Swampwater, day 5.

I went hunting for a scale last night, but it seems ours has gone AWOL. The last time I did a candida diet change, I lost 14 lbs in 2 months. Simply from changing the way I ate. I'd like to track my progress this time, but I don't think I should get caught up in the numbers. Not yet, anyway.

I found it this morning, in our room under a pile of clothes. 170. Eep!

But this time, I have my secret weapon, the aforementioned Candida Cleanse and added Herbal Fiber Blend. Picked both products up at my chiropractor's office, of all places. She has successfully used them herself and recommends them to her clients so frequently that she decided to bring some in to sell, instead of sending people to the health food store at the end of the street. 

Today is day 5. I'm still hanging in there. In fact, I haven't had this much success in the early days before. I'm crediting the Fiber Blend for working it's magic on my digestive system, cleaning and healing it and showing it how it can be full with only a normal size of food. And of course the candida pills and tincture, which are dueling with the yeasties currently kicking around in my body.

I've been having fun with my food - you have to when you're working with a limited spread. Supper the other night was Ryvita crackers spread with goat's cheese (a candida no-no, but I've learned in the past that I can handle it), mashed avocado, halved cherry tomatoes and fresh ground black pepper. Soooooo very good!

 
I'm also nearly 5 weeks into my No Caffeine Adventure. And doing great! I don't miss coffee and I'm not even having decaf. I've been drinking tea, but my go-to drink in the morning is a coffee substitute made by Bambu. It is made from rye, chicory, figs, acorns... (ok, I know I just lost a few readers!) But it's tasty. And hot. And dark. And it meets my needs of having a mug of richness in the morning.

In other news, we had our first snow overnight! When I brought the boys downstairs, I told Elliot to go look out the window. He did, and seconds later there came an exuberant cry of "SNOW!!!!!!" He's been asking for weeks when it was going to be winter. Ever since Halloween.

Have a bunch of errands to run in it today, so that should make him happy. (Well, not the errands themselves because one of them is a doctor's appointment where he's gonna get an immunization. Shhhhh.) But it's drizzling now and I don't expect the snow to be down long. What little of it there was is fast turning to slush and running away.

Rain. Day 7.

Well, many parts of the province have pretty well floated away. It's been raining steady for a week. Today we got a bit of a break and the drizzle stopped around 11. Stayed gray and windy all day, though.  During the first 3 days, we got a typical month's worth of rainfall. So much flooding and damage. Several bridges and many roads have been washed out in my hometown. Scary.

 Tina Comeau, photo

Aaron Pothier, photo

Aaron Pothier, photo

 

The boys are going batty. Took them out puddle jumping yesterday. Their raincoats were still soaked this morning! Luckily, I'm still off caffeine so I'm mostly in control of my impulses and able to deal with the stir crazy testosterone around here. I think. Though I did lose it on them around supper time yesterday. In my defense, I'd had crappy sleep the night before and 2 needles - flu and tetanus shots - that morning. I still wish I hadn't yelled.

We went shopping last weekend - bought what we went for, but it still added up to $$$$. Got a brand new 1620 coil count mattress with a memory foam topper. (Apparently, the coil thing is good - standard bed have around 800, she said.) It's a queen, firm, cozy. Hasn't been delivered yet. (Boooo! 2 more days...) We can't fit a queen box-spring up our steep, narrow staircase. And a queen split - 2 smaller box-springs - was an extra $300 on the cost of the set. Yipes! The current platform we have sucks. It's old and creaky and the slats slip back and forth and stick out the sides and we bang into them. So, Jay's building a new platform for the mattress. Not sure how the logistics of new bed in, old bed out will work since the platform won't be ready when the new bed arrives. We'll see.

We also bought a new portable dishwasher to replace the freebie we got on the side of the road last year. Yay for efficient dish-washing not being done by me!

Elliot's entered another aggressive phase. On Friday, Jay came around the corner from the kitchen and saw him stabbing Felix in the head with a plastic pen from their magnadoodle thingy. Nearly broke the skin, Felix had a good bruise. Jay said it was vicious. Later that day at preschool he got mad at one of his friends and bit him really hard. Didn't break the skin, but a full impression was still there at the end of the day. Plus he's always (and almost unconsciously) hitting and poking people as they walk by. The other night he told me to put the food in my butt when I told him to put it in his mouth and eat his supper.

And Felix, well, he's 2 and he's showing it. Every choice, every offer, ever question, every request is met with screaming. He sounds like a schizo pterodactyl.  Bedtime is an issue. Naps are fine, but bedtime. Ugh. It took 75 minutes to get him to sleep tonight. I'd tuck him in, two minutes later he'd be silently standing in my room, staring at me until I wordlessly took him back to his room.

Sunday again

Wow, so the week from hell continued and I *think*/*hope* it's over. My Wednesday continued with me calling the Nurse Link line again and describing all of Felix's fever symptoms, hoping they could guide me as to if it was just an immunization reaction or the start of strep throat. Their check list pointed to it being more likely a result of the needles, so I waited it out. Luckily, by Thursday, his fever started to go down.

Elliot's antibiotics had kicked in by Wednesday, so he started to be less cranky. But only slightly. He had a wicked case of cabin fever. Both boys were cantankerous bears, but we muddles through. I noticed Elliot scratching a nasty looking bug bite on the back of his right leg. Then I forgot all about it, until Thursday morning. That's when I saw he had scratched it raw and it was oozing (and no longer resembled a bug bite, just torn flesh) and his calf was swollen to twice the size of the other and it was hot and hard. Cleaned it, put on a hot compress, then some polysporin and a bandaid and sent him to daycare (hallelujah!).

It was still still rock hard and warm when I picked him up that night. In hindsight, I should have taken him to the walk in clinic then... called the Nurse Link line for the 3rd time in as many days that night, and they confirmed what I already knew - he should be seen by a doctor. The good news was that since there were no red streaks coming from it, we didn't have to rush to the ER. They said it should be seen within 24 hours, and that sooner was better. So Jay bundled Elliot up and they hightailed it to the walkin clinic at our dr's office.

They left home at 7pm. By 10, I still hadn't heard from them and was getting nervous. I was worried that the infection was so bad (ie flesh eating disease) that they rushed them over to the hospital and were amputating below the knee to save the rest of his leg. At 10:05, Jay called. They had just left the clinic and were heading to the pharmacy to get new antibiotics. They got hom around 11:30.

The new stuff is a broad spectrum antibiotic which replaces the Amoxil he was on for strep throat. The dr had drawn a fun map around the hard parts of Elliot's calf for us to monitor. We had an appointment to take him back for a follow up appointment the next day.

Friday was taken up with that dr's appointment, and the fantastic and wonderful loan of my mother in law's car. We got to drive around in air conditioned bliss and even popped out of town to visit friend's and go swimming in their lake.

Everyone seems on the mend now. Felix also chose this week to drop a nap. It's been fun! He's going down between 10-11 and sleeping for 2ish hours, then needing a 20 minute catnap around 4:30... still need to find a way to get him sleeping by himself all night long. I bought a futon for the guest bed a few months ago, and bought a cheap one, figuring it wouldn't be slept on much, and certainly not for more than 1-2 night's in a row. Yeah. I've been in there for at least 5 hours every night since. And boy, does it hurt my poor body.

I should stop doing my self-help through osmosis thing, and start reading all those baby sleep help books I bought. Maybe there's an answer in one of them?

Friday yet?

What a week and it's only Wednesday.

Sunday night, Elliot spiked a fever. It was 103 in his ear, which means it was at least 104 internally. (I refuse to subject my 3 yr old to a rectal thermometer!) Monday morning, he was so polite and good natured. Jay and I looked at each other with alarm. Who.was.this.child??? (Especially since both Sat & Sun mornings he went batshitinsaneballistic.)

At lunch time, he said the blueberries hurt his mouth. Thinking they might be stuck between his teeth, I peeked inside. And saw that he had strep throat. It was the Natal Day holiday Monday, and there was only 1 walk in clinic open in the city that we could find, so off we set. After 2.5 hours, we got confirmation and a prescription for amoxil. Which took over 24 hours to kick in. He's been batshitinsane since then.

Tuesday I took Felix for his 1 year check up and shots. Poor little monkey SCREAMED with totally justified rage when his nice dr jammed the 1st needle in his thigh. I was nursing him at the time and his mouth opened wide, dribbling the unswallowed milk everywhere. His hemangioma darkened to a deep purple, almost black and for a moment I thought 'Here goes. THIS is the time it will just rocket off his face and drench us all in gore.' But it settled down. Poor boy. He'd been happily smiling and playing peek a boo with the dr moments before, and now he was buried in my neck, shooting highly distrustful and pissed off looks out at her.

He settled down enough, then it was round 2 - the MMR shot in his arm. More screams. More black hemangioma and threatening looks. But more mama milk soon calmed him down enough that the incident was, mostly, forgotten.

There might have been a 3rd immunization, but since Elliot thoughtfully brought home chicken pox from daycare when Felix was 7 months old, there was no need for that vaccination. We would have delayed it until school age, anyway. Which is what we did with Elliot, and the rest is history!

Tuesday afternoon, Elliot had such a wicked melt down, I went next door and asked if they could take Felix for 20 minutes or so while I calmed down the banshee.

That night at supper, I turned around to see Elliot's finger buried up to a knuckle in his nose. I asked him first if he needed a tissue, but there was something about his behaviour that made me ask what was up there. He giggled and said "Macaroni." Stinker. I could only just see it when I tilted his head and flared out his nostril. I couldn't get him to blow it out, so I called the brand new Nurse Link line that they just set up here last week and they confirmed we had tried everything we could at home and we should take him to the IWK.

Back over to our neighbour's I went - she graciously drove Jay & Elliot there and even left her daughter's car seat so they could cab home if she wasn't able to come back for them! At the hospital, after looking at it, they decided to try one more thing: Jay had to lay Elliot down, cover the non-noodled nostril and blow hard into Elliot's mouth. He had to do it about 5 times (and there was much talk at that point about having to freeze his nose and extract it, since it didn't appear to be working) but then the noodle came down far enough that they were able to sit Elliot up again and get him to blow really hard a few times and it shot out. Lucky duck. Extraction wouldn't have been fun. But I half wish they had done the extraction, if only to teach him a lesson. (Bad mama!) I think he knows the seriousness of the situation now, but it would be even harder to forget about it is they when the freezing & such route.

When they came home Elliot ran up to me and said, very solemnly, "That wasn't a good idea."

This morning, Wednesday, Felix has a fever. It's only 100.5 (in his ear), but he's rather cranky. Probably just a reaction to the immunizations, but I really hope it's not the start of strep throat. The dr said to minimize the boys' contact, and to not let them share food/cups/utensils. Yeah right. Easypeasy.

I've spent the last 3 nights bed hopping and medicating the boys. *YAWN* I told Jay this morning that he should feel free to come home from work early! And where are my boys now, you might be wondering? Parked in front of the TV while I sip my coffee and cruise the internet. I won't be winning any awards today. We always said that our kids wouldn't watch much, if any, TV. And when that started to change, we vowed that the TV wouldn't become a babysitter. Things never work out the way you plan. I console myself with the knowledge that we screen their shows and they have a short list of programs we deem to be a good mix of education/entertaining.

Ahhhh. And then mama gets time to pee alone. Cook supper. Surf the internet. Put one child down for a nap so the other doesn't go batshitinsanedestructive... you know, the basics!