Blood Test for PKU

One thing that comes with being the parent of kids with PKU is blood tests. We do blood test on Colby and Carter once a month unless our nutritionist wants us to do it more frequently. Knowing how much a finger poke hurts, I always feel bad doing this, but it's necessary to make sure their levels stay within range. We mail them to Richmond and in about a week and a half we get a phone call from the nutritionist to see where they are and make appropriate changes. One thing I noticed about Colby is that when his levels are too high OR too low, his behavior gets more erratic. Lately it hasn't taken much to send him to a crying fit. I mean not a few tears, but sobbing. According to what he's eating, he's right where he needs to be, so I'm thinking that since he now weighs almost 50 pounds that his protein intake needs to go up because his levels at the moment are too low. We'll see. Blood tests don't seem to bother Carter at all. Give him a bottle and he doesn't seem to care if I give him a heal stick...for now.

A Few Frustrations Lead to God

Well, it snowed for the 2nd time in as many weeks. We now have two snow days to make up somewhere (I guess). From the beginning of the week it looked like it was going to snow today...it's a good thing it did because I had no plans for today.

I'm feeling frustrated with school right now...I think this is going to be a very difficult semester because my class sizes are huge and full of students with special needs. I'm certainly not against working with students that have special needs - I'm just frustrated that they weren't spread more evenly between semesters and classes. Now I'm done complaining because it won't fix anything and I hate complainers. I realize the other day that this might be God knocking on my school life door. Yesterday I listend to a local Christian radio station on my way to work and my attitude was way more positive than the day before. I know I've always seperated my work life from church life and I've known for a long time that I was wrong to do that, so maybe God is trying to make me see that I can't do it alone and that I NEED Him. And with nearly 25 special needs students and 80 students total I'll need His help more than ever. Just a comparison - last semester I had maybe 5 special needs students and 70 students (and I thought that those classes were big...ha!).

Other things I'm frustrated about today:

1. The sound randomly stopped working on the computer (how am I going to watch walking dead now?!)
2. The weather channel keeps naming these winter storms (todays was Khan...the wrath of Khan...ha!)
3. The laundry won't put itself away (sigh)
4. And I'm wearing two pairs of pants, three shirts, socks and slippers and I'm just comfortable...that's a lot of clothes to wash and put away (see #3)
5. I lost my wedding band for about 24 hours earlier this week. It fell off because my hands were cold and probably because I lost weight. I found it later in the vegetable drawer in the fridge. (Ha!) Might need to get my rings resized.

Dreaming of my Summer Garden

Today I've been thinking about our garden. Last year we didn't plant one because Carter was born the week we would have needed to plant and I can tell you having had major surgery I wasn't going anywhere near the garden.

This year I'm really excited. Our neighbor breeds rabbits and he's been letting us use the rabbit poo on our garden. We also planted oats and peas which are supposed to be good ground cover and add nitrogen to the soil. The oats and field peas came up only in patches, but about a week before we're ready to do our final till, we just mow it all down and plow it all under. This year I'm also committed to only growing heirloom vegetables. One plus is that we can save the seeds to use the next year. Another plus is that we won't have to worry about GMOs. I don't know if anyone else has heard the debate about this recently, but Genetically Modified Organisms are not up my alley.

So far here's what we want to grow during the summer - tomatoes (Roma and slicing), summer squash, zuchini, green beans (bush), onions, cucumbers (slicing), watermelon, pumpkin, okra, peppers (sweet and maybe one jalepeno). After all that's done I'd like to plant spinach, lettuce, sugar snap peas and broccoli for a fall crop. I'm also thinking of working some herbs into one of my front flower beds. So far the only thing I've been able to grow well in this particular flower bed is crab grass and a few flowers. I think working the herbs between the flowers will be a good plan and look a lot better than crab grass. Sunflowers have been unsuccessful in all of my flowerbeds much to Brandon's disappointment. I think I'll try again with the sunflowers but I'll do it differently this year - when the weather gets warm I'll start them in the plethora of plant containers I have and then transfer them to the beds when they get a good size. I'll see if that helps.

What I'm really excited about is planting strawberries in the raised beds at the side of the house. Last year I grew some spectacular queen anne's lace - this year I think it can go to a better use. I need to do some research on preparing soil for strawberries, but I think it's gonna be good...better than buying strawberries from California every time I turn around, right?

Snow!!

Well, I promised to put up a new post at least once a week and I noticed I'd already missed posting for over a week...oops! But it can be a good thing...that means nothing very interesting has happened and I didn't have anything to write about :-)

Yesterday something interesting did happen...it snowed...a lot! We probably got about 6 or 7 inches. Colby was super excited. He burst into our room this morning almost in tears because he'd been watching the news and they said the sun was going to come out and melt the snow. I guess he was afraid he wouldn't be able to play in it before it melted :-) But he did get to go outside and play pretty much all morning. It wasn't very good snow for snowballs because it was a bit powdery, but he and Brandon still managed to fling snow at each other :-) and Brandon took Colby to the elementary school down the road to go sledding. There's a huge hill there. They seemed to have a blast!

I on the other hand had to grade papers :-( Today was supposed to be a teacher workday and I SURE had work to do. At this point I'm not sure when grades are due...soon I assume...so even though I couldn't go to school I had to finish grading exams and start planning for next semester. I'm pretty stressed about starting the new semester next week - I haven't even had time to make copies of my syllabus! I might have to go in on Monday, which is supposed to be a day off, and pray that I can get to a copier. If not, I guess I can scramble for one block and get my act together for the others during my planning...I'll think of something! One thing most teachers are good at doing is coming up with a Plan B, C, D, E, or F on the fly!

Oh, and I didn't do super great these past two weeks when it comes to dieting...I lost one pound and was steady on my measurements. That's nothing to sneeze at. I didn't gain! But I guess I was hoping it would go a bit faster :-) I'm just going to blame it on my mom for tempting me with sweet potatoes and chocolate cake (which I didn't eat!) :-) Love you mommy!

Colby's Christmas Presents

So, one of the gifts we got Colby for Christmas was a camera. He loves taking pictures with our camera, but I don't want him to break it so we bought him is own $30 camera. He has been taking pictures like a crazy person the last couple of days. I haven't really looked at them, but he takes pictures of some crazy stuff like the brake light or other cars on the interstate or Carter's blanket. Maybe one day he'll grow up to be a photographer or something!

Another thing we got him for Christmas is Toy Story 3. It has now become his favorite movie and he wants to watch it all the time. Good thing I also like it! But it does make me cry sometimes! He's watching it as I type.

I'm so looking forward to this weekend. I'm going to Hampton for the weekend. One thing I want to do this year is visit every other month. Not that we've been bad about visiting or anything, but I want to be really consistent about it. I think my mom worries about missing the boys grow up or that they won't get to know her, but I hope visiting regularly will help her feel better about living a ways away. It's supposed to be nice this weekend, so maybe we'll get to do some fun stuff!

What Goes On in His Mind?

So lately Colby has been thinking that kindergarten is like boarding school. He thinks that when he goes, he'll no longer live at home and see the same people that he sees now. I am stumped about where he got this. He doesn't read Harry Potter or watch Matilda. He doesn't know anyone that went away for school...I just don't know where he got it! It cracks me up though :-) I try to explain to him that he'll still live at home, but he talks over and over again about how he won't be here and Carter will play with his toys...that boy is silly!

Two things that surprised me today...

1. It's going to be in the 70s this weekend! I know, it's crazy! It's January!
2. I hate putting my laundry away. Ok, this didn't really surprise me, but I was reminded again today that I hate to put my laundry away. Anybody with me?

Summer Project Finished

Today I finished a project that I started over the summer. Back in June or July, Mary Lee, Nick's fiance, gave me about twenty of her old shirts that she didn't wear anymore. I guess she's like most of us and unwilling to part with them because they had some sentimental value. So I cut them up and peiced them together and using a large t-shirt sheet as the backing I made a quilt! It looks pretty good IF I do say so myself! :-)

It's certainly not perfect, but I learned a lot about the process of doing this so if I do this again it'll be even better! I hope you love it Mary Lee!

Back to the Weigh Station!

Today was my first appointment at the Weigh Station of the New Year. I'd taken a break and hadn't been since Nov. 8th. I had decided to not worry about ketosis (that's when my body breaks down fat...you have to eat only protein to get to this stage and then you add back some fruits and vegetables and strive to stay in ketosis by staying away from carbs) and stay on diet when I could and not worry about it when I was at a party or get-together. Today I am glad to report that I did not sabatoge myself! I lost 3 pounds since my last appointment! I want to lose another 26 pounds and then I will re-evaluate where I am. If I look at a BMI chart, I need to get below 150 pounds to be considered normal. I think I can get there, but I think I might have a hard time keeping it off. I've read a few articles about how your body is always strivng to get back to your highest weight...I sure hope not! And I REALLY hope those articles aren't talking about pregnancy weight! Anyway...tally ho!

One of My Greatest Accomplishments of 2012

One of my greatest accomplishments of 2012...well to be honest I started it at the end of 2011...was finishing up the Game of Thrones book series. If you've ever seen one of the books, almost all of them are around 1000 pages, you'll understand that this really is an accomplishment. To be honest, I really did like the series, but it was very dark compared to lots of things I normally read. As a matter of fact, I took a long break at the beginning of the year because I got irritated with the series (keep reading to see why) and the darkness can be overwheliming at times and then finished with a flourish over the summer. The characters were unique, which is probably why I kept reading...I wanted to find out what happened to them! I particularly enjoyed the characters of Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister. One thing I didn't like about the books was the way the author, Martin, kills off beloved characters with the stroke of a pen and those evil one's never really seem to get punished. People who have read the series will recall the Red Wedding as one of the worst/best examples of killing off characters. Some people say the killing off of beloved characters is what makes this series unique - nothing is sacred - but I say that's what makes it so annoying. I also would like to know where this whole thing with Arya is going, I'm really confused as to how her exploits at the moment have anything to do with anything, and if Daenerys finally gets on with this whole being queen thing. Apparently I'll need to wait a while for the next book because Martin is notorious for taking years to write a new book.

To answer your unspoken question, no I have not watched the HBO series. It apparently has a lot of graphic nudity for no good reason, so I've not watched it. Sure there's sex in the books, but I don't consider it graphic compared to some romance novels I've read. I just came to the conclusion a long time ago, that what you put in your head stays there for a long time and I don't want some of the book's exploits in my head like that. Plus I wouldn't want to buy the series and then have teenage Colby and Carter find it and think that's the way you treat women...yeah, that would be bad. Anyway, if you want a good read and enjoy well-crafted characters, try Game of Thrones, but don't expect to get it done any time soon!