Chicken Pox!!!

A warm cup of chamomile tea, some yummy dates, and three sleeping babies - my recipe for a blog post. After a beautifully cloudy day with my parents down to visit, a 2-hour walk/jog on the biking trail thrown in the mix, I can think of no better way to end my day. I will be posting about our wonderful biking trail soon, as it is one of our favorite places to be and I have so many memories to share. But today I thought I would take you back to the..... (suspenseful music...) CHICKEN POX (this to be said in a loud, scary theatrical voice). The poxy days, although weeks past, are still fresh in my mind as I look at Kane and Max's marks and wonder how many will scar. They, thankfully, didn't pick at any of the scabs - they all fell off on their own - but some were still so big and so deep that they have left quite a mark for now. I guess we'll see...

The first few days of itchiness I put them in baths with goat milk powder and vitamin E capsules. With their food allergies, we just can't do oatmeal baths, so that was my substitution. After three days of those I did have to wash them as they started to, well, smell like goat milk :-). But it was a nice, soothing treatment for those itchies.

Between baths they were covered in a mixture of colloidal silver, lavender calendula salve from our wonderful friend at the local Farmer's Market, and tea tree oil. They probably would have smelled like goat milk sooner had the tea tree and lavender not covered it up so well! Uncharacteristically, Bella ended up getting them the least of the three. She had a few on her face and head, a few on her tummy and back, and some in her mouth and throat. That was it for her.

The older you are the worse the case, supposedly, but Max really got them the worst. Kane had the most pox. One day I sat Kane down to count the ones on his face and there were 45. Ugh. He was miserable.

But his didn't get as big and scabby as Max's did. And while Kane's seemed to just stop bothering him after about three days, Max had so many in his hair that his bugged him for much longer. At first I didn't want to admit how miserable it really was for all of us. After all, I DID purposely expose them to the virus. But I will freely admit now that there were a few days that were really hairy. Thankfully Bella didn't get them as bad, and hers broke out about 2 days after the boys, so that made it easier than it could have been. They all had them in their throats and mouths, though, which I think made them the most miserable. It was kind of cute, though, to ask Max to show you his chicken pox and see him hang that tongue out for you.

Can you see the one right in the middle of his tongue? He also had his bottom incisors coming in, so that didn't help matters. For about a week he was either doing this:

Or this:

Or this:

Ah, but it is all over with now, and there is always that silver lining. For us, that silver lining is called Lifelong Acquired Immunity, so I have three children who should never have to worry about the chicken pox for the rest of their lives. I am happy that it is behind us, but I am still thrilled that we went to our Pox Party, shared that juice box, and did what will be best for them in the long run. Now, the cup of tea is gone, as is the bag of dates - it was NOT full when I started this - and those three shining stars of mine are still snoozing away. So I am going to go join them and sleep off those aches that will set in tomorrow from having jogged farther today than I have in, oh, 5 years or so.

The Beauty of Color: Episode II

Ah, Bella and Kane are off to Nan and Pap's for the weekend, and Maxwell and Baylee (the little girl I babysit) are fast asleep, which gives me time to BLOG! My normal blogging time is after the kids are in bed, and with Max getting up every half hour to hour after I put him down, I haven't had the time to get on here lately. I also have been busting my behind getting this year's garden under way, planting, shovelling, expanding, double-digging... So that has eaten into any blogging time I might have during the day. Although I should be finishing my seed starting right now, or doing some much needed sewing/knitting, I decided to take a break from all that needed stuff to finish up my photos from our day of painting. I have so many other posts running around in my mind and so many pictures begging to get on here that I want to get these done so I can move on! Plus, with spring having sprung (happy first day of SPRING!), I am dying to get some of the color on here that is surrounding us outside. But as I sit at this cold computer desk, the color that I see is taped on the wall in front of me - a big piece of paper that was once white but was given a new life of color with hand and foot prints all over it and smears of every color everywhere. And it makes me smile.
This time around with our body painting, Kane was more subdued and reserved. He didn't like the thickness of the face paint, said it was too sticky, so he spent most of that phase of painting picking the dried paint off of his stomach. But once we got the paper out and put tons of color on the pallet, he let loose. He did some work with the brush, some with his hands, then he dove in with those bear-paw feet of his. He painted on some green - his new favorite color - then dipped in to the yellow the easy and more fun way.
Then it was time to put that color to work!
I look up right now at the paper to see his green and yellow foot prints and can almost feel the paint between my toes, cold and slippery.


Bella dove right in with smiley faces on her tummy and cat whiskers on her face. She has been pretending to be a cat a lot lately, and was happy to have a chance to put on whiskers and a black nose. Then it was time for color experimentation. Since there was no pink, her favorite color (duh), she had to make some, and was quite proud of how it turned out.


Then she just had to fill her belly button. I mean, come on, who could resist, right? It was the obvious choice.

When the black, white and red went on to fingers, she went from cat girl to spider man quickly.
Then it was back to being a cat. For that she needed to make paw prints, which required painted back paws.
Then she was on all fours stomping away, meowing with glee.

It was quite fun, and I didn't escape the color, either. Don't you worry. Someone had to take all the happy hugs Maxwell had to give and then carry him to the bathtub. I still even have some paint on my camera. And that shirt is a happy reminder of a colorful day.