S Club Mama

A college friend had this up and I haven't written anything much past book reviews and doctor appointment stuff lately so I thought this would be brain candy for me. 1. What we're eating this week... I am needing to review a cookbook so this weekend I'm trying out cheater crepes made with tortillas. Yum! Tonight I'm making my boys' favorite meal - ham sammies! 2. What I'm reminiscing about... When days weren't so full or when I wasn't so needing quiet to recharge. When did I become so hermit-ish? 3. What I'm loving... I love this weather. So warm. And I love that I found TWO pairs of comfy maternity pants!! Yay! 4. What we've been up to.  Doctor appointments. One with a PT (Moose has functional scoliosis, no biggie it sounds like) and an MRI. Next week: follow ups. We've also been trying to get outside to the park more. 5. What I'm dreading... This month with something almost every day planned. I have tried to cance...

Dear mama,  Life is hard, isn't it? All those phone calls, medical terms (followed by insanely scary Google searches - stop it), doctor appointments, no-sleep nights because of the "what ifs" drifting in. It's overwhelming. To top it off, you actually have to be a mother and love, discipline, nurture, make food, take them places, socialize, eat (please eat), shower.   I was lucky. Life was relatively normal for about 2 years into motherhood. I mean, it was hard but I thought that hard was normal (and to an extent, it is normal. ALL mothering is hard, special needs or not!). And then we got the diagnosis that made some of the hard better explained. Didn't make it harder or easier, but explained so we could do something about it.   Then added on top of normal mothering stuff, we had the doctor appointments, therapies, trying out diets (that didn't work), fishing through quack doctors vs. real doctors. And we came to our new normal.   It was hard. I am coming...

A month ago when Moose had his first seizure, it was a "normal" one. One we all think of - tremors, eyes rolled back - when we think of seizures. Over the past few weeks as we've learned more about seizures, we have wondered (at least I have) if we've been missing smaller seizures for a long while now. Moose is a spacey kid. Moose is a sloth-y kid. What if those spacing out moments, those lolligagging moments aren't being spacey or sloth-like? What if they are seizures so small you don't notice? Or after affects of seizures (the fatigue)? Now, we don't (and aren't) want to beat ourselves up over this because we're only human and only so observant ourselves. But an observation nonetheless. Yesterday Moose had a seizure around 2pm. I still see God's handling of this because I was not home from 10-1 and Big A was tending to the yard and garden at those times. We were all in the living room at 2pm when our son became unresponsive. Totally unres...

We love the Berenstain Bear books around here. I've been reading them since I was a child and I love reading them to my children. They are some of the most helpful social stories, in my opinion. I was excited to get to read "The Berenstain Bears' Country Cookbook (Cub-Friendly Cooking with an Adult)" by Mike Berenstain because I love when my boys help me in the kitchen. They do not do so with as much enthusiasm as when they were just a few years younger. Moose was still hesitant to help me but Squirt was VERY excited about this cookbook. He flipped through it and decided on a few dishes to make. I didn't have the ingredients for all of them so we had to pick and choose. image via BookSneeze We ended up making a Shepherd's Pie first. It was really good and very easy. Squirt helped me put the ingredients together and in no time, we sat down to a delicious kid and mom made meal. It was just fun to make something simple with him. I would use this recipe f...

Awhile ago I reviewed "The Desire" by Dan Walsh and Gary Smalley and loved the characters and plot in the story - Christina being pregnant and not knowing what to do, Marilyn taking her under her wing, Michele wanting a baby so badly and not being physically able to carry one. I loved how the authors tied their stories together with exactly what God ties our stories together with: love, grace, forgiveness, and more love. image via amazon.com When the opportunity to read "The Legacy" by Walsh and Smalley came up, I was very excited. This story revolves around Marilyn's youngest child, Doug, and how his life has been very far from the God his parents have found relationships with. Christina is involved, heavily, in this story, and we also get to see the adoption story with Michele play out fully in this. As often with novels, this plot wasn't hard to follow or figure out the ending to. However, that doesn't detract from the tale. Who doesn't lo...

This past Tuesday is when we took Moose to see a pediatric neurologist. We really liked Dr. K; thought he had a great bedside manner, especially with Moose. It takes some patience and persistence to have a conversation with this kiddo, but the doc did. Very observant guy, too. He noticed a slight curvature in Moose's back and that one leg is longer than another. We'll have that PT appointment to look forward to in the near future. Dr. K also said I would not make it to my due date; so we'll see on that one, too. Moose did so well behaviorally. It was kind of amazing. He not only did well in the appointment with Dr. K but also endured an EKG and EEG that same day. I was talking to his teacher this morning and she observed (and I agree) that Moose holds it together really well during school and sometimes on Fridays you can see him coming apart at the seams. I'm sure it takes great energy from him to seem so "normal" so often, but he does a wonderful job of i...