Aug. 29, 2005
Random ramblings this morning
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Today,
if the weather stays ok, we may go to a U-Pick blueberry farm.
The kids think this sounds cool. Bwahahaha - I hope they still
like it once they're there. I worked every spring/summer/early
fall for 3 (or was it 4?) years at a strawberry farm. It was
cool, because the majority of their employees were homeschooled
teens. It started that way because in the spring, we were
available, but PS kids weren't (obviously). Eventually, they
started hiring HS kids just because they liked us :-D. We helped
w/planting in the spring and then we had a section of the field to be
responsible for weeding and tending. Once it was strawberry
season (late June - end of July in northern MN), it was different, but
still fun. We were responsible for labeling people's buckets (our
farm had buckets that were then dumped into flats that the people took
home), showing people where to start, bringing bug spray to people,
carrying buckets up out of the field, etc. Plus, we picked
berries for "Custom picked" lol. After the season was over, we
all picked jam berries like crazy and did more weed work. I've
wished I could take my kids there to pick when we visit, but they sold
their place and moved somewhere. :-( They were cool.
They always had an end of the year outdoor party for us w/games, great
food and lots of fun. I have great memories of working there,
even though it was not *easy* work. Part of that may be because I
worked w/my best friends, too ;-). Wow, did I ever get
off-track a little lol. Anyway, I hope my kids, who have a
completely different lifestyle than dh or I, will have a good time and
actually *work* while doing it :-D. Dh & I both wish we could
give the kids some sort of taste of our growing-up lives. We both
grew up in the middle of nowhere, but not near each other (about 40
miles apart). He was on a farm and while I wasn't, I was
surrounded by farms. We both had fields, tons of woods and dirt
roads. While I was working on a strawberry farm, he started hard
labor (no joke) at a local dairy farm when he was 14.5. The work
part isn't what I'm meaning when I wish we could show them how our
lives were. It's the country part. When my kids don't know
that it's ok to "go outside" WHILE it's snowing, that makes me
sad. Of course, we've lived in the south for all their lives, so
it snows once in a blue moon. They don't even get to play outside
much, because they have to play in our yard, which can be boring and
they can't be out alone (not safe here to do that and I'm not being
paranoid). So it was a big deal to them a couple of weeks ago
that dh took them to a local state park for bike-riding.
:-( Maybe I'm just too full of nostalgia, but when I visit my
best friend in MN, her kids are doing exactly what my siblings and I
were doing growing up. OK, enough of this particular ramble LOL!
At the grocery store on Friday, I bought a quart of Lact-Aid milk to try w/Nik. I thought I'd maybe use it here and there in cooking some things for him and also let him try a little drink. I am not trying to be dangerous, since his dairy problem is one of those fast-response massive puking reactions. I think it's mainly the lactose he has a problem with, which is why I bought the Lact-Aid milk. *However,* he took a little sip and refused to drink more. He said it was yucky. I put a little splash in his scrambled eggs to see how he'd do (since he wouldn't do the test for me by drinking the tiny bit I gave him) and he seemed ok, but I think I may just give up on that. Geez - that stuff is more expensive than his rice milk. I may look for the potato milk Michelle mentioned, too. For now, I can get enriched rice milk at Super WM, but haven't found it anywhere else, strangely. For my own benefit, I wanted to write down what he mainly eats in substitution of what he *can't* eat and since this is a ramble, I guess that's ok. Instead of cow's milk, he has enriched rice milk. He didn't like goat's milk the one time I tried it, but I may try again sometime w/fresh. He does like hard goat cheese and tolerates it well. In place of wheat, that's the big one. He has apple cinnamon rice cakes and corn tortillas for "sandwich-type" purposes; grits & oatmeal for hot cereals; rice snacks, cashews, occasionally potato chips, raisins, etc. for snacks. For pasta, I just bought the rice flour shells, but he's had sweet potato starch noodles in place of things like spaghetti and he likes those. It was suggested that I could try Asian rice noodles (not the kind I just bought), but those have wheat starch in them darnit. He can have the Walmart brand of Rice or Corn Chex (the General Mills kind now have wheat in them), Rice Krispies (his new cereal love lol) and Cap'n Crunch. He doesn't eat a lot of cold cereals. He loves eggs, which I've been keeping my eye on, because he would eat them all the time if I'd let him. There are a lot of things I make for all of us that he can eat and I'm always glad when I find even something else. I often make him a separate part of what we're eating, like his own little meatloaf or his own mashed potatoes and gravy. Things like that. Dh has recently been pushing for allowing him to have things with wheat a bit again. This makes me so mad and frustrated! Dh wasn't on board w/the allergies at all for a while, until we sat down one night after a huge incident (in the Denny's parking lot no less) and I read out loud to him portions from the Is This Your Child? book. The lightbulb lit up above his head - almost literally lol. He still wasn't as convinced about the wheat once the book influence wore off, but Nik ended up accidentally having a bunch of wheat at my mom's (my aunt was visiting and made some stuff) when he and I weren't there. He had numerous things that had wheat, including several large meatballs w/wheat germ in them. He ended up w/burning hot cheeks and puking a ton. :-( Poor little man. That isn't his usual problem w/wheat, but I think it was because he'd recently "detoxed" the wheat from his system and then had massive amounts (he's a teeny little guy). Usually what happens is his behavior and sleep patterns become atrocious. For a while, I'd let him have some things here and there - like regular spaghetti noodles one week and a few crackers the next. I could tell that it would build up, because he'd get horribly volatile, would barely sleep. Dh thinks part of this is in my head and that sometimes, he's just worse than other times. He *is* a somewhat volatile kind of person - so is dh. Either hot or cold, not much in between lol. And he - well both dh and Nik - are not the kind of people who sit around much. They go go go and either their mind is always whirring or their body or both. But I can tell the difference between that and the "wheat thing," kwim? OK. Now I *must* stop rambling. I realized I have to call this blueberry place and I have to also call the chiropractor. Every one of us needs to see him :-D. Dh does, too, but he probably will never have time again, the way his schedule is lately. Here's hoping for a great day for me and the kids (and dh at work and school, too)! |
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