cold sore treatment

Oliver has had of history of getting pretty yucky cold scores around his lips.  I'd try to treat them with various over the counter stuff, extra fruit and veggies, other random home remedies, but we've always had to turn to an anti viral prescription from the doctor because they would just keep spreading. 

Pinterest, where all good comes from, told me that I might be able to prevent or treat cold scores using tea tree oil or melaleuca as it's called by the DoTerra folks.  Tea tree oil is a natural anti viral.  So, I find someone who sells DoTerra and place an order. 

So the oil arrives (this is months ago) and I get a little roller bottle from whole foods.  I add fractured coconut oil to the bottle and about 20 drops of melaleuca.  I roll this concoction around Oliver's mouth a few times a month in hopes of it preventing an outbreak.  I may have gotten lazy, or maybe I lost the roller, or maybe Lydia hid it, or Oliver flushed it, no I just got lazy...it happens.  Last week I noticed the little tell tail spot on his lip yelling "warning, warning, a cold sore is coming" and it did.  Rumor has it the tea tree oil could fix this so I put it on.  I mixed one drop tea tree oil and one drop coconut oil in my hand and rubbed it all over his lip area, often.  I really, didn't want to have to call in the script for the anti viral.  Know what, the tea tree oil really worked, the spreading stopped and the affected area scabbed over.  I'm still putting the oil on twice a day and some aquafor once a day, but it looks like we are in the clear this time. 

I just treated a problem naturally and saved a bunch of cash.  Good times. 

23 months

Sweet Lydia is going to be TWO next month.  What? 

Lydia is a joyful, fiercely independent, quiet, loving, playful, girl.  She adores Oliver, milk, dogs walking down the street, books, play dough, snuggles, and climbing. 

flashback

A few of her current favorites...

Helping herself to the milk in the fridge, instead of trying to chug it from the jug she now brings me all the supplies (milk, cup, lid) and I help her pour it, then she puts the milk away.  Her other favorite fridge treats are clementines, usually eating 3-4 a day, and peanut butter, which she enjoys eating by the spoonful.  Yum.

Potty training herself.  Yep she did it, just like that.  Over the past couple weeks she's hard only one daytime accident, that was today while we were outside, she just got caught up in the fun.  Lydia still wears a diaper at night but only wets about 3 a week.  I'm trying to get her to say the word "potty" or something to indicated that she has to go, so I can help her, but she usually just goes and does it herself or just lifts her shirt or dress up to let me know she needs help.  This is all very shocking to be because I wasn't even going to think about this until she was 3, but whatever, if you're going to do it yourself, you go for it girl. 

Climbing! Swinging! Sliding!  Lydia loves the park.  Climbing all over and sliding down the slides herself.  She can even ride our zipline the whole way down holding on all by herself...she is her brother's sister. I'll probably sign her up for gymnastics in the next few months. 


Doing her homework.  Oliver spends a few minutes in the morning or after school working on his school work or sight words and Lydia takes that time to get out her little school caddy and do some drawing.  Typically the drawing starts on the paper then morphs into her drawing on her feet or legs.  Whatever, it's all fine motor practice, right?

Lydia still isn't saying much and receives weekly speech therapy, we are only on week two, but it seems to be going well.  The therapist gives us a little assignment and then we work on it during the week.  I find the balance a little tricky.  The therapist wants me to make it so that Lydia has to talk to get things done, you know, make things harder for her to get to so she has to talk to get them.  I like that she is independent and tries things for herself and moves chairs around to reach stuff, so we find other places where she needs to talk.  Over the past week we worked on saying "down" so I could put the car window down for her.  We also worked on choices.  I give her two options and she answers as to what she wants...it usually doesn't sound much like either choice, but hey she's using her voice to make stuff happen.  

 My favorite thing about Lydia, she always wants more and more is one of the most clear words she says.  More hugs, more milk, more climbing the tree, more riding down the hill, more playing, more singing, more milk, more books, more, more, more.  She loves life and to explore and her family. 

She's our sweetest girl. 

 

potty training?

Potty training sucks!  Oliver came with some potty training skills, not really.  Oliver came with the ability to be compliant and sit on the toilet, it's what he was trained to do before his arrival here.  He wasn't trained to feel the sensation of needing to go and then go, no at the orphanage you sit when you are told to and stay as long as needed, maybe longer.  I taught Oliver his all his upper and lower case letters and letter sounds while sitting on the potty.  Fast forward to present day, he still has weekly accidents and let's not even discuss night time potty training, can you even train someone to not pee themselves at night?  He pees before he goes to bed, around 8pm, again when Jim goes to bed around 9ish, and again when I go to bed close to 11, and he still wakes up wet 75% of the time.  I try not to discuss it with him anymore, I figure he'll get it sometime, at least he doesn't accidents at school.


Then there is Lydia, I'm in no hurry to potty train her.  I really don't mind the adorable cloth diapers, and I'm even okay with washing them.  Lydia on the other hand, she wants nothing to do with diapers.  She rips them off before I can get them fully snapped on her.  Wednesday of last week I gave in.  It was a blah rainy day so we were not planning on going anywhere, I set the little potty outside the bathroom and decide to just let her run around in a dress with no diaper or underpants and see what happens.  She normally wakes up dry so I got her up and put her right on the potty, after a couple minutes she made it happen.  I put her dress on and tell her when she feels she needs to pee she should go sit on the potty...like she can even understand that.  She must have.  At one point we were doing homework and drawing at the table, she crawled down, walked away, and pooped on the toilet.  Hmmm.  No accidents all day.  So I guess we are doing this?  There have been accidents, but also tons of success. I just started letting her nap without her diaper, and go on outings without her diaper, and she's used a few public toilets, she even made it through church on Sunday.  She is pretty adorable in Oliver's outgrown Thomas the Train underpants. Here we go, for now. 

say what? not much...

At Lydia's 6 month appointment I mentioned that I thought she didn't babble much.

At her 1 year appointment she was supposed to be saying about 10ish words...maybe 8, maybe.

The 18 month appointment yielded news that by her 2 year visit she should be saying 50 words.  50!

 Well here we sit at 22 months old and Lydia might say 10-12 things.  Maybe she's just a quiet soul, maybe she is more thoughtful than vocal, maybe she just likes to take in the world around her...all possibilities, but it's my job to help her be as successful as possible so I call up the early intervention folks and request a developmental assessment.

They assess many areas of development, but we focus more on speech.  They ask me questions, they observe her play, and notice how she interacts with them and with JJ and myself (I sent Oliver out to play with a friend).  Now in order to qualify for help you have to be 25% or more below where you should be.  At the end of our time together the ladies tell me that Lydia doesn't qualify for services because she's around 23/24% below the norm for her age, rocking verbal production skills of a 17 month old.  Well, that's about the worst place you can be. Lucky for us, and Lydia, they said that they would give Lydia speech services.  So sometime in the near future a speech therapist will start visiting once a week and giving me different techniques to help Lydia.  Give her a few months and maybe she'll be stealing some of Oliver's air time. 

got tomatoes

We do!

Holy tomatoes batman.  Back in the spring we planted three tomato plants.  1 roma, 2 cherry.  I hoped we might grow a handful of romas to make some BLTs and a few bunches of cherry tomatoes for a couple other summer recipes.  Two of the plants went crazy choking out one of the cherry tomatoes, so we were left with one of each....and they went insane.  They are planted in our front flower garden area and have progressed to partially taking over the walkway and driveway. 

So here's a list of how we are dealing with the bunches and bunches of tomatoes we are harvesting on a weekly basis.

-We give them away to anyone who will take them.  People at church, friends, neighbors.
-The kids pick and eat them while we play outside, even Lydia knows how to just pick the red ones
-We traded two bags of tomatoes for free open gym time at the gymnastic studio ($10 savings)

Slow roasted BLTs -absolutely so delicious and you must make the basil mayo to go with it, really so perfect.  We've eaten these almost once a week.

 



Cherry tomato puff pasty tart.  Yum and super easy, like really easy.  This was devoured at our small group meeting a few weeks ago. 

 



End of summer vegetable soup.  I just delivered this to a friend and she thanked me more than once saying the soup was great.  The tomatoes are not the star of the dish, but they are there and it's a great soup, I think the roasted corn really makes it awesome.  I've made it with the popper croutons before and they are pretty good too. 

Pasta with Roasted Summer Vegatables, just make it.


BLT Salad -Most of the tomato recipes involve cooked tomatoes because I don't actually like them raw.  However, this salad is really tasty and simple.

Salad
-romaine lettuce
-thick cut bacon
-tomatoes

I bake bacon at 375 for 15-20 minutes, keep you eye on it!

Dressing
-1 cup buttermilk 
-1/2 cup sour cream
-1/4 cup mayo
-clove of garlic, grated  -if you like it spicy, my kids don't like it with the garlic
-salt
-pepper

mix it all together and set it in the fridge while assembling everything else

Croutons
-bread, cubed... good bread, something crusty from the bakery
-olive oil
-salt
toss the cubed bread with some olive oil and salt then bake at 375 for 10ish minutes

Pile everything together and yum. 



Go forth and cook those tomatoes you've grown, or come raid my front yard.

zoo train project

 Ages ago, when Lydia was tiny and slept often and didn't move much, Oliver and I made this awesome zoo for his trains to drive through.  He loves these kinds of projects, messy ones.  

Anyway, here is what we used...

-the bottom of a large sheet cake box (we happened to have some left from a baking project)

-paint and paint brushes

-pencil

-rocks

-low temp glue gun and sticks

-tubes of little animals from different places around the world...we got our tubes at Joann's with a 50% off coupon, but you could also find them at amazon

-air dryer, just to speed the process along

plan out a place for the train to go
a place for the people to wait
and spaces for the animals to live

paint and outline with rocks
we used the glue gun to stick the rocks down

speeding the process along

set up the track

get everyone moved in

give rides to all the zoo visitors

been here before...finally

Jim's been asking, are we there yet? 

When Lydia was born she was a second child, but a first baby.  People would assume we'd done this before just because we had an older child, most of the time I suppose it's safe to assume, but we were surely first time parents when it came to that little newborn.  Clueless, baby nervous, is she broken, sleep deprived, first timers. 

As Lydia progresses into the depths of toddler hood Jim keeps wondering, have we done this yet, is she at the age Oliver was when we got him, are we no longer first timers?  Yes!  Oliver came home just over 20 months old and that's where Lydia is now.  We've been here.  Well not really. Siblings were not made for comparing.  One is not a measuring stick for the other. 

The biggest thing that strikes me about this little milestone is that when we adopted Oliver at age 20 months we thought he was so young.  Soooo young.  How lucky were we to have only missed 20 months? 

Only 20 months! 20 months is an eternity! Do you know how many photos I've taken of Lydia in the span of 20 months?  How many hours she's been cuddled and loved?  How many kisses she's gotten? How many people love and adore her?  How many books she's been read?  The numbers are too great to be calculated.  A lot can happen in 20 months and it makes me sad for the time I missed with Oliver.  Not sad that I missed the time, but sad that he missed out on  the wonderful advantages of being a new baby in a family....though we've made up the difference the best we could.


However, regardless of the path or time of arrival to our home we simply adore them both.  They are the best for us and the best for each other and they both got here at just the perfect time for them.

Oliver, 20 months, in Moscow a few days
after leaving the orphanage

Lydia, 20 months, hanging in Bermuda

They both got passports when they were 20 months old....