Milestone Markers

This has been a full, strange kind of day. But instead of boring you with all the petty details, I just want to mark two milestones that today will be remembered for.

Milestone One:
Today marks my fourteenth day of not drinking tea.

I didn't set out to abstain from it, or anything. No grand "I'm going to break the tea habit" resolutions didst cross my mind. I didn't join any kind of twelve-step program. Hello, my name is Talena, and I've gone fourteen days without a drink...

It was kind of a side effect, a "perk", if you will, of being sick.

Because when I'm sick, I don't want caffeine.

Usually this only lasts for a couple of days, and then I'm right back where I started--sleep-deprived, and using tea to help me limp through my day, or simply as a comfort ritual, or even as a snack replacement. (I have been trying to think about it more consciously to see if what I really want is tea, or maybe I would do better with an apple or something.)

However, this time, I was laid out with that cold for a week. By the time the end of the week rolled around, I had started substituting the "comfort" part of the habit, the all-I-really-want-is-something-warm-to-drink part, with a steaming mug of lemon oil and honey in hot water. This began with the need to soothe my throat, but I kinda like it.

When I came to the realization that I had gone for seven days without a drop of caffeine of any sort, I was hesitant to break that streak for no particular reason other than old habits, so I thought I would see how far I could go. In the back of my mind was my father's voice (and some remembered impressions of words on the page of some book) saying "It takes twenty-one days to make a habit..."

In the last week, I have had three mugs of hot chocolate, more as dessert than anything. I am hesitant to have tea, in case I remember how much I really like it and all my will-power crumbles before the twenty-one day new non-tea-drinking habit is formed.

Will I have tea again sometime? Definitely. I just want to get past the mindless slavishness of tea-drinking that I had fallen into. When I drink tea, I want it to be because it's a bit of a treat, or perhaps a special occasion (a social drinker!), not because Well! I'm finished breakfast! Must be time for some tea! or I'm finished lunch! Must be time for some tea! or whatever the excuse du jour is.

That milestone, however, is minor compared to the next one.

Milestone Two:
Noah turned four today.

In my middle-of-the-week rush, focusing on what needs to be done, I actually kinda forgot about it until lunch time. The poor kid caught my cold, so he has been a little under the weather for the last week, as well. He was sitting at the lunch table in his lion costume (a permanent accessory these days) and it hit me: Today is Noah's birthday! As soon as I told him, he said, "Birthday cake?" hopefully. I chuckled and told him that we would have that on Friday, when we are having his actual party. But to mark the occasion, we went out and got Tim Horton's muffins for everyone--not quite cake, since Noah's isn't the only sniffly nose we were feeding. But a little more special than just having yogurt or something. (Or nothing at all!)

I was listening to Noah say the blessing the other day, and it struck me really how much clearer he is speaking. Yay! All the time with his aide is paying off! His speech is generally easier to understand.

Since getting the Wii, most of his comments have revolved around it, unfortunately. He's my little man that could easily fall into a T.V. addiction, and I can see that coming out with the new game system, too. I'm hoping the novelty will wear off soon, and he will start remembering that he has fun doing other things. (Perhaps getting distracted by a bunch of new toys this Friday may help?)

Noah has also really sprouted over the last few months. He is still a couple of inches shorter than Jude, but only because his brother has been growing equally fast. I'm still pushing Jude up a size in clothes usually because Noah needs them, not because he has actually outgrown anything. In fact, their T-shirts tend to be kind of interchangeable when I am folding and sorting laundry.

One of the coolest developmental milestones that Noah has hit is that he is only days away from being Pull-Up free at night! He has had five out of the last six nights dry--when our kids go for seven nights in a row dry, they get to stop wearing a Pull-Up. Like all of his other milestones, this isn't something that he has striven for, it has just kind of "happened". Noah isn't a striver. He just gets to things in his own time, when he is good and ready.

Well, after a very productive night last night, and a throat that is threatening to become inflamed again after the lateness of said night, I have decided to take the rest of tonight off and go to bed early. So this is it, folks. Chat with ya' more when I'm good and ready!

Wii Will Rock You

If I were to post more often than once every two weeks, I might not have so much to say when I get there.

Or I might remember more of what I wanted to say when I get there.

Or something.

What was I saying?

On Tuesday, nearly two weeks ago, I was hit with a terrible, terrible cold. My throat started to feel a little scratchy, and by Wednesday morning it felt like I had been trying to swallow flaming swords all night. I limped my way through Wednesday and Thursday, doing what I had to do (including taking the kids into Jude's Kindergarten Valentine's Day party, where I tried to stay far away from everyone, and everyone probably thought I was extremely rude because I wasn't talking to them, but really I had just lost my voice and didn't want to make everyone sick!), then on Friday, oh bliss!, Jason was home. I spent most of the day in bed, sleeping. I was too sick to even read. I was too sick to watch movies. I just spent the day in a feverish fog, the few hours I was awake spent mostly just laying there, staring off into space and trying to get the weird feverish thoughts out of my head that seemed they would be circling in there until the end of time. Now I know what a plush teddy bear's life is like!

Friday night the fever broke, but Saturday wasn't much better, energy-wise. I didn't really feel like I got my feet back under me until Tuesday morning. But the difference was amazing! The only thing lingering from the cold is a dry-ish cough that pops up a few times a day. (This was probably exacerbated by me leading worship at church yesterday, and the practice time that went with it.) This cold is "going around", I guess, and I can be thankful for my essential oils and Ningxia Red, because the other people I have seen hit with it, have felt it linger much longer than what I had.

The same weekend I was incapacitated in bed, our X-Box died. This is also what we used for our DVD player, which is the main thing we immediately missed. We had just rented a few movies for the weekend, and were suddenly without a means to watch them! While I was prepared to go for a week or more without a DVD player, Jason surprised me by coming home the next day with a Wii.

I never cared for X-Box. It was okay, but to me, it was pretty much a time-waster. You had accomplished nothing productive when you were finished with it, and most of the games involved punching or shooting things with kind of inappropriate graphics, so I wouldn't let the kids play (or even watch) most of them. Because of this, Jason rarely even used it except when he was getting together with "the guys" to play Halo.

Granted, a good chunk of this is that I have a constant need to be useful--even my hobbies (with the exception of playing music) have a concrete product to enjoy at the end--a scrapbook layout, a knitted treasure, or a new song.

This very "Type-A-Personality" thing about me is what drives me crazy about video games. I can't knit while I'm playing it, so at the end of it, I've got what?

Nothing.

Most of the time, you can't even call it good bonding time in my opinion, and it promotes physical inactivity--something we don't need help with in the depths of winter.

However, I have to admit, the Wii has won me over.

The free games that come with it are innocent and fun: updated versions of Nintendo's "Duck Hunt," table tennis, pool, fishing, and (my personal favourite) cow racing, to name a few. And you don't just sit on the couch and move your thumbs--you have to shoot the pool cue, yank up the fishing pole, roll the bowling ball, swing the golf club. You have to get up off the couch and move. And they really are good family-bonding games to play, just like going to the bowling alley (which burned down in our town two years ago.) (Also, just like real ten-pin bowling, I managed to throw my ball back at my team-mates yesterday instead of down the lane. Oops.)

Then, just to seal the deal, Jason bought me Guitar Hero III on Saturday. How could I not love it after that?

Productivity? What's that?

Now, more than a week later, Jude is still our Resident Champion Boxer!

You Are What You Eat

This landed in my e-mail inbox, and I can't seem to find a source for it. So, I don't know how accurate everything in here is, but it is kind of a cool idea, so I thought I would share it.

The reason I haven't been sharing anything else for the last week is that I got sick last Tuesday night and just have finally got all my spunk back today. In order to preclude repeating the sleep shortage that let me get sick in the first place, I may not get to do a real post for a few more days while I get caught up on everything I couldn't do while I was laying in bed, too ill to even read a book.

Don't worry--I am feeling much better now, thank you.

Enjoy!

@ @ @

This is interesting info...

You are what you eat, so eat well. A stupendous insight of civilizations past has now been confirmed by today's investigative, nutritional sciences. They have shown that what was once called 'The Doctrine of Signatures' was astoundingly correct. It now contends that every whole food has a pattern that resembles a body organ or physiological function and that this pattern acts as a signal or sign as to the benefit the food provides the eater. Here is just a short list of examples of Whole Food Signatures.

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye...and science shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.



A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.




Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.




A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over 3 dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.


Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.



Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.


Eggplant, Avocadoes and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? .... It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).


Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm as well to overcome male sterility.


Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.




Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries.



Grapefruits, Oranges, and other citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.


Onions look like body cells. Today's research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.


Peanuts have a profound affect on the testicles and sexual libido. Peanuts were banned as a food for males by the church during the middle ages. Most people don’t realize that arginine, the main component of Viagra, comes from peanuts.

Miscellani

On any given day, when I open Microsoft Outlook, I have six or seven reminders pop up with a loud chime, telling me what I ought to be doing. My typical response is to wince, clap my hands over my ears, and turn down my computer speakers. Then I click "snooze to be reminded in 5 minutes" on the cascade of "to-do" items, quickly try to check my e-mail before they start bugging me again, and close Outlook as quickly as possible.

Okay, seriously, I do take note of what I reminded myself to do--but quite often, right that second is not the best time to do something about it. "Write to _____." That would be great, but I have five milliseconds to clear the urgent items out my Inbox before my kids need my attention again. "Plan Noah's Birthday Party." Wonderful. I'll get right on that as my porridge boils over. "Buy envelopes." Oh, yeah. It would have been good had I checked my Task list before I went shopping then, eh?

I have been trying this new system of alarmed reminders since around the beginning of January. (This actually has nothing to do with a New Year's resolution--it just coincided with the timing of finding the recharging cord for my Palm, which I sync with Outlook, so the darn thing could be useful. I had misplaced it sometime around August.) With the busy-ness of my life, it seemed I was always forgetting about some appointment or birthday or other. I figured the alarmed reminders would help negate that. (Some people might point out that setting myself reminders is only useful if I actually read them--and perhaps, even act on them! Those people can feel free to keep their opinions to themselves. You know who you are.) However, it seems I have forgotten to remind myself of the more important things in life--like my blog-aversary. Blithely it passed me by last Thursday without me giving it so much as a nod of the head. In fact, I just realized that I even had the date wrong--I thought it was on the 10th, not the 7th!

At least my blog won't be offended and not speak to me for a month.

And at least I remembered my mother's and friend's birthdays, which both fall on that day as well. Whew!

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A few days ago, Jude announced, "I want to be a cowboy when I grow up!" Jason and I exchanged glances, hiding our grins. "Papa will be thrilled to hear that," I said. (Jude is so proud of the fact that his Papa is "a real cowboy." Or at least, he was once.)

"What do you want to be, Noah?"

"A lion."



He's been a lion pretty much every day since. I figure he's too young to burst his bubble. A boy's gotta have a dream!

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Saturday night was Scrapbooking night at the church. Despite teaching a young girl from our church to knit, I still managed to complete four layouts.

Earlier in the day, I had been reading an article in a scrapbooking magazine that was a checklist to knowing if you are addicted to scrapbooking. Included were such things as "When planning a trip, your scrapbook bag is what you pack first," and "You carry a camera in your purse so you always have one with you." As I read down the list, I was chuckling to myself and nodding. One that I had not yet stooped to was "You change your child's outfit to match the paper you want to use on your layout of the event." Nope, haven't done that one!

BUT!

That night, as I was scrapbooking photos I had taken during the afternoon, I realized I could add "You acquiesce to your child's cute request, just so you can scrapbook about the way they asked it."


Is there a support group for people like me?

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Jabin Right Now:

Favourite Phrase: "I do it!"
Favourite Food: Anything with lots of vegetables and no meat. (I don't know who he gets it from. Must be some recessive gene.)
Favourite Person: Still mostly Mommy, but he is beginning to have his "Daddy moments," too.
Favourite Activity: Colouring. On anything. Not always a good thing.
Favourite Songs: Jesus Loves Me, The Alphabet Song, We Will Rock You
Napping?: Most days. Supper time is pretty grouchy in our house if he doesn't nap.
Diapers?: Only at night, and sometimes when we go out for the day--he doesn't like using a big toilet, and often refuses to go on it until he literally can't hold it anymore. I can't wait until summer--then we can teach him to just go in the bushes!
Something that Mommmy can't get enough of: When he leans against me and tries to wrap his little arms around me (which means his hands are holding tightly to my biceps) and says, "I lowoo, Mommy."

What's been tickling your funny bone, lately?

Puppy Dog Tails and Everything Nice

I'm what you might call a "slow waker-upper." All members of my family will vouch for this one. My dad used to crank classical music to wake me up as a teenager. My husband complains that I have to hit the snooze button three times before I even notice that my alarm went off. (Fortunately, he needs to get up before me 95% of the time, and, unlike him, I can sleep through his alarm or fall back to sleep immediately when it does wake me.)

So, while I have a loose goal of actually being up and dressed before my kids get up every day, more often than not I am just about ready to crawl out of bed when I hear them pounding across the kitchen floor on their way to my room. They then proceed to either a) crawl into bed beside me in Jason's "dip" (we need a new mattress set in the worst way) while they wake up, or b) jump over me, around me, or on me with an abundance of energy that makes coffee jealous until I get tired of it and kick them all out so I can actually get up and get dressed, or c) all of the above.

Jabin, by virtue of being not as heavy or rough as his older brothers, does not get kicked out as frequently as they. In fact, since he still likes to crawl up on my chest and cuddle with me, I usually treasure our morning time together, knowing that it won't be much longer and cuddling with Mom will be blasé and he will have much better things to do.

This morning, as he woke me up with the sunshine in his smile, I asked him, "Are you always going to be this sweet?"

"Yes," he said, sweetly of course, grinning from ear to ear.

"I'm going to hold you to that," I said, winking, and gave him a big, wistful hug.

You Mean I Don't HAVE To Be Sick?

I thought you might all enjoy this 5-minute animation from Natural News that uses football to drive home the benefits of healthy eating:



Goji berries, augmented by blueberries, are two of the major components of Ningxia Red, the superfood drink that I have been using for a year to cleanse my liver. Since I started on it, my psoriasis has all but disappeared (it might be completely gone if I got a little more sleep, but, uh, let's not talk about that right now), I have had only a handful of colds, compared to the near-constant state of sickness I was in for the previous five years or so, and have had much more energy on a daily basis than I used to have. My kids also love the "Super Juice," as we call it. When we do get a cold, it tends not to last as long when we use a little extra Ningxia Red. My kids' friends will have a cold that drags on for weeks. My kids will get a runny nose that lasts for a few days to a week, then is gone.

Ningxia Red is one of the most amazing products that Young Living has to offer, in my opinion (and they have some pretty amazing stuff!). If you would like to learn more about how you can start protecting you and your family's health using this, please send me an e-mail (address in sidebar.) I would love to share with you how to improve your family's health, as ours has been over the last year.