Y’know, Stuff

I haven’t meant to be so quiet around here. It’s just that once again mothering has taken over blogging and writing.

For one thing, Queen V has been living up to her name recently. While she still has my heart wrapped around her finger and is positively the sweetest thing ever, she’s going through a bit of a high-maintenance phase.

My sacred morning writing time has completely dried up as she has decided that she cannot exist in the mornings without me by her side. She won’t let me leave the room without her which makes bathroom breaks never lonely, and I’ve learn how to walk around the house with a toddler clinging to my leg.

She’s also waking up a lot at night (teething?) so in the morning I shuffle around and mutter incoherent things under my breath while hubby hands me coffee and backs away, slowly. After the second cup I’m human, but by that time people are expecting breakfast and such.

Humph.

Also, I’ve been spending about 17 hours a day in the kitchen as I attempt to navigate this new terrain called “My 8 Year Old Is Allergic to Everything”.

An update:

I took her to a fancy-schmancy allergist who didn’t know jack squat. They did some skin prick tests and said she didn’t have allergies, only intolerances. Only.

And I know the difference, thankyouverymuch fancy Doctor lady with comfortable bugly shoes. And so they said I could try re-introducing corn, chicken and peanuts, (the ones she was “less” intolerent to) one at a time, waiting a week inbetween.

I tried first with corn. She had a bowl of organic corn tortilla chips, one of her (previous) favorite snacks.

WITHIN MINUTES, her nose turned bright red and began to run, she got wicked vampire dark circles under her eyes and began spinning around the room on her eyebrows. That night, she had an itchy rash that kept her from falling asleep and hives breaking out on her arms.

I’m not trying that again anytime soon.

The great news is that I’ve seen a change in her – both emotionally and physically, since I removed allergens from her diet.  She’s settled down tremendously – she’s still energetic and athletic, but she seems calmer and FAR less prone to the inexplicable rages she used to experience, not to mention the other symptoms that will remain unmentionable, so I don’t end up spending my “3 Months in Paris” fund on therapy for her instead. She and her big sister are getting along much better and even moved back in together.

The bad news is that creating menus and cooking literally 3 meals a day from scratch is taking much of my time and brainpower. I have to work on some ways to reduce this. I’m thinking of stuff like cooking huge triple batches and freezing meals, and rotating menus instead of coming up with new stuff every week.

I’ve been reading a lot of ethnic cookbooks and gathering recipes. This last week we had Indian food twice. Tonight we had Gujarati Pudlas (made with chickpea flour instead of wheat, and no eggs atall) with Potato-Vegetable Curry. Stuff like Tomates Farcies is showing up on le menu.

(It was delicious. Thanks LadyInFrance for the recipe.)

Speaking of French, while I haven’t been doing so great with my writing, I have been practicing my French every day. Last night I was conjugating verbs in my dreams, which is pretty wicked cool. I think it must mean I’m laying down long-term memories.

Je comprends un peu le français. 

So at least something is getting done around here. It sure isn’t blogging, but oh well!