Five Favorites (With a Really Crappy Giveaway!)

Joining Hallie again. If I was allowed to have a sixth favorite, it would be the song she has in her number one spot. So beautiful. I've been listening to it on repeat all week. But I'm not allowed to have six favorites, so I'll just get started with my five below.

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This post by Jenny. Every post by Jenny actually, but especially that one. She has such a knack for writing about living out your pro-life values in an anti-life world. And a knack for writing in general.

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The person who can solve this current parenting dilemma for me. YOU will be my favorite! How do I get Hannah to stop biting her nails and chewing on her fingers? How? I need to know!

"Smile Hannah." "No. I want to be siwwy. Yite dis."

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Sweet Potato Fries from a bag. I love all sweet potato fries, but the kind that I don't have to cut up and stand at the stove frying are the best. It goes against my attitude of "don't spend money on something you can make yourself" and I don't care one bit because they are fast and delicious and oh my goodness I just need food in my body right this second! And when you are making dinner and realize you forgot to make a side....sweet potato fries. When you've run out of options for a quick lunch......sweet potato fries. When the baby wants your food and wont stop grabbing it out of your hands.....broken up sweet potato fries to the rescue.

I buy the giant bag at Costco but I've seen them at Walmart too.

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This homemade recipe for remoulade. Having been dairy free for the better part of three years now, I can tell you that the desire to dip stuff into something creamy does not go away. I just want ranch!!! Or cream cheese!!! Or queso!! So when I remembered that remoulade is mayonnaise based, I whipped up a batch and starting dipping. Mostly sweet potato fries.

I had never heard of remoulade until we moved to Mississippi. On my first day of training at my new job I went out to lunch with a bunch of beautiful, young, Southern gals with thick accents. They looked at me like I was a freak show when I started eating my food before every.single.person had their food in front of them too. Because apparently that's a thing in the South and it's most certainly not a thing in the North. Not when there are more than a dozen people at the table. And food is being brought out one dish at a time. And we only have a thirty minute lunch break.  But I noted their stares and agape mouths and put my fork down and sat and watched my food get cold like everyone else. So later when I asked, "What's remoulade??"they had no trouble just writing me off as a rude Northern weirdo who didn't know her Cajun food.  I think I put my elbows on the table too. They, on the other hand, did not.

Unrelated picture of Paul. Also being "siwwy"

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This book on potty training. Oh Crap Potty Training by Jamie Glowacki. I read it months ago and totally forgot that the author offered to do a giveaway for readers of this here blog. I pulled it back out this week because we are going to start night training Hannah now and I wanted to refresh myself with her tips. For us, her method worked like a charm. I appreciated the wealth of informaiton and the tips on common mistakes. I totally would have said, "it's ok!" every time Hannah had an accident when, really, it's not ok. That's why we're teaching you to use the potty! So instead I followed her advice of just stating the obvious ("You peed on the floor.") and reminding her what to do ("We pee in the potty now.")

I liked that she doesn't use food as a reinforcer and found that to be super successful for Hannah. It was a much more logical approach than the sticker charts and candy and it worked for us.

The most helpful was her guidelines for determining if your child is ready. I wish I had read it sooner because Hannah was definitely ready a few months before we finally started. And if we had read it earlier I would have had a potty trained toddler before the new baby arrived and wouldn't have been messing with potty training while caring for a five week old.

If you want to win it, enter below! And if you don't win, you should just buy it. It was actually a fun read and I read it cover to cover in one sitting and then went back to digest the important parts. Her language is pretty rough, but I kind of enjoyed it. She did use some curse words as a warning for those who may not like that. And God's name in vain a few times, which made me sad. Because there are so many better ways to say things without stooping to that level, ya know?

But overall, good book. Super helpful. Go win it! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Quick Takes: Jackets, Quotes, and Unsolicited Advice

Joining Jen for some quick takes. Because seven little paragraphs are a lot easier to write than seven coherent blog posts.

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It's fall ya'll. Well, "fall" since we are talking about Florida. It's chilly enough for about an hour in the morning to justify a jacket. And even though I'm back in shorts and a t-shirt by 9:30, the slight change in weather has been wonderful. Add to that the new slide a friend just gave us, and well we spent the whole dang morning outside. Allow me to decorate this entire post with pictures of my adorable children wearing JACKETS!

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Thank you so much to anyone who commented or emailed me about my whiny rant about food allergies. You are all too kind. And it is so, so helpful to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I stumbled upon this gem this week and I could not stop laughing. And another story to add to my collection of "people are so stinkin nice I can't even believe it sometimes because I am so selfish and never think to do that" stories, a cousin of mine, who I haven't talked to in years, sent me a box of gluten and dairy free goodies. I didn't even know she knew I had a blog, much less that she read it. People are just awesome. Thanks Amy!

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Another post this week got some great comments and I wish I had more time to respond and enter into a really good conversation about forming Catholic friendships. You should go read Jenny's post for more. Good stuff.

  

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Some Hannah quotes.

Hannah: Mommy, when I get bigger I make your coffee for you!

Me: You will? You are the sweetest....and I'm definitely holding you to that.

While singing Immaculate Mary and rubbing my back at bedtime, (yes, you read that right. I love bedtime snuggles) she had her very first attempt at making a joke.

Hannah: Immaculate Mary, your praises we ning. You reign now in spendor wif Desus, our Ning. Ah-bay, ah-bay, ah-bay......Hannah.

Me: Ave Hannah?? Is that how it goes?

Hannah: Immaculate Mary, your praises we ning. You reign now in spendor wif Desus, our...doodle!

And when she discovered a package sitting at our front door:

"Mommy look! A mailbox!"

One whiny Tuesday morning:

Hannah: I want watch a show. Because I'm so sad.
Me: Awe, why are you so sad?
Hannah: Because I want watch a show.
Me: Well I can't argue with that logic I suppose.

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A Trader Joe's just opened up in town. I've never been to one and am super excited to go. I'm absolutely positive I will love it. How could I not? The flyer we got in the mail was about 95% devoted to pumpkin spice everything. Anyone have a favorite (gluten free/dairy free) item that I need to check out?

I rock polka dots. You sport stripes.

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How do you feel about getting unsolicited advice? I'm the queen of advice giving. Not because my advice is particularly helpful, but because I dish it out like candy at Halloween. I try to stop myself, but my mouth just takes over. I think a big part of it is my chosen profession. I've spent almost all of my career and time in grad school giving parents advice on how to help their child. It's like I'm a trained advice-giver. But I know some people really don't like that sort of thing.

I'm not a big fan of getting unsolicited advice but more so because it hurts my pride than anything. I'm just a tad arrogant and feel like when I get advice the other person is implying that I'm deficient. Which I probably am. And I usually need to hear the advice. But my pride, what can I say? I'm a sinner.

But every time I hesitate to give advice I think, "but what if this piece of advice could really help that person?" and I usually air on the side of giving too much information rather than withholding what might be able to help. I'm guilty of this with blog comments. I always try to "fix" things when sometimes people are just ranting and not looking for a solution.

So I guess I'm soliciting advice about unsolicited advice. Should I shut up? Should I write a blog post chalk full of all my unsolicited advice because everyone just loves what I have to say on every single subject? (That's a joke.)

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I probably mentioned last year my distaste for all things "pink" for breast cancer. I still don't like it. Here's a good post explaining why. And this post really broke my heart and opened my eyes to how hurtful the "pink" campaign can be to actual victims of breast cancer.

Have a great weekend. We will be spending our two days of "fall" bliss watching a friend's triathlon and hopefully hitting up a pumpkin patch. If you thought these pictures were cute, just you wait!

I Just Wanna Eat Food

I think my heart has finally stopped pounding and my breathing is returning to normal. But man. If you had been a fly on the wall for the last 20 minutes in this house! Frustration after frustration left me clenching my jaw to keep from shouting some f-bombs (I mumbled them instead) and slamming an even more tightly clenched fist onto the washing machine. I set out to prep the crock pot dinner for tomorrow and make a new batch of coconut creamer for my coffee. Simple enough. Except that it's not. It's never simple. And after my fifth trip out to the garage to use the noisy food processor and cleaning up my third spill in as many minutes, well I had just had it. I was slamming doors and fighting back tears and when Ted came in to ask what was wrong I went into a monologue about onions not getting chopped the right way and coconut milk splattering everywhere and and and and.

"What's it really about?" he said. And it hit me. I just wanna eat food. Regular food. Food that doesn't take an hour and half to prepare. Food that doesn't cost double and triple what everyone else is eating. Just food.

I'm so tired of not being able to eat anything. I don't mind giving up dairy while nursing (too much). But having to give up gluten on top of that had been so, so hard. (In case you're lost, both of my kids have dairy allergies that require me to give it up completely when nursing. And I discovered a pretty severe gluten intolerance in myself and Paul just a few months ago. I suspect Hannah has it too.) 

I just want to eat one piece of freaking sausage without having to call the meat packing company and ask if they have gluten in their seasoning. And when I don't bother to call in hopes that it doesn't, I don't want to feel like shit for the next 24 hours. I want to be able to eat a bowl of cereal that doesn't even contain wheat and not walk around with a balloon in my stomach because it had "oat flour" and was probably contaminated with wheat anyway. Captain Crunch, I know you were wondering. I want to feel like there isn't something pushing on my bladder all day long and being nauseous any time I eat something because I accidentally ate egg noodles (with a teeny, teeny bit of wheat) three freakin days ago.

I'm sick of seeing my baby spit up so much that he can't even crawl away because of the spit up pool he's created around himself is so large that he keeps slipping. All becauses the only pumped milk I had in the freezer had gluten. I'm sick of seeing blood in his poop because I ate twelve gluten freakin free almond crackers that I didn't realize had butter in them. I'm sick of feeling like a ticking time bomb ready to blimp up and make my kid miserable if I accidentally eat the slightest bit of off-limits food. I'm tired of telling Hannah, "No you can't eat that delicious treat that all the others kids are having. It will make your tummy hurt. Here, have your one thousandth raisin of the day."

I'm sick of being a burden to everyone I know. I'm tired of double checking every ingredient of everything someone offers me. I'm tired of not being able to eat when I go to baby showers or vacations because no one thought of (or knew about) my food issues. I've been blessed with wonderful, wonderful friends who go out of their way to see that I can eat at least something when they invite me to their barbecues and ladies' night outs. And I know they would say that they don't mind, but it's still a pain in the ass for them and takes so much extra time and energy to accommodate me. I secretly wonder if one day I'll just stop getting invitations because it's too much trouble to include me.

I'm sick of being hungry all.the.damn.time. I'm sick of not being able to go to Mass without packing a snack for the car ride home. I'm sick of the kitchen looking like this three freakin times a day.

I'm sick of cooking every little thing from scratch. I just want to open up a freaking package of hamburger helper and call it a day. I just want to throw some mac and cheese on a plate and move on with my life. Sure, they make gluten and dairy free substitutes. But unless we win the lottery there's no way we'll ever be able to afford them. As hard as I try I just cannot figure out a way to stay within our grocery budget without buying six dollar pints of "ice cream" and five dollar loaves of "bread". Much less with those added expenses. 

 I'm overwhelmed at the thought that this is going to be for the rest of my life. The thought that at every Thanksgiving I'll have to pass up the mashed potatoes and the gravy and the stuffing and probably the corn because someone added butter just eat my dry turkey dipped in cranberry sauce. The thought that I might never get a break. I might never get better.

Yes, I know it's worth it. I don't really have a choice unless I want my kids to be miserable and in pain and I want to feel like I'm about to pop and/or throw up all the time. And I think I actually do a really good job of not complaining and facing this issue head on. I guess the last two and a half years of not complaining has boiled up inside of me and is now showing itself by punching the washer and crying about chopped onions.

Sorry for my rant, unsuspecting internet readers. I don't blame you for not making it to the end of this bitch complain fest (I think there's been plenty of cussing in this post to last quite a while already). I've calmed down since I started writing but I can't say I feel any better. This is just how it is. Whether I want it or not. There are so many days when I want to throw up my hands and shout, "I didn't sign up for this!" until I remember that I did. I signed up for taking care of my children to the best of my ability. And this is my best. Anything less would be cruel to their poor stomachs. And to mine. I have a supportive husband who thanks profusely for everything I do. A husband who, when I apologize for a crappy meal of bland leftover chicken and green beans, says, "It's a heck of a lot better than what I made tonight," and then eats his meager meal with a smile and a sincere thank you.

If you're one of the lucky people who can go out to dinner and order anything off the menu, will you please say a prayer for me? And if you're one of the ones who went out to eat for your five year anniversary and the only thing you could order off the five page menu was the grilled shrimp without the sauce or the seasoning and not even a side to go with it, well can I get an amen? And a promise that it really is going to be ok?

Gotta go. I'm hungry.