago exactly!

No one else got sick.  Knock on wood.

I’m thinking she picked it up either at the allergy doctor on Monday or the dentist on Tuesday.  I let her play with the toys at both places.  When Rosie got sick with the same virus it was after playing with the toys at the eye doctor.

I am a total germophobe.  I’m thinking I should never let them touch the toys at those offices again.  Healthy immune systems be damned.

 

Speaking of the allergist, I got some great answers there.  The appointment was for me.

Years ago, before I got pregnant with Rosie, I went to Mexico and stayed with a family there.  I got a parasite but didn’t know it.  The regular doctor just told me I had developed IBS randomly, so I suffered through random diarrhea every two weeks and increasingly horrible abdominal cramps.

I tried eating gluten free for months and I felt better at first, and then the cramps and diarrhea came back so I gave up on that and went back to eating delicious gluten.

At one point, before getting pregnant with Ada, I went to the herbalist my midwife recommended.  He said he thought I had a parasite and gave me some kind of creepy tree fungus tincture to take that would deworm me.

So I took this tincture, it was so disgusting tasting! I had to drink a whole little bottle of it at once and it tasted like…*shudder*….nursing home and bad vodka.

I got really high.  I felt like I was walking on marshmallows.  I’m guessing that’s what a bad, bad shroom high feels like.  Never again.  Ever.

Anyway, during the 24 hours after taking it I shat my brains out. Near the end I started pooping out worms.  Seriously–like something horrible you would see when you mistakenly look up human parasite pictures on google images.  It was one of the most horrific things that has EVER happened to me.

The herbalist said that the high feeling was from the toxins the worms release as they die and not from the tincture.  I don’t know…but it was NOT pleasant.

I had to take a second dose exactly two weeks later to kill any eggs.  The second dose also gave me explosive diarrhea, but no worms came out that time.  (Thankfully.)

The herbalist said that I could have lasting digestive effects from the parasite infestation. It damages your intestinal lining, causing you to suffer from leaky gut or food allergies and intolerance that you didn’t have prior to the parasite.

Fun, right?  Lucky me!

For future reference, if you ever travel to a third world country and come home with reoccurring Montezuma’s revenge then YOU MIGHT HAVE WORMS.

Just sayin’.

 

So.  That in mind, I have had random digestive issues ever since.  Not the same specifically horrible abdominal pain I had from the parasite, but something else.  Like gas bubbles, bloating, a general feeling like something was fermenting inside my gut.  Random diarrhea.  Really great wonderful, leaving me afraid to eat anything pretty much.

Finally I decided to go to the allergist.  I tried to research different methods of food allergy testing and it was very confusing.  Lots of different opinions.  After a year of putting it off I just asked the allergist what she recommended and brought up some of my accuracy concerns.  She said I should just start with the skin prick testing.  Therefore, skin pricks I did.

The testing showed I was allergic to only two things.

I am severely allergic to rye!  The thing swelled up huge, and my nose immediately stuffed up.  I had trouble breathing within a minute of the test being administered.  Awesome.

The other allergy that showed up was pistachios.  Random.  Not allergic to any other grains or tree nuts, just those two things.

I have been shelling pistachios for Rosie on a daily basis, though not eating them myself since I don’t really like them.  The 12 grain bread I’ve been eating contains rye!  So does the chex mix.  And the stuff from the lower shelves of the Whole Foods bakery case where there are rye bread crumbs!  My mouth and tongue kept swelling up after eating things and I could not figure out why.

That mystery is solved.  Rye and pistachios, I can avoid those!

The allergist said exposure can also cause nausea and diarrhea, so…yeah.

 

But here’s the best part.  The allergist also said I have all of the symptoms of lactose intolerance.

Hmmm.  Well, I haven’t been able to eat ice cream or cream based soups without getting immediately and violently ill (within half an hour of eating) in the past couple of years.  I guess I never thought all lactose was making me sick!

Apparently the lactose can’t digest in your intestines, causing gas and bloating.  It slows down your intestinal motility, making you constipated.  The lactose keeps your intestines from absorbing water like normal. The the gas and the water and undigested lactose make this fun soup that causes cramps and explodes out of you in the form of scary poop.

Hi, lactose intolerance…we are not friends.

She suggested I avoid as much dairy as possible and take Lactaid tablets when eating anything with dairy.

Well that’s not too hard.  Certainly not as hard as eating gluten free.  (I am not allergic to wheat at all, by the way!  Just rye!)

So this Lactaid is like LIFE ALTERING.

Why have I not tried it sooner?

Since taking it I have had no rolling gas bubbles.  No horrible bloating.  No cramps.  No diarrhea.

My intestines feel like nothing.  Like, they might as well not even be there.

Amazing.

CHRISTMAS FREAKIN’ MIRACLE.

 

So we’ll see.  I hope this solves the problems and it lasts forever.  Fingers crossed.

Seems great so far!!

The only problem is apparently I am (was) eating a diet chock full of lactose.  Those Lactaid tablets are expensive and kind of annoying to take all the time.  I had to take four of them after eating macaroni and cheese because those same symptoms started.  The initial two tablets weren’t enough, but luckily two more took care of it before anything bad happened.  I’ll think twice before eating mac and cheese again.  I’m not even going to dare try ice cream even with the Lactaid.  Not worth risking the resulting misery.

 

Ok, if you survived digestive system and allergy talk here are pictures from yesterday.  We had the girls’ best friends over to play.  They live in the mountains three hours from here, so only get to see them every few months.

Little Miss is still kind of grumpy after being sick.

“PUT THE CAMERA DOWN MOMMA!”

Watching a movie together…

And a quick series of Ada and Eli jumping on the bed together!

 

 

 

We love our friends.  They live three hours away and come to visit every couple of months.

Rosie loves her best friend Cade so much! They are only a month apart in age.  They’ve known each other almost their entire lives.

And now baby Eli and baby Ada can be best friends too.  I think they’re five months apart.

(He was lifting Rosie up, she’s not that much taller.)

(Ada in her PJ’s…)

It’s so nice to have friends that are our age, doing the same things in life, and have kids the exact same ages.

They also have chickens, lots of pets, and Cory convinced Tyler to get a mini van.  They have the same one, only theirs is a 2007 and ours is a 2005.

It’s hard for me to find friends that have the same hobbies and parenting beliefs, let alone friends that have kids and are my age.

Why are there so few responsible parents around here in their 20′s?

Sure age isn’t everything, but sometimes it helps to have friends who know what it’s like to just be starting out in life–owning your first home, finding stable careers, etc.

I guess I should consider myself lucky to have found friends that are so similar to us!

They even helped us groom our hell cat Rintoo.

Valentine’s Day: wonderfully ridiculous!

(Fear not, gross spot to the right of Mr. Owl is paint courtesy of Rosie.)

Visit to Monkey Joe’s with friends…

Today, Ada enjoying the sun and 60 degree temps!

Oh, love her so much.

Rosie refused to participate in the sunlight photos…typical four year old, right? She was too busy running up and down the sidewalk.