Blog Archives
The Post Where I Mention Friends – You Might Be In Here
Sunday – Great day! I volunteered in the nursery at church and loved it. I’m so glad I decided to get the nerve up to volunteer to serve, as idiotic as that sounds. Working with strangers makes me nervous (because church people are so scary) so I’d been putting it off, but decided to text my friend Denise, take the plunge and she helped me contact the right person to get the ball rolling. And it was fun! After church we went out to eat with friends who I am testing to see if they read this blog and the woman danced on the table and took her top off and twirled it around her head. Tarheels. What can I say? I guess Red Robin brings out the wild in some folks.
Increased loyal readership by one via paranoia? Check.
And if I were from Michigan and looking to support a local sports team, I’d pick NC State. I’m just throwing that out there, perhaps based on false anecdotal evidence cited above, but mostly because we have a cow with a see-through stomach.
Later that afternoon my mom came up and brought a red velvet cake which we promptly ate.
Want to burn your hand? Try lighting that many candles at once.
Tuesday – The alarm went off and I found Rhys in bed with me. Dave had already gotten up to go hunting with one of our friends. I don’t know if that set Rhys off or what, but it was a scream-fest from the moment he got up until *pausing to think* bedtime. CC was a nightmare. He wouldn’t sit in his chair. AGAIN. It’s just so frustrating. He KNOWS two of the kids in the class, he’s been to one of their houses several times and she’s been to ours, for heaven’s sake! I know he knows a third one’s name because he calls him “Little Noah” (they’re the same size, so from where the ‘little’ comes, I am clueless) so that’s half the class he’s familiar with. He has the same tutor from last year!!! And I am sitting RIGHT. THERE. But still, he persists in clutching to my pant leg and making faces like he wants to murder someone.
Then Sarah decided she didn’t want to be in the nursery any more. Poor Mrs. Lori now had a class with seven kids, two of which were mine, both of which didn’t want to sit still and pay attention. Rhys slowly inched up towards the front of the room, still sitting off to the side as if he didn’t trust that the other kids weren’t going to circle him like a hoard of zombies and rip his guts out for snack. Sarah finally got so loud and rambunctious (read: climbed up on a table in the back of the room and threw her hands up in the air and waved them like she just didn’t care) that I had to remove her. Rhys stayed put. RHYS STAYED PUT!!!! The classroom has a Dutch door which made all these comings and goings interesting, but it did come in handy for checking back in on him. He was standing in front of the class doing his presentation on Henry’s little green motorcycle like a normal human being.
That’s it. I am never going to class with him again.
For the next 45 minutes, I followed a happy, exuberant Sarah around the church, killing time until CC was over. Nursery? No. Wasting my time in the hall? Yes.
When class was over, I was thrilled to find out that one of the other boys in Rhys’ class had been making conversation with him. They both like green. I hope this was a bonding experience. Maybe we can have them over to play sometime so Rhys can make a friend – he doesn’t really have his “own” friends besides Colt and since we’re not at PLCC anymore we don’t see Colt as often. And Kaelynn MOVED. Ahem. :D Rhys really is a fun kid if he’d just let his guard down. I keep wanting to stand up and make an announcement, “There’s really nothing wrong with him, he just has horrible social anxiety and he’ll be fine by Christmas! He just likes to be with his brother and if he were in Mrs. Roxanne’s class you’d see a different child. We swear, don’t we Mrs. Lori!? Really, he’s normal! I promise!!!”
Oh Tuesday. The upside? I did not roll into anyone’s car.
Wednesday – I don’t know, but it was horrible. I cleaned up THIS.
TWENTY POUNDS OF LEGOS. DUDE.
Thursday – Sadness, my mom is leaving. I will bawl. We are going to go down next week so we can drive up to the mountains and see the leaves before they all fall off. The boys have never been to the real mountains. There are mountains around where I grew up, but they’re small. Of course the kids think they’re big but oh ho ho! Are they in for a treat! We’re talking the Blue Ridge mountains! We’re talking candied apples they can’t eat because of peanut warnings! We’re talking chocolate nut clusters they can’t have for the same reason! We’re talking about unpasturized apple cider that will scare me, but I’ll probably let them try. Woodworking and dolls and old-timey things. And steep, steep inclines, and sand ramps for 18-wheelers who can’t slow down on the descent. Ahhhh, mountains!
Oh, and before I forget, Sarah and I both got new purses this week. Here’s mine
Shout out to Emily for the oxblood red trend knowledge!
And here’s Sarah’s
Yes, that’s Sarah’s purse. No, that’s not Sarah. She’s playing with Rhys’ transformer.
“And there’s a smartphone in here!”
“What did I do with my keys?”
“TRANSFORMERS! MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE!”
Okay. There’s no accounting for taste. I’d play with the purse myself, but Sarah also likes to play with a bottle of Italian salad dressing so who’s to judge?
Yeah, It Really DOES.
Of all my posts, about 0.0001% are actually dedicated to the subject of peanuts and peanut allergies. We’re going to increase that statistic to 0.000015% today.
Thursday afternoon we went to the Catholic concept of purgatory, known to protestants as Costco, for a few things. There was of course, a free sample lady giving out hunks of some kind of chocolate and graham cracker cheesecake with chocolate drizzled on top and it probably had gold in the middle, I don’t know but I wanted a taste. And I wanted one bad enough to say to my poor kids, “It has a peanut warning. I will buy you a churro to make up for this, k? OKAY!” They didn’t seem to care. I’d seen the cheesecake in it’s original packaging and given it the once over before I ever saw the lady giving out the samples, I was already drooling. It didn’t contain peanuts, but had the “manufactured in a facility that also manufactures peanuts and tree nuts” which is equally damning in the allergy world. So no cheesecake for the kids. Poor things.
When I went to get my little sample, the lady tried to hand Henry and Rhys one also. I said, “They can’t have one, they have peanut allergies.”
“Oh no! There aren’t any peanuts in this! It’s just cheesecake and graham crackers and chocolate!”
“But the packaging says says it was made in a facility with peanuts and tree nuts.”
“But there’s NO PEANUTS IN THESE!! It’s just graham crackers and chocolate and cheesecake! It’s fine!”
“No, read the packaging on your product, this is dangerous to people with nut allergies.”
“But it’s just graham crackers and chocolate and…”
And I rolled the cart off.
I would assume most parents and adults who have allergies read labels before taking the proffered sample but good grief. Offering someone a sample of something that could potentially (but probably doesn’t – but could) contain nuts is dangerous! Costco could be held liable for this. I’m thinking about calling them. I should but I haven’t yet. I don’t want to get the woman fired, I want to get her properly trained. They are a good company so I’m thinking they’d probably do the latter. However, they can train till they’re blue in the face but that doesn’t mean it will stick.
However – ultimately it’s the parents’ responsibility, the onus is on them to protect their children. But this was the first kind of “It doesn’t have peanuts” “Oh yes it could” tit for tat I’d ever had so I felt like writing about it.
Peanuts, you inconvenience. I fart in your general direction.
Kidnapping Advice
I think I caught the AT&T sales guy off-guard the other week. We were getting an iPhone for moi (woot) and the sales guy was nice enough to turn the tv to cartoons for the boys. They had a huge ottoman in the middle of the wide-open store, with a big screen right in front of it. So the boys sat quietly and watched as we went about our transaction.
We could see them, they were within spitting distance, but not glued to our legs. I felt they needed some advice, regardless.
“Boys, if someone tries to grab you…”
I could feel the “here comes the big speech” eye-roll from the sales guy.
“…make sure you tell them you’re allergic to peanuts!”
“Okay.” In unison.
And he burst into laughter.
Safety first, y’all.
This Week Has Been Nuts
The kids and I went to visit my parents this past week; it was quite an exciting visit. I won’t write about how my mom tried to kill them for the second time in four months with nut-riddled food, because that might embarrass her. I’ll just post this picture of her chasing Rhys with a bat instead.
This is how I was disciplined too. Sadly, I am not a good sprinter. (kidding on the first part)
It was an honest mistake and it wasn’t actually nuts, but almond extract and a tiny, tiny amount at that. I don’t even know if they’re allergic to almonds – we’ve never had them tested for that particular nut. Just because a kid is allergic to peanuts doesn’t necessarily mean they’re allergic to all nuts (they’re not allergic to me…). As soon as we realized they’d both been exposed I doped them up with benadryl and watched them like a hawk for the next two hours. They were fine, I probably needed a nitroglycerine tablet as I think I now have angina.
Two days later, poor Rhys ended up in the urgent care. He’d been playing with Henry and his cousin outside at my aunt’s house and started wheezing. He couldn’t even talk without having trouble catching his breath. So I freaked out. Again. And of course I’d forgotten his nebulizer AND his inhaler at home, three hours away. I called his pediatrician and they called in albuterol to a drug store in my folks’ town, but they didn’t have a spacer or mask, which kids need to get the medicine in them, or at least Rhys does. So it was pretty much useless (though we figured something out, more on that later). The pediatrician talked to him on the phone and said from listening to him he definitely needed to go to urgent care too, so off we went. He got a nebulizer treatment and was given the all-clear. Not two hours later, he was back to wheezing. I called the on-call nurse at his pediatrician’s office and we followed her directions to take a shower for 20 minutes and then do 2 albuterol treatments. Luckily, my dad had a leftover spacer from his albuterol days, so we rigged it up and Rhys took a hit off the albuterol peace pipe. I enjoy a nice, long, hot shower, but not as much when I’m accompanied by a 3-year-old who is short enough that eye-level hits at a very awkward spot. And did I mention that my parents’ shower is small, like a phone booth? So let’s just go ahead and triple the awkward.
After the shower and the treatments he was okay and hasn’t wheezed again but we now know he can’t handle playing outside in pollen (the urgent care doctor said it was very bad this week) and possibly under nut trees. I did freak out internally a little when they said it was a walnut tree. It’s not like the tree was going to grab him and force it’s limb down his throat, but after the first incident, I was a little nut-jumpier than usual.
Oh and I wolfed down dinner so fast that when we got back to my parents’ house, it all came back up. More fun!
Sarah didn’t sleep through the night until our last night there. She woke up at 4 am again this morning, I guess I better get to sewing on those housecoats.
Sunbutter: Liberty for the Peanut-Oppressed
My kids have almost experienced that childhood rite of passage: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Almost – theirs was a Sunbutter and jelly sandwich.
One of my friends from CC was talking about Sunbutter, which is like peanut butter, except made from sunflower seeds, and how it’s almost as good as the real thing for our peanut allergy kids. I’ve been looking everywhere for it and finally found it at Harris Teeter. I shuddered as I added it to my virtual shopping cart – it’s $8 a jar – but I’d think nothing of spending that at McD’s and at least this isn’t filled with sodium and fat and who knows what else. It will also last longer than a five minute chow down.
After I picked up my groceries last night and put stuff away, it was the first thing I grabbed. I wanted to see if it really tasted like PB. It really does! I mean, I wouldn’t pick it over JIF or anything, but for kids who have never had peanut butter, they won’t know the difference. We’ve tried soy butter before – NASTY. This is nothing like that. It was a little runny, but refrigeration fixed that. I put some on crackers and they had their first taste. Henry was scared to eat it, he asked several times, “Is this going to make me sick?” Rhys didn’t care, he shoved the cracker in his mouth and pronounced it good. When we finally talked Henry down off the ceiling and he tried it, he liked it too. And no one died! I wasn’t expecting them to – sunflower seeds aren’t nuts, but it looks like peanut butter and it did make me irrationally uneasy at first.
And now I shall pimp Harris Teeter’s Express Lane shopping program. You order your food online, select a time to pick it up, drive up to the store, press a button, someone comes out to swipe your card, they put the groceries in your car and off you go. You don’t have to get out, you can wear pajamas, you can use coupons and get VIC and eVIC deals. You can tell them exactly how to slice your deli ham and to give you the farthest expiry date for your perishables. Until I no longer have a little baby to wrangle, I will be using this system – it is as if Harris Teeter designed this just for me. Sure, it costs an extra $4.95 a trip but are you kidding me? $4.95 for someone to SHOP FOR YOU and PUT IT IN YOUR CAR? I can get away with going about twice a month, so that’s $9 a month for a personal shopper. Yesterday I forgot to add bread to my order (“cracker nuts” redux) so I had to call the store and ask them to add it – no problem). I also had some kind of website issue with my eVIC deals, so they just gave me all my Campbell’s Chunky soups FOR FREE (and I had 7!) so I wound up spending not a lot of money for a huge car-full of food. And it’s super double coupons up to $1 until the 10th of January, so that helped too.
I’m slapping some pink, Bum Genius newborn AIOs up on ebay today if anyone is interested. I will post the link later, so check back and BID! There will be a Chunky Monkey and a Happy Heiny too (both boy prints, size small). And I’ve got to tag all the stuff for the Raleigh Kids Exchange sale next week too. Geez. At least that stuff is already on hangers, ready to go. I just have to tag and ziptie it.
Someone pooped and then back to home teechin’.
