How NOT To Eat Fried Worms

It's raining. On this particular occasion, rain reminds me of worms. Here's my train of thought: it rains, the sidewalk gets all wet, the worms crawl out and hang around all wiggly on the sidewalk. And worms remind me of a moment in my life, one that occurred when I was about four. For those of you who may be concerned, no actual worms were harmed in the making of this memory.

At the time, my family was living in the Philippines (my dad was in the navy). I was (and still am) a total girly girl. My older sister, not so much. The fundamental differences in our personalities can be aptly described by our choice of playthings at this particular point in our lives. I had a set of play pots and pans. They were plastic, multicolored and adorned with a variety of happy faces. I loved those pots. My sister Patti was much more intrigued by her bucket of slime. You could get slime with worms or without worms. Hers had worms because the slime with worms was purple. One this particular occasion, I was outside playing with my green pot. The green one was my favorite. I was around the side of the house where the garbage cans were stored. (Don't ask me why I was playing by the garbage cans. I don't remember. But I mention it because it is important later.) I was perfectly happy in my culinary world of make believe. Then Patti arrived. Without asking, she dumped the worms from her bucket of slime into my beloved green pot. Apparently she wanted slime without worms for awhile. Anyway, she dumped and was gone before I could even respond. So I calmly walked over to the garbage can and chucked her worms in because I did not want worms for dinner! I don't remember exactly what happened after that, but I do remember she was mad when she came back for her worms and they were gone.

So there you have it. The single best way to avoid eating worms is to immediately toss them in the trash!

Matthew Has Embraced the Soy Milk

Literally.

(I know it's blurry. Sorry.)

Got (Soy) Milk?

Yesterday Matthew learned how to blow bubbles in his milk . . . while drinking out of a sippy cup. He figured out that if he turns the cup so the spout is on the top rather than on the bottom, when he sucks on it air rushes in through the air-equalizing-valve, flows through the milk, and creates bubbles! He was laughing his head off during dinner last night and it took us a few minutes to figure out what was going on. I think he is too smart for his own good. Or maybe he is just too smart for MY own good. If all my kids are going to be smarter than me, I better take advantage of them now while they are still too inexperienced to know any better.

In spite of the fact that I usually tell my children not to play with their food, I couldn't resist a chuckle at Matthew's bubble discovery. And a huge sigh of relief. Until about three weeks ago, Matthew looked at soy milk with scorn. When we tried to get him to drink it, he acted like we were poisoning him. He got to the point where he wouldn't even drink water or juice (probably because he thought we were trying to give him soy milk again). Due to our extremely limited options, we were getting a bit stressed. So he can blow as many bubbles as he wants as long as he occasionally stops to actually drink the stuff!

Panic Attack!

I had my first allergy related heart attack today. My visiting teacher, who has a son just about Matthew's age, was here. We were chatting and all of a sudden I looked over and Matthew had her son's bottle in his mouth. I don't think I have ever moved that fast in all my life. I took the bottle away before he even had a chance to tip it back. Thank goodness. I would really hate it if I had to call the pharmacy to order a refill of his EpiPen less than an hour after I picked up the first one. That would definitely take me out of the running for the Best Mom of the Year award. Of course, the fact that I hardly ever comb my kids' hair (one of the benefits of having only boys) will probably keep me from Perfect Mom status anyway. But who wants to be perfect? I would much rather be entertaining!

Speaking of entertaining, Daniel brought home the proofs of his spring pictures today. I had an excellent mom moment because I did not laugh. At least I did not laugh until later when Kev was home and Daniel was in the shower so he couldn't hear us.

Please Don't Pass the Lactoglobulin

Matthew is a picky eater. Really picky. Not only is he incredibly resistant to trying new foods, but if we give him something he likes and it is not the exact thing that he wants at that exact moment, he acts like we are hitting him with a big stick. This would not be nearly such a big problem if he could just tell us that he wants peaches instead of applesauce today. However, he is just a little guy and his vocabulary consists of Mom, Dad, yes, several undescribable things that we think are Daniel and Nathan, and an amazing assortment of loud shrieks and cries of discontent. So meal time is pretty much guess work at our house.

Today we discovered that Matthew has a darn good reason for being such a picky eater. He is allergic to milk (which we knew, but we didn't know how severe it is), eggs, and peanuts. It is a triple whammy. So when he spits out the scrambled eggs or rolls with an egg white glaze, it is probably because they make his mouth uncomfortable and he can't tell us yet. After a few times of having some crazy food make my tongue itch, I would probably get picky too. In fact, we are probably very lucky that he didn't actually swallow some of the things we've tried to feed him.

Now the hard part begins. I have to figure out what to feed my child. And that is not as simple as it sounds. Just avoid milk, eggs, and peanut butter, right? Wrong. There is an entirely separate vocabulary that the food industry people use, probably just to mess with the minds of the moms who are trying to keep their kids from going into anaphylactic shock. For instance, a label can say a food contains milk or butter, but it is more likely that it will say lactoglobulin, casein, or lactulose. Eggs show up as globulin, ovomucoid, and other nearly unpronounceable things. Peanuts can appear as hydrolyzed plant protein. Why don't they just print a big label that says, "Hey, come and get some super tasty gobbledy gook glazed in a nice freakin' what the heck sauce"? And things show up in the craziest places. Did you know that some spaghetti sauces contain peanuts or peanut butter? Hotdogs and sausages can contain milk. And the infamous "natural flavor" can include just about anything. I'm going to need an encyclopedia (and maybe an emotional support system) just to go grocery shopping. So if you see me hyperventilating in the frozen foods aisle of the Walmart, be kind and push me in the direction of my car.

10 Things I Love About Daniel

Recently Daniel's teacher sent home an assignment for the parents. I was bummed to have homework. But at least it was first grade homework and not college homework. Anyway, she asked us to write down ten interesting things about our child, cut the paper into strips, and send them back. She will then draw a slip of paper with an interesting thing on it, read it to the class, and they have to guess who the person is. In the middle of this, I realized that Daniel's interesting things are many of the things I love about him. Whether they are just his preferences or reminders of experiences we have had with him, they are all things that make him who he is.

1. He has a scar around his belly button that is shaped like a backwards question mark. When Daniel was born he had a urachal remnant. Basically, that means that the connection between his bladder and the umbilical cord didn't close like it usually does. When he was four months old, he had surgery to repair it. He was sleeping in Kevin's arms when the nurse came to get him. He woke up just in time to realize he was being taken away. He didn't trust anyone besides Kev and I and Kev's parents (who we were living with at the time) for a very long time.
2. He got to ride in an ambulance when he was two. This was our first super big asthma experience. He screamed and screamed because he did not want them to put the oxygen mask on him, but once he realized he could actually breathe again, he wouldn't let them take it away. Because he was oxygen dependent for a while there, they sent him from the instacare to Primary Children's Hospital in an ambulance.
3. He prefers to read nonfiction. He had no interest in reading fiction at all until he discovered the Magic School Bus books: they are fiction but teach about all kinds of interesting science stuff!
4. His favorite t.v. channels are the Science Channel, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel. I'm not kidding. Give him a choice between cartoons and How It's Made and he will choose to learn how they made cd's or neon lights any day.
5. His favorite color is yellow.
6. When he grows up, he wants to be an astronaut or a scientist. He has space on the brain. Today in school they did an art project with a bunny. The had to use the bunny, but they could decorate it any way they wanted. If you look closely, you will see that Daniel's astronaut bunny is ready to blast off in the rocket that is in the background.
7. He loves airplanes and can identify more different kinds than I knew existed.
8. Sometimes I actually have to tell him to stop reading and go play for awhile. I am certainly not complaining about this. In fact, sometimes I have to tell myself the same thing!
9. He watched the recent lunar eclipse online (the video came from Minneapolis) because it was too cloudy to see it here.
10. He loves Lego. I cannot think of a more amazing and open ended toy!

There are lots of other things that make Daniel unique, but I could spend all day making an enormous list of all his quirks. I'll stop at ten and simply say that Daniel is definitely his own person!

Please Pass the Ketchup

Today has been one of those days where multi-tasking has not worked to my advantage. I usually get a lot done by multi-tasking. I start one thing, make a mental note of when I need to return to it, complete several other tasks, and come back just in time to finish up the first one. But today the process did not run as smoothly. I returned home after running a few errands and put some green beans on the stove to cook. Matthew doesn't do so well with things like lettuce, so I keep an assortment of tender cooked veggies in the freezer for the times when we eat what he can't chew yet. That is why I was cooking green beans at 10:30 in the morning. Anyway, I brought them to a boil, turned the stove down, and then walked away, promptly forgetting all about them. Are you seeing the breakdown in my normal process? I continued to the next task, and the next, until all of a sudden I began to smell an absolutely appalling stench. Now you're thinking that this is the point when I'll remember about the beans. Nope. I proceeded to walk around the house trying to figure out where the stink was coming from. I walked through every room, spotting nothing suspicious. I even wandered through the kitchen, looked at the pot ("Oh, yeah. I'm cooking beans.") and continued on my rounds because there was no smoke coming from it. Finally I decided to head outside and see if it was odiferous out there as well. I glanced at the pot and (here is where I finally clue in) wondered if by any chance I had burned my beans. I lifted the lid and whaalaa! Super stink!

After the discovery came the clean up. I dumped the beans, took out the garbage to get the source of the smell out of the house, started de-stinkifying the air with vinegar, cloves, air freshener, etc. As I stood at the sink pondering the possible demise of my most conveniently sized pot, I suddenly remembered that my mother in law uses ketchup to clean the copper bottoms of her pots. I had never personally tried it, but I figured it couldn't hurt. So I scrubbed the crud off the inside of the pot (you can only see a faint outline of where each bean was lying), dried it off and slathered on the ketchup. I let it sit for a few minutes (not as long as I would have if I hadn't just had a very sad experience with multi-tasking) and wiped it off. I was completely astounded. Here is the before and after for those of you who doubt.


I did have to use an SOS pad on the one edge that was completely black (even that was significantly softened), but the rest was all ketchup, no elbow grease required. So for any of you who are considering crispy frying your RevereWare, you might want to keep the ketchup handy.

Random Facts About Me

All of my sisters called this Life Images, but I have to be a rebel somehow. So here they are, some random facts about me presented in picture format:

Age On My Next Birthday:



A Place I'd Like to Travel:



A Favorite Place:



One Of My Favorite Things:



One Of My Favorite Foods:



My Favorite Flower:



My Favorite Color:


The City I Live In:



Name Of A Past Pet:



A Nickname I've Had:


College Major:



First Job:



A Hope For 2008:



So there it is. Some are pretty self explanatory, others not so much. Hope it at least made you say, "Hmmm."