Totally Random Thursday Post

I have a confession to make.  I am sort of obsessed with British things.  Not crazy obsessed like buying Will and Kate memoirbilia (can't figure out how to spell that word!).  I didn't even watch their wedding.  I probably would have but we didn't have a tv at the time.  But things like tea, and their cool flag, and castles.

I am not sure where the US obsession with princesses and fairy tale endings and all that came from, probably straight from the source when Britain first landed over here on our giant land mass we call home, but I have to admit that I love it.  I know I should probably say that it is such a bad example for our little girls.  That setting them up for the prince to come and save them is ruining a lot of what reality is like.  But I don't care.  (And feminists will probably hate me, but when did it become a crime to find a husband who loves you unconditionally, and has sworn to be faithful and take care of you for the rest of your life?  That's the type of husband I have, and yes, while I can get the door on my own and take care of most of my needs, it sure is sweet when he does it and shows me how much he loves me.  And no, it doesn't lessen who I am as a woman.)

Anyway, back to the subject.  Because it really isn't the prince finding the princess part that I love (although I do like that too), but it's the time period and the clothes and just how society functioned during that part.  I should probably say wealthier society, because I have read a lot about how medieval society kind of sucked if you weren't wealthy.

It just sort of makes me long for a time when their was tradition and formality instead of girls in clothes that aren't appropriate for prostitutes, and wait, their moms are wearing it too.  There I go again off subject.  I am finding it just so hard to focus!

Somewhere I read that Britains average 3 cups of tea a day.  Americans, three cups per week.  This makes me wonder, why drink tea at all if you are only doing it 3 times a week?  I don't even think that's enough to really get any of the health benefits that tea is supposed to have.

In case you live under a rock, and don't feel bad because that's probably where I am most of the time, the summer Olympics are in London.  I imagine all things British will be hot sellers soon.  I am not a huge fan of summer Olympics, my favorite event would be the crazy diving stuff that they do.  Isn't that insane?  I don't think you could pay me to jump off a platform many feet in the air and do tricks.  And I am not even afraid of heights, more of the plunging like crazy to the surface thing and then having to look pretty while doing it.
We'll probably tune in every once in a while.  I like to watch the opening ceremony, and I think it's good for the kids to see all the different things people can do.  Although I have to admit it seems like a giant waste of money.  I read in a magazine about an entire building that was built for some type of indoor bicycle racing.  This humongous first class building not even for regular bike riding.  What are they going to do with it when everything is over?

Anyway, that's all I've got for today, and I am not 100% where it came from.  For the record, I am also obsessed with Czarist Russia.  Not crazy Vladimir Putin Russia.  Also for many of the same reasons as for Britain. I actually took Russian in college.  We spent the first 3 months just learning the Cyrillic alphabet.  My kids think I totally rock that I can read something that looks just bizarre.   Anyone else have these crazy loves of other countries for perfectly silly reasons?

Crap Nuggets

That's the word Owen invented when we were playing the Curious George match game.  Pretty creative, don't you think?

At our house, I say crap a lot.  I know that I probably shouldn't because then the kids pick it up, but I just can't help it.  And considering it's the worst word I say (with very rare exceptions) I don't feel too bad about it.  I do think it's silly though, if I were to get after my kids for saying it when we do.  So we let them say it.  But the nuggets part, he came up with that all on his own.  I am raising geniuses over here.

We had our first beach attempt.  It was interesting.  All Truitt wanted to do was eat sand, Moyz and Kembia liked the water, but then they both ended up losing their balance and falling on their tummies.  They had their life jackets on, and I always give my kids a chance to react to the situation before scooping them up.  Moyz just stayed on his tummy and tried to stand back up but couldn't quite get his feet under him, so I stood him back up and off he went and played again.  Kembia had a little bit more trouble and she didn't like being on her tummy in the water at all.  So after she stood back up she decided to come and hang out on the sand for awhile.  But this a humongous improvement from when she first came home.  Bath time for her was absolutely the end of the world.  I am talking full out screaming and flailing and trying to keep her body out of the water.  She either had some type of terrible experience with it at the orphanage, or never got more than a sponge bath and was terrified.

Overall the beach was a success, but Chris was there as well as a couple of my girlfriends, so there is absolutely no way that I would do it on my own.  Hubby would run into the water after Ava and Owen and the little ones would follow thinking that they could do it too.  It's just too dangerous to do on my own.  Stuff of my nightmares.

Speaking of nightmares, last night I had a dream where Truitt choked on a bouncy ball.  Today I am thoroughly going through the house and picking up all of the things that remotely could be a choking hazard.

Hiding From My Kids At Home

This week has kind of sucked.  Every single day, whining, plus whining, plus whining.  I am pretty sure I also called Chris everyday at 5 to ask if he was getting off work on time.  A couple of times he said no.  I almost cried.

Today I hit the wall.  Hard.  I told dear hubby, I'm heading out, don't know when I am coming back. (Today, not forever, just want to be clear on that!) Can't take the children anymore.  To which he replied, "Well this is our life now".  Can I say how that did not go over well at all?  After a couple of heated moments of discussion, we both realized we were taking things the wrong way, but I still left to watch the movie Avengers all by myself, my favorite way to watch a movie.  It was pretty good, and I haven't seen any of the others about it.

Hubby called to say that they were headed down to one of my fav. shopping destinations and did I want to meet up with them.  Nope.  I am hiding from my children at home.  Sad, I know.

I walked into the house, and not a sound to be heard.  I cannot seriously remember the last time my house was quiet during the day.  I can't remember the last time I was in my house with NO CHILDREN.  I am hoping that they stay away for a very long time.

Mommy needs a break.

Week 3 Update

Down 8 pounds.  Yeah!  I am very happy with that.  I was sort of hoping that the 8 pounds would come off my hips and thighs which is my numero uno trouble spot, but it appears that it's coming off my arms and the upper part of my stomach.  But I'll take it.

One thing I have noticed is that if I am too lazy to take the time and cook something and then therefore postpone lunch until I am absolutely starving, it is a different type of hungry.  Instead of the sugar crashing hungry, it's just hungry.  This I am super thankful for.  I know that I have talked a little bit about being hypoglycemic, but eating like this has really changed the way my body reacts to sugars.  I love not crashing throughout the day.

Before when I would have crashes the easiest way to deal with it was to quick drink some type of sugary pop.  And since Coke (regular, never diet) was my favorite way to drink calories, it always worked out well for me!  Do I miss Coke?  Yes, sad to say I still do, but I don't have any cravings for it.  But now I no longer have the crazy cycle of sugar crashing, drink something sugary and have it crash again.  It's quite nice.

I have no idea how many calories a day I am eating, I haven't been keeping track at all.  At first I would venture to say not a whole lot given the majority of my diet is veggies and fruit.  But then I always add olive oil when I am cooking, and there are lots of calories in oil, so I am probably getting more than I realize.  Plus I don't restrict myself from eating at all.  If I am hungry, I eat something.

Two days ago for lunch I had an entire avocado that I turned into guacamole and ate that.  And I am pretty sure that avocado has some serious calories, and if not, for sure some serious fat.  It was seriously yummy, and I will definitely be repeating that, probably today.

I am going to try and stick with this until my crazy canoe trip at the end of June, beginning of July.  Because it will not be easy to eat that way on the trip.  Fresh fruit and veggies are a little hard to keep nice and fresh and not smashed on a 100 mile canoe trip.  And even though we will be eating some rationed food, it will be things along the lines of noodles and carb heavy things.  I believe we are even going to go the MRE route for several meals, and you know those aren't all that great for you.

Hope you all have a great Memorial weekend.  It is supposed to rain here the majority of it, and although I would love to go camping one Memorial weekend, that would require planning, something that I seriously lack in my life right now.  Plus I am not sure that the rest of the campground would be excited if we showed up with our tribe and tented next to them.  Actually, now that I am thinking about it, tenting with 3 kids under 2 doesn't really sound all that fun!

Talking Babies

Now that the babies have mastered the words and concept of no, mine, and naughty, life has taken on a new twist here at our household.

Instead of previously just screaming at one another if someone took something, now they yell mine, and naughty to the other.  And sometimes if they feel the other one is being exceptionally bad, they will wag their finger as they say no.  I didn't even realize that I did that until I saw the babies doing it.  And they had to learn it from somewhere!

They also will come up to me if one is screaming and acting out and ask me "nigh-nigh?"  Which means that they think the other person should take a nap.  Because at our house, if you keep whining for no reason I will tell you that if you can't stop crying you will have to take a nap.  Well, those babies are smart and they picked up on that real fast.  Mostly I think they say it in the hopes that I will put the other baby down and then they can be all by themselves, free to roam around the house without sibling interruption.

Truitt has also decided to become mobile this week.  He doesn't crawl, but kind of gets into the beginning crawling position and then can't get his other leg around so he pulls himself forward using one leg.  Exactly how Moyz used to do it.  Yesterday he was all over the living room floor.  Now I have to go back and really baby proof things because I came into the living room and he had gotten to a magazine, ripped out a page and was chewing down on that puppy.

Ava's ear has been bothering her for the last several days.  She told me she thought it was because Owen yelled in her ear a couple of times.  And because I am the awesome mother that I am, I said that we needed to wait a while before I would take her in because I wasn't going to spend $175 on a visit because your brother yelled in your ear.  Yesterday we finally went in for an appt. at 7:15 in the morning, I literally threw granola bars at my kids in the car on the way, amazed that we made it on time, and lo and behold she has a raging ear infection.  Awesome.  Only the second one of her life.  And I pretty much ignored it for 3 days.  What doesn't kill you makes your stronger.....

And then tonight, ah, tonight.  Tonight starts soccer for both Ava and Owen.  I am not really looking forward to this as they both play at the same time on the two fields furthest away from each other.  And Moyz is going to be devastated that he can't run out onto the field and play.  That kid has an obsession with balls that is pretty much unparalleled.  There is no way the babies will be able to stay in their stroller for an hour and a half, so every thursday will be spent trying to keep our kids off the field.  I already do this every Tuesday when Chris has softball.  So now I get to do it 2 times a week!  Although Chis will be able to help. If I am lucky, he'll get the babies and I will take Truitt and we will have to split our times at the fields and then swap to see both kids.

Let the summer crazy begin.  Isn't it supposed to be relaxing?!

Plant Based Diet Week 2

I should have posted this last Friday, but we were out of town, so you will probably get two posts like this this week.

Week 2 went okay.  Overall I am down 4 pounds, so I finally lost my "Montana weight".  Not too bad for two weeks!  But I did end up cheating a bit.  At the end of week 1 I was so bloated with gas and in a lot of pain.  Even more pain then when I ate an entire pound of brussel sprouts by myself about a year ago and blogged about that.  I truly looked how I do at about 5 months pregnant, which meant a whole lot of stretchy pants, and since I don't really own stretchy pants I was walking around the house in large t-shirts of my hubby's and sometimes his sweatpants which he doesn't like that I do that because they are too long and I step on the ends of them and make them ratty.

Anyway, so I cheated by eating chicken and some other meat, but I still didn't really have any processed foods, and the majority of my diet was plant based.  It seemed to help a lot to get something else in my system as far as gas and bloat, but then maybe I was starting to get used to it too.  But then I also cheated last weekend where we were staying for the funeral.  It is super hard to eat this diet at someone else's home, especially if they are inclined to not eat veggies.

I did have processed foods twice.  One time for supper I had noodles and I had cereal one morning.  As soon as I started putting that stuff back in my system I could feel it, I swear.  My blood sugar also crashed later that day and that hadn't happened since I had started the diet.

I have found that the easiest way to stick to this diet is to have some type of meal that you really love to fall back on.  Lunch is the hardest meal of the day for me even when I am not restricting what I eat.  For some reason I just can't seem to get it together for this meal.  My fall back for lunch is tabouli.  I continue to make this a lot.  I didn't eat it much last week, but have started up again.  It's fairly quick and super yummy.  And then I don't have to stare in my fridge wondering what will magically materialize that I didn't see before.  Also, I eat a lot of strawberries because they are in season right now, and therefore cheap.

Some people say that they notice their fingernails and hair stop growing as quickly because of the lack of meat.  I haven't noticed anything in this department because my nails take forever to grow, and although my hair typically grows fast, I haven't had time to take notice of it.

That's it for week 2!

Seeing Color

Now that the babies have been  home for 10 months, we normally don't notice all the people staring when we are out in public.  Things are just too crazy to see, and we are used to it.

At the funeral for our friend's little girl, a family sat next to us who had 3 adorable little white girls and their equally adorable black brother.  We didn't have our kids with and we obviously noticed this family right away.  Okay, so they sat right next to us and it would be hard not to notice them, but we would have noticed them anyway.  Partly because we have black kids too, but partly because you notice families that are "different".

It is still unusual to see a family with black and white kids.  It drives me crazy when people say that they don't see color.  Yes you do.  Everyone sees color, everyone looks at our family and goes hey, they have different colored kids.  I wonder how that happened.  When I look at my kids I obviously see different colors, half are black and half are white, but it doesn't affect my parenting them.  It really doesn't ever come in to play unless someone comments about it.

What I think people mean when they say that they don't see color is that they are trying to stress that they don't feel prejudice/racist.  Of course, we seem to get a lot of people that feel the need to tell us that they don't see color, and for the most part I think they are trying to make us feel good and let us know that it doesn't bother them that we have black kids.  But the saying kind of bugs me because it is something silly to say in general, and also because I think sometimes people use it to deny the prejudice feelings they do have.  I know that because I am guilty of prejudice thoughts as well even with my black kids.

I think we all have and continue to have prejudice thoughts based on how society has dealt with and formed opinions in the public at large as well as our own personal experience which we then generalize onto an entire population.  Think of some that you may have- asians are super smart, blacks are really athletic, native americans drink a lot, white people think they are better than everyone else etc. you get the picture.

Having black kids has really helped me catch myself if something not appropriate comes into my head.  And lets face it, we are all human, and need to work on sin in our life.  I will make snap generalizations about people initially based on my previous experience with someone like them.  But that's the catch isn't it?  "Someone like them" isn't them, and I need to remember that.

Anyway, didn't mean to get all serious on my first post back, but there you have it.

On a funnier side note, we saw what to expect when your're expecting, and when I saw Chris Rock pushing a double stroller with a kid in a front carrier, I realized just a little bit how ridiculous I look sometimes!!