Tired of Germs

I am constantly surrounded by germs, in my personal and professional life.  I have come to terms with this.  I am a mother to three small germ carriers and I take care of sick children whom sometimes have infections that stump the infectious disease department of my hospital.  My philosophy on germ control is something along the lines of "exposure increases immunity."  My house is far from antiseptic.  But over the last three weeks, I have been forced to reconsider my stance.

It all started with a nagging cold that plagued my husband and I for a couple of weeks.  We both still managed to work out as much as we wanted, and maintained our daily routines without a problem. 

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  All of a sudden my cough turns into something that I can't deal with anymore.  I couldn't sing my kids to sleep because speaking for too long would send me into a fit.  I started getting chills and my cough became deep and unproductive.  I knew this was turning into something bad, so I drug myself into the local Urgent Care for a prescription.  This is when Patrick realized how bad I felt.  I NEVER take myself to the doctor.  I usually think I know what's wrong with myself and how to fix it.  I stay away from antibiotics as much as possible and rely on good old Ibuprofen to get me through a rough spot. 

The Urgent Care doc gave me a pneumonia diagnosis and put me on steroids, cough suppressant, and a "new" antibiotic, Factive.  I waited a day to fill these prescriptions and almost landed myself in the hospital due to my delay.  I took my middle girl to gymnastics and totally sapped the little reserve I had left.  I was delirious on the way home, my fever had spiked to 104, and I was having coughing fits that were leaving me dizzy.  I really shouldn't of been driving.

Anyway, I was slowly improving as the meds got into my system.  I maintained my work schedule, albeit with a deep rattle of a cough, but I felt like I was at least not infectious after five days of antibiotics. 

Then, on day seven of the antibiotics, this happened:

And this picture was taken in the early stages.  I was covered in an itchy red ugly rash.  Every single inch of my skin looked inflamed.  I was afraid to go into public because of how infectious I looked.  I hated wearing clothes because of how sensitive my skin was.  I was MISERABLE. 

Meanwhile, my three small children were all spiking fevers at different intervals.  Jackson had it the worst, missing two days of school and half of his spring break due to fevers over 101 degrees.  They were all diagnosed with the flu, so Hubs was smart and put himself of Tamiflu before he succumbed.  We subsisted on pizza and juice for several days because it was easy and it was the only thing any of us felt like eating.  I actually called my husband home from work early because I physically couldn't care for my family.  That was a low point for me.

And now here we are.  The kids all seem better, and this is good.  Patrick is healthy, thank goodness.  I, however, am still having issues.  The rash has faded and the itching is gone.  The cough is better.  But for the last four days, I have battled a monster sinus type headache.  I am not a person that gets headaches, so my tolerance is very low.  I want to pull my face off every evening around 6:00pm, for this is when the headaches peak.  Ibuprofen hardly touches them.  I have invested in congestion and allergy medicine, I have used and reused the neti pot, all to no avail.  I am scared that I will again have to go to the doctor for a sinus infection and be put on ANTIBIOTICS.  I do not want to go.  I will suffer as long as possible.

Netflix is AWESOME

Why does it take me so long to catch onto trendy stuff? I don't know, but now that I've found Netflix, I will never let go.

Triathlon training is in full effect around this house. The weather is mostly nice, and the hubs and I are taking advantage. I've found a training plan I am super stoked about from Trigeek.com, and it starts officially next Monday. In the meantime, I am working at building my swimming and running base. Building my running base at this time consists of 45 minute treadmill runs during nap time. PAINFUL. Treadmills are torture. I often just count as high as I can in my head as the miles tick by, sometimes reaching the tens of thousands. Seriously.

Until Netflix. Now, I count down the minutes until nap time. Right now, I am catching up on the first few seasons of Glee, next I am moving onto the "Downtown Abbey" show everyone is talking about. I set up my trusty iPad on the treadmill shelf, turn on the captions so I don't miss a plot line, and just run and run.

Swimming is heaven. I wish I could get everyone I know in the pool. The world would be a happier place. I am slightly nervous about getting back into a lake, but in the meantime, I am enjoying the clean, clear, chlorineness of the lap lanes.

I am also quite excited about the growing number of my friends at work that have signed up for their first triathlons. I am so excited about sharing this journey with more and more people.

My Husband, the Yogi Master

So, Hubs had been bugging me to do a class with him at the gym.  I am seriously not the gym class type.  I get anxious about what to wear, how my fitness compares to others, remembering moves, etc.  There happens to be a couple of yoga classes on Wednesdays, Patrick's day off.  I gave in and agreed to go with him to one of these yoga classes the first week of January.  I figured, at least in yoga, our fitness levels would be a little more evenly matched.  Wrong.

I am totally addicted to these classes now, which I'll get into later, and have since dragged P to one every week.  This last week, we attended one taught be a tiny little blonde lady, more fitness instructor than yoga enthusiast.  Well, I think she thought she was going to show off and try and teach us all the "Firefly" pose, thinking no one would be able to do it except her.  Hmm, I guess she hadn't counted on my World Championship Athlete of a husband showing up.

Not an actual picture of P. Downey, but pretty close. 

She actually walked up to him and said, a little dumfoundedly, "Have you done this before?"  He, while still in the pose, answered calmly and sheepishly "Nope."  I love that man.

And I love yoga! Seriously, I thought I knew yoga.  Patrick and I have a few DVDs; Yoga for Athletes, Yoga for Pregnant People or something like that.  I figured I was going to this class to spend time with my husband, but I knew what I needed to know about stretching.  Dude, I get it now.  I am a total addict and want to do it everyday.  The DVDs aren't going to cut it anymore.  The girl that teaches our class on Wednesday evenings is exactly how a yoga instructor should be.  Long messy hair, maybe a dredlock or two, several piercings, trendy thick rimmed glasses...I love her.   I think her name is Eden or something.  She takes her job very seriously.  The lights are low, the room is hot, and she walks around breathing loudly and softly correcting our poses.  She gives us yoga meditations at the end to think about as we relax.  I'm learning what "Vinyasa" and "Pranayama" means.  You'd think that me and my semi-hippy lifestyle would have discovered this earlier in life, but whatever, here it is, and I love it!

P is also slightly in love with it, but he insists he needs a badass mat to set himself apart from the other males in the class.  He is desperately searching the webernet for a black mat with flames or a Metallica symbol or something.  Harder to find than you would think.

2012. Here We Go...

Whoosh!  Did you see that? That blur of tinsel and melted milk chocolate?  That was the holidays rushing past us!  We had a great season here in the Orrick household, but boy howdy are we ready to get back to "normal."  As evidenced by:  My son asking for turkey and crackers for dinner the day after Christmas.  What?  Normally, if he was going to request a dinner, it would be cookies, chips, and pizza.  His craving for turkey and crackers proves he had his fill of holiday junk food.

Who's that?  That's Santa, in front of our fireplace!  I found a website (through pinterest, of course) where you download a pic of your Christmas tree, fireplace, living room, whatever, and then photoshop Santa into the scene.  You can pick from dozens of different Santa's and poses and then adjust his size and shadowing to fit your picture.  I was probably a whole lot more excited about this than the kids, but maybe in a few years these pictures will keep the Santa doubts at bay.

So what's on the agenda for 2012, you ask?  Lots!  My good friend and fellow goal maker, Hillary, and I spent a day at work planning for 2012 (No, we did not ignore the sick babies while we were making New Year's Resolutions).  I have two triathlons on the horizon: the classic Tinman in Topeka (Hubs has a history of doing very well at this race, he better make Momma proud); and the all-woman's Smithville race in Missouri.  I am planning on doing super duper awesome at these races.  What's my secret?  Clipless pedals!!!!

 

Aren't these just the most beautiful things ever?  And at the same time, so scary.  So when you're wearing these, you have to clip your shoes onto a little lock on your pedals.  These allow you to push and pull faster when you rotate your feet.  The scary part?  When you stop, at a stop light or intersection, for instance, you have to remember to unlock your feet!  Or else you fall flat on your face. 

"You're going to fall in the beginning, it's going to happen!"  This is the advice my super fast bike racer uncle gave me.  Awesome.

The other big race I'm planning?  The Warrior Dash!  Yay!  This is the race that you climb through mud, up walls, under barbed wire, and through fire!  I'm so excited!  And then at the end, you get free beer.  When I first got excited about this race, I thought it was just a 5k with some novelties thrown in for messiness.  Not exactly.  I'm going to have to do some serious upper body strength training if I have any hope of finishing decently.

On the home front, I've renewed my subscription to good old E-Mealz again.  It's nice not to have to search the internet for new recipes every week, and I signed up for the low-fat plan, so maybe I can get my calorie intake back on track.  I've also discovered (thanks to Hillary) www.motivatedmoms.com.  For a little bit of money, you can get a whole year's of "to-do" lists to print out and have ready.

The system doles out routine and non-routine tasks like "trimming the kids nails" and "cleaning the refrigerator shelves"  in an orderly and non-overwhelming manner throughout the year.  Plus you have a list of daily tasks, like wiping out the sinks and taking your vitamins (!) to check off everyday.  It's kind of satisfying to turn the page at the end of the day and know that I got a heck of a lot accomplished.  It is also quite exhausting.  I've declared bedtime at 9:00 these past few nights and the Hubs asked if I was feeling okay.

Another interesting component of the Motivated Moms daily list is the bible verse.  By the end of the year, if you stay on track, you will have read the whole Bible!   Those of you that know me well, know I
am not a churchy type person.  I have read the Bible on a couple of different occasions, but more so I could be good at answering Jeopardy questions.  Having said that, I really would like to be more of a churchy type person, but have yet to find the right church.  Hubs and I took the kids to a new church on Christmas Eve, and my goodness, I think we were both a little affected.  Hubs said it was the first time in his history of church going that he never once looked at his watch.  So, maybe this new church combined with daily bible verses will get us on track to being more churchy people...

I Have Scallops in My Freezer

I have scallops in my freezer, and I'm a little nervous about it.

I love scallops.  I could pop them in my mouth like chicken nuggets.  I crave them when I watch Top Chef with the Hubs.  Inevitably, one of the chefs makes a delicious looking scallop dish. 

The problem is, I've never made them for my family.  I've never made them period.  I hear it's not hard (the cooking part, not the feeding to my family part).  I got brave at Walmart today and bought a frozen package of those round fleshy little seafood medallions.  I hope I don't end up regretting it.  I know Patrick won't touch them, but maybe if the sauce is simple enough, I could force/bribe/trick my kids into trying a bite of one or two. 

I think my confidence has been boosted by Thanksgiving.  Jackson tried the turkey and mashed potatoes at my parents house AND a bite of each dish on his plate at Patrick's mom's house.  Macy tried corn.  Both of these occurrences are big successes for me.  My children have not touched a traditional Thanksgiving dish since they were babies and still eating mashed turkey and sweet potatoes. 

I've also invested in these:

My son's a bit of a know-it-all (where did he get it from?  I just can't imagine...) and if anything I think he will get satisfaction from making sure I've filled up all the bowls correctly.  Secondly, these plates will keep me honest and make sure that my meals don't lack for fruits and veggies.  They won't solve all my problems, but they might help a bit.

I finished my half marathon, by the way.  It was fine, a little cold, but psychologically not near as hard as my first half.  I was stiff at the end so I didn't finish in the time I wanted but I was happy.  I ran a lot of the race with a guy who was running his 100th (!) marathon.  He's done a marathon in all fifty states.  Amazing.  That's a lot of miles.

The rest of my time?  Pinterest, pinterest, pinterest:

A "mindful" jar.  I'm slowly coming around to this "mindful kids" movement.  Basically, train your kids to be more aware of their feelings so they can monitor and redirect their reactions.  My son is a REACTOR.  As am I, sometimes, so I am learning as well.  If he (or myself) is tired, hungry, stressed, anxious, etc, than he (I) tends to get more worked up about things that really are not that big of deal.  So when he is "freaking out", I have him shake the mindful jar five times and watch the glitter float to the bottom.  So simple it seems silly, but I have witnessed it working with my own two eyes.  It doesn't work as well with Macy, because she is a "retreater" when she is upset about something, so if anyone has a jar for that, let me know.

Puffy paint.  One tablespoon self-rising flour, one tablespoon salt, enough water to form a paste, and food coloring.  We used cardboardish type paper (old coloring book covers).  Let the kids paint and then pop their creations in the microwave for 30 seconds.  Macy couldn't get enough of this project.  Most of those were hers.  Jackson liked to make 3D relief maps of the city.  Man, I love my little nerd boy.

The Elf on the Shelf!  We got our Elf from Santa two days ago, and he's already up to no good.  I think my kids are slightly freaked out that this guy is watching them and then doing weird things at night when they are sleeping. 

Finding new things to do with my too long hair.  This is after I left the sock bun in my hair overnight,easy heat free waves.  What I most like about this picture is that it looks all bloggy and artsy from the waist up but....

This is what was really going on.  Dirty bathroom floor, toy box, emesis basin(?) and a shopping bag full of bathroom supplies that need to be put away.

Thanks for the Support

The advice and support I've received regarding my kids and their meals has really helped pull me out of my slump. I feel rejuvenated to stick with the plan, at least for a little longer. I've added a few changes to my plan, thanks to some suggestions. I now require my kids to take one bite of the main course before being allowed to leave the table. I had avoided this before, thinking dinner would turn into more of a battle than it already was. Last night, with tortilla soup, it was absolutely not a big deal. Jackson even volunteered to make up a sign with the new rule on it.

"New Rule 1) 1 bite befor being exused"

I love that boy.

  

On a positive note, I have discovered quite a few new favorite recipes, some off of Pinterest, some from other blogs.  My most fav right now, is the Cajun Chicken Pasta off of Pioneer Woman.  I highly recommend the blog in general, but I use her site most frequently when I need a new recipe for the week.  I pick a recipe that has the most comments on it and am guaranteed a winner. 

Ellis loved the Cajun Chicken Pasta, too.  It was chock full of healthy veggies and great flavor.  As a side note, I could not find "Cajun spice" specifically, so I purchased "Creole" seasoning, and ended up with a delicious dish anyway. Maybe those two are the exact same thing, I'm not very clear on Louisiana vernacular.

The best, and most repeated, advice I've received is that "this too shall pass".  Kids have phases and this is just an especially long one.  If I stick with my guns, something, at some point in time, will change.  If I go back to how it was, than I am guaranteed that nothing will change.  Sigh. 

I have decided that I am going to write a book for new parents, so they don't make the same mistakes I did.  It will have only one premise.  If you want your kids to eat what you serve for dinner, serve it to them from the VERY BEGINNING.  Don't ever ever make them something "special" for dinner, unless it is a special night.  Maybe I'll just write a pamphlet.

My friend Hillary had a very good observation.  Our generation as parents have more dinner time issues, including but not limited to being "short-order cooks." This might be tied to distinct differences in how our households are run nowadays.  When our mothers got married, the cultural assumption was that they would have dinner on the table,every night, even before they started building their family.  When kids were added to the table, the dinner time routine was already established. 

Fast forward to modern time and, at least in my house, when a couple gets married, dinner on the table is a special event, not a routine.  My husband and I had (and have) such wonky schedules that sitting down at the table together was the exception, not the norm.  When kids were added to the table, we had to develop those dinner time expectations on the fly, and obviously didn't do too well.  What's the moral of this story?  Couples starting out on that family journey should establish their dinner time patterns early.  Dinner is dinner, if you're old enough to chew, than you will be eating what is served. 

Whew, that's enough of that.  Here's what else we've been up to:

Family pictures at Antioch Park.  The entire Schumacher side was photographed in all it's glory.  Thanks to my sweet sister-in-law for setting up the sessions, and my slightly metro brother who picked brown and "peacock" blue as our color scheme.  The Hubs and I haven't had a professionally picture taken of ourselves since our engagement pictures.  Yikes.

Deep cleaning.  I think my internal calendar thinks all this 60 degree weather means it's spring cleaning time.  I am slowly moving my way through each room, scrubbing, sorting, and throwing out ALOT of crap.  I've recycled and donated what I could, and am still left with several bags at trash time.  The environmentalist in me feels a twinge of guilt, but Lord it feels good to walk into a decluttered kids room. 

Another big clean out involved my craft "area."  Not just a drawer or a box, but an entire side of our basement.  That purge felt good, and also made me acutely aware of my hoarding tendencies.  I'm pretty sure I could of stocked a Hobby Lobby store with the amount of crap I had saved.  Need glass etching supplies?  Check aisle three.  Wood carving tools?  Right there next to the modeling clay.  Magnets, wire sculpting, scrapbooking, beads, embroidery floss, I got it all.  And I'm not even going to get into the piles and piles of yarn.

Advice Needed

So it's November, 2011.  I completed my major New Year's Resolution, to finish a triathlon.  There is one uncompleted resolution that is nagging at me, though.  The one where I resolved to get my kids to eat better.

To bring you up to speed, I decided I was going to make one dinner for EVERYONE, at least four nights a week.  No frozen pizza for the kids, no salads for me.  The children could eat or not eat, but I would not be a short order cook.  I usually ended up putting Patrick's portion in the fridge for when he arrived home around 9:00pm or so.

So I stuck with this, but 11 months later I am highly frustrated that I have seen little to no improvement in my kids' palates.  This, combined with the fact that I am spending more on groceries on a regular basis but throwing away more of each dinner, REALLY makes me want to quit.  Even Patrick doesn't always eat what I've cooked, mostly because he's not that hungry at 9 o'clock at night.  So it's me and the baby eating about 25 percent of whatever I've cooked that night, and the rest either getting moldy in the fridge or being thrown away.  Frustrating.

Really, the only thing keeping me going at dinner time IS the baby.  God bless her, she'll munch on red peppers and cucumbers while she waits patiently for her Cajun Chicken Pasta.  I figure at least I can keep her palate from shrinking, right?  In the back of my mind, though, it nags at me that all of my kids were adventurous eaters at an early age.  I seemed to do everything right until they hit about 2 and 1/2.

So, my kids go to bed hungry every night (they really seem to be getting used to it, neither of them ever complains about being hungry) and wake up to eat seven waffles each, and meanwhile I drink more and more wine at dinner to deal with the stress of another failed meal... Likewise, my husband silently cringes at the growing grocery bills every month.  Where do I go from here?  I've ordered a couple of books from Amazon, hoping to get back on the right path.  I'm a little wary, however, because I've tried most of the advice out there, including, but not limited to: 

1. Let the kids help with meal preparations.  We do this a lot and the kids have fun, I get to clean up a bigger mess, and dinner still doesn't get tasted.

2.  Let the kids pick out healthy foods to try at the grocery store.  We did this frequently over the summer, but I ended up eating a ton of kiwi and asparagus all by myself. 

3.  Let the kids plant a garden.  We've had a raised bed garden for three years now, and my kids do enjoy digging, planting, and picking.  Sadly, at harvest time, everything they pick they bring to me and say "Look mom, a tomato for you to eat!"  My kids apparently think I am the only one in the family that consumes vegetables.

I've tried everything, people.  New recipes, new vegetables, new plates.  I'm beginning to think the damage is already done and I might as well cook the kids what they want, so at least they get some calories in them every night.  I'm seriously thinking of consulting a nutritionist, or possibly Dr. Phil.  I'll give these new books a chance, and then... I don't know.  If anyone has some sound advice, I'm open to suggestions.