June...in a nutshell. Part I

We ran around like 4 monkeys in June. We went to a family reunion, 2 weddings, I worked twice as much as usual, Rob had a birthday AND Father's Day, and Max got 2 molars. Whew. So, I barely blogged.  And, lets be honest, sometimes I barely took pics. But there are a few that need to be seen. 

Father's Day

I cropped these pics and made Rob a three part frame for Father's Day. My children were nuts for these pics, but slight less nuts as usual because they were tired from just waking up. Which explains Ry's sleepy eyes, and Max's slight Donald Trump hair-do. As my niece Zoe tells her brother "you get what you get and you don't have a fit."

The last pic, where they are supposed to both hold the DADDY pic gave me some awesome shots that are not meant for a framed gift, but totally meant for a chuckle. Enjoy.

Wait! Max look at the camera, Rylan, sign down, shirt down!!!!

Awwww blurry love

Mugshot

And, it goes downhill

Power of the pacey. Calm baby toddler, which causes calm big toddler. Its magical. I hate how magical it is.

"Here bro, let me pick your nose for you."

Getting bored with it

Max "let's see if we can make mom completely batshit crazy today. We were SO close yesterday." Rylan : "done!, she doesn't even know I left all the lids off my markers yet! And I didn't flush the toilet, you should totally go in the bathroom when she's uploading these pics."

Ummmmm. Dunno.

Max, do you have a question?

ANOTHER question?

Okay, we went too far, she's gone nuts. Like this mom? You want me to hold him like this? You aren't going to put my movies on top shelf time out are you? 

zzzzzzz

1. My parents are awesome and asked (actually asked) to take my kids for 3 nights. The day they asked I did an actual air fist bump, since there was no one there to fist bump with.

2. I officially broke up with Christian Grossness Grey and his Red Room of Pain on Thursday night. Its not me, its him. And the author. In the words of my sister, "something's bad wrong with that writer." I made it 1.5 books out of 3 before I could take no more of those books. I then opened up a perfectly good Mary Higgins Clark book and returned to the world of normal.

Add #1 to #2? 12 hours of uninterupted sleep last night. I haven't slept till 8am since 2008.***

***Miss my kids like whoa!!! They are crazy and tend to fight over EVERYTHING and Rylan told me the other day during a time out that I wasn't allowed to go to WalMart anymore, and Max still eats dog food and can't keep his hand out of the toilet and they only want hugs and kisses after bedtime or before wakeup time, but they are the two most awesome kids in all the world (at least in my eyes) and I wouldn't trade them for a million of anything. They are worth the sleeplessness. And grey hair.

50 Shades of Ewwww

I'm so tired I can barely breathe. My old roomate, Alicia used to say this all the time. Really any ailment is interchangable with tired. I'm so _____ I can barely breath. I'm so drunk, I can barely breath. I'm so mad, I can barely breath. I'm so hot I can barely breath. I'm so hungry I can barely breath. I think of her every time I say it. But, we were night shift nurses, so "I"m so tired I can barely breath" was the main one. Its funny still, 8 years later.

So. Tired? Because I have a 3 and 1 year old that get up at the asscrack of dawn on the days I stay home with them and the days I work I have to clock in no later than 7am? Nope.

I'm tired because of this piece of literary weirdness:


And the weirdo wanker that's in it.

I have had this book for a month. I used it as a door stop for a couple weeks, then I lost it twice. I decided it didn't interest me and said I was going to sell it on Craig's list. And then I opened it to just read a few pages till I got sleepy. And then I read for 3 hours.

And I'm not sure why its such a page turner. My theory is that, for me, I can't stop looking at crazy. In a Kardashian, wreck on the side of a road, drag queen show, 16 and Pregnant, and 1/4 of my Facebook friends kind of way. I'm like "ewww, that is so weird, this book is whack and stupid and I'm not reading it anymore." And then I turn the page and read on. And then its 1am.

Let's talk about dairy

Or the lack thereof.

A year ago (and some change) we took Rylan off of dairy. He wasn't showing actual allergic reactions to it, but he had a strange group of symptoms and was sick, like, ALL THE TIME. We took him off dairy, voila. The rash on his face and arms that came and went for the first 2 years of his life? Gone. The (sorry, too much info), watery doo? Not so watery. The asthma? Still there, but not making such common visits. Ear infections? One since giving up the sauce, er, milk. One tiny infection in over a year.

And here comes Max. Lover of milk. Max got ear tubes at 7 months after having 6 ear infections. Between 7 months and 15 months, Max had eight more ear infections, with ear tubes. EIGHT! So, we had the doc take the adenoids. This was the week of  Christmas. Between the week of Christmas and February, he had  four more ear infections. If you are doing the math, that is 20 ear infections in 17 months. Tired of medicine, tired of surgeries, and tired of seeing our kid sick and hurting, we threw caution to the wind and ditched the dairy for him to, because, really, what could it hurt?

Its been five months. Zero ear infections. Wha WHAT?????

Life without dairy takes getting used to, but it has been so worth it. And yes there are hard times, like playdates when I have to tell them they can't have the childhood favorite of goldfish crackers. And yes, I do occassionally let my guard down and let the poor kids have a cupcake slopped with buttercream icing at a child's birthday party. My theory is that they are not ALLERGIC to milk, they are intolerant, so it isn't life threatening. A very once in a while treat is okay. And skipping a few goldfish crackers on a daily basis makes it okay to have the very occasional yumminess like a yummy cupcake.


I have been able to substitute non dairy for most meals to the point that the kids don't realize they are missing out. It requires a lot of homemade vs. quick and easy, which is time consuming but healtier anyway. Bye bye Kraft mac n cheese, previously mentioned goldfish crackers, and out to eat pizza.  The only things I haven't mastered at home is a non dairy cake icing and lasagna. What do you do for the ricotta/cottage cheese part? I guess I have their whole lives to figure it out.


Here are some helpful things that have helped us with our switch.


-"Light" margarine is dairy free
-Duncan Hines cake mixes and brownie mixes are dairy free
-If you take your own cheese, nice pizza places will make your kids a pizza with dairy free cheese and they don't have to do without.
-Anything labeled "vegan" is dairy free.
-Whole Foods has almond milk yogurt that my kids would like to swim in.
-Snack time was hardest, my kids have come to love peanut butter crackers, pretzels, nutra grain bars, dried   fruit, applesauce, oreos, soy or almond milk yogurt, nuts, jelly toast, cereal, and hummus and veggies.
-DAIYA cheese melts the best for pizza
-Veggie cheese (found by the tofu) is nasty if you eat it as is, but isn't bad on a sandwich.
-When you remove massive amounts of milk from your kid's diet, they are hungry for food like meat, veggies, and fruit. At least at my house.
-Restarants that are easy: fast food (real butter costs a lot, they fry in cheap non dairy grease), chinese food, and seafood.
-Restaurants that are hard: pizza, baked foods, expensive restaurants such as a steakhouse. They cook in butter mostly. If you remember to ask for no butter, its fine, but I don't think of things like this.

 July 4th Ribs and corn on the cob, he's in a dairy free food coma.

Holiday candy is tough. Mostly skittles and jelly bean type stuff. The flip side for my kids? More swag. Spiderman hats/color wonder paper/color books are dairy free.

While Daddy's Away, the Kids Will Play

And by kids I mean my two kids plus me and my sister, Tammy.

Rob has a yearly canoe/dudes camping weekend. Because in my mind camping in July is batshit crazy not my idea of fun, I gladly sent him on his way for some time with his guy friends and made a list of air conditioned things to do here in LR..

Rob's always afraid of leaving us, we do live a crazy life with these two sleep hating crazy boys, but all was well. I mean, not one load of laundry got done, the vacuum didn't run, and I'm pretty sure I gained 6 lbs in onion ring induced bloating. But we had a fun weekend too!

First of all, Aunt Tam came to hang out, which is always a fun time. We took her out for Purple Cow her first night in town, aka Child Friendly (and Dairy Free friendly) eating. We recently discovered that Purple Cow has milkshakes with soy ice cream and soy milk. Yay for Rylan and Max. Tammy and I shared a Dreamsicle shake full of the devil's milk.

Saturday morning we went to Wonder Place. Rylan was invited to his very first classmate birthday party. It was for this completely adorable girl, Emily, or if you are Rylan, "Emerhee". I ok'd it with the mom paying for the awesome Wonder Place Party that I bring Maxerton, since they have a certain number of kids they are allowed. Yay for some no-shows, Max got to come too. And I'd say he enjoyed himself completely.

My boys spent a good deal of time in the doll house area. I would be a little nervous, but it was something new to them.

Not only did Rylan's awesome teacher show up, but she played with the kids more than their own parents. That is her hand doing a puppet show for Rylan.

Max preferred his shirt wet to the point of being see thru and no shoes.

I finally got to meet Kate that we'd heard so much about. 

Birthday girl. She was so completely precious and]

Max might have had a pink cupcake. I'm not sure.

This is 3 year old for "putting the moves on". You blow the party blower directly in the girl's face.

After the party we went to the Rivermarket to enjoy the Farmer's Market and then get Tammy one of her favorite Little Rock lunches: BLVD Bread Company. After we ate our lunch, we noticed a new establishment in the Rivermarket hall called Gourmet Lollies. Oh holy moly. So Freakin Good. Tam and I had salted caramel, Max had strawberry, and Rylan had watermelon. Now Tammy has a new favorite place to visit.

Gourmet Lolly coma

Gourmet Lolly Yosemite Same Stache

Gourmet Lolly inspired happiness

Rivermarket Hall. Love.

After we got all our produce, and our bellies full, we decided to take our sticky, tired kids to the library. Cause where else would you take kids that are sticky and tired but to a place where they need to be quiet. They still did pretty good. And we got all new books, which is always nice. I love Main Library. They are so child friendly.

This is Rylan pretty much sleeping standing up inside the tent.

On Sunday we bid our precious Tammy** farewell and got ready for church. Except Max was a pistol and threw dogfood and water everywhere and Rylan badgered me so many times "where are we going, where are we going, where are we going, where are we going?" that it took my eight times as long to get us in the car and we left the house wayyyyy too late to attend that church service. We were in the car with no where to go, and what would any rational mom who had to wayward children do in this situation? I chose Chuck E. Cheez. I am batshit crazy a little nutty like that.

Let me just tell you, I had heard rumors that Sunday morning is the best time to go to Chuck E. Cheez. Prior to Sunday morning I thought NEVER was the best time for Chuck E. Cheez. I stand corrected. Sunday morning at Chuck E. Cheez is AWESOME. There was like 2 other families there. Chuck E. himself came out and did a little dance with the kids and at the end he threw like 500 tickets in the air. My kids didn't GET it that they should be excited about all the tickets, but we were able to score quite a few from nice workers that felt sorry for the mom wearing a Sunday Mass skirt at Chuck E. Cheez on a Sunday morn. I would definitely suggest going at this time!  This was our weekend in a nutshell. We did good with no Rob but we are glad to have him back!

High fives prior to Max deciding Chuck E. was the devil

This Chuck E. was okay. He got a hug.

Best day of Max's life. He got to ride a "hearse"

**I realize there is not one picture of Aunt Tammy in this post. I'll try to do better?

Chatty Kathy

Sometimes its hard to remember to update the good. Let's talk about Rylan's speech. We realized when Rylan was 18 months or so that his speech was not up to the level of his pals of the same age. Its been a few years of trying to get the doctor to refer him for speech and then to get him evaluated. After 5 months of evaluations, he has been accepted into speech therapy and will start in August (don't get me started on the fact that they took 5 months to EVALUATE my kid, right in time to go on summer vacation). I worked with him at home during this time, we added a day of daycare to increase his socialization and we eventually moved him to an actual school where they have curriculum and teach Spanish and sign language. I don't know if it was all of the above or one of the above or if he merely just needed a little more time to develop, but my darling boy is speaking in paragraphs these days.

"I have a lot of time to make up for, wanna hear about this stick?"

He still needs speech, but the words are there. A year ago I couldn't have told you that. I was concerned there was something else going on in there that was holding his words back, but they are there. They just need a little tweaking. Its heaven to be able to talk to him. Its heaven for him to have the ability to tell me his needs. Its heaven for him to tell me his feelings and his fears. Its heaven to hear "I love you to the moon, mommy."  And, for all the physical attributes that Rob gave Rylan, I have, apparently, given him the gift of gab.

With good language, comes the not fun part. The part that corrected me when I said "damn" the other day. He said, "no mommy, DAMMIT." Whoopsie. Or the part that used my words against me. One day I was having a mommy meltdown and he told me to "get yourself put together." He has started yelling "5 more minutes" like a freakin teenager when its time to get up for school and he informed me that I shouldn't have ice cream. Wh-What??????

I'll take it. I'll take the same question 1,000 times in a row. I'll take the correcting me and using my words against me. He rocks the casbah and I can't wait till the whole world can understand him like Rob and I can. The whole world can understand a whole lot more, and for that, I am thankful.

Branson!!!!

I added it up last night and me and my little family have traveled in my poor, 180,000 miles, 2003 Escape for over 50 hours in the last month! Holy moly. This partially explains my infrequent blogging. The fact that I have adult ADD (not actually diagnosed by a medical professional, just by me) also can explain the blog break. After my grandpa's funeral, but before the salmonella outbreak, after the trip for Aunt Staci's graduation, but before the second trip to Kansas for a wedding, we ventured up to Branson, MO for a family vacation. Love my family. They are worth the car trip.

The amazing house that we rented

Happy Rob, tired Max enjoying the porch

Sister Tammy

Max has reached the "mom, quit taking pictures of me" phase of his childhood.

He will smile with his Aunt Tam

Cars swimmies? Check. Cars swim trunks? Check. 

Our niece, Zoe. Rylan's bff.

How awesome is this pool? How awesome does that guy floating in the pool look? 

Goggles are meant to be carried not worn, fyi.

Nephew Anthony. 

This was supposed to be a pic of all of Zoe, because she hilariously jumped in the water prior to applying massive amounts of sunblock that was pooling in white clumps all over her body, but I accidently zoomed it. She's just so darn cute that I still managed a good pic.

After an awesome first night, chillaxing in our rent house, and an excellent morn chillaxin in our pool, we ventured to Silver Dollar City. See that baby that my mom is holding? His name is Max and he had a fever at this point. Unaware that he had stomach death and thinking it was teething, we dragged the poor bear to Silver Dollar City with us.

Trolley shot. 

Our family. We did good for a spur of the moment pic taken by a complete stranger.

Rylan thought riding rides with his mom was super LAME, but Aunt Tammy makes it awesome

Luckily Zoe thinks I'm cool or I'd have issues. Well, more issues.

Angie, Clay, Zoe, and Rylan.....riding rides with them is cool too.

The next day the family wanted to chillax more at the house/pool, but Rob and I and all our low mature level glory wanted to go back to Silver Dollar City. Zoe came with us. She's so good with our kids and they act better with her there. She's like our 5 year old nanny, really.

Once again, we drug our poor feverish (though low fever at this point) kid.

Eventually the rest of the fam went back to Silver Dollar City and, of course, Rob and I went back for a third time in two days. Why are we always tired? oh, yeah, we can't relax.

Someone started feeling better

Happy camper. Shortly after this pic, or maybe while I was taking it, the awful poo-tuation started. 

We are home for a full two weeks before our next trip commences. Hopefully lots of blogging will be done and all my pent up "I should blog about that" ideas can finally happen. Your welcome in advance.