Archive | December, 2008

Fond farewells continued

31 Dec

I can see that this whole blogging with two children thing is going to be very challenging…

Anyway, once I realized everyone was gone and Michael and my mom realized I was very upset about it, Michael told me to hurry up and get my clothes on and he’d run me down to the airport.  Instead I crawled back into bed, feeling defeated, but my mom convinced me that I just might catch the others if I hurried up.

I pulled on some pants but left on my pajama top, threw on my scarf, coat, and hat.  Michael drove me down to the airport.  This is where it’s so great to live in a small town with the airport so close.  Seriously, it takes 15 minutes to walk to the airport from our house.

And the airport is small, so when I ran in and saw that they were no longer in the check-in lineup, I looked the other way to see if they were still in the security lineup.  Only Pedro was there (I think he’d been slowed up by having packed some liquids in his carry-on).  So I snuck up behind him and said, “You guys are all idiots!”

His mouth fell open.  Besides being called an idiot and not having had any coffee, I’m sure the fact that I was on the brink of tears was a little shocking.  (But that flabbergasted look!  He is so darned cute.  This visit was the first time I’d really got a chance to, get to know him a little and I’m so happy for my sister that she found such a great guy.)

So I got to say a proper goodbye to Pedro, and once he got through security, he sent my sister back out so that I could hug her goodbye, too.  My dad opted to wave at me through the window that looks into the security-cleared area.  That’s just the way my dad is, so I didn’t feel hurt.

Was I a bit juvenile?  Maybe.  But I was sleep-deprived and disappointed that not a single one of my family members thought I’d want to wak up to say goodbye to them (and go back to bed).  Sheesh, I get up in the night for the baby and the toddler, why wouldn’t I do it for them, right?

Anyway, the week’s visit was wonderful and I did get to say my goodbyes in the end.  And tonight we’ll be saying to 2008 (good riddance, I say!) so… all’s well that ends well.

Fond farewells

30 Dec

I know that the “holiday season” isn’t really over yet, since there’s still the Big New Year’s Party to be had (though for the past three years, I think the Big New Year’s Party has really been the Big Lounging-on-the-Couch-Watching-Smallville-Fest-and-Forgetting-to-Stop-at-Midnight Party).  But right now I’m feeling that let-down feeling.  That “party’s over” feeling.

Both girls are sleeping and I ought to take advantage of that to take down the Christmas tree, but I’m not.

Today my family left my house, and all of a sudden it’s so much bigger and emptier.

My mom left just half an hour ago, after a rushed lunch and teary goodbyes.  I have loved having her here and she has been such an enormous help, getting us through the most difficult time of adjusting to Jade’s diet, when she was still having a lot of seizures, and also the huge adjustment of adding Halia to our family.  I have been able to recover my strength (and my sanity!) because she was here to make things easier.

My dad, my sister, and her husband all left early this morning.  Their flight left at 8:00, so they went to the airport for 7:00.  I was up a few times last night, a couple of times for Halia and once for Jade, so I was pretty sleepy and out of it in the wee hours.  I heard Michael showering around 6:00 and I heard the sound of luggage being moved from the guest room directly upstairs from me, but it was still early and Halia was sleeping only fitfully, so I figured I’d wait half an hour.  My eyes flew open at 7:00 when my alarm went off telling me it was time I get up to get Jade’s medicine ready.  I carefully bound out of bed so as not to wake Halia, and ran up the stairs.  My mom and Michael were in the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” I asked, slightly bewildered that there weren’t more bodies in there.

“Getting our breakfast,” said Michael.  Mom was holding the pill crusher for Jade’s medicines, still in her PJs.

“Doesn’t everyone have to be down at the airport for 7:00?” I asked.

“They’re already there,” said Michael.

“What?!  Why didn’t anyone wake me?” I screeched calmly inquired.

Oops!  Halia is awake.  To be continued later..

Oops!

24 Dec

Not sure why that post went up eight times, but thanks for pointing it out! (Jackie, I had to repost your comment — out of order — to get it onto the same post where everyone else commented.)

Thanks to Heather for her particularly useful fact-based argument. But I like hearing your more spurious opinions, too. ;)   (Because we can’t really both be right, right?)

And happy birthday to you, Cat!

A minor dispute

23 Dec

Okay, so Michael and I had a small disagreement yesterday. It started when I mentioned that our friend Lara is having her son baptised on Christmas Eve and I wondered aloud if it would be during the Christmas mass. Michael said, “It’s got to be. When else would they do it?” I answered that sometimes families have private baptisms, so they could theoretically be having it done during the day.

“But then it’s not Christmas Eve,” said Michael.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Christmas Eve is the day before Christmas.”

“No,” said he. “That’s Christmas Eve DAY. Christmas EVE is only the eve before Christmas.”

I snorted. “So according to you, Christmas Eve starts at 6 o’clock?”

I’m pretty sure the word “eve” is an old word meaning the day before. Like “All Hallow’s Eve” being the ENTIRE day of Halloween, not just the evening.

What say you, Internet peeps? Is the eve of a holiday the whole day before, or just the latter part of that day?

What do YOU want me to talk about?

21 Dec

Well, I certainly have a bad track record for daily posting this month.  I’m sure you’re not surprised to see less posting, but it drives me bonkers.  Often when I get a blog idea, I’ll write down the title of the post as a reminder for when I have time to write it up later.  But these days, there is no “later”.  Just a record pile-up of potential blog posts that never get written.

Instead of driving myself crazy trying to get them all written up now, I thought I’d let you darlings tell me what you’d most like to hear about.  Below you can vote for the potential blog posts you’d like me to finish (you can vote for multiple posts, if you wish):

This poll will stay open for a random amount of time, subject to my whim and availability, so vote soon to avoid disappointment!

Away in a manger

17 Dec

It’s been many months since I’ve been able to go to church, but a few weeks ago, our priest, Father Claude, came by to visit. He had some books and holiday activities he wanted to share with Jade; he remembered that our original plans were to be in Ottawa for Christmas, so he wanted to be sure to come by before we left. (This is just one small act that demonstrates what a thoughtful and loving man he is.)

I told him that we are now staying in Whitehorse for Christmas, but I still didn’t think I’d be able to take on the role of accompanying the choir at mass (which I’ve done for the past two years at Christmas and Easter) because my ability to sit at a piano is limited by the necessity of feeding Halia on demand.  He was very understanding about it, and the choir will be accompanied by a guitarist this year, I think.

Yesterday Father Claude phoned and asked if we might want to participate in the mass in a different way.  Every year, there is some kind of re-enactment of the Christmas story during the Christmas mass.  Halia is the newest baby in the congregation, so he asked if Michael and I would like to be Joseph and Mary, with Halia playing the part of Jesus, while Jade could be a shepherd with the other children in the congregation.  I think this would be great fun — as long as I don’t have to talk!  (My spoken French has definitely grown a little shaky in my long absence from church.)

I told him we’d love to do it.  After I hung up I asked Michael if he was okay with it.  (What, isn’t that the way things work at your house?)  Fortunately, he too was enthusiastic about the idea.  As long as he doesn’t have to talk!

Ships in the night

16 Dec

So many bloggable moments, so little blogging time.  In between feedings and hyper-emotional teething toddlers, there are Christmas preparations to make.  That means sending out cards, figuring out a keto menu for Jade’s Christmas dinner, finding last year’s returned Christmas letters (and realizing I’m going to be getting some of this year’s cards back as well), and getting the house organized to accommodate the rest of the family that will be here.  (Have I mentioned that my dad, sister, and brother-in-law will join my mom here for Christmas?  I haven’t?  I don’t know why.  I’m SOOOO excited!)

Also keeping me from the blog is the fact that I’m missing half the day because I usually get out of bed around 10:00, 10:30 — and sometimes even ELEVEN — these days.  I know, I’m spoiled.  I am totally taking advantage of the fact that I don’t have to be sleep-deprived while my mom is at our house.  Only two weeks left before I have to start getting up earlier.

Michael and I are not seeing much of each other these days.  At all.  We haven’t even slept in the same room in about three weeks.  Jade is continuing her multiple wakings each night (with one or two nights excepted) and, of course, Halia needs her night-time feeds.  There’s no sense in both of us parents waking up for each one of both children’s wakings, so we’ve taken to separate rooms so that we can catch as much rest in between wakings as possible.  Which means I’m still getting more sleep than Michael.  Jade’s wakings take longer to deal with, and Michael has to get up at 7:15 to get her “breakfast” and medicines into her.

By the time I get up, Michael’s often back in bed (with Jade in my mom’s care) either catching up on sleep or else working on his laptop, since our bedroom is the most peaceful and least kid-trafficked area of the house.

Is this normal?

Apparently, yes.  A friend of mine just told me that she and her husband haven’t slept in the same room since her second child was born eight months ago!  Ack.  (Although, she is newly pregnant again, so they must find times for, ahem, conjugal visits.)

At least I usually get to see Michael at supper-time.  We even sometimes manage a little conversation in between mouthfuls of food.  Ahhh, the blissful life of the married with children.

Lucky number three

12 Dec

The results for Best Family Blog at the Canadian Blog Awards just came out today. Out of the five blogs that were in the second round of voting, I came in third, which, considering my sole wish was to not come out last of the 28 nominees (I know, I aim really high, hunh?  Besides, the overall voting numbers weren’t released so I wouldn’t have had a clue if I’d been dead last.  Who knew?) is pretty darned great!

That there is what you call an award-winning run-on sentence.  It’s totally why I came in third.  (You can interpret that however you wish.)

First place went to The Mabelhood, and second place went to Don Mills Diva.  Fourth and fifth place went to Under the Mad Hat and Party of 3 respectively.  Congrats, ladies!  I feel so honoured to be in the company of these women because I’ve run across them in various places in the mommyblogging world, so I feel like the unknown element in a crowd of celebrities.  Aww, shucks.

Thanks to all of you who voted!  Yipee!

family-3rdsm08

Updated to add: Two days after I found out about my nomination for Best Family Blog (so well into voting time), I discovered that my blog had also been nominated for Best Activities Blog.  Because of the delay and the fact that I had no idea what Best Activity Blog actually meant, I never actually mentioned it here.  But thank you so much to whoever nominated me, whoever you are.  (You know you’re driving me crazy with not knowing, don’t you?)

Christmas tree massacre 2008

11 Dec

I was quite pleased with our Christmas tree this year, which we put up just this evening. I was very pleased until it fell over about 10 minutes ago. Many Christmas balls were slain in the disaster.

Clean-up can’t be completed until tomorrow, since vacuuming would likely wake up the little miss snoozing directly downstairs. Luckily, the tree fell fairly quietly, considering.

A day in the life of the keto diet

10 Dec

I’ve had a number of questions about just how Jade’s diet works on a day-to-day basis, so here it is in a nutshell to satisfy your curiosity!

Basically, Jade’s food is her medicine now (although she is also still on three drugs, too).  Her body is fuelled almost exclusively by fat, which is good.  Burning fat (being in “ketosis”) is what keeps the seizures down.  Since she hardly has any fat on her body, Jade needs to get her food very regularly or her energy crashes.  (Plus, her body would then start burning muscle tissue, which is unhealthy and would also cause her ketones to drop, which would impact seizure control.)  With me so far?

Right now Jade eats her “breakfast” at around 7:30 a.m. (and breakfast is in quotes because it’s in a bottle because she’s generally still in bed then), a snack around 10:00 a.m., lunch at noon, afternoon snack around 3:00 p.m., and supper at 6:00 p.m.

Each of Jade’s meals and snacks is very specifically calculated to maintain her weight and allow for just a little bit of growth.  She gets 272 calories per meal (plus or minus 4 calories, depending on the recipe) and 75 calories per snack.  90% of her calories come from fat, usually in the form of butter, oil, mayonnaise, or whipping cream.  Since the calculations are so precise, we use a spatula at the end of each meal to ensure Jade gets every last drop of cream or butter or whatever.

breadHere’s the meal Jade had for lunch today.  This is low-carb almond bread with butter and cheese, served with whipping cream mixed with oil and a little water as a drink.  (She also gets “keto-koolaid” as a drink, but the cream and oil make up the balance of the fat she had “budgeted” for this meal.)  I was very happy to get a bread recipe because she missed bread a lot. The main ingredients are almond flour (which is nothing but blanched ground-up almonds), eggs, and cream cheese.  It’s extremely crumbly when done, and even with such low carbs, Jade can still have only a sliver the size of my finger.  Once baked, my mom spent a couple of hours painstakingly packaging small pieces into “Press ‘n’ Seal” packages for the freezer.  I created this bread and cheese recipe because she kept asking for cheese.  As you can see, the recipe is pretty heavy on butter!

I have access to an online tool called the “Ketocalculator”, which I use to create new recipes for Jade.  It gives me the guidelines set out by our dietician and automatically calculates calories and nutritional values for me.  We have to stick to specific brands for many products since nutritional values vary by brand.

Here’s what one of Jade’s favourite meals looks like as a recipe:

Tuna and Fruit

  • 34 g Fruit 6 (usually raspberries)
  • 16.5 g Tuna (Cloverleaf, chunk light)
  • 5.5 g Butter
  • 28 g Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise

And here’s what it looks like made up.  (We’re out of raspberries at the moment, so I substituted applesauce, but that is a “Fruit 9″, so she gets 23.5 g of that instead of 34 g.)

tuna

As for finding ingredients, we’ve been pretty okay with that.  We can’t find 4% cottage cheese or any kind of creme fraiche, unfortunately, and we’ve had some adventures with whipping cream.  (Did you know that whipping cream comes in three different levels of fat?  There’s 33%, 35%, and 36% and we’d have to recalculate any meals using whipping cream if we were to substitute a different fat level cream.)  I had to get Jenny to send me the Bickford flavours so that we can now put “maple syrup” (maple-flavoured butter) on her pancakes (made almost entirely of whipped egg whites).  And Janet helped us locate keto-friendly Kool-Aid and coconut oil in Whitehorse.  Besides that, shopping for diet ingredients hasn’t been too bad.

We are kind of dependent on power since the scale works only when plugged in.  The last couple of power outages made us kind of nervous.  Fortunately, we found these cute and cheap scales at Lee Valley; they run on batteries and while they may not be as accurate as our big scale (though we can’t tell a difference, to be honest) they will do in a pinch!

The cooking hasn’t been the hardest part of the diet.  The hardest part has been psychological and emotional.  And a bit logistical, too.  But I’ll save all that for another day…

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