…and shoveling and shoveling. Oh, and shoveling.

Wednesday we got 8″ of thick, *heavy* snow. Perfect for snowballs and snowmen and playing. Ken and I got up early and he did the bottom of the drive and I did the top and we, in our nearsightedness, left the middle “for later”. Bad choice. Thursday, early afternoon, we went back out and shoveled the 5″+ that had fallen. And kept going out. We got about 12-14″ yesterday by the time we stopped shoveling – around 8pm. We figured there’d be another 2-4″ last night – very doable. Several times, yesterday, we waxed poetic about how much we love the snow and how it’s “just like home” and how we both prefer the aesthetic of a shoveled driveway over a snowblown one (our snowblower’s got a broken axle). This morning we woke up to another 8-10″. I’m getting a bit tired of all the shoveling. Mostly because we’ve shoveled the driveway over 3 times now – and it’s a 200yd long, heavily sloped drive.

Not exactly a New Year’s resolution, per se, but this year I decided to try and bake all our bread. So far so good, as I haven’t bought any bread or english muffins since the start of the year. We’re enjoying the new breads I bake and figuring out what we like.

The homemade bread I grew up having was my Gram’s and was simply delicious. Everything a homemade bread should be – light, fluffy, crisp when toasted and made amazing grilled cheese sandwiches. I have her recipe, but it’s just not the same, somehow. I’ve made Anadama bread for years now, and we like the whole grain flavour and healthy aspect of that, but I get bored of it easily. So the search for “our” bread has been ongoing. Ken prefers the flavour of whole wheat, so I’ve been aiming for that (I like all bread). We’ve found a perfect breakfast bread that’s super easy, so I’ll share.

No Knead Whole Wheat Bread (you’ll have to scroll waaaay down). It’s everything a breakfast bread should be – tender, moist, slightly sweet, and entirely, completely, whole wheat. Also? Super crazy lazy-person easy. (stir together, leave on counter, toss in fridge for the night, bake). The boys, who normally insist on cinnamon sugar sprinkled over their plain toast, eat it with just butter and nary a complaint. Give it a try!

We weighed Ethan and Victor this morning (tried, with the cats, to hilarious failure). Ethan has gained back the 2lbs he lost in Nov/Dec, so he’s up to 35.2lbs. Victor’s now well over that at 37.7lbs. I suspect, for summer clothes, we’ll be buying them the same sizes.

Years ago, when Victor was still quite small, someone asked me if they were twins. I thought they were crazy since the only thing in common they had was hair cut/colour. However, now, if someone were to ask me if they’re twins, I wouldn’t be surprised. They may not look identical but they’re pretty much the same size and look about the same age, too.

It’s reinforced when you hear Victor say something like he did to me this morning as I went into the kitchen to start the tea. “So, Mommy… I hope you had good sleeps?” Such a little man!

I planted my tomato seeds last week…

So far so good with germination. The hybrids are taking longer than the heirlooms, but they’re doing better than last year so I won’t complain. Plus I need all that I can get since germination of the eggplants this year has been poor.

Also planted Celeriac seeds (it’s celery, but in root form – new veggie for us!), and so far they’re doing well, too.

Peppers and eggplants were transplanted into larger abodes yesterday.

The peppers, especially, have been growing like crazy! Seriously…worrisome…crazy.

I’ll likely need to transplant them into larger homes in a few weeks, but for now this is what they get. They all did beautifully, save one that didn’t seem to make it (top row, near the middle). I’m impractically optimistic that it’ll perk up, but realistically sure it’s a goner. That’s alright, since there was one tiny eggplant seedling that hasn’t grown it’s real leaves yet that I can fill the void with once it’s ready.

Next gardening day is March 13, wherein I need to magically gain a whole lot of space to plant onion seeds (in the range of 150-200) plus brussels sprouts and luffa. I’ll also be planting in the garden at that point (yes! before my frost date!) as beets and turnips like the cold. Sometime between now and then I need the ground to thaw a whole bunch so I can fluff up and prepare their bed.

So yeah. Just like last time – feeling it on Saturday (mostly in the morning), hit me *hard* on Sunday, improvement on Monday. So I went looking for a cause because… *seriously.don’t.need*… and found some women had vertigo while on the same birth control that I’m on. Hmm. Now, a few people on message boards will draw my attention, but the fact that it has happened twice, in the exact same pattern and the exact same time after the start of a new pack of my b/c pills… *that* draws a much clearer causal line for me.

I’ve been unhappy on these pills. They’re a single dose, and the first week I’m an emotional mess from the big hormonal boost, and the last week I’m an emotional mess from the hormonal overload of the pills plus my body’s own hormones. I’ve also been concerned since I started seeing adverts on the tele for class-action lawsuits against the makers of Yasmin (the brand name of the stuff I’m on). There’s all sorts of side-effects, some really scary, that women have had.

All that being said, and given that Ken’s going in for his sterility check next Monday, I stopped taking the pills (so much for *that* co-pay). The post-procedural page for Ken’s vasectomy said “14 ejaculations” but was crossed out and replaced with “3 months”… we’re pretty confident he’s shooting blanks at this point (and I shouldn’t be fertile right now anyways).

It’ll be nice to be off b/c. Maybe I’ll have an easier time losing a few pounds. At the least, I should be less crazy and unstable, at best I won’t have vertigo every month.

(right click, ‘view image’, to embiggen)

This morning, Ethan decided to write out the poem “Twinkle twinkle little star”. So I got him some paper and he did. His handwriting is challenging to read and there’s no spaces between words but the words are spelled correctly (excusing the lack of ‘e’ at the end of “twinkle” and “little” – the ‘o’ in “wonder” is there, it’s just really faint) and he did this entirely on his own (no help or hints from Mommy). That’s the part that floors me and makes me burst with pride (and a bit of fear because seriously?!? what do we do?).

2010 seems to be getting off to a stichery start for Ethan. His procedure went well but he had many stitches from that. Now I get a call from the school nurse that he was running and tripped and conked his head on the edge of a desk and will likely need a stitch or two to close it up (behind his ear, of all places). Ken’s on the way to the school to pick him up and take him to the ER.

He was a bit cough-y this morning, and I wondered if we should just keep him home today if he’s getting a cold. I guess I should have gone with that instinct.

Ethan was mispronouncing the word “mighty” so, as we tend to do, Ken sat down in front of the fridge with him and showed him with the fridge letters how to spell “might” so that he could understand (seeing the letters helps him hear the sounds better). They then started switching out the first letter to spell other “ight” words (knight, blight, sight, light, etc). After going through every word we could think of, Ken chuckled and said he was going to do something different and put up an “e”. Ethan immediately, and without pause, said (properly) “eight! HA HA! That’s eight!”

We got a little packet for the end of this semester’s marking period, included with it was a list of the sight words they’ve learned:

a, the, can, at, I, am, like, is, big, in, but, it.

Words that Ethan knows by sight:

beautiful, would, everything, curious, and how to read suffix’. (This is a short list – it’s hard to pull up random words to mind.)

His driver, Diane, suggests we have him tested for giftedness. I think we would, if it weren’t for his adhd and some issues with testing. Maybe next year things will be calmed down somewhat. Suffice it to say, he’s excelling in his academics with some slight improvement in his behaviour. We’re pleased.

I think I’ll always be as thrilled as I am that he’s such an eager eater. I just love it to no end that anytime Victor sees me taking veggies to the side of the sink, he immediately rushes over, checks what I have, and asks “Can I haf sum ca-ROT? Pleas?” He wants to try everything. I tell him what I’m cutting and he wants to try it. He knows, now, that onions aren’t eaten until they’re cooked, same with garlic and ginger. His favourites are tied between carrots and red peppers, but everything gets tried – potatoes, eggplant, cucumbers (another favourite), broccoli (raw stems are yum). He adores cooked broccoli and mooched most of my broccoli last night (made beef & broccoli) even after he’d had his own rice. (On a side note, one of Ethan’s therapists once told me that she’d shown a picture of foods to Ethan and he didn’t know what one of them was – don’t recall which – but that he knew what broccoli was. She mentioned it because she often has children who *don’t* know what broccoli is. Seriously.)

The only problem with it all is his eagerness. If I turn my back he’s grabbing bites off the cutting board. Most frustrating is when he grabs the uncut veggies (whole carrots, cucumbers, peppers) and takes a bite out of them. It’s hilarious, but frustrating. He’s even done it in the garden. Last summer I gave him a cucumber to carry over to Ken (who had more of them). He did, but later we found a bite out of it. Who knows how the garden will fare this summer. I always wanted the kids to learn to go into the garden to snack. I’m thinking, in a year or two, I’ll need to plant him his own little mini veg garden to eat off of.

Further north, level/cleared land, house with character (and fireplaces and a wood cookstove). Barn/fencing/acreage enough to support animals. Guinea fowl (bug control), chickens (eggs & meat), sheep (wool & meat), llama or alpaca (hair & herd protection), cattle (milk & meat). Lottery winnings (to finance it all).

Prince(s) of the Cosmos (vid 5mb).

It’s a video game, and you can see it in the background. For those who don’t know, the Prince of the Cosmos is sent with his Katamari (little ball) to roll things up so he rolls around his ball and things stick to it and the ball gets bigger etc. It’s quite a bizarre and amusing game (and challenging!) and the boys love it. Ethan plays some, but it’s hard for him (and he gets frustrated easily) and Victor can’t really play at all but they love to watch and pretend to be rolling their own Katamari around. My little Princes are goofballs!

During the Christmas break, for a few days we gave Ethan yogurt cups for his afternoon snack. Two days. Only two because on those two days, after the yogurt, he started acting oddly. Oddly in the “silly to the point of manic”. We wracked our brains to figure out what was going on and we realized that the only odd thing was the yogurt (normally he has crackers or something). We looked at the label and the only conclusion we came up with was that he’s got a sensitivity to red #40. So we went through all the food the boys eat and eliminated that (not hard). The manic thing hasn’t happened since (at home, we found out it has at school though don’t know if that’s from before Christmas break or not).

This weekend we had boxed Mac’n'cheese for lunch on Saturday and that afternoon/evening Ethan, though differently, was acting oddly again. Yellow #5, and I think all chemical colourants, are now on the “Do Not Feed The Animals” list, now, too.

I know there was a bit of an outcry against food additives in the 80’s. I’m thinking they weren’t all that wrong and today’s chemical-laden foods need a closer look at them.

At least the yogurt is easy to replace (plain yogurt mixed with jam works great) and we didn’t eat M&C too often, before. I’ll need to find a replacement, though, if I can.