I am dying over Daiya cheese!

Daiya cheese is Jaxon safe AND it melts & stretches like the real thing. To top that off it tastes good too. It is sold at Whole Foods or on the website www.daiyafoods.com. I never thought something made from pea protein could be so wonderful! This is my find of the year for sure. Jaxon has been enjoying "pizza" on a regular basis. You can get it in a block as well. Jaxon will beg for chunks. Check it out, you will not regret it!

Eggs - NO GO!

Jaxon had eggs for the first time EVER last night. It was an accident. I made turkey burgers which I didn't intend for him to eat. I had made him a beef burger due to lack of enough of one or the other for everyone. Johnny didn't know I had added an egg to the turkey burger mixture in hopes of keeping them from falling apart on the grill. Jaxon had two bites before I caught the mix-up and corrected the situation. That was about 3 minutes before he violently emptied his stomach all over the floor. He was perfectly fine before and after. It has been a long time since he has had such a severe and sudden reaction. Just a little reminder for me that I can never be too careful with his food.

At this time we avoid wheat and gluten, corn (all forms), rice, eggs, dairy, honeydew & cantaloupe, and nuts. We were going to start food trials at Rady Children's Hospital but he showed reactions to everything on his last prick test.

Little help?

Daniel was on a roll yesterday. I can laugh about it now, which is why I am writing this post. Yesterday it was not so funny.

It started 11:59pm when Johnny and I both woke to Daniel's blood curdling screams. We had put the bunk bed together on Tuesday so I immediately assumed he had fallen off the top bunk and broken something. After Johnny and I almost killing ourselves running down the stairs in the middle of the night we saw Daniel sitting on his bed screaming hysterically. When we finally got him to talk to us he just said he was thirsty and continued to scream. I have implemented a new rule that he can't have more than a sip of water 1 hour before bed with hopes he will stop overflowing his pull-up every night. So far it has not worked and now he is screaming for a drink in the middle of the night.

The next morning I was exhausted when I woke to Jaxon screaming. He ran into my room and jumped in my bed. The side of his head was wet. According to Jaxon Daniel had used his soaked pull-up to slam over Jaxon's head. Daniel quickly followed Jaxon into my room to try and "sorry" his way out of trouble. Did you know that when a pull-up full of a whole nights worth of pee is slammed over a 2 1/2 year olds head it explodes? Yeah, I never knew that either. What do you even say to a 4 year old about doing something like this? I had assumed it was a given that slamming a wet pull-up over someones head was not a good choice.

I wish I had taken a picture but I was too frustrated. I made Daniel clean all the chunks of the pull-up off the wall, beds, chair, changing table, and floor. After that I made him vacuum the room then wipe everything down with antibacterial wipes. He was not too happy, but neither was I. Poor Jaxon even had pee on his head from where he was hit which means it was also in my bed from when he crawled in there with me.

After dinner Daniel threw a pillow at Jaxon knocking a toy into his forehead. Of course this resulted in a puncture wound and Daniel was put on his bed for the rest of the night. While on his bed he somehow hit his chin hard enough to bite through his tongue. After cleaning the blood off of him and the side of the bunk bed I went on a much needed late night ice cream run. It was the best tasting ice cream I have had in a long time.

Anyone know how I can get Daniel to stop hurting Jaxon? It has passed the point of brotherly competition or Daniel simply picking on him because he is younger. I can't keep them separate. Time outs don't seem to be working. I have tried the 1-2-3 Magic method which works to stop him from doing things when we are physically in his presence, but not when we are out of the room. I try not to spank, but we have even tried that in the past and it doesn't seem to work. Almost all of his toys are in a garbage bag in the garage. Most of the time Daniel is a very sweet boy, but then he pulls a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Any suggestions are welcome!

Wesley AKA Fang

Wesley has 8 teeth now. When he smiles at new people they are always a little taken aback. Seriously 8 teeth at 8 months! Two more on the way in the near future. Crazy! Well because of Jaxon's food issues I have been very reluctant to try new foods with Wesley. With a mouth full of teeth this boy chews on everything. Blankets, toys, and paper especially paper. Saturday we were at the park having a picnic with a friend. Jaxon is almost potty trained so I was involved trying to get him to tell me if he needed to potty. Wesley took the opportunity to crawl across the blanket and literally attack a package of graham crackers.

I turned around and he was double fisting them into his mouth! Wesley was so proud of himself. It made me realize he is not Jaxon. There is no guarantee he will have the same issues as Jaxon and I need to let him have his own experiences. So, he is now eating graham crackers, cheerios, and a few other age appropriate items I had been holding back. No sign of reaction. Actually the opposite. He loves trying new things. Go Wesley. Thanks for making mommy realize you are your own person. I needed a little reminder.

Father & Sons Camp Out

The Priesthood Commemoration Father & Sons camp out was this weekend. For a mother of three boys this is one of the best days of the year! Daniel and Jaxon were SO EXCITED! We went shopping for camping treats then packed their bags. They were not really staying the night because Johnny has school in the morning, but they enjoyed cooking over the fire and being out by the creek.

While they were gone my mom and I went out to dinner with little Wesley. I gave my mom a really hard time about putting on makeup. I was hungry. I had a gift card and wanted to get going. Free dinner without my boys knocking stuff over! Sounded good to me. I was wearing my very cute and stylish Oklahoma University SO CAL SOONER shirt (the epitome of fashion). No makeup on. I didn't even run a quick brush through my hair. My mom was taking too long to get out the door. We finally get into the restaurant, sit down, and our waiter walks over. Guess who it was. My first kiss!

His name is Jason. I was in 6th grade and tagging along with my older sister to the awesomest (I know its not a real word) place one earth; the roller rink!. He held my hand during a couples skate. I hugged him good night and then he kissed me (anyone else having Adventures in Babysitting flashbacks?). One little peck. I remember being on Cloud 9 for days! Wow I was only in 6th grade, how crazy is that? He was in 9th; an older "man."

My first thought: Maybe I should have put on some makeup. My mom laughed way to loud when I told her. She wanted to call him over to reminisce. What a funny coincidence. That is what you get when you move back to your home town.

Memory Blanket

Before my friend Lee's wedding in Hawaii she sent me a bag of random Hawaiian material and asked me to "do something" with it. She told me I was her "crafty" friend. I have no idea why she thinks that because I can hardly sew a straight line. Well after some thought this is what I came up with. It is a memory blanket. People signed the back at the wedding. On the front I added pictures from the ceremony.

It came out alright in the end. I actually shed tears when it was finally complete. I am not sure if the tears were because the edges looked like a 3rd grader sewed them or if I was just so relieved to be done. A little of both I think.

Yeah! One more thing to check off my "TO DO" list.

Good, Better, Best

If you have not heard or read the talk Good, Better, Best by Elder Dallin H. Oaks I highly recommend taking the time to read it.

Recently I had an experience with the principles taught in this talk. Let me first say that Johnny is doing well at his job and after 3 months of technically being unemployed (on the union out of work list) it is nice to have a steady income the last 6 weeks or so. The problem is that we have been slammed with some unexpected expenses. Between Jaxon's recent endoscopy, our computer hard drive crashing, the lower ball joints and alignment for the car; you get the picture. I was feeling a little overwhelmed. Our lovely budget which happens to look very practical on paper does not look so nice anymore. Why do things like this always come in threes?

That being said I was asked to grade the 6th grade writing portion of the Arizona AIMS test for two weeks in May. I immediately thought what a wonderful opportunity this was going to be to earn some side money. After submitting all the required paperwork I started the online training and immediately realized I was crazy. Some of you have known this for a long time, but at that moment I knew it too. I was required to train and qualify in the areas of voice, word choice, and sentence structure over a three day period. The initial training was to take 2 hours, each section after that was to take 4 hours. After the practice exams I was required to score 7/10 & 10/10 in the qualifying rounds for each trait. This added up to a minimum of 15 hours. Johnny was home and taking care of the kids. The baby was upset and the other boys seemed to sense my attention was focused elsewhere which of course sent their mischievousness into overdrive.

Now I am no Einstein but I do have a Masters degree in Education and consider myself an educated person. I just could not focus. The best way to describe what happened was to reference D&C 9:9. I literally had a stupor of thought. My practice scores ranged from 2/10 to 7/10 but there was no consistency whatsoever. My qualification scores went downhill from there. The entire time an ever increasing list was running through my mind of things that needed my attention. My frustration with the boys interruptions was rapidly growing. I felt the same way trying to do this job from home as I did when I worked from home the last six months we lived in Mesa. I felt uncomfortable, depressed, frustrated, and had a killer head ache. I talked to Johnny about how I was feeling. I was worried about feeling like a quitter, but more than that I felt like I couldn't pass up this opportunity due to the extra cash. In the end Johnny told me he supported whatever decision I made, just like he always has in the past.

The amazing part was how I felt after I decided to let go. Complete relief and focus. It was not so much giving up as realizing that I was putting off my other more important obligations as a mother and wife for something that was good, but not best. It would have only been for a few weeks, but those weeks would have been very difficult. The week after making this decision Johnny actually had double time hours 4 out of 5 days equaling more money than I would have made part time in two weeks. He was off work Friday and we went to the Dominigoni Aquatic Center together as a family. If I had been working this past week I would not have been able to go. While we were there I laughed so hard playing Hide & Seek and Shark with Daniel and Jaxon. I have not laughed that hard in a long time. It was such a special feeling to experience that with my boys. To not have any obligations to worry about, just concentrate on having a fun time with my children. It was refreshing and made me understand more fully what Elder Oaks was referring to when he talked about choosing the best instead of just the good.