Moderate Panic

Since registering for the June Seattle Marathon, panic has set in. Only a little though. I've noticed a slight spring in my step and that I feel generally more ambitious about my day than before I started getting crazy ideas about my athletic capacity, so I plan to proceed with hope and confidence and very serious intentions. And whenever that voice of doubt does pop up, I have plenty to drown it out with, like: -Dietary Concerns -Continuing to Purge Our Possessions -Keeping Up With My Crazy Children We're continuing our wheatless existence with great success in terms of eczema improvement. I'm blown away by what a trooper Jack is being about the whole thing, since most of his favorite foods involve wheat. The boy loves him some bread, which I'm quickly learning is the hardest thing to replace in wheatless fashion. Blogger is trying to tell me that "wheatless" isn't a word, but after cooking for a whole week without wheat of any kind I say to Blogger, it IS a word. Not only is it a word, it's a state of being. We are wheatless. And for the most part happy, although for some time now I've had cheese danish on the brain, which is odd because I can't recall ever craving a cheese danish before our lifestyle shift. After some terrible experiments with alternative flours, I decided to stop trying to substitute things that are supposed to be made from wheat. It's too disappointing. The exception is the brown rice pasta from Trader Joe's which is surprisingly tasty AND dirt cheap, and as long as you're careful not to overcook it you might not know you weren't eating regular pasta. Of course, put enough Alfredo sauce on anything and you can make it taste good...Spelt flour isn't that bad, but I think it might bother Jack's eczema as much as wheat does. We tried it out before we had totally purged the house of wheat though, so some of it may still have been in his system. I'm going to give spelt another try in a few days and see how his skin does. Seriously though, I'm so grateful to be able to do something for Jack to help him. His hands look perfect and only feel a little dry, and he was so impressed by the improvement in the patch on his ribcage that he had to stare at it in the mirror for a while. I think the eczema must have bothered him more than he realized, because he has not once complained about not being able to have wheat. My plan is to be really diligent about it while we're at home so that he can hopefully get away with eating a little wheat here and there when a friend has a birthday party or something. I think it must be the Spring weather we've been enjoying, because all over the blogging world people seem to be cleaning and sorting. I've been picking a new project every few days, trying to identify the things that keep ending up on the living room floor and either getting rid of them or finding a way to store them out of the boys' reach. Right now I loathe puzzles; I think the pieces have found a way to reproduce themselves, because I swear I put the same pieces back in the box six or seven times a day. My tolerance for investing time in caring for our belongings decreases every day, and I've made great strides in whittling down our "stuff." Our furniture keeps breaking, which is a great help because then I don't have to think about whether or not we should keep it or give it away. The other night while watching the Olympics, our last remaining futon collapsed and the side of the frame fell off. "Hey, now we can throw it away!" I said. I'm not sure what we'll sit on downstairs, but at least it will be a nice, open space. The Spring weather also seems to having an effect on the children, since they have been extra crazy lately. I wouldn't have believed they could get anymore energetic, but they continue to astound me. I was so frazzled earlier in the week that Aaron sent me to the bookstore for the evening. I bought myself a Red Velvet cupcake, then felt so guilty for buying wheat while poor Jack goes without that I carried the cupcake around the store for half an hour before I ate it. It tasted like forbidden fruit. It also tasted like gluten and chocolate and cream cheese, so I managed to choke it down. Jack loves it when we "all watch a movie together as a family," but it's hard to come up with movies that are appropriate for them and interesting for the adults. We all love 'Ratatouille,' but we've also seen it a lot already. Tonight, Aaron took Jack to the video store and came back with 'Swiss Family Robinson.' It was fun to watch, but the best part was watching the boys. I thought they were going to explode, especially Matteas who kept shouting helpful tips to the actors like "Cut dat snake in a half!" and "Shoot dat mean pirate!" Poor Aaron bore the brunt of their enthusiasm since he was sitting between them, and during the more intense scenes the boys would both creep further and further up Aaron's body until they were both nearly wrapped around his head, all while doing the aforementioned supportive shouting at top speed and volume. By the end of the movie we were all exhausted, but Jack pronounced the evening "the best day of my whole life." As I was putting him to bed he kept asking very anxious questions, like how long we could keep that movie and if it was available for sale. He said his favorite part was watching the family build all those "booty traps." I thought about correcting him, but honestly, how much better is it to call them "booby" traps? Who thinks of these things?