Finding Happy Places in September

We started back to school in mid-August, but the true reality of back to school really hits when all of the kids activities start back up again.  Some perks of homeschooling is that we could take full advantage of the gorgeous September weather we had, and played outside whenever we could during regular school hours.  In the pictures from top left, in clockwise order below: Emma and Violet modeling matching dresses that my mom bought them for the fall, Lucy convincing me to buy a top for her at a store when we did our back to school clothes shopping after everyone else was back in school for some great deals, Emma making a project for her yoga class, the girls enjoying 'art class' outside on a gorgeous September afternoon, and finally, my attempt to help the girls practice their piano more efficiently than just playing their favorite one or two songs over and over again during practice time - popsicle sticks with each song they are supposed to practice in a mason jar, and it has helped a little.

This semester, Lucy and Emma are in swim lessons, ballet, piano, yoga and catechism.  Violet started her first dance class too.  This is too much running, but Lucy and Emma are very close to graduating from swim, and so when that happens, I think our schedule will be just right.  I have also arranged their daytime classes (swim, piano and yoga) for around 11:30 on their various weekdays, which is the perfect time for us to have a laid back morning and complete most of their schoolwork for the day.  That leaves the afternoons for playdates, naps and quiet time, and usually with my kids, creative crafts and play.  In the below pictures from top left in clockwise order: volunteering with fellow homeschool friends at a local food bank, our monthly homeschool nature class, Emma learning a rhythm on the drums during her piano lesson, Violet at her first day of dance, Lucy at her first day of dance, and Violet looking cute at her first day of dance class.

Here are the girls below, enjoying various creative pursuits during our homeschool day, in clockwise order from top left below:  Lucy making Disney princesses out of polymer clay, Violet playing and coloring, Emma and Violet relaxing and reading stories, Emma literally climbing the walls, Lucy and Emma making a backdrop out of an Amazon box for a play they are going to put on in the living room, Violet doing yoga while waiting for her sisters to finish up school so she can have playmates again, and finally, Violet keeping me company as I attempt to take an afternoon nap.

Violet and I enjoyed special time at the playground while Lucy and Emma were in their yoga class this past month.  I was impressed by her fearless ability to climb the ladder to a slide that was three stories up on the playscape, and have no hesitations when she slid down the super tall slide.

Most school days really are pleasant and enjoyable.  However, to paint a true to life picture, we deal with moods, so many moods, sibling fighting, and my nagging to finish school, stop dawdling (or in Lucys' case, Doodling & Dawdling), and do your chores throughout the day.  It can be exhausting to not get a break to just respond to a few emails or make a simple phone call uninterrupted, and my least favorite, to be whined at while I am in the bathroom to read someone their spelling words.  Plus, I have a feeling my kids would treat a traditional teacher with way more respect and sweetness than they treat me, their scape goat, for frustrating math problems, spelling words or tiring reading lessons.  Even so, it is worth it to me to take the cons of homeschooling over the cons of traditional schooling just as I am sure a lot of parents are happy to take the cons of traditional schooling over the cons of homeschooling.  Parenting is hard no matter which way you work through it, and I am just grateful that we have a choice in the matter.  In the photos below, clockwise from top left: Will 'operating' an ice cream shop after the girls were bummed we said no to the Ice Cream Truck that went by during dinner time, Charlie enjoying some wet cat food so he stops trying to eat the girls ice cream, and finally, the girls drawing our family in chalk, complete with a silhouette tracing of each family member including our amicable Charlie.

For me it is the little moments that add up to a great or not so great day.  Sitting outside while my kids play in the sunshine, eating a leisurely breakfast or lunch with them, having Emma read to me from her reading book while we snuggle on the couch, watching Lucy go from frustrated and struggling at the beginning of the school year with cursive to being proud and confident as she develops her own signature and artistic look to her handwriting - these little moments in time really do make for a good day.  In the below photos, in clockwise order from top left: a trellis Will made for my sweet autumn clematis that has moved with us to three different houses and is now happily draping over a statue of a mom holding a baby close to her heart that Will's aunt gave me after Luke died, and the girls playing Little House on the Prairie in a fort they made in the backyard.

We also enjoyed water play - both the slip and slide and the kiddie pool this past month as it was unseasonably warm.  Lucy pointed out the irony of their kiddie pool next to a pile of raked leaves.

Our new neighbors have given us their blessing for having chickens, and so this past month Will brought home seven chickens that the biology class at his school had hatched from eggs earlier this year.  Our original chickens are still living a happy life in the courtyard of Will's school, and so we thought we would go with a smaller and younger flock this time around.  The girls have named all of the birds, but have especially taken a liking to the runt, a chicken they named Ivy.  Ivy is at the bottom of the pecking order and is picked on constantly by the other chickens so Lucy, Emma and Violet take extra special care of her.  Ivy has repaid them by allowing the girls to carry her around and play with her.  If I come anywhere near Ivy, she skitters away, afraid and unsure.  This is very inconvenient when it is dark and the other birds have not let her into the safety of the coop for the night and I have to hunt her down and put her in the coop myself on the nights that Will works late.  If chickens cannot get into their coop, they will roost in the highest spot they can find - not convenient for their owners, but safer for them to get through the night.  Picture me holding my phone turned flashlight while climbing a fence to reach a bird that is as afraid of me as she is a raccoon. Yeah, been there done that.  Otherwise, it is nice to have chickens back - it feels like all is right in our little world again and it is a fun responsibly for the kids each morning whose job it is to open up their coop and feed them.  Our suburban farm still had plenty of tomatoes, another crop of raspberries, rhubarb, and a decent crop of pears this past month and in about a month or two, our chickens will start laying eggs.  In a bottom picture below is a stock pot full of concord grapes that I have waited all year for from our favorite farm at the farmer's market.  Unfortunately, my pregnancy food issues will not let me enjoy them or even have the energy to can them, so I cooked them, strained out the seeds and froze them in the hopes of being able to enjoy them in a couple of months, and if not enjoy them, have the energy to make jam with them.

Ah, pregnancy food issues.  A couple of months after Violet was born I experienced an anaphylactic reaction from a home-cooked turkey dinner that resulted in an ambulance ride and my first shot with an epi pen.  After all of my allergy tests revealed that I was only allergic to cats, dogs and house dust I continued visiting various doctors for an answer to my reaction.  Finally, after multiple more severe anaphylactic reactions from unknown causes, a naturopath diagnosed me with histamine intolerance and possible Mast Cell Activation Syndrome.  Finally, things started making sense.  Food has varying levels of histamine in it, and your body naturally makes histamine in the digestion process.  After I began following a low histamine diet, I started experiencing relief.  I still had the occasional reaction, but usually it was after eating something I forgot to check the ingredients on or taking a risk and eating restaurant food.  Foods highest in histamine include alcohol, fish (highest being shellfish which I have been severely reactive to since junior high and did not test positive for on my allergy test so it is interesting that this mystery finally makes sense), and the older a food is, the higher the histamine levels in it.  The turkey dinner that sent me in an ambulance to the hospital?  It was a handout from our neighbor whose chest freezer had died and after inquiring, had probably been in his freezer for several years.  I thought I was managing my symptoms through diet until I became pregnant this summer.  It's like my symptoms with food have been magnified and I am now only able to eat a very small handful of 'safe' low histamine foods without having severe digestive distress.  One day when I was feeling especially hungry and depressed about my current relationship with food, Will bought me an Instant Pot.  Think pressure cooker that works like a crock pot.  The big deal for me though, is that it cuts typically long cooking times into a half hour.  This is a huge deal for limiting histamine in my food and has been such a blessing for my food choices.  I can eat soup again (typically too high in histamine because of it's long cook time) and I have been rotating making beef stew and chicken soup, and then freezing individual portions of the leftovers for me to heat up right before I eat them.  Thank God I live in modern times with Instant Pots and freezers.  Granted, I probably wouldn't have this weird intolerance if I had lived in older times.  It does seem to be a new problem, and more and more people are suffering with it.  I just wish modern medicine was a bit more advanced on solving it.

At one point this past month I was craving a chicken taco that I remembered eating at Will's work Christmas party last year.  Will text his boss to find out where it was catered from, and needless to say, that night I enjoyed it for dinner.  Granted, all I could eat was the lettuce, chicken and chips, but it satisfied my craving.  Oddly enough, pizza sat well with me this entire month - but no toppings unless the pizza joint had fresh mushrooms.  Sadly, pizza is no longer sitting well with me, but I have to say, I'm shocked for how long it did considering dairy and gluten are not the best for histamine issues.  Fortunately for my social enjoyment, pizza was still my friend when friends of ours invited us to join them in the suite they had at the baseball game over Labor Day weekend.  It was our kids first real baseball game, and we all had a lovely time, made especially great by our friends, the pizza we shared and the en suite bathroom.

The girls and I also enjoyed a tea party with family as a going away party for Will's cousin who is studying abroad for a year.  She is a collector of vintage hats and graciously let us all borrow them for the tea party at a local tea room.  My food issues allowed me to eat apple slices and apple scones and it was hard not to be embarrassed when I explained my allergies to the waitress.  It really makes no sense, and I wish that food wasn't so isolating for me right now.

 It has been good for me to see the pictures of my kids smiling faces and all of the fun things we still did this past month with me feeling less than great.  I definitely have been a comfort food eater, and was known in my house as the late-night snacker.  Nothing ended my day with contentment more than a slice of homemade apple pie, or some chocolate chip cookies.  An individual prepackaged cup of applesauce just doesn't have the same feel.  I am slowly changing my nighttime ritual for comfort though, and have a giant stack of great fiction books from the library, and am learning to indulge in other ways.  I usually read nonfiction, but I think now is the perfect time to read a book that is more like dessert than meat and potatoes.

My children decided this past month that they wanted, no NEEDED, a mermaid Barbie that they saw when shopping at Meijer with Will.  Our policy on buying things for the kids that aren't necessities is we never buy it on first impulse, and then, if we still want that item, we wait for it to go on sale or to put on a birthday or Christmas wish list.  After a week of first seeing the mermaid Barbie, they still wanted her just as bad and started hounding us to go back to Meijer.  When our response wasn't soon enough for them, they resorted to leaving little slips of paper with Meijer's logo on it in strategic places around the house - by Will's car keys, in my purse, next to the tooth brushes, in the fridge - you get the idea.  Here are our persistent little beauties below, finally on their way to Meijer.

Fall is great weather for Ectodermal Dysplasia - says Violet.  Anytime it was slightly chilly, or a cool breeze blew by us, Violet would look at us excitedly and proudly tell us, "This weather feels great for my Ectodermal Dysplasia!"  I love that she can pronounce such big words, and that she is understanding more and more what her body needs.  We have gone on several fall hikes, taking advantage of weather that is good for ALL of us.  I never realized how little I care for overly hot and humid weather either, and since learning about Violet's lack of sweat glands, I have definitely enjoyed the benefits of our lifestyle change - playing in water when it is hot, avoiding being outside if we are without water play during the hottest parts of the day, and really getting out there and enjoying any temps that are Ectodermal Dysplasia friendly.  It has caused me to be more aware of the weather, and to fit our activities to the temps, instead of doing our activities regardless of the weather.

Going on hikes with my family is definitely on my happy, non-food list.   I can't explain it, but when I am hiking with my favorite people and breathing in all of the fresh air, and enjoying all of the natural beauty, it uplifts me in a way books and even food can't do.

If hikes are my happy place, my ultimate happy place destination was discovered this past May when we went up north.  After that trip, we immediately booked a September encore trip to the same cottage.  When I found out we were pregnant mid-summer, I smiled with relief when I saw that our September trip would be a week or two into my second trimester and thankfully I would be feeling better, as I assumed this pregnancy would follow suit like my last four had.  It's a good thing I had this trip to look forward to, and to keep my spirits up when the second trimester rolled around and I was feeling no better.  

The girls favorite story to tell about our trip was that when we got to the rental cottage, the previous renters were still there.  As in their stuff was still there but they were no where to be found.  We called the owner of the cottage and long story short, we ended up at a hotel forty minutes away as he couldn't get the previous renters kicked out and the place cleaned up in time for us to spend the night there.  All of the hotels in the area were booked for the weekend, and it was a bummer to miss out on a night of a campfire, watching the sunset and just relaxing.  We ended up watching the sunset from the car as we made our way to the hotel the owner had reserved for us for the night.  We made the best of it the next morning and enjoyed a hotel breakfast, spent time at the farmer's market, the beach, downtown shopping and a lighthouse.  

When we were finally able to unpack at the cottage, we wasted no time in getting out to our favorite hiking trail and enjoyed a beautiful evening hike.

 We love the view of Lake Michigan from this hike, and in clockwise order from top left below: Will and the girls at the end of the trail, Lucy writing her name in cursive in the sand, us hiking back to the cottage, a porcupine we followed for a bit on the trail with some apprehension when we realized there was no cell service and we couldn't google if porcupines were aggressive, Violet next to a white violet that was in bloom along the forest part of the trail, and finally, the view we love so much at the end of the trail.

Instead of three nights of sunsets and campfires, we had two, and we definitely made the best of them.  One of my favorite books that I like to read to the girls - especially on vacation - is called "All the World" by Liz Garton Scanlon.  Lucy realized after I read the book one night at our cottage that, "Mom, this book described our day!  We went to a farmer's market, the beach, watched the sun set and had a nighttime fire!"  It hadn't occurred to me until then, but this book describes my opinion of a perfect day.  And that perfect day is easily had up north at our now favorite cottage.

We spent the rest of our trip exploring the national park near the cottage, playing at the beach and sleeping very soundly.

 A highlight for the girls was a sand dune climb we did...

 ... and having their national park passport books stamped at the ranger station.  Despite the slow start to our trip, it was still a lovely time and we were sad to leave.  We are already hoping to book at least a trip or two next summer, and until then, we will dream about the feel of the cool sand between our toes, the spectacular views, the fresh air, and the laid back days and nights.

When we got home, it was time to harvest our honey.  This is such a busy time of year for us with back to school, Will's job is very busy, and of course the honey harvest.  Will was such a team player and did almost the entire harvest without me as I am sad to say that honey is making me sick and I really don't want to create an aversion to it from this pregnancy.  The photos in clockwise order from top left below: the girls playing cards in the trunk while Will lugged heavy honey boxes to the car, Lucy enjoying fresh honey on her oatmeal, our car hitch loaded down with honey boxes, and finally, the girls helping to box up the jars of honey we harvested.

It was a small harvest this year, and not enough for me to publicly sell.  We made sure that our neighbors got first dibs and then family.  I want to really emphasize though that if it wasn't for Will's hard work (and of course the work of our bees!), we would not have had a harvest at all this year.  I feel like I get all of the fame of beekeeping but the reality is, Will is a major part of making it happen,  even when I'm not pregnant and nauseous!

Here are my sweet girls below, snuggled in their jammies for an evening movie.  I am so grateful for this life and this blog helps me through the tough times as it serves as such a great reminder of all of the life that I live and the love that I share, despite any bumps in the road.