Three

The number of ounces Goldie drank from a cup today! Finally! See, while Goldie can eat pretty much anything, she has a tough time managing liquids in her mouth. We've tried straws, open cups, water bottles, and sippies. She can get the water in, but it streams (or spurts)back out or her eyes get big, she sputters and chokes. I think because of this she became a very reluctant drinker. Who wants to feel like they're drowning? Up until recently I wasn't too worried about it because she nurses so much. But, now it means she nurses sooo much. The mim mims were her main source of liquids.

Then, this evening, I put a little too much salt on the popcorn and she guzzled 3 ounces of blueberry tea. (The PT laughed when I told her that's what I put in her cup. Seriously though, I make it myself so its cheap, has less sugar than juice and more flavor than plain water.) Her cup of choice is an Avent sippy with the soft spout. Once she is drinking consistently we can work on the straw thing. Goldie has also been signing drink and making the k sound.

And for dinner tonight, we had curried chicken. I thought it was a tad spicy (my tounge is delicate) but Goldie likes her food with flavor! That, she gets from her Dad. He's never met a hot sauce he couldn't handle. I can see them eating hot wings together some day.

Good Things

~ The Steelers won the Super Bowl! What teamwork and determination, definitely worth letting the kids stay up late for. I love how you can never count them out, no matter how few seconds are left on the clock.

~ Goldie is moving from the highchair to the table. See, everyday when Hank gets home from work, after Goldie gives him his hugs and kisses, she goes to the kid's cupboard, gets out a plate and sets it at the table. Sometimes this is followed by a bowl or cup. Then she pulls out the chair and stares at me.
I brought my yellow seamstress' tape measure to Target and found a booster seat with a belt that would fit under the table without smooshing her chubby thighs. The other 3 booster seats we already own, were too high and she kept sliding off the phone book. Now, time to learn this girl some table manners.

~ Hank's job. This is a big one for us. As the economy is tanking, we are rising from the abyss. My part time job was eliminated when Goldie was born and Hank was laid off when she was 8 weeks old. We applied for both SSI and unemployment. But, here's the sweet part, SSI only counts half of your wages, but ALL of the unemployment. So, they decided we should pay back 3 months worth of Goldie's SSI money. Nothing like kicking somebody when their down. Hank tried to hang on to his job at his old employer for way too long. They were letting us keep our health insurance, which is no small thing, because the state was paying for a portion of it and they were only 3 miles from our house.

Fast forward to this fall, I get tired of Hank drinking beer and playing with tractors strike oil by finding him a new J O B. He is now driving for a stable company that treats him almost as good as I do. A peace comes over me when I look at his pay stub and see money going toward health insurance, retirement, and even an account to help cover medical expenses. Plus, his new company has decided not to keep the money the state gives them to pay for Goldie's portion of our health insurance. They are having the state send the check directly to us. Can you believe that? Their belief is that will pay for our family what they would pay for any employee's family and give us the money to help for our portion. That's integrity. And the best part, Hank likes his new job, he has his pride back and is generally much nicer to be around.

~ I have a legitimate reason for not cleaning my kitchen floor and letting my kids run barefoot. It seems dirt really is good for the immune system. But, I'm going to have to draw the line at becoming infested with WORMS. Maybe Swatcho really does have a tapeworm? She's got a bullet proof immune system and despite how much food she packs away has wrists the size of a two year old. Hmmm.

How the FDA Has Let Me Down, Again

If you read my 25 Things, you'll see that aspartame gives me migraines. Aspartame is an artificial sweetner that my body responds to with vision loss and vomiting followed by a severe headache. I used to be able to avoid this neurotoxin by not eating anything labeled as light or diet. But, it is becoming so common that I have to read all food labels and I never eat homemade sweets at picnics.

My MIL is most put out by this. I recently gave her 6 pages of articles on why artificial sweetners are evil. This was my last resort after asking her repeatedly not to feed them to my kids or buy us food with rat poison aspartame. I won't bore you with the info, its easy enough to find. Unless, you are the FDA.

While the FDA is researching the evils of stevia, mercury is the lastest contaminant they have allowed to leech into our food system. I received this link from a special needs homeschool email list.

http://www.iatp.org/iatp/press.cfm?refID=105025

I do my best around here to avoid HFCS, but I don't always have time to cook from scratch or the money for alternatives. Example: Heinz ketchup w/ HFCS is about $2 while Annie's Naturals w/o is $4 at my grocery store. The nearest Whole Foods is an hour away.

The girls and I went through the cupboards to see what we had with HFCS. Just a box of Rice Krispies and some Dole canned grapefruit. Mini Me asked about the iced tea she drinks at school and I told her it would be better for to switch to water. She, too, has a milk allergy. Does anyone know if Silk makes individual soy milk cartons?