If Brothers Gotta Hug, What Do Sisters Gotta Do?

Last night Kev and I went to the temple and as we reached the end of the session and everyone pulled out their little papers with names on them, the women sitting next to me tapped me on the arm and directed my attention to her paper. The name of the woman on her paper and the name on mine had the same last name and were born in the same place within just a few years of each other. We think they were sisters. It was pretty cool to think that perhaps these sisters were sitting together on the other side of the veil while the two women standing as proxies were sitting together in the temple.

It made me think about my own sisters, all of whom I've had the supreme pleasure of sitting next to (or in the very near vicinity of) in the temple. (Watch out guys. This could get mushy.) I'm one of those people who not only gets to be with these sisters forever, but I'm actually glad about that. We spend time together not just because we have to or because we're supposed to, but because we actually like each others' company. Although we all have our moments, for the most part we get along really well and we have a million and one inside jokes to prove it.

Patti and I are fairly close together in age and we spent much of our growing up time together. We weren't always bosom buddies (ask her about her purple worms), but by the time we were teenagers we got along pretty well. We did things together, talked frequently (I'll bet my parents just loved the long distance bills we created while I was in college), and although we are very different in personality I think we understand each other pretty well.

Rachael and Esther are enough younger than me that they were still in elementary school when I went away to college. So imagine my glee when I moved home after graduation and had an opportunity to get to know my now grown up younger sisters. There were good times and much laughter. One of my very early dates with Kev was to one of Rachael's choir concerts. Esther rode with us and only freaked out a little bit when Kev drove down the road backwards. But he was on the correct side of the road for the direction he was going so we weren't actually in much danger! Now Esther is the one I can talk education with. She is my inside source for book orders and if I ever go back to teaching, I'm going to steal about a million of her ideas.

And as for Rachael, before the four and a half years I spent in her basement apartment, her apartment was kitty corner across the parking lot from mine for nearly two years. We saw each other nearly every day for over six years and we didn't even kill each other! And once I moved, I discovered that I kind of missed being able to just knock on the door and go up to see her. I mean, my boys so don't care how cute my new shoes are! I actually have to wait now to share the cuteness!

So I count myself pretty lucky to have three sisters that I actually consider friends. I'm sorry to all of you who have ever experienced all of us together. We can be a bit . . . spazy. Even our mother has a tendency to roll her eyes at us. But I wouldn't have it any other way. So here's to my sisters:

Where Popcorn Poppers Come From

(Matthew was perfectly willing to sing this for the camera only after I told him we would send it to Auntie Esther.)

Status Quo

Nathan finally got to see the eye doctor today and the news was not quite what he was hoping for.  His eye tested at 20/25 today, which is just a tad worse than last time, but his good eye was also 20/25 so the doctor was not concerned.  He said that if we were to come back tomorrow it would probably be just fine.  But because of that, Nathan will still be patching four hours each day.  He wasn't thrilled.  In eight weeks we will go back again, recheck his prescription to make sure it is still accurate, and go from there.

Pumpkin Fun

Last night we got around to decorating the mother lode of pumpkins we scored last Monday evening. The boys opted for paint while I (with my extraordinarily limited painting skills) took up the knife and carved. Obviously this was a very serious task that took great concentration.

Here is Nathan with his finished pumpkins.

Matthew was being Nathan's Mini-Me, just like always. And the oh-so-original pumpkin was my creation in paint, hence my option to carve.

Daniel is holding one of his creations and the other is on the table to his side.

And here he is showing off Kev's Pump-witch.

My pumpkin was sporting bats.

Obviously our ten bucks got us more than one evening of entertainment!

Twisted Logic

In an attempt to give Matthew as normal a life as possible, I’ve spent the past year and a half learning to cook and bake using no milk and eggs.  This hasn’t been the easiest task in the world but I think I’ve managed to become pretty adept at it.  So if Matthew were to become less allergic or perhaps even not allergic at all, it would mean that all my hard earned skills would be utterly wasted.  Then it stands to reason that in order to utilize my skills to the level that they deserve, Matthew would in fact have to become more allergic.  Right?  Well, using that logic, the results of Matthew’s blood work are exactly what we wanted.

So here is a little food allergy 101.  We have done two types of allergy testing: the skin prick test which uses a tiny lancet to break the top layer of skin and deposit a small amount of the allergen to determine if there is a reaction and the blood test (called an ImmunoCap) which tests the number of immunoglobulin E antibodies (these are the ones that cause allergic reactions) for specific allergens that are present in the blood.  Anything below 1 is a low or extremely low allergy, pretty much nothing to be concerned about.  A count of 1 is moderate and it goes up from there.

Matthew’s number for milk went up from 14 to 18.  Although his doctor says a small amount like this could just be a representation of the normal day to day fluctuations of such things, it still isn’t the direction we want to be going.  But even worse is that his number for eggs went up from 26 last year to 45 this year.  Definitely not good news.  Dr. W is pretty sure based on this increase that Matthew is not inclined to outgrown these allergies on his own.  As for peanut, his number on both dates was greater than 100.  They don’t bother counting past that since by then you pretty much just better keep the epipen handy anyway. 

Based on his blood work, Dr. W decided not to do skin prick testing for egg, milk, and peanut, but she is watching him for tree nut allergies so she tested for a variety of nuts, the seasonal flu shot (we have to do this every year since the flu vaccine contains egg protein), and cats and dogs.  Good news: Matthew can eat sunflower seeds and sesame seeds which opens up options with Sunbutter and tahini and he will be able to get his flu shot this year (of course, they don't have any H1N1 vaccine to test with, but we'll deal with that one later).  Bad news:  He is allergic to dogs (we pretty much already knew this) and had a mild reaction to cashew.  Dr. W wasn’t too concerned about the cashew, but she will continue to monitor his reactions to tree nuts and for now we will definitely be staying away, especially where cashew is concerned.

Dr. W did tell me that great progress is being made in the field of desensitization therapy to milk, egg, and peanut.  She said that they are having a success rate in the neighborhood of 90%, which is very promising.  There have been a few instances of anaphylaxis associated with the therapy so it doesn’t have a complete green light, but it is close.  She’s thinking that in the future Matthew would be a good candidate for therapy, one allergen at a time of course.  So although growing out of it doesn’t look like a realistic option, there may still be hope.

In the meantime, I’ll definitely be getting the most out of my dairy, egg, and nut free baking skills.  Sunbutter cookie with soy ice cream, anyone?

Yup's Up, Doc?

Today the boys picked the carrots they planted back in the spring.  One of my favorite things about carrots is that you can see the little green leaves but you have no idea what is going on under the ground until you pick them.  Considering how sad the rest of the garden was this year, I didn't expect much out of the carrots.  But I was pleasantly surprised . . . as were the boys.  The ones I didn't thin were tiny (as expected), but the ones that did get thinned were pretty decent sized.  I made all the boys (my brother Seth's boys, Devon and Corbin, were here as well)  take turns picking carrots in an attempt to be an equal opportunity mother.  As the bigger ones appeared, there were lots of exclamations of, "Whoa!  Look at that one!"  But Matthew lucked out and picked the biggest one of all.  He was almost overwhelmingly excited about his "huge carrot!"  He even tried to take a bite out of it before I could cut it into carrot sticks and then decided it was too hard to bite and nearly exploded while waiting for me to cut it so he could eat it.  And the very best part?  Out of five boys, not one complained about eating his vegetables at dinner time.

All This For Ten Bucks!

For family home evening today we went to pick out our Halloween pumpkins. We have been seeing signs for a pumpkin patch that is close to our house, so we decided to give it a try. And besides, choosing pumpkins from a patch is way more fun than selecting them at the Walmart. They had wheelbarrows available at the patch so you could cart your pumpkins in from the field and Nathan and Matthew thought the kid sized ones were the best. Of course, Matthew couldn't put any pumpkins in his because as soon as he did he discovered he isn't strong enough to keep it upright, but he had fun and Kev and I are there to carry pumpkins anyway, right?

Second perk to the pumpkin patch? Ten pumpkins for $10. None of them are really huge, but it's still a much better price than you can get at the Walmart.


The third perk was the free hay ride we got. The man who owns the patch drove us around the farm. It's not huge like Wheeler Farm, but the boys were suitable impressed by the barns, fields, sheds, and the goose. And I love that it was free!

Perk number four came in the form of a little corn maze. It was tiny and there is no possible way an adult with any brains could ever get lost in it, but it was perfect for my little first timers. And it was free. (Sound byte of the evening-- Daniel: "I don't know where we are." Nathan: "We're in a corn maze, Daniel!")

The boys were pleased with the pumpkins we scored and are already planning how to decorate them. And we had so much fun we are definitely planning to go back next year!

(I have no idea why Daniel was holding his pumpkins like this, but it made me laugh. At least they weren't melons.)

Macbeth Is Not A Comedy

At least it's not supposed to be.

Last night was opera night and the offering was "Macbeth" by Verdi. In addition to the strangely humorous findings that appeared in what is usually such a grisly story, I was wicked tired (Did you know that after your child gets injured the combination of leftover adrenaline and the overwhelming need to check on the aforementioned child fifty times in the night make sleep incredibly difficult to come by? I was up until after two reading a really stupid book. I usually only do that for really good books.) and sitting by Esther who has one of the smartest (and sassiest) mouths I've ever known. When the curtain rose on the three witches ("Double, double toil and trouble" and all that), there were thirty witches instead. I kid you not. It was like the ultimate in multiple personality disorder. And about five minutes in, one of the witches on the back row fell down the stairs on the back of the elevated set piece. We heard a big thunk and a couple of her fellow witches took a quick glance back. Esther and I were both trying really hard not to laugh which of course resulted in the unavoidable completely silent but hard to miss full body shaking.

Other humorous moments included the herd of stealthy (not!) assassins stomping their way around stage, the open throne (it didn't have a seat and although we found out later that it was so the ghost could suddenly appear, Esther and I were throwing around comments about the porcelain throne), and the fact that after Macbeth fell dead on the stage, he sat back up and sang some more. That is a pretty common opera occurrence. They always have to get their last two cents (or five cents, or $1.50) in before they can stay dead. But to its credit, the music was great and the singing was fabulous. And hey, I wasn't really in the mood for a drama anyway!