The Sixth Stage: Rediscovering Joy

When I first suspected that Jack had a wheat allergy, I thought "What better mother than me to deal with something like this; I like medical stuff, I enjoy applying a scientific approach to problems, and I love to cook. This will be easy." I was so wrong. While it became clear very quickly that Jack does in fact have a wheat allergy, I could not possibly have anticipated the impact it would have on me personally. The first week was alright, and I was very encouraged by how rapidly Jack's eczema began healing; it seemed totally worth it. Give up wheat and my kid's suffering diminishes. Good deal. Brown rice pasta isn't so bad, tacos are tasty and naturally wheat-free, bread isn't the best food for you anyway. And then I got grumpy. I don't know if there's such a thing as actual wheat withdrawal or if I just got burnt out from trying to convert our lifestyle to wheatless, but my goodness I was a grouch. I didn't even want to be in the same room with me. My parenting skills began to slide, I lost my temper with the boys more frequently, the thought of making dinner was overwhelming and depressing. If I had to look at another corn chip I was going to hurl, and even the initially innocuous brown rice pasta now loomed offensive and bland on my culinary horizon. I no longer loved cooking. This was bad. That's when I hit the first stage of grief: denial. Maybe Jack isn't really allergic to wheat, maybe there's nothing I can do to help his skin. Next I got angry: cooking without wheat sucks, all I want is a big, white, chewy(oh how I miss the texture of chewiness) bagel. Next, I tried bargaining: maybe he can have spelt. Spelt flour is pretty easy to work with, and the spelt bread from Trader Joe's is quite tasty. After two days of spelt, Jack's eczema looked as angry as if he'd been eating wheat. And that's when the depression hit. I dreaded meal times, often skipped meals just to avoid eating another corn tortilla(I still fed the kids). I don't know if I ever really embraced the acceptance phase of grief, I think I was too depressed to feel accepting. And then. And THEN. My mother-in-law borrowed a cookbook from a gluten-intolerant coworker, which included a collection of gluten-free flours and little baggies of evaporated cane sugar and xantham gum, ingredients which had previously never been in my arsenal. I started reading the cookbook right away, and haven't been able to put it down since. The most heartening bit was that Tom Colicchio, who has no dietary difficulty associated with wheat, wrote the introduction. That was enough to get me past my skepticism, even though I thought all wheat-free flours smelled and tasted terrible. Most contain garbanzo bean flour, and tasted like it. I really doubted anything sweet and delicious could come from something that tasted like it should be made into hummus. With a hopeful heart I carefully measured, measured some more, sifted, measured and stirred. Gluten-free baking requires a lot of ingredients to mimick the effects of wheat flour, and putting this bread together felt more scientific than I generally like cooking to feel. My bread is not as dark as the one in the picture, but no matter; it was freaking delicious. With the first bite I discovered what is on the other side of the Five Stages of Grief: Pleasure. Dotted with lumps of moist, caramelly apple and rich with cinnamon, this apple bread tastes like a cross between Amish Friendship Bread and an apple fritter. The crumb is unbelievably moist and tender, the sweetness not overpowering, the cinnamon swirl emerging around the crust so crunchy and satisfying I had to put the rest of the loaf away to keep myself from eating the entire thing in one sitting. It has a depth of flavor to it that's hard to put your finger on; it's a little darker, a little earthier than bread made with white flour but not in a whole wheat kind of way. It's earthy but clean, rich but not heavy. And here's the most shocking part: not only is it wheat-free, it's vegan. No eggs, no butter. I know. I KNOW. If you gave me this bread- no, let's be honest, it's really cake- if you gave me this cake, I would never in a million years be able to guess its true nature. It doesn't taste like something masquerading as something made with white flour, eggs and butter, it tastes like something that was in fact made with white flour, eggs and butter. You cannot hide a lack of butter from me, I will taste it, I will criticize it, and I will spit it out. Or bring my own cube of butter. While I did depart from the recipe slightly in that I brushed the top with melted butter instead of oil, I did not, contrary to my usual habit, feel the need to put any butter on the finished product while eating it. The only necessary accompaniment is a tall glass of cold milk. Jack was so overjoyed to have some kind of bread-like food to eat that actually tasted delicious that he started giggling at his first bite. Even if you can have wheat and eggs and all manner of other foods, abandon all your inhibitions about this particular recipe and make it at all costs. It is one of the best baked goods I've ever tasted, including my previous wheat-egg-butter love affairs. I don't know the actual nutritional information, but I'm guessing that garbanzo and fava bean flour is a lot better for you than traditional white baking flour. Also, coconut oil, while certainly not low-fat, contains no trans or hydrogenated fats and is very high in Omega-3's(good, happy fat). I've only tried two recipes from the Babycakes cookbook, but I'd highly recommend it for several reasons. One is the pictures. This book is pure food porn, and every single recipe is accompanied by a picture. I hate cooking something without knowing what it's supposed to look like. The other reason is that in the beginning, Erin takes you through a definition and explanation of every single one of the ingredients. She tells what each ingredient does and how it combines with other ingredients, largely demystifying the intimidating world of gluten-free baking. She is a genius, a fantastic cook, and a serious cutie-pie besides. She writes an introduction to every recipe explaining how the finished product tastes, often including interesting back-stories on how that particular recipe came to be. If you have friends who must avoid wheat, this cookbook would make a fabulous gift. A few recipes do include spelt flour, but most do not. Apple Toastie Adapted from Erin McKenna's Babycakes

1 cup garbanzo-fava bean flour(I used Bob's Red Mill)

1 1/4 cups evaporated cane juice, divided

1/2 cup potato starch(again, Bob's Red Mill)

3 TB corn starch(the original recipe calls for 1/4 cup arrowroot, which I didn't have)

2 1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. xantham gum

1 tsp. salt

2 TB ground cinnamon

1/2 coconut oil

1/3 cup applesauce

2 TB pure vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups very hot water, divided

1 cup roasted apples

First, peel, slice, core and cut into small chunks one large apple(I used a Fuji). Sprinkle with a little sugar and cinnamon and spread out on a baking sheet lined with a silicone baking mat, and bake at 325 for about fifteen minutes. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients, reserving 1 TB of the cinnamon and 1/4 cup of the evaporated cane juice and being careful to use EXACT measurements. Carefully whisk everything together until you have a homogenous mixture. In a separate bowl, place the 1/2 cup of coconut oil in the bottom of the bowl and carefully pour 1 cup of very hot water over the oil, stirring gently until all the oil melts(most coconut oil is sold in tubs and is the consistency of shortening at room temperature, so it must be melted before use in baking). Add the oil/water mixture to the bowl of dry ingredients, then add the applesauce and vanilla. Stir until smooth, then gently fold in the roasted apples. Remove 1/4 cup of the batter to a separate bowl and add the reserved 1TB cinnamon, 1/4 cup of evaporated cane juice and remaining 1/4 cup of water. Stir until smooth.

Pour the batter from the larger mixing bowl into a greased loaf pan, then carefully pour the cinnamon batter in a line down the center. Use a spoon to swirl the cinnamon mixture into the loaf, being careful not to stir too much; you want a visible ribbon of cinnamon in the finished loaf.

Sprinkle the top of the loaf with a few pinches of evaporated cane juice or plain granulated sugar(what I used), and bake at 325 for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the loaf out of the oven and brush the top with either melted butter(what I used) or melted coconut oil(original recipe). Sprinkle with a little more sugar, rotate the pan and put back in the oven for another 20 minutes. The loaf will be golden on top and a toothpick inserted in the middle will come out clean. Let the loaf rest in the pan for 20 minutes before running a knife around the sides and inverting onto a cutting board. Slice and serve warm. Be happy.

I ♥ Policemen

Before the haircut

After

The haircut pictures don't really have anything to do with the police, they're just the most recent shots I have of Matteas. I loved his hair long and shaggy, but it was getting a little bit out of control. He saw me giving Aaron a haircut the other night, and asked for one of his own. With Aaron's help I managed to do a pretty decent job, although it was touch and go for a while; Matteas is so darn wiggly, and then he thought the comb was tickly so there was a lot of moving around and near-chopping of fingers(mine, not his). After a lot of patient head-holding from Aaron, we got it done. My only regret is that all the bright blond highlights are gone, but I'm sure Summer will come along and take care of that. And now, where the police come in... I have never really been a terribly "together" person; while I excel in certain areas, there is usually a trade-off. I choose to focus on a few things that are my top priorities and pretty much don't worry about the rest. I'd like to be more on top of things, but a lot of the time I feel like it isn't worth the struggle. At least not as long as the struggle involves wrestling whiny kids. Last week Jack was invited to a birthday party, which we missed due to Matteas being in a state of serious snottiness; every few minutes there would be a fresh smear of boogers across his face, so I thought it was best not to take our slimy selves to the birthday party. We hung onto the present for the birthday boy, and yesterday at school pick-up I actually remembered to give it to him. I was having a semi-together day; I'd done my hair, was wearing an actual outfit as opposed to sweatpants and a coat, managed to fill the car with gas and pull off a trip to Trader Joe's with Matteas in tow, and now I was thoughtfully remembering birthday presents for a kid whose party we didn't even attend. Someone give me a gold star. I get Jack from school, collect his papers from his cubby, remember to grab his water bottle. I see the birthday boy and tell him that we have a present for him in the trunk of my car. I hit the trunk button on my car remote, simultaneously hitting the "lock" button(you know where this is going, right?). Matteas is already buckled into his seat. I pull out the present, toss my armful of school stuff into the trunk, and shut it. With the keys inside. I knew I shouldn't have put on a bra today; it probably cost me my last few "togetherness" points. Jack's teacher immediately calls 911(Aaron was more than an hour away) and the mom of the birthday boy kindly waits with me, and she and the teacher take turns regaling me with stories of all the times they locked themselves out of the house while their newborn was napping, it's happened to all of us, etc. I stand by the window next to Matteas and tell him that Mama locked the keys in the trunk, but a nice policeman is coming to get them out and everything will be okay. He was well for a few minutes, but the windows in the car are up and it's starting to get a little warm in the car. I try instructing him to slide the top harness of his carseat buckle down and pull his arms out so he can reach forward and unlock the door, and he does actually get the buckle to slide down but then he's too upset to listen to further direction. The cop shows up, has me sign the release form and gets to work on the passenger-side door. Matteas is freaking out by now, his little face is flushed and sweaty, and he's crying. I put my hand on the window next to his face and try to talk soothingly to him, but this is difficult because he's crying and can't really hear me through the glass anyway so I have to shout which isn't really very soothing. In spite of the stressful circumstances I feel a quick moment of embarrassment that my car is so messy, the floor of the backseat littered with buckets from the beach, extra clothes and coats and about 16 half-used packages of diaper wipes. The cop tries valiantly to unlock the door, but apparently my car is extra difficult to burglarize. This is not comforting news under the circumstances. At this point, Matteas is so upset that he's screaming and rubbing snot all over his face. The snot irritates him and he tries to brush it off his face, but he succeeds only in gashing his own cheek. Between the snot and the screaming he's getting pretty worked up, and in short order he barfs all over himself. Good thing he drank a lot of milk with lunch. "This kind of thing doesn't usually happen, I'm a very attentive mother!" I want to blurt out. "I control Jack's eczema by giving up wheat as a family! I read to them everyday! I feed them only organic fruits and vegetables! I'm training for a $%#@ing marathon!!!" But none of this matters right now, so I don't say any of it. I meekly accept that it is my turn to feel sheepish, that no one gets everything right all of the time and it doesn't make me a bad mother, it just makes me human. Another cop shows up to help, and Jack's teacher gets me a damp cloth to wipe Matteas with when I eventually get him out of my car. Twenty minutes after the 911 call was made, Cop #1 succeeds in getting the door open which of course sets off the alarm, so now that sound is added to the screaming. I lunge into the now-open passenger door and hit the unlock button, run back around to Matteas and pull him out, sweaty and covered from head to toe in various bodily fluids. His whole little body is trembling and his hair is matted with sweat. "I'm sorry baby, Mama's so sorry," I whisper over and over again as I rock him in my arms. "Mama was right here all the time, I knew the policeman would save you, it's okay now baby, it's okay," and in a minute or two he calms down. I thank the cops, who are very friendly and understanding and they don't even tell me I'm a bad mother or that I should have cleaned my car that morning instead of having coffee with Anna while the kids watched cartoons. We get home and I run a warm bath for Matteas, change my clothes and get Matteas a bottle of grape juice to get the taste of curdled milk out of his mouth, and in short order everything is just fine. I give myself permission to make macaroni and cheese for dinner(with brown rice pasta). My friend Anna's words come back to me: "It's the mothers who think they have it all figured out that you need to watch out for; they're not open to the fact that they might be getting something wrong. The good mothers are the ones who know they need help; they know they can't always do it alone." Anna's like that; she can make you feel like a good person precisely because you made a mistake. As I'm making dinner, the phone rings. It's Aaron's brother Tristan, calling to say that Grandpa Caseri has passed away quietly in his sleep. I light a candle and say a prayer for Grandma Caseri, who will probably never quite understand where her husband went. I resolve to be extra-nice to Aaron when he comes home, and start tidying up the house as a welcome. As the noodles for dinner are cooking, I load the dishwasher to the brim which is a good thing because after dinner we will be totally out of clean silverware. I put in the soap, close the door and push the start button. Nothing happens. I fiddle with it for a while, then realize that something must have shorted when Matteas flooded the counter earlier in the day while "doing the dishes," a process which bought me fifteen minutes of peace to eat my lunch unmolested but which apparently cost me a working dishwasher. Aaron gets home and I open wine, kiss him hello, ask if he's alright. He says yes and then asks me if today's events have motivated me to get the spare key(which isn't spare anymore because the real spare broke off in the lock a few months ago) back in its hiding place, which I wrongly interpret as criticism. I bite my tongue, and all I say in reply is "yes." The phone rings. It's a young kid named Will, trying to earn money for college by selling me knives. I hate solicitors. Especially the kind who call during the dinner hour because they know you're home. Poor Will. He doesn't deserve what's about to happen, but unfortunately for him he's the last straw and I let fly. "Will, I'm sure you're a very nice kid and that your knives are of the finest quality, but I accidentally locked my kid in the car today and the police had to be called to get him out but not before he got so upset that he barfed all over, my husband's grandfather passed away less than an hour ago and my dishwasher is broken. I really hope you get to college but I'm just not interested in any knives right now." "Oh, uh, I'm really sorry about all that; I completely understand. Have a good evening," stammers Will, beating a hasty retreat. As I pray with Matteas that night, we thank God for cozy beds, warm baths, and policemen. Later, in my own bed, I say a prayer of gratitude for emergency help that comes when you need it, and for moms who are willing to have the "I'm not perfect either" conversation. Then I promise myself that tomorrow while Jack's at school, I will buy myself a cheese danish to eat after I wash all the dishes by hand. And I will wear sweats to school pick-up.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Marathon...

So I've noticed an interesting phenomenon about telling people you're training for a marathon: the instant the words leave your mouth, the person you're talking to will involuntarily look you over. I've probably done the same thing, automatically trying to weigh the facts against ambitions. Since noticing this trend, I've been careful not to mention my marathon aspirations unless I'm wearing pants that flatter my bum. I went running for the first time in a while on Sunday. We had a horrendous time in church with the boys that morning; the sweet lady who sat behind us actually hugged me when we left. I think she sensed my exasperation. We got home and had some breakfast, then watched the US/Canada hockey game while the food settled. Later Aaron took both boys to Costco by himself(something we usually do together or with fewer kids) so I could go running while the shopping was being done. It was a lovely spring evening, warm enough to run in a light long-sleeved top. The route I chose took me past at least a dozen cherry trees and the air was soft and sweet. I haven't run long distances for a while; when I say "a while" I mean somewhere around ten years. I ran as a teenager to work out my angst, and I'm simply a lot less angsty these days. I ran 3-5 times a week, between 3-5 miles per run. I liked the way my mind and my body unwound as I ran, untangling the knots in my brain as well as my muscles. Running gave me my own little world, one set apart from my family and friends and all the cares of school and my job. It was something that was mine and mine alone, a world I created for myself from nothing but the strength of my own body. It was a way to get away, literally but perhaps more important, figuratively, from everything that troubled me. I ran a lot after meeting Aaron. In fact, the day after I met him I improved my personal best for distance by pounding out eight miles, not willing to admit to myself where this new-found source of energy and ambition was coming from. On days when I started to feel tired and my energy lagged, I relied on two tricks to get me to the end of my run. One trick, and I have no idea why I did this, was to count my strides in sets of twelve. It was a high enough number to move me a significant distance but low enough that I could always bring myself to run just twelve more steps; every time I got to twelve, I'd start over. Sometimes I'd be counting to twelve for a whole mile, my brain switching to an automatic track that wasn't allowed to think about the discomfort in my lungs or the heaviness in my legs, only to count to twelve and to force my feet to move with each number. The other trick was to think about Aaron. For a good amount of the time I knew him, he was dating someone else. Consequently, I did a lot of running. I had a sense from the very beginning that Aaron and I were meant to be together, so the effect of seeing him with another girl was twofold: it created in me a sense that all was not right with the world, but also a sense of waiting. It was a strange mix of feelings to have at once a sense of dread but also hope, that if I just stuck it out long enough the Forces of the Universe would eventually get with the program and everything would work out. This outcome seemed a lot less likely during the three-year period that Aaron and I didn't speak to each other. I wasn't speaking to him because I felt he'd behaved like an ass, and he wasn't speaking to me because he felt sheepish about having behaved like an ass. Later, the roles would be reversed but eventually it did all work out. In the meantime, I ran. And whenever I felt like counting to twelve wasn't going to get me through the last mile, I'd pretend that Aaron was waiting for me. The end of my run was always the hardest part, two fairly long, fairly steep hills coming between me and my parents' front door. I'd usually walk up them, but on days when I felt particularly angsty or that the universe was so badly out of order I couldn't see how it would ever right itself, I'd channel all my discontent into self-improvement and make myself run up both hills to finish. Often, the only way to get myself to do this was to envision Aaron at the top. He was never there, but the hope of someday propelled me though many a final ascent. During my run on Sunday, my thoughts wandered back to all those fraught runs of my youth and where they'd gotten me. Muscle memory is a well-documented thing, but what I find even more compelling are the mental memories woven into the process. I ran about five miles that evening, and it was just difficult enough to be really satisfying. During the last half-mile, I started counting to twelve. After a few rounds of that, I realized that my other endurance trick would probably serve me better since Aaron would, in fact, actually be waiting for me at the top of the hill.

An Actual Conversation Between Matteas and His Banana

Matteas is sitting at the kitchen table alone, eating a banana. I overhear the following. All voices were provided by Matteas.

Banana(in a pitiful voice): Please don’t eat me!

Matteas(in a growly voice): But I’m hungry so I will eat you.

Banana(hopefully): I will find some food for you?

Matteas: Well, ok.

Banana: Do you eat meat?

Matteas: Yes, but if you eat too much meat you will get dia-meena(diarrhea).

Banana: Then I will find you a chip.

*Matteas puts down the banana, picks up leftover chip from lunch*

Chip(same voice as banana): Don’t eat me!

Matteas: But I’m hungry.

Chip(more confidently than the banana): I will find some food for you.

Matteas: Um, ok.

*Chip conducts a search for food, but comes up empty-handed*

Chip:(resigned) Ok, eat me.

Matteas: :Chomp:

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?

Winds of Change

I have to warn you, the "after" pictures are still pretty disgusting. There are a lot of gross things about our house, and this cabinet is pretty high up on the list. It clearly sustained a lot of leaking in the past and the resident handyman decided the best fix would be to slap some contact paper on it. I cannot tell you how many layers of contact paper I had to peel off of the shelves when we moved in. Incidentally, lining deep(and I mean deep, like four feet) cabinets with fresh liner while seven months pregnant in August is a terrible idea. Anyway....

This is the caddy that scared me. Can you blame me?

Four inches of bilge water. Luckily I have years of practice of breathing through my mouth.

And after. Like I said, it's still kind of scary despite the definite improvements.

Doing things I'm scared of is part of my new lifestyle. I realized recently that I spend a lot of time thinking about the sort of person I'd like to be, but not a lot of time actually becoming that person. This is a common practice usually indulged in while in a fancy store, and one that salesman know and love. They know that if you see yourself in that slinky dress or those fabulous boots, there is a whole new persona that goes along with that outfit. Often it is the fantasy of our new selves and not the actual merchandise that makes the sale. I do this a lot. Not usually with purchases(not a big shopper), but very very often with activities. At least once a day I'm grateful that ESP is not a real thing and no one besides me can see how rich my fantasy life is. The ability to fantasize is a great thing, especially if you spend a lot of time with children. The danger, however, is that the difference between your fantasy life and your real life is often disappointing. Especially if you are a procrastinator, which I am. I have invested hundreds, maybe thousands of hours visualizing the sort of person I want to be, and hundreds, maybe thousands of hours more putting off actually becoming that person. It's hard. And it's work. And I can't do any of it while sleeping in and then spending two hours drinking coffee in my pajamas. I am not a morning person. I prefer to do my partying at night, staying up until I'm so tired I can't keep my eyes open and then stagger to bed and fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. I consider anything prior to 9 a.m. early, and anything prior to 7:30 a.m. positively ungodly. So God thought it would be hilarious to give me a kid who is the perkiest early-riser ever. Seriously, Jack puts farmers and birds and dawn itself to shame, springing to life at 6:45 every morning bright-eyed and curious about the day, the world, and all the exciting things that might be going on in it. He's also totally in love with his dad, and waking at 6:45 is the only way he gets to spend any time with him in the morning. Aaron usually leaves the house no later than 7:30, so that's usually when Jack starts coming into my room and whispering urgently about his desire to make a machine that takes old garbage and recycles it into new toys using a complicated system of conveyor belts and pulleys, all of which he describes to me in desperate lisps at a time when I'm still having trouble understanding English. I can usually ignore him for about half an hour, but by 8:00 I'm tired of being bombarded by his grand schemes and I stagger out of bed and head straight for the coffee. I am not proud of my morning routine. There's not really much routine to it, for starters; more like a delay, as if I keep hitting the "snooze" button on my life. Then the other day, I was giving a really moving speech to one of my little brothers about adulthood, and how the hallmark of becoming an adult is the ability to enforce and respect boundaries. So, just to make sure we're all on the same page here, I am a procrastinator, NOT a morning person, and a hypocrite. No wonder I'm having so much trouble instilling discipline in my own children; you can't give what you haven't got. Life has a funny way of backing you into a corner, of insistently applying ever-increasing pressure to change. We all know how much I love to change. But the time has come. It started with Jack's eczema(not, as one might hope, with his birth. I resisted even then.). He's had a small patch of it on his ribcage for about two years, with another small patch(about the size of a nickel) on his inner arm. We don't really do anything to manage it because he hates cream of any sort, saying that even the gentlest emollients sting. I didn't press it because it really didn't seem to bother him that much, but shortly after we eliminated white flour from our diet his eczema flared up in a serious way, the patch on his ribcage doubling in size and two new patches springing up on the backs of both hands, all of it looking red, inflamed and generally angrier than I'd ever seen it before. I'd gotten really enthused about switching all of our white flour products over to whole wheat, and thinking back over our previous meals I realized that in my enthusiasm for whole wheat everything, I'd fed him wheat four meals in a row. So now, faced with the suffering of my firstborn, I was greatly compelled to make some changes and we have now removed wheat from our diet entirely. Within four days, his eczema calmed down. It's still there, but it's no longer red and angry-looking and with the application of 100% pure shea butter(the only thing that doesn't bother his skin) three times a day I think we're keeping it under control. The whole process got me thinking about the way I engage with life, and the fact that until I'm faced with serious consequences I rarely to anything productive. This must stop. I want to stop being reactive and start being proactive. Today. Now. So I've been asking myself some very hard questions, and coming up with some very uncomfortable answers. I try to catch myself in Fantasy Mode and force myself to work through what I'd actually need to do in order to turn that fantasy into reality, and ask myself if that's what I really want. Then I have to be on the lookout for Denial, because that's another tool I'm very good at using. For example, I've always wanted to run a marathon. At least, that's what I used to tell myself. Now I realize that I don't actually want to run a marathon, I just want to be the sort of person who does that kind of thing only without having to put any actual work into it. Problem: running 26.2 miles isn't the sort of thing that happens by itself. You have to work for it. My trainer suggested recently that I train for the Seattle Marathon happening in June, and I say I'm interested. For a few weeks I delude myself into thinking that, just by talking about it and entertaining the possibility, I am now the Sort of Person Who Runs a Marathon. But then I start doing some reading about training schedules, mental coping mechanisms for running through pain, tips on keeping hydrated throughout the race, what to eat the night before, what to eat during and after, and I realize there is an awful lot of work involved in this marathon business. My heart gets all fluttery just thinking about it. So I start compromising, telling myself that a half marathon would be good enough, 13.1 miles is still a pretty good distance to run, etc. Then I start telling myself that I can run 13.1 miles by myself, I don't need to sign up for a marathon and pay $85.00 to sweat for two hours. So I have gone from being the Sort of Person Who Merely Talks About Running a Marathon to being the Sort of Person Who Merely Talks About Running a Half-marathon Unofficially, and I have yet to log a single mile of my training. This is not the kind of thinking that produces excellence. This is not the sort of person I want to be, but in order to make any changes I first have to accept the cold, hard reality that this is the sort of person I am. This will not stand. Unless I plan on raising a bunch of mediocre kids with mediocre ambitions who put forth only the minimal effort required to succeed on a mediocre level. I don't plan on raising those sorts of kids. So, hear this: on June 26th, 2010 I am running a marathon. The whole thing, not just half of it. I will devote time and space to the proper training, I will work hard to be well-prepared, I will suffer through the fact that I absolutely hate running with glasses on my face, and I will show my kids that if something is really important to you, you work for it no matter how hard it is. Did I mention that the marathon starts at 7:00 a.m.?

I Don't Remember Having a Baby Recently...

...but for all the sleep I've been getting I may as well have. Poor Matteas has had a rough go of it lately, battling successive illnesses which resulted in massively interrupted sleep for everyone. It's been kind of a hazy week, but there have been some bright spots. Matteas is finally big enough to navigate his boots with some degree of control, if not finesse. Definitely not finesse. He tried running across the rocks at Picnic Point and suffered a major fall, but after he learned his lesson he remembered to reach for Mama's hand before breaking into a trot. He's admiring a fish, of which I could not get a satisfactory picture because the darn thing wouldn't hold still. It was a very wiggly bullhead which I managed to catch with that bucket and a little shovel, plus some bad-ass wilderness skills. If I didn't hate bugs and being cold, I could have my own Survivor Girl show. But since there are bugs and cold to contend with in the wild, I prefer to limit my foraging skills to demonstrations close to home where I can have a warm bath and eat roast beef for dinner, which is far tastier than bullhead. Also, roast beef can't sting you. I think this is one my favorite Jack projects ever. He loves, loves to write with permanent marker and is generally very careful about where he does it so as to avoid having his Sharpie privileges revoked. This morning he went out and gathered a bunch of rocks, cleaned them off with diaper wipes and then turned them into dinosaur skulls. The biggest one is the skull of a T-Rex, in case the fierceness of the teeth didn't clue you in. In other news, our house is coming along. Tristan has been devoted in his efforts to tear down what was once a make-shift(ghetto) "sun room." The paint smears around the window are color samples which will one day grow into full-on coverage, at which point we'll have a big party to celebrate. I don't know if it's the weather or the progress on the outside of the house that's been inspiring me, but I've been working on the interior or our house as well. I haven't done anything major, but I have begun what I hope will be a thorough culling of the flocks that are our too-many belongings. It began a few weeks ago after a particularly squirrelly morning with the boys during which they made one disaster after another, demanding multiple snacks and wiping of bottoms all the while. By the time I took Jack to school I was frazzled and wondering how we were going to get through the rest of the day. As I walked Jack into school, I was struck by the quiet hum of activity. I actually stood there and counted how many children were in there; 16 kids, most of them only four years-old, all working quietly with the supervision of only two adults. How is it possible that 16 kids can be quieter, more organized and more peacefully engaged than just my own two at home with me? I've concluded that the key to success lies in the organization of their environment and have henceforth decided that I'm going to organize my home more like a Montessori classroom. I want them to be able to access work independently and put it away independently, which will require me to better enforce the way things are organized. I want them to be able to respect a few things that are not for touching, but I don't want to frustrate them by filling their space with lots of things that aren't meant to be touched. I also have serious Ikea fantasies involving enclosed storage space so that things with lots of little pieces or that are special projects for a special time can be out of sight and out of reach. And now, I'm off to my trainer's where I will hopefully find the motivation to power through the rest of my day. I discovered that while the kitchen faucet was leaking(which lasted for approximately four months), dirty dishwater was slowly collecting in the caddy of cleaning supplies underneath. I'm afraid. As should you be also, because I'm going to post before and after pictures.