The diet

Today I tried mustard greens for the first time. Since I had to give up milk and don't want to lose my super-human bone density, I need alternate sources of calcium. Mustard greens are a good source of calcium and vitamins A and C, so I thought they were worth a try. They were...uninspiring. At least the way I prepared them. Palatable, but uninspiring.

Such is life. I'm actually adjusting fairly well to the new diet. Avoiding actual sugar isn't that hard when I can substitute with sweet fruits, stevia and agave nectar. And I don't actually NEED as much by way of sweets if I fill up on bean or lentil soups (yum!) and salads, which have become staples. Luckily, Olivia actually really likes both lentil soup and any kind of bean soup, so I can feed my family some of the same things. And I don't feel guilty eating whenever I want because what I'm eating between meals...fruits, veggies, nut butters...is not going to make me gain weight. It's all about the glycemic index, baby. I'm learning to keep my insulin level so my body works better.

I still have a wee bit of dairy now and then, in the form of butter or those cheeses that get snuck into super-yummy things (pesto), but I figure that the overall effect is what we are going for.

The hardest part is figuring out exactly which diet to use. I've read lots of things from lots of different sources, and while some of the info is the same (eat fruits and veggies, duh), there is a lot of contradiction over various protein sources and, of all weirdness, grains. The book I'm following closest says whole grains are great. But I found a site this week that said avoid ALL grains. Both sources claim to have helped women overcome infertility using their diet recommendations. It's so confusing.

I think maybe I need to stop reading.

I have decided to commit to this until Summer's end, at least. We shall see what several months of diet overhall can do...

FOUR posts in one week! Can you believe it?

I managed to post nearly every day this week. Wow. Must be coming out of the winter funk. Maybe it's the fact that we've gone a whole week without a snow day and I'm finally feeling like we are on something of a regular routine again. At any rate, here are four random thoughts to celebrate my four posts this week...

1. I have this friend who has a son who was deathly afraid of getting a flu shot. She searched high and low for a book to help him through his fears. Not finding one, she decided to write one herself. It was just published! Go here to buy it. Go! Now!

2. When our cell phone contract was up with our old provider, we switched to a pay-as-you-go option. We got free phones online and pay $30/month for 1000 minutes and 1000 texts (if you research plans, you'll know what we got). I COULD NOT BE HAPPIER WITH THIS PLAN. There are no hidden fees! No accidentally-incurred charges (if you don't subscribe to it, you can't access it...awesome)! And we get MORE talk time AND text (which wasn't on our old plan). I can't figure out why more people aren't doing this.

3. We are giving a presentation on the Sacrament of Marriage at an RCIA program this weekend. I wrote the talk and my husband put together the awesome powerpoint presentation. I hope it goes well. It was rather difficult to motivate my brain to think in terms of writing a presentation...and I used to do this with some frequency. I think that part of my brain has started to atrophy.

4. Today is day 3 of no paci. I'll dedicate a post to that sometime. (I know the suspense is killing you...ha!) But for now, exhaustion is the key. And chocolate treats from the paci fairy, who is acting as a daily cheerleader with her notes and little bits of chocolately goodness. Let's just say that after two days with no nap, Olivia fell asleep last night in under a half-hour (good on any day) and slept ELEVEN HOURS, uninterrupted, without paci. There was minimal sadness and whining. I'm not sure how we will reintroduce nap (which she does sometimes need), but we'll deal with that when we must.

Crayola craft distraction

Today, we skipped nap for the second day in a row. It may have had something to do with the recent visit of the paci fairy, which I will discuss in a later post, when it's not so traumatic and just a distant memory (and a successful outcome). At any rate, I've found it necessary to wear the child out so she will go to bed tonight, so we stayed up and did crafts instead of napping.

While I enjoy crafts, I'm not terribly creative, so I stole these ideas from my cousin. Go check out her post on this Valentine garland. She is very creative.

First, take old crayons...preferably pinks, purples and reds. Shave little pieces off. I think this would have worked better with a pencil sharpener, but I used a pocket knife. The end result is a little, um, chunky as a result. But still pretty.

Sprinkle the shavings onto a piece of wax paper. Give a cheesy smile to the camera.

Cover with another piece of wax paper, then cover with a towel. Iron on medium heat.

Using cookie cutters, trace hearts. Cut out hearts. Tape/staple/string hearts together however you want.

Voila! Valentine hearts for your window. They look pretty when the light shines on them. This was a craft for Grammy's birthday (shhh...don't tell her!), but it works, of course, for Valentine's Day too.

While I was ironing/tracing/cutting/assembling, Olivia was charged with sorting the rest of the broken crayons by color into a muffin pan (another of my cousin's projects). She took this task very seriously and did an excellent job. Make sure you line your muffin pan with at least two and probably three muffin cups per space. This will keep wax from seeping into your pan.
Get ready for meltdown to make unique new crayons.

Bake at 275 for about 15 minutes or until melted.


Let cool, then pop those new crayons out. We made color families and also a few multicolored ones. The only problem was mixing different crayon brands...the wax seemed to have a different consistency. So these seem to break apart pretty easily. We can still save them for shaving and make Spring flower garlands similar to the hearts above. That might be fun.
Now it is time to go outside and get some Vitamin D. It may be 20 degrees, but I need some sunshine if I'm going to live through Olivia's paci withdrawal.

My cold-weather daydream

The nice thing about watching school teachers' kids is that we have a built-in week off in March. The unfortunate thing is that this week is commonly mis-named "Spring" break. I don't know about the rest of you, but whatever week in March is chosen as break is, inevitably, the coldest week in the whole month of March. Last year we "vacationed" locally. It was, well, uninspiring.

So my thoughts are traveling South...specifically, to Phoenix. My husband searched the web a couple of weeks ago to price ideas for a beach getaway to NC or FL. We would opt to drive to either of those locations, and I don't relish the idea of a dozen hours in the car with Olivia. She starts whining after 45 minutes...90 if we are REALLY lucky. Spending more than four hours in the car with her at a time is physically painful. For all of us.

Phoenix is FAR. It's a bit of a plane ride, but google maps measures the driving time in terms of days, not hours (as in, one day and some hours in the car...continuously). So we'd have no choice but to fly. Which, honestly, is fine with me. I'd rather spend half a day in travel than a whole day on the road. That's the kind of thing that requires an extra day of recovery, and who wants to spend their vacation recovering from their travel?

Plus, the environment of Phoenix doesn't seem to make my head want to explode. I love Spring, but honestly it's so hard on my head when things start to bloom. I hate allergies.

We vacationed in Phoenix in early March not long after we were married...maybe a year. It was sunny and warm and everything that home was NOT. Of course, we were childless at the time, but I kept thinking, "This would be a good place to bring kids."

So I did a quick google search today and found that I was right. First of all, there's Spring Training baseball. We took in a game last time we were there. Major league teams in tiny local ballparks. Inexpensive! Fun! Warm! What more could you want?

Then there are these places. Some educational. Some beautiful. Some things just meant for kids. Plenty to fill a week, right? And then, of course, there is the pool. Wherever we stay, there is bound to be a pool.

So, anyone have a couple thousand extra dollars for plane and rental car? We've spent a good deal of dough on medical travel in the last year, and while a week-long getaway in a warm and sunny locale sounds DIVINE, I figure out how to justify the expense. Especially when Summer is just around the corner. The very long, interminable corner.

I'm suffering some serious Spring fever. And cabin fever. Does it show?

Just some things

I've been a bad blogger lately. I keep thinking of little snippets of things that I'd like to say, but nothing of any substance.

We've been rocking the new diet lately. I found a new book that is SO helpful in narrowing down the best types of food to eat and supplements to take for my particular condition. The book is here. It is authored by a reproductive endocrinologist and a specialist in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It sounds SO not like the kind of book I'd like, but it is really helpful. The doctor was once involved in IVF and didn't like it because he felt like he was "playing God" so he started looking for ways to improve a woman's fertility so that pregnancy could occur in the usual way. Although he argues pretty strongly for IVF as an absolute LAST resort after trying to fix fertility surgically, hormonally and with improved nutrition, he does also refer for and help couples prepare their bodies for IVF. Unfortunately, given my beliefs about life and how IVF factors into that, I would have a very hard time recommending this book to just anyone. But for the nutrition help, it is definitely worth a read. I have even found the Chinese medicine stuff (herbs and supplements) to be helpful! And best of all, it takes the view that "80% is perfection"...meaning that I'm ALLOWED to cheat on my diet once in awhile. We are looking for overall change and effect, not absolute adherence to the "rules". I can't tell you how freeing that was!!

We've been researching adoption agencies lately. Our current agency isn't getting us anywhere, and at the end of this month our homestudy expires and we will have been with them for two years with no talk of a match. We've decided to let it lie for several months...work the new diet and see how it affects hormones and fertility. If we get to the Fall and things still aren't looking up in the fertility area, we have a new agency in mind that is FAST. Expensive, but fast. They have a good reputation and are very good about counseling and support of birth parents, so I think it will be worth the extra money to work with them.

In the meantime...anyone have any ideas about how to get a very-security-item-dependent three-year-old to kick the paci habit? It's well past time, but she cannot settle down without it (and blankie, but blankie can stay awhile). At this point, one without the other just won't cut it. If we get in the car and forget paci and blankie, and she gets tired or upset, she WILL NOT STOP SCREAMING until she passes out from sheer exhaustion. She's old enough (and verbal enough) to deliver very involved monologues about why she NEEDS these things and how they make her feel better. She will use all of her powers of persuasion to make them appear out of thin air. She refuses to accept that they are not (even temporarily) available to her at her need.

But a kid at her age should be able to soothe herself without something sticking in her mouth, right?

Changes

Well. After spending most of yesterday morning with a perpetual feeling of motion sickness, I called the doctor to see if it was normal and also OK for me to live with these symptoms for the duration of the antibiotics (3 weeks). He said it was not. We might try something different next cycle, but for now I'm getting my taste buds back. Slowly. I'm realizing this because I ate an apple from a bag that I had all but given up as disgusting, and it tasted good. All other apples I've eaten from this bag (bought after starting the pills) tasted awful. So maybe it wasn't the apples.

A couple of weeks ago, we opened a new bank account at a new bank. Our bank, with whom we have banked (individually, and then later as a couple) for DECADES, decided to drop their free checking option and start charging people fees if their checking account dropped below $500. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS! I think that's unreasonable. If I'm going to let that much money sit anywhere, it's going to be in a savings account or some other interest-bearing account that is meant for piling up cash. (Our checking account WAS interest bearing, and we would have totally switched it to not interest bearing to get free checking, but there was no option for that. Come on, people. A checking account is for MONEY THAT YOU INTEND TO SPEND. Duh.)

Anyway, after a few months of shifting money around so as to avoid the evil fee snatchers, we decided we'd had enough of that nonsense and switched banks. Almost. We are in the process of switching bills and deposits and automatic stuff over and OMG I never knew how much work it is to switch accounts. Ugh. But worth it.

Take THAT, mean old bank.

In the meantime, we decided to buy a new (to us) car. We traded in our always-needs-a-repair van for another car, which I think I may come to regret in the cargo category. But my husband insists that we can trade the other car in for the van I actually WANT in about two years. Something to look forward to...

Buying a car when half of your money is in a new account where you can't actually access any of it easily because you haven't yet received your checks and debit cards and the other half of the money is in the account that is currently paying all of your OTHER bills...well, it was not exactly smart timing.

We finally figured out all the financial issues and had money transferred into the bill-handling account (old bank) where it still sits, today, a full ten days after giving our debit card number for the deposit and a full week after arriving with a check for the difference and driving away with the car. I'm not really sure what to make of that. Perhaps they don't want our money?

That, indeed, would be a welcome change.

Long, long month

Ugh. I hate January. It's such a let down. With the holidays over and the cold intensifying and school canceling for snow every other day, it's just LONG.

To make it even MORE exciting, I'm five days into a three-week course of antibiotics related to a fertility issue, and I'm being hit with several of the unpleasant side-effects, including dizziness, change in taste, lack of appetite and a faint but constant feeling of nausea. Now, not only am I supposed to avoid dairy and sweets and carbs, but they are pretty much the only thing I WANT to eat because they tend to be the strongest in flavor. I feel the need to use flavor to counteract the weirdness in my taste buds and lack of appetite.

At least I'm not constantly thinking about food...

The good news is that we are all over our recent colds. That has made playing outside a little more fun. So let's end this dreary post with some photos to cheer it up, OK?

Olivia wanted to "write" her name with the shovel in the currently-absent neighbor's driveway. I helped.
Sledding is more fun without a constantly-running nose.

Olivia has a new big-girl booster seat. She fits it quite well. I thought it would work OK for car naps too.
But maybe it isn't quite as suited for car naps as the previous car seat!

Happy Monday, I hope!