Family Life – Page 49 – a hippie with a minivan

ughh….

I am sick…

Last week Colin and Khéna were sick and Khéna is still coughing in a way that makes him throw up a few times a day, especially when he lays down. I felt bad on Sunday and then felt better on Monday… enough to go out on Monday to a friends house with the boys…

Then, right on the way back home…. it hit me…

I feel miserable. My throat feels like it is going to swell shut and it is so painful to swallow that I flinch each time. It is Wednesday morning and I have felt like this since Monday night…
It is SO hard to be a mom when you are sick… I can’t really relax and take care of myself and the more that I try the more the boys need my attention.

Of course, being sick can’t be enough…

Now the dryer broke… We are biting the bullet and buying a new one… it should be here on Friday but until then we can’t do much laundry and I am at the end of the cloth diapers…

It has been raining for two days so line drying hasn’t been an option… (I think that we are going to get a sunny break today though)

food colouring…

It has been almost a year since we decided to stop eating foods that have colouring. Our original reason was upon knowing that food colourings can affect behaviour in a negative way, the other reason was that Colin seemed to have a physical reaction to food colouring.

It has been hard to cut everything out but we are getting there and still discovering foods that surprise us… the boys are also getting used to it and know that it is not good for them. The battles are getting easier and are almost non-existent now. When Xavier shops with me he points out the foods that have colouring and asks me to check if others do.

Though it was a goal before it has forced me to go toward that whole food, non processed diet that I have been wanting and though there are still some things to work on I am feeling happier about our eating habits. There are however, still a few things that enter the house for us adults and yesterday one of those things confirmed one of the reasons that we avoid colouring…

Yesterday I made Sushi and while I was making it Colin was picking pieces of Tempura out of the bowl. I had finished making his so I had added some crumbled some honey snacks in the tempura (the sushi shop near me has sushi with it in and it is so good) and well, they have colouring….

Well, Colin must have gotten a little piece because he got hives all around his mouth and started coughing after…

There was nothing else that could have done it, and about an hour later the hives had gone… but now I am 100% sure that he has a real allergy to food colouring… and though we are really careful, we have to be even more… what he could have gotten was such a tiny piece… I don’t want to know what more could do…

Colin…

on sunday Colin turned 3…
with Colin though this birthday feels a bit different.

l still have that feeling of wow! where does time go?! but then l also think “only 3?”

What an amazing kid he has become. Verbally he is so advanced, so much more than his brother at the same age and now his understanding has caught up with his vocabulary. He just acts and talks so much more older that is surprises me that he was only 2 and now that he is only 3… Maybe it is due to being a second child but whatever it is, I love that we can really have a conversation with him at such a young age.

He is such a fun kid. He make us laugh everyday.

He loves playing the role of someone else… he is often Harry Potter, a puppy, a girl (named Trishay) among others… he plays those roles so well and of course we need to play along….

He loves music and songs, he loves to play with cars, trains and has an amazing imagination.

What a cool kid!!

little update….

The construction here started last week and besides for last Friday, there was someone here every day last week… first to take the walls out that were damaged and then replace them and then the plaster…
Over the weekend Simon took all of the furniture out of the guest room and the Office and put it all in the Play room… and then yesterday a guy came and ripped out all of the floors in those two rooms… Today, they are putting the new floors in and then we can start transferring things back… then they are going to paint the walls where they need to, put new tiles in the little corner in the laundry room and then disinfect the floors… hopefully being done by the end of the week….
Though it is a real pain and I wish it would not have happened there are some good things that will come out of it….
First, the old owners didn’t do a great job of putting the floors and they used the cheapest possible… the new floors will be better quality and will be professionally installed and I was able to choose the colour so it will fit with our furniture.
Another good thing is that I am going to be very careful about goes back into those rooms. There was WAY too much clutter there. My sewing space was in the Office along with the computer desk, Simon’s Computer, all of our bookshelves and books and really my sewing space was overrunning the rest.
The guest room was also a sore spot. Too much furniture and too much stuff in there that didn’t have a space… It is also where Simon keeps his dresser and clothes and with all of the stuff in there we had to make room for people if they came over… really not ideal. So… I got rid of the excess furniture by giving it away 2 weeks ago and I would like to put Simon’s dresser in the Closet… that way I could have my sewing space in there.
So hopefully by the end, we will have two rooms that function well and that we can really use to their full potential without extra clutter. They will hopefully be easier to keep clean also..