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.

The Beauty of Color: Episode I

I was in an interesting place the other day, where I knew the floors needed scrubbed badly, but I just didn't feel the urgent need to get it done. So I fixed that by saying, "Hey, guys, would you like to do some body/feet painting before bath tonight?" I figured, with paint all over the floor, I would have to scrub it well. And the way I see it, if I have to clean it, I might as well give myself the joy of being able to really see the reward to my job well done.

For Maxwell, this was his first time digging in to the painting scene, but you would have never known it. He has watched his brother and sister, and from the minute I set everything out on the counter he was stretching to get his hands on a brush, yelling and bouncing up and down. Once I got him stripped down and into a disposable diaper, the party was on. We started with left over face paints, which were slightly dried out from last painting day, so I dipped the brush in the paint for him, told him to paint his tummy, and he immediately did just that.
He had just as much fun playing with the paints on the brush as he did painting himself.


We had music on (Christmas songs, thanks to Bella), and things got a little wild for a bit with dancing and singing.

Then he decided to try his hand on another canvas - his brothers tummy!

Next I rolled out the white wrapping paper for some feet painting, but Max thought he needed more color on himself, so the acrylics went on the tummy and hands as well. He got really excited at one point, squealing and shaking his paint-saturated hands.

We used some nice bright colors, but in the end everything ends up one color anyhow. Hard to believe it starts with these colors and ends up lime green all over the paper...

Maxwell did finally decide to put a little on the paper.

As you can see, he ended up mostly brown at the end of it all.
It took one good muddy-water rinse before they could all be bathed.

Apparently Max was really thirsty, because he was trying to scoop the water into his mouth with his hands, then gave up on that to try this. He had never attempted this before.

You would think that washable face paints would wash off, but maybe the super-concentration from them drying out some made that pigment a little more resilient than the last time we used them. Max was covered in lovely pastel patterns for the following day. I think I'll just stick to my acrylics from now on.
There are so many more wonderful pictures, some of which I will share with you in Episode II, featuring Bella and Kane. There were just too many to include here. But if you are interested in seeing them all, you can hop on over to my Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturemama/. I would love to have you, and I am downloading the images as I type. I hope to see you/hear from you there!

Edited to tell you that my uploader just crashed, so it will take me awhile to reload all of the pictures and relabel them all. Drat. It has taken me three days to get to where I could download them! But they will be there eventually...

Hilarity

Sunday was a relaxing day, and I just had to share with you pictures of how we ended our evening. Kane has "Bam Trucks," which are little monster trucks, the term for which comes from the days of my nephew's childhood. Most of them you pull back then let go and they run, but there are a couple that will crank up forward, gaining more speed the more you crank them, and they really go flying. Which is exactly what Adam was doing. And it CRACKED...

KANE...

UP!!!

Adam would crank up the Bam Truck to an insane speed...

then let it go out of Kane's and Max's room... and it would speed away to jog off of the door frame of another room, or kick off the gate into the bathroom. Or even better was when it would hit a door frame and flip over on its side, flying all over the place with the wheels still spinning. Once it was spinning wildly behind our bedroon door, throwing out pages of My Little Pony stickers that Bella had stashed there. Maxwell would run, or crawl, off to find where it had finally stopped,

and bring it back every time, with theatrics.

Our little retriever.

Then he would plop down and get ready for the next run. The anticipation was nearly unbearable.

Kane had crazy hiccups by the end, and it was just generally a blast had by all. Now I am off to get some sleep and prepare for our big day, as tomorrow the kids will get the chicken pox. Yes, it was an intentional exposure. And for those who think I'm crazy, getting the virus means life-long immunity, whereas the vaccination (if we got vaccinations) only lasts 10 years and doesn't ensure you won't get it anyway. So we went to a Pox Party and shared a juice box, and we will get them tomorrow. I would much rather know we're getting them and be prepared, and know that my kids, especially Bella, will be spared from complications getting the virus later on in life. So, with that said, I'm off to sleep, to wake up to pox and get ready for the days of healing ahead. Good day to you!

The Many Faces of Maxwell

My children have expressive brows - it is a genetic gift from their father's Italian heritage. Max is finally really starting to use his. He is the baby of one thousand faces. I have said, since the time he was little, that I could snap 10 pictures of him in continuous mode and I couldn't delete one, because each one was different. His facial expressions are constantly changing, and I love to watch his emotions come out in them. For the longest time I have loved to watch him when he is really concentrating on something - the way his little lips are pursed, and his brow furrowed... Here is a classic example from last week when it was warm and he was improvising on the use of this "tee." It takes a lot of concentration to balance a plastic golf ball on top of a Tee Ball tee. You can see how hard his little brain is working to get that ball to stay up there.

Now I have a new favorite face. He just started it a few days ago, and does it when he is really confused or concerned about something.

This is watching me take dinner out of the oven a few evenings ago. I had him back up, then opened the oven and let him feel how hot the air coming out was. It was obviously concerning to him. One of the things I love most about this face is how far apart it sets him from Kane. They look so much alike in many ways, but their expressions are so different to a mother's eye.

One more new face that I love and expect to see a lot more of: the "am I going to get in trouble for this?" face.
Sheepish, head down, eyes looking up, avoiding eye contact. I love every minute of it. And just to be clear, he did NOT get in trouble for eating the dirt here. I figure maybe he was in need of some important trace mineral. Plus, every kid needs to know what dirt tastes like. Heck, every adult should know. So if you don't know, you should give some dirt a try this spring. I hope that you know what it smells like - oh, how I LOVE the smell of soil. I hope that you will give it a try if you don't know what it tastes like. And I would love to see if your feelings about it came through as clearly as my little Maxwell's do.

Flashlights and Suction Cups

Take any parent of a young child and they will tell you, in some form or another, how much kids can take joy in the unexpected things. I know you've heard it before, "We buy her all these toys and what she ends up playing with are the boxes." I love this about my children. In our house I try to foster an environment of creativity, and creativity does NOT come from playing with a plastic toy that makes a bunch of noises as well as it does from a box full of sticks or an empty mesh trash can. Subsequently I have more random things to clean up after, like leaves and pine needles, or those empty trash can space helmets that end up upstairs after a rocket ride when they should be downstairs. I am happy to have this delima.

Some of the most memorable times for me and hopefully for my kids are evenings spent preparing for sleep in an unexpected place. Those unexpeted places tend to have a fort or tent theme around here, and tonight was no exception, with all three soundly sleeping in Kane's and Maxwell's room. There was a handy fort built between the top bunk bed and Max's crib, and Bella just had to snuggle up there to sleep for the night. So we got out my old sleeping bag and a pillow and found her a little flashlight so she could find her way out to me if she needed to, which was a concern of hers. And while we were preparing the fort, Max found a suction cup off of a cheap stick-to-the-door basketball hoop - one of those things I have been meaning to throw away for awhile. He realized it would stick to his chest, and my little cut-up spent 15 minutes smacking it on his belly and then sticking it on, leaning his head way back and laughing, all for the effect it gave of cracking Bella and Kane up. He thought it was super funny. Then we turned out the lights and tested the flashlight. They wanted me to take pictures of everyone in the light of the flashlight,and Bella just had to take one of me.Then it was time for sleeping. Kane ended up in his bed after sneeking down with me and falling asleep on the couch. Bella is sound asleep in the fort, and Max in his crib. I love the bond that they build when sleeping so closely, the way it is meant to be. There is no animal in this world that lives in a heard/pack/flock/family group and sleeps in it's own room away from all the others... And I love the memories that we can form with flashlights and suction cups.

Mr. Moon

After a fun day with my knitting group yesterday, the kids went to bed nice and early and I spent some time with my Rebel and my tripod on the front lawn. The moon was big, beautiful, and ringed, and I wanted to play with my shutter speed to see what I could get. I wanted to see the detail of the moon, so with the shutter speed at 1/125 of a second, I got Mr. Moon's face.

Then changing the speed to 1/30th of a second, I was able to capture the glow of that brilliant ring.


Wondering what would happen to the wandering clouds with a healthy shutter speed of 8 seconds brought me this wonderfully blurred shot reminiscent of an oil on canvas.

My two favorites came with a shutter speed of 1 second. I love the way the glow of the moon back lit the passing clouds.

It was fun and relaxing. Now on to more fun - we're heading to Roseymama's to plan our garden and order our heirloom, organic seeds to split between friends. Yeah, spring! Can you smell it? Go ahead, try. Go outside, even if it is raining, and close your eyes. Listen to the multitude of American Robins gathering in the trees above your head, take a deep breath, and feel the energy mounting in every living thing surrounding you. Now can you smell it? Spring is on the way, even if we have to endure another 5 weeks of winter to usher it in. And I'll be ready with trays of tomatoes and peppers, pots of sprouting herbs and a song in my heart!