Surgery a success!

The twins had their surgery today, and the doctor said both were textbook surgeries - went extremely well and should yield the results we are looking for! It was so cute seeing them in the little hospital gowns!! I can't wait until the boys feel better. It was such a surreal experience today, lots and lots of waiting and lots of comforting the boys. The whites of their eyes in the corners are definitely very red, but overall they look ok! Thing Two won't open his eyes, has slept all afternoon and is already in bed - Thing One is still trying to convince us he's fine and to let him play Mario Kart Wii!! I know they are both exhausted and I am guessing since it's so quiet up there they are both asleep now. Phew, this day is finally over! I still don't know how to feel about it all, seeing your kids go through this is such an experience. Just seeing my little boy put under with the gas mask brought tears to my eyes, I couldn't help it.

Sunburned eyes?

I took Big Kid to an amusement park over the weekend, and since then both of us have been complaining about dry eyes, our eyes are a bit red, and he has mentioned feeling like something is in his eyes on and off. I just looked up "sunburnt eyes" and got that exact definition - bloodshot eyes and the feeling of "foreign objects" in eyes. Great. It's been three days, will it ever end? I'm tired of feeling like I look like a drug addict and my eyes are sore!!! I'm using visine but it doesn't help, I'm going to move to the blink lubricating drops. Maybe that'll soothe them. Problem is I hate wearing glasses all the time, I want my contacts :( Anyone have any remedies?

How to clean sterling silver at home

Yesterday I picked up some really nice silver serving platters from a freecycler, who funny enough turned out to be Big Kid's chess teacher from his public school days! Anyway - the silver was extremely tarnished, and I didn't have any silver polish. I read an article online that mentioned the chemical reaction between boiling water, aluminum foil, salt and baking soda. I took an aluminum roasting pan and poured boiling water in it with the salt and soda, and put the first small piece of silver in it. It didn't look like anything was happening for the first two minutes, then suddenly all of the tarnish disappeared right before my eyes!!! Seriously, it's awesome to watch. So I put all the pieces in one at a time, and they all came out almost completely free of any tarnish! A few spots I had to rub off with a clean cloth, but I was just floored with the results. I'll do my best to post the before and after photos properly, I have a hard time getting two photos on one post :)

Preschool is so fun!

We officially started preschool at home with the twins, and it has been really fun. As a parent I had already given them some playdoh, let them paint a few times, and we of course read every day - but having a theme for the month, and getting into the preschool attitude has really got me going on a lot! I was a pre-k teacher for a few years, and have all of my old lesson plans and a number of the books. I have been given/freecycled a ton more preschool items, we are ready to go! I decided to go with a theme for each month, and loosely follow one of my old pre-k curriculums. I make a one page lesson plan for the month, and list books I want to read with them, projects to do for art and for the letters and numbers of the month, and what skill we want to focus on for each month. Since they aren't school aged yet I don't have to report to the state so I'm not keeping track of times, etc. we'll have years and years of that ahead of us!

This month we have started cutting with scissors, and have painted with brushes and hands so far. They love playdoh (seriously, at least an hour a day of playdoh time!) and have loved almost every book we have read, their favorite being The Very Greedy Bee. Thing Two got up and walked away after a few pages of Where the Wild Things Are, he really didn't like the book. That's a first for me, maybe he didn't like the monsters! I am just so excited to see the boys learning and laughing so much, and am so happy we decided to start school now. We have a little bulletin board we use every morning, and pin up what month it is, day of the week, weather, and their names. They love it! We also have their behavior charts up there, which they are counting stickers on constantly. I haven't decided on a reward yet... have to soon!

Sick from gluten

I "glutened" myself twice over the past few weeks, and still am unsure exactly how. I get sick from the tiniest crumb of gluten, so it's hard to trace where it came from. I sit wondering, did I kiss one of the twins after they ate a cheese it? Did I not clean the table or counters well enough? Is it the potholders I used? In the end I never really figure out what made me sick, and it took a week the first time (this month) and at least a week and a half the second time to get over. I have glutened myself in the past, but certainly not often and not twice in one month!

I am one of those celiacs who get sick off any gluten at all - Amy's brand gluten free products make me sick sometimes so I have stopped eating them. And I know when I'm sick from gluten, it's a special sick that only comes from eating gluten. So all these new fad products that slap "Gluten Free!" on their box aren't really completely gluten free!!! Makes me sick... literally and figuratively. When I eat any gluten at all I am sick for about two hours after the crumb, all night if we use the wrong pancake mix by mistake. After that I sort of go numb in the abdomen area, to forget the pain. Every time I eat it will hurt for an hour or so, just a general feeling of malaise. And I always feel full for the first few days after eating gluten, I can't figure out if that's physical or mental! Oh and just for fun I usually break out with a few rockin pimples, I'm guessing from the stress.

So to anyone else who suffers through the severe sensitivity I have developed, you are not alone. I can't decide which is worse - to get sick from even a microscopic crumb of bread or to not know you aren't completely gluten free and continue to hurt your insides...

Bliss, in a 13x9 pan

I bought the box of gluten free Rice Krispies, came home and after doing my usual six million chores I made a batch of rice krispies treats and ate three before I could stop myself. What a great treat - I have been yearning for this moment for years!!

Now I'm crossing my fingers that Kellogg's will come out with gluten free Corn Flakes - then not only could I have GOOD corn flakes with sugar sprinkled on them again (gosh I miss those, never thought I would say that!) I could also make holly cookies that I CAN EAT again at Christmastime!!! Hint hint Kellogg's!

Gluten Free Rice Krispies??!!!

How did I miss this?? Are they new? I was shopping at the store today and walked right past a box of Gluten Free Rice Krispies... and almost had a heart attack. I had quite a love affair with rice krispies treats before going gluten free, and the thought of eating one again just made me warm all over.

Gluten Free PF Chang's - for FREE!!

A few days ago PF Chang offered a coupon for one order of complimentary lettuce wraps with any purchase on facebook. I happened to be online as they released the coupon, and I got one!!! We didn't feel like cooking tonight so we ran over to PF Chang's and picked up our free lettuce wraps (gluten free of course) and paid $6 for a huge container of egg drop soup (always gluten free there). It was SOOOO tasty, I love their food!! We used to go eat there, throw down $80 and eat until we almost burst... now not only can we not afford that but I don't think the twins would last through us eating that much ;) It was still amazing food, omg yum. THANK YOU PF CHANG'S!

Very moving...

click this link

I follow this site for coupons and deal finds, but what she is doing for the tornado victims just leaves me speechless.

ever wonder...

I remember listening to women around me talk when I was a child - while I was sitting in the hair salon while my mom's dye sat, or in line at the grocery store, places like that. I would listen to the "talk" around me, and sometimes I would hear these women gossip about how certain hairsprays could make your hair fall out, or that cell phones were going to kill everyone, or that video games would bring the end of civilization. I really did hear all of those at one point or another, sometimes over and over again!! I would sit there wondering where the heck these women heard these tall tales and why they believed them enough to warn others about them!!!

Well, today I got my answer. My mom brings over magazines from time to time for me to read through when she's done with them - I like Martha Stewart's Living especially around holidays. Lots of great ideas. Today I read the Health she brought, and it actually had an entire article on 11 things you should only buy organic, and listed the "scary" reasons why. Before I go any further let me state that I have tested buying organic options and it tripled my grocery bill. Tripled. The article stated that milk is bad for you because it can account for 60 to 70 percent of the estrogens we consume. Do these people not understand we are drinking "breastmilk" from a lactating cow - c'mon, how could it NOT contain hormones?!!! The article went on to say BPA is hiding everywhere and soaking into our food - in the lining of cans, in tupperware, water bottles. So we're not supposed to buy canned tomatoes now because the BPA in the lining can kill us. Thanks. One part of the article actually quotes part of a book stating that we can give our children leukemia using yard pesticides then walking it inside! It states we could be losing our memories because of chemicals in our mattresses, our all purpose cleaners are going to make our boys sterile, and eating beef is going to give us breast cancer because of the hormones used to treat the cow. The best one was that our pots and pans emit toxic gasses that are giving us "allergy like symptoms".

So to sum the article up, I'm going to get breast cancer from eating burgers, get allergy symptoms from the pan I cooked the burgers with, and zero my husband's sperm count with the reheated corn I stored in tupperware and the bottle of water I gave him with dinner. I will further raise my chances of getting breast cancer by using canned tomatoes in our rice and drinking a glass of milk with dinner. I'll make my boys sterile cleaning up the kitchen after we eat. This after my husband treats the ants out back, giving our children leukemia. But it won't bother me because my mattress will erase it all from my memory while I sleep.

I started laughing out loud when I read that our mattresses could be causing memory loss. Where the h*ll do these women get those idiotic ideas? FROM THE MAGAZINES THEY READ!! No wonder women have to constantly fight the stereotype of men being the smarter sex!!