Visiting the Salt Mines

Austin and I went to Williamsburg for a night away from the kids (thanks Helen and David!).  We didn’t actually go into any of the Colonial Williamsburg buildings, but enjoyed walking around the town, and even stumbled upon a glorious Christmas concert at the Bruton Parish Church.  Since we were late, we got the only seats left—front row! 

One of the highlights was getting to visit a salt spa the next day.  Basically, it’s a room with 15 tons of salt making up the walls and the floor, simulating a salt cave.  You sit in chairs in the cave, and it’s supposed to purify the lungs and help all these respiratory ailments.  Apparently the idea originated from the Polish salt mines in the 19th century—all the miners were so remarkably healthy that a doctor started examining why. 

I’m not sure one session has cured Austin’s asthma or my allergies but we definitely emerged feeling very relaxed and refreshed.  I highly recommend visiting a salt spa if you have the opportunity!

Me and the Old Ladies

My new favorite store is Walmart these days. Me and the old ladies love those motorized handicapped carts with the little basket out front. Molly likes them too and has learned how to drive when my attention wavers for a second. She prefers to navigate the store with one hand on the wheel (is she a backseat driver already?). Tucker isn't as enthusiastic as expected, perhaps because he kept falling off. Surprisingly, those carts probably weren't designed for three people. I really should take a picture of the three of us whipping through the aisles. It definitely beats grocery shopping on crutches. (Two more weeks to go!)

Bye Bye Marathon, Hello Crutches

Well, my plans for the Richmond marathon are done. I did a little 10k race two and a half weeks ago, and noticed a little groin pain about mile 3. That's odd, I had thought, and continued to run. After all, the pain wasn't so bad. Until I stopped. Fast forward to now: the MRI yesterday confirmed a pelvic stress fracture, which are "notoriously difficult to heal." Hmmm... not what I like to hear from my doctor.

I am the proud new owner of a set of crutches. Gee, thanks.

Thankfully I am physically able to walk in a pinch, but I've learned enough about these fractures to have great respect for how long they take to heal if not treated well. Based on the internet forums I spent copious amounts of time last night perusing, it seems pretty common for people to report being out of running for a year. I'm hoping for three months.

Right now I can't even really pool run. I actually was pool running for the past two weeks, and that was what convinced me that I couldn't possibly have a stress fracture. Stress fractures are only supposed to hurt after doing weight bearing activities, but somehow mine hurts after I pool run... so it HAD to be muscular....

It is a little tricky navigating the world with a baby on the hip and crutches. The pic is of me looking particularly svelt this morning trying out the front pack-crutch combo.

Catching up, or at least hanging on

The past month has been a doozy around here. I've been sick for five weeks, no exaggeration. A cold I caught in Florida turned into a lung thing which turned into a sinus infection. Now, two antibiotics later I think I'm turning a corner. I hope. I have new empathy for my father-in-law who has chronic sinus problems. It's awful!

All my energy of late has gone into all of us reaching the end of the day alive, fed and clothed, preferably with the house not on fire. (These seem like lofty goals to me, too!)

But of course, the kids have been anything but static over the past month. Molly especially is changing rapidly. She learned a couple weeks ago how to roll from her back to her front, and she is excited with her new powers. In fact, when she first learned she lost all interest in nursing for several days. I think her thought process was something like this: "I'm so powerful! I can roll over! I no longer am subject to normal human conventions like eating!" She likes to be on her stomach now just because she can do it herself, and she just feels stronger to me. She no longer likes to be in a reclining position, and spends her time in a crunch trying to sit up straight. Her other major accomplishment is trying to grab hold of everything so that she can put it in her mouth. This is a delicate operation because she REALLY wants it in her mouth and if all doesn't go according to plan, I have a passionately frustrated little girl on my hands.

Tucker's favorite thing right now is playing a tackle game where he finds an unsuspecting parent to sit on the rug so he can run over and tackle us to the ground. The other day he had a stomach bug and the first thing he said in the morning when I walked into his room was "I don't want to play the tackle game" (not that there was any chance of me wanting to play the tackle game at 6:30 am with a sinus infection after spending the night cleaning up vomit....) It was like telling me in flashing neon lights "I feel sick, Mommy."

One of the other highlights from the last month was a concert that Tucker participated in at the Bible study we go to. It was ridiculously cute. Tucker did the University of Florida gator chomp throughout most of the songs, and was quite the little wiggly-dancing-singing enthusiast. He had a lot of the audience laughing out loud. It's funny; Tucker will be too shy to hold hands with the other leaders in our little prayer circle beforehand, but he can be the absolute center of attention on the stage and think that is the best thing since sliced bread.

Another milestone in my little boy's left happened yesterday: he climbed his first tree, much to the delight of our 86 year-old neighbor, Althea. He also filled out his first NCAA basketball bracket yesterday, with a little help. I told him yesterday morning we needed to fill it out ASAP if he wanted to be in our extended family pool. He promptly got down from the breakfast table and ran to get his football helmet, and to get me a ridiculous hat shaped like a birthday cake. Apparently, picking a tournament bracket is predicated on the proper headwear. Who did he pick to win it all? Notre Dame. Why? I told him their mascot was like a leprechaun. Other favorite teams were Michigan State because they wear green, Richmond because they are the spiders and Aunt Liz went there, and Washington because that's where Uncle Mike lives.

There is, of course, much more I could add, if I could think of it. It's even possible that one day all my brain cells will collect in one place and I'll start speaking in complete sentences again. :)

Firefighter Tucker

Tucker has been sick for the past few days with an awful croupy cough (a cough that sounds like a seal barking). Actually, the bark has gotten a lot better but it was bad on Sunday so we made up a game to help ease his cough.

One of the best things for a nasty cough is to be in a warm, steamy room. So we turned the shower on hot and steamed up the bathroom--but how do you get a three year-old to stay in a bathroom for an extended period of time? You play firefighter with the "smoke"!

Now it takes all our energy to get Firefighter Tucker OUT of the bathroom. But his cough is a lot better. :)

Things I'm doing in the New Year

No, not injection drugs: allergy shots. I never suspected I would say this, but it's true: I love allergy shots. I'm currently on shot 19 of a course of 26 (not counting 3 years of monthly maintenance doses).

If you've been around me in the past five years, you probably were sneezed on and I apologize. I was so allergic to dust that I could barely get through the day, especially during pregnancy and nursing when I tried not to be continually doped up on antihistamines. But even the newer antihistamines could only take the edge off the problem and reduce my Kleenex usage from three boxes a week to two (I actually never measured this, but it was an absurd amount). I had horrible allergy attacks without fail every Sunday morning when I put on my church clothes, and then at church because of the carpeting and fabric-covered pews. I felt bad taking communion directly from the cup because the person next to me would think I was getting sick when really I had just been sneezing all service because of the dust. One time I had an allergy attack so bad I had to leave work.

Austin has commented that he would never go to a doctor's appointment with two kids in tow. It's a bit bizarre, but my allergy shots have become an activity for us, much like going to the park or gym or library. On Tuesdays when we go, Tucker uses the chalk and plays with the trains. On Thursdays we have a picnic there after Bible Study. If they aren't busy and I get my shot really fast (and only need to wait there for the 20 minutes to make sure I'm not having a bad reaction), Tucker complains because he wants to play longer.

The shots start at 1:1000 concentration, then go to 1:100, 1:10, 1:1 and finally, 1:0.5. Most people only begin to notice a difference after two or three months of shots, once the concentration builds up enough that their immune system starts reacting to it. I had a systemic reaction on my very first shot (a systemic reaction happens in about 1 out of 1000 allergy shot patients, and almost always on a high-concentration dose), which shocked both my doctor and the nurse. After that rocky start, I have to take two types of medicine on days when I get shots just to tolerate them. But the good news is that I started noticing a difference immediately in my quality of life.

Today, a minor miracle occurred: I cleaned the attic with no antihistamines in my system and sneezed twice. It's a whole new world.

"What's that uh-uh mean?"

This is Tucker's favorite phrase right now: "What's that uh-uh mean?" That's how he asks what something is called and what's it for. It's really cute, though hopefully he isn't picking up verbal fillers ("um") from me yet.

Today at the grocery store his ducky needed to come, and actually spent the last 20 minutes of shopping on Tucker's head. Tucker almost always eats a banana in the store, and the fact that a large duck was draped over his head didn't dissuade him from munching a banana at the same time. A couple people stopped and said it was a perfect picture. (Incidentally, to pay for a banana that a child has eaten, just ask them to ring up another banana twice.)

In other news, I managed to either seamlessly get another cold on top of the one from 2+ weeks ago that is still lingering, or the old one has turned into bronchitis. That puts my tally at 6 or 7 colds since the fall. Argh! At least it's clear now that our wood stove is absolved from being responsible for me getting sick.

Austin complains that my blogging frequency has gone down this year, but life is pretty quiet these days. Tucker is entirely amusing, when he's not trying to pick fights with us (which is not too often, but he is a two year-old). Yesterday he ran and got a snow shovel from the shed and ran all the way down the driveway with the shovel yelling "help Daddy!" because he was hoping Austin might need to fix the driveway drainage with him again. Or maybe he was just reenacting the fact that they had fixed the driveway together.

Tucker is against all things baby right now. At Bible study last week, Tucker was in my classroom before it began. Several of the four and five year-olds were already there, and so I excused myself and said I needed to bring Tucker to his class. One of the four year-old boys said "Yeah, he's in the baby class." That was the perfectly wrong thing to say. Tucker was so upset about going to his class because it was for babies. I had to show him the nursery where the babies were and show him his classroom to "prove" to him his was NOT the baby class. He still did not entirely believe me.

Prednisone

...makes Tucker crazy.

For a sick kiddo who was supposed to be taking it easy and resting, Tucker has been a hyper maniac. Two year-olds aren't generally known for their attention spans, but Tucker's the past couple was just about non-existent. He couldn't even sit still to watch his favorite bus video. I tried to take a video of the craziness, but it was hard to capture.

The biggest problem with all this is that he is a tired hyper maniac. His little body needs the rest (he has been asking to take his nap at 11 am the past few days!) and yet he just can't take the long naps he needs, and he can't lay low to make it through the rest of the afternoon till bedtime.

Thankfully, his breathing is great so we stopped the prednisone today and I think there's already been a big difference.

I also want to mention that Tucker now uses his favorite CD "The Wheels on the Bus" like a security object. He wants to take the CD everywhere with him, not necessarily to listen to it, but to hold it. He likes listening to it too, but holding it is even more special. We even took it with us in the ambulance because it calmed him down and he showed it the nurse and doctor at the hospital.

Frightening snowstorm adventures

I hoped that our snowstorm misadventures were finished after abandoning my car by the side of the road and barely making it home on Friday night. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning.

Yesterday morning Tucker's fever had climbed to 103 but he was active and the doctor on call said that as long as we filled the prescriptions (antibiotic and prednisone to help his lungs) in the next day or so, we'd be okay. She did warn to watch his breathing, and that is what to be most concerned about. We hemmed and hawed about whether the roads were passable until the early afternoon when the snow lightened considerably. Austin packed emergency supplies in case he got stranded in his truck, and hit the road.

Our actual driveway and lane were plowed by our neighbor in his tractor, but the secondary road it feeds into was completely unplowed, 24 hours (and 25 inches!) into the storm.

Austin did make it through, following some tire tracks until he hit the main road. Barely. But, while Austin was getting to CVS, Tucker decided to get sick. REALLY sick, and fast.

One minute he was playing upstairs with me and his trucks and the next he was hot (103.6) and listless. His breathing started to get labored, and he proceeded to throw up all over both of us. I cleaned him up and gave him his inhaler and Tylenol. Unfortunately, even with his inhaler, his breathing got even worse still. He asked me to give him the inhaler again, but another dose was four hours away. He threw up two more times, his breathing degenerated further and then I found his temperature had spiked to 105.3! One-oh-FIVE.

That was when I called the ambulance.

It took the ambulance 25 minutes to get to our house (usually a five minute trip) because of the roads. By the time they arrived, things were already getting better. I had gotten his fever down some by sponging him with water, and his breathing was getting better as he was calming down. Tucker got a nebulizer and oxygen in the ambulance and the fever meds kicked in. By the time we got to the ER (an hour ride--usually 20 minutes), he had good color and was playful and happy. What an amazing relief.

Tucker does have pneumonia--a chest xray at the hospital confirmed that, but since he was doing so well was able to go home. I am SO thankful.

But that wasn't the end of our adventures. The second twist on the day was that our neighbors called us while we were getting ready to leave the ER, to tell us that they had lost power. We debated about whether we thought we'd be even able to get up the hill to our house, and how to manage no electricity and a toddler with pneumonia.

Things were a bit grim, but not as terrible as we expected. The unplowed road near our house had been improved significantly by a good samaritan who plowed a layer off the road. We made it home slowly but safely.

I find it ironic that our longest power outage ever (20 hours) happened the night we had a sick child with pneumonia. Austin got our wood stoves going and we managed to stay as warm upstairs as we usually do. We didn't need to worry about our food spoiling because our porch was our refrigerator, and our wood stove was our cooktop. It was not too bad, but Tucker was distraught that the bus video wasn't working and he couldn't play with the water from the faucet (our well pump is electric).

Worst Winter Driving Ever...

It took me three and a half hours to drive home from town yesterday evening (about 15 miles). Tucker had a doctor's appointment at 4 pm, squeezed in before the snow was supposed to start at 8 or so. I stupidly took my Civic instead of Austin's truck, not even considering that it could be a problem.

Oh, how wrong I was.

When we left the doctor's at 4:50 pm with prescriptions for amoxycilin and oral prednisone, I was surprised that my car was already covered with snow and that it was falling fast. I called the pharmacy where we live to make sure it was going to stay open for two more hours, and hit the roads. The main road to the Western part of the county was impassable. All the roads around here are hilly, there are about 40 plows for the whole county, no one knows how to drive in the snow, no one has snow tires, and there are few 4WD vehicles.

It was horrible. The guy in front of me for awhile was in a cute little rear wheel drive sports car that needed to be pushed up each hill, and fishtailed down each hill until he finally did a 180 into the other lane and I passed him. The accidents were so bad that it took me two hours to go 0.3 of a mile.

Keep in mind I had a sick toddler in the back who kept asking to go night night and to wake ducky. For about an hour all he said was "Tucker hold Mama," just pleading with me to hold him. Sad. The best I could do was hold his hand from the front seat.

Unfortunately, the only alternative route was not an alternative because it was full of accidents, and I didn't know if my car could make it on the back road to it, anyway. My Civic doesn't drive great in the snow without snow tires, especially doing the start-and-stop driving that I was doing last night. Going up hills is much harder when you don't have any momentum.

So we just sat, and sat, and sat, completely stranded. There was an accident up ahead, so Austin couldn't get to us. Finally they were able to clear one lane, and a plow came. Phew. Home free, right?

Unfortunately, by this time there was already about 7 inches on the ground, and they hadn't plowed the secondary road to our house at all. Could my Civic do 3.5 unplowed miles of 7"+ deep snow?

Answer: no.

I got stuck half-way up a hill, about 3 miles from home. Austin came to get us in his truck, and we tried to tow my car up the hill. Unfortunately, the whole plastic bumper/front end got ripped away by the tow chain during our first try. Our second try it flat out didn't work. We backed the car to the side of the road, and abandoned it until the storm is over. Poor car.

We walked in the door at 8:20 last night, no prescriptions in hand and no way to get them. This morning the situation isn't any better. We have gotten 23inches so far, and it's still falling at 1-2 inches an hour! On the news, the head of the roads department said they are only plowing about four main roads in the county. That means we'd have to navigate 3.5 miles of 23" deep snow to get out. No four-wheel drive is THAT good!

According to the news, they opened emergency shelters for stranded drivers in our county and the next one over, and hundreds of drivers were stranded overnight on various roads last night. I believe it!!!!

The picture of Austin's truck is all the snow that accumulated after we got in last night. I'm also putting up one of the picnic table, and of Tucker's Cozy Coupe car (whose top we're using to measure our snow total--we measure and then wipe it off every few hours!)

Is it really the middle of December??

Whenever I go a week between blog entries, I tend to get a phone call from my mom wondering if we are all right. Yes, we are great but time seems to be in fast forward.

I have been busy finishing up a project for work. Usually I work a handful of hours a week, about two naptimes or evenings worth of work. But this project that I thought would be done by the end of the summer totally expanded, and by November was just embarrassing to me because it was still unfinished. Especially because I had my organization's GIS hard drive at my house, I simply had to finish and return it. So I have been furiously working for the past six weeks or so, putting in about triple the amount of hours as usual, and am ecstatic to announce that it is finally DONE.

It really feels like finishing exams for school: now Christmas can come!

To celebrate, I am fighting a little cold and Tucker has a 101 fever. We did get our Christmas tree today, though. It was a long drive to the place, and was a funny Christmas-tree cutting operation, because ALL the trees looked so good, it took us about 2 minutes to pick a tree. For two hours of driving we were only at the place for about 20 minutes since Tucker had no interest in running around.

It is a handsome tree and when we tackle putting it up will be worth a few pics. I wonder what Tucker will think of all the ornaments. So far he seems to have no grasp on what happens at Christmas, who is Santa, etc. I think I will take him to the mall to see Santa this week, though I am pretty sure that outing will involve us watching the other kids talk to Santa (waaay too scary to talk to Santa himself!)

I have an impressive list of things I want to do for Christmas that has accumulated during this work craziness. So far, not much of it seems to be happening today, but at least there is a football game on!

Gluten-free living

A month ago I was talking with a friend at a Bible study I go to. She was telling me about how she used to be just exhausted all the time, and never able to feel rested no matter how much sleep she got. When she started telling me about needing a long nap every afternoon, getting 9-10+ hours of sleep at night and still feeling tired, she was describing my exact situation. She got her thyroid tested, but no problem there. She tried other things. Nothing helped. Finally, this summer she went to a chiropractor who suggested going off gluten. A week later, she said she was a different woman.

Tiredness is one of those non-specific things that is hard to address. When you have spent much of the past several years pregnant and nursing and living with small children there's a sense that of course you should be tired. But I have known for awhile that my level of tiredness is just not normal. I even had a sleep study last year to tell me that I don't have a sleep disorder. But if not that, what?

I went off gluten a day after talking with my friend, and although I'm still waiting for any possible placebo effect to fade, I am beginning to think this is for real. I have not needed a nap one day in the past month. I have been sleeping an hour or more less at night. And I don't go around yawning, feeling miserable and exhausted. It is amazing.

In fact, the past month has been so amazing in this regard, that I have absolutely no desire for all things wheat. If I can feel this good without wheat, it is hands down worth it. It actually hasn't been very difficult at all because we make most of our own food from scratch, I can grind my own non-wheat flours, and we tend to do leftovers for lunch rather than sandwiches anyway.

I've learned during this experiment that gluten sensitivity is most common among people with European ancestry, especially the Irish and Basque (I'm half Basque). I have also known since grad school that eating too many wheat products gives me heartburn. But to think that something I eat could be making me TIRED? Fascinating... and potentially life changing.

There Goes a Monster Truck

Tucker LOVES the monster truck video we checked out of the library. He still has a relatively high fever (thankfully it topped out at 103.5 yesterday, so not scary high), which means that the little guy is tired and a bit cranky and needs some entertaining.

Toddlers aren't super good at lying down and resting when they're sick, so we let Tucker watch lots of videos when he's not up to snuff.

Unfortunately, the only video he will let us play for him is the same monster truck video, over and over again. Yesterday he watched it at least three times, and today he's working on his third time right now. I think I've memorized Monster Truck Driver Dave and Monster Truck Driver Becky's lines.

He shows no signs of getting bored of it. He is sitting over there smiling, with just rapt attention. I, on the other hand....

Tucker's Daddy Withdrawal

Tucker loves his daddy. But there are some days when Tucker is so into Austin that he is incapable of leaving him alone. Today featured Tucker draping himself on top of Austin at every opportunity, bouncing on Austin's stomach, even coloring with markers on paper he placed on Austin's chest.

This was all cute, of course, except for the fact that Austin has the flu and has had a temperature of up to 102 all day. I was reading yesterday that one tactic to prevent the spread of the flu is to maintain a six foot distance between sick people and others. Six feet is a bit extreme, but SOME distance seems prudent... but apparently not to Tucker. Tucker even tried to get Austin to share his pacifier with him. It will be amazing if he doesn't get sick.

Incidentally, we're wondering if Austin has the swine flu. Apparently it's widespread in our region right now, and what other flu goes around in July? If it is the swine flu, it's not been worse for Austin than the regular flu (they're both miserable!). If Austin still has a fever tomorrow he might go to the doc and get to find out which strain he has!

Ah-choo

I have been having the worst allergies lately. I'm allergic to dust, but it feels more these days like I'm allergic to breathing.

I usually am able to maintain a stable truce with my dust allergy... don't bother me, and I don't bother you. I know I'm in for it if I clean, or organize, or wear clothes that have sat in my closet unworn and unwashed for too long. I basically ignore constant congestion and periodic sneezing fits. Antihistamines are my friend.

But somehow the equilibrium has been seriously thrown off. Antihistamines are barely taking the edge off of my problems. We gutted our bedroom several weeks ago and did about 10 loads of laundry washing every part of our bedding and room that could be dismantled. I even used a rug cleaner on our rug. And still... misery.

Vacation was a wonderful respite (for the most part) from this sneezing plague, but about 5 minutes after we walked through the door of our house, it began again.

So, the good news: I'm not allergic to the dog, or to outdoor allergens. The bad news: I'm allergic to our house!!!!

I have been turning the house upside down today trying to de-dust as much as possible. Here's a sampling of my crazy dust-elimination strategy:
*Roll up the area rug in our bedroom, remove our dust ruffle and curtains
*Steam clean all area rugs in the house
*Move all furniture and vacuum and mop behind all pieces of furniture
*Wash all overheads fans and A/C vents
*Use the AC continually to reduce the humidity to discourage dust mite growth
*Take off our mattress topper because it can't be easily cleaned
*Put out three air purifiers that we hadn't been using because we always have our windows open
*Spray this allergen-neutralizer on all upholsered furniture
*Have a dust mask available at all times if I get into a room that really bothers me
*Start taking probiotics (which some studies have shown reduce allergic symptoms)

That's only about half of the items on my allergy to do list. Hopefully something will work SOON!!!

Contagion

Yes, Tucker is sick AGAIN.

No, it wasn't from licking his chair at the airport. Turns out he picked up a strain of hand, foot and mouth disease that is running around C'ville but it incubated until we got to Vermont.

Could they think of a worse name than "hand, foot and mouth" disease? It sounds like leprosy. Really, it's a virus that causes some blisters... he only has them in his mouth, but it makes eating painful. (And I guess it makes screaming at night seem like a really good idea, because that's what he's been doing.)

Did I mention I'm done with illness in this house????

How many illnesses can we collect at one time???

If you're wondering why this post initially published totally blank, all I have to say it has nothing to do with an attack baby trying to press all the buttons on his mommy's computer.

Anyway, in other news, we are a hotbed of illness still. We spent the morning going first to Tucker's doctor, and then to mine. The results? Bronchitis and an ear infection and wheezing for Tucker; bronchitis, a sinus infection and wheezing for me.

So now all three of us have inhalers, and two of us are on antibiotics. Have I mentioned that winter's over and I'm DONE being sick?????

I am even more done having Tucker be sick. I think lying down hurts his ear, because he's been choosing to stand up and scream in his crib the past few days rather than sleep. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.....

It is only uphill from here!

What I have been doing when I'm not blogging...

I was the type of kid that got really high fevers suddenly. Well, it looks like Tucker has inherited my trait. Out of nowhere on Friday afternoon he woke up with a 102.6 fever. We can handle that, right?

Well, it went up to 104.3 Saturday at its highest which warranted a weekend trip to the doctor. But then, Saturday night, it spiked to 105.7!!!??? That is NOT what I like to see on the thermometer at 3:30 am.

Thankfully, it came down quickly and we avoided the hospital. And then Sunday, it was up to almost 104, and down to 95 last night (seriously, this wasn't a thermometer error). So we got a second weekend trip to the doc that culminated in a chest x-ray. Thankfully no pneumonia.

We keep thinking he's over it, and then it goes back up when the dose of Motrin wears off. In the wee hours of this morning it was 104 again.

It's probably some random virus that he picked up somewhere, but of course we're googling horrible diseases that can be acquired from poultry and other esoteric medical mysteries.

So that's been the hard part of the past few days. The good news is that Tucker is still a nut, and as long as he has some Motrin in his system continues to beg approximately every other minute to go outside to stomp in the puddles and visit daddy's truck and the chickens.

The other night we were in the hospital waiting for his chest x-ray at 11 pm after having all started our day at 3:30 am with his 105 fever. Doesn't this sound like a recipe for disaster? It would've been if I had been the patient. Instead, Tucker amused himself by knocking over the towers Austin built and chucking the blocks around the deserted waiting room. (The boy has a good arm, incidentally).

That is all to say, that this has been a long five days, and it is time to go to sleep....

Sneezy the Dwarf

Have you ever thought of your life in terms of the seven dwarfs? Like one day you're Happy, another day you're Bashful, Grumpy, Sleepy, Doc, etc. (Can anyone name the dwarf that is remaining? Answer at the bottom of this post*....)

Well today, because it's a Sunday, I am Sneezy. I am almost always Sneezy on Sundays.

I'm allergic to dust. But besides the occasional problem with vacuuming, I do pretty well... until Sunday rolls around. Church clothes are my nemesis. No, it's not that I'm allergic to dresses and skirts, it's that they are much less frequently worn and washed than everything else in my closet (and tend to need dry-cleaning at a high rate).

It is pretty common for me to actually have to leave the service because I've been disrupting everyone with my incessant sneezing. In fact, it is routine for me to receive the sacrament by just having the wafer dipped in the wine rather than sipping the wine from the cup because I don't want the person at the altar next to me to be distracted by the fact I'm drinking from the same cup they are and have so clearly been "ill" and sneezing my whole way through the service.

Why do I bring this up now? I decided recently this course of events had to stop so I have been getting dressed an hour early, to test whether I can successfully wear an outfit without an allergy attack. Today, I have already run through two outfits that made me ill. I am waiting for my nose to settle down so I can try another. I only have 15 minutes left till take-off.

(And yes for all you wondering, I do take anti-histamines... claritin does nothing for me, but I'm a fan of zyrtec, a new one.)

*Answer: Dopey

Welcome, friends!

My mom and Aunt Jackie are visiting from Vermont since Thursday night. Boy, we have shown them a good time. On Friday, they babysat while we worked. On Friday night I got sick, and they helped clean everything up. On Saturday, Austin and I were both sick and they entertained the baby... oh wait, that's what they did today, too!

At Midway Farm, we show our visitors a good time. Thankfully, we haven't gotten either of them sick... yet.

Still, I do hope that we will all be able to leave the house tomorrow and maybe even all have our appetites back for a meal together. I really can cook things other than toast.

However, predictably, even illness and bad hospitality has done little to dampen Jo Jo and Aunt Jackie's enthusiasm for watching the Tucker channel. He, of course, is thrilled with his enlarged fan club and is hoping that they are a permanent addition. Today, no less than four adults loudly applauded his efforts putting the pieces in a puzzle. His grin said that the world was as it is supposed to be.

It will be a sad day when the fan club leaves!