Love, Erika

Happy Birthday! Parker is THREE!

This little man is the cutest, sweetest little ray of joy in our lives. I just love seeing what he's going to do next. Spontaneous hugs, please and thank yous, questions and observations, and of course a spirited mind of his own are all things that I enjoy about him every single day. And- I won't lie- he's got a bit of an evil streak too.

This kid is friendly. He says "HI!!" and "BYE!!!" to everybody and everything he runs across.

(more to come later)

NC Zoo

 

Terrarium

Food Changes

Weird things sometimes happen for a reason. This week, I started watching this program that I found on the DVR called The Blood Sugar Solution which aired on PBS not long ago. I thought Dave had recorded it, so I started watching it. He later asked if I had recorded it, and I said no, I thought you did. He said no. So nobody claims to have done it. It must have been a child mishap with the remote control. Weird, huh?

Anyway, this is a program by a doctor who outlines various (negative) changes in the modern diet which have resulted in most of our modern day health problems like obesity, diabetes, etc. The things he talks about in this program are not suprising, not new information to me..... it was all things that I have heard a million times before (way too much sugar, not enough fiber, too much processed food, too many preservatives, etc). We KNOW this. We've heard it all before. But for whatever reason, that particular day I was in the right frame of mind to watch the program, pay attention, and feel ready to even make some changes based on what he was talking about.

So these days there are 1001 things to watch out for in the foods we eat.....saturated and trans fats, pesticides, hormones, genetically modified this-and-that, sugars, gluten, glycemic index, you name it. One of the things that struck me the most from that program was high fructose corn syrup. Gross, in its modern day Frankenstein chemical makeup (and did you know what a rotten, pest-infested crop corn is (and therefore one of the most heavily pesticide treated crops???).

I decided to take inventory of the things we regularly eat and see if they contain HFCS and see what the alternatives are at the store when I go shopping. Reading all the food labels, I am shocked and disgusted about how it's in everything.  But there are a few particularly bad offenders: some juices (particularly lower quality and store brand juices), jelly, pancake syrup, applesauce, ketchup, and BREAD (really?? bread? why they gotta put that crap in bread?).

Luckily I was easily able to find alternatives for many of those things. Ketchup was easy-- ALL of the Hunt's products do not contain HFCS and Simply Heinz does not also.  Jelly was fairly easy too, as long as you read the labels.  Bread was a little harder, but you do just have to stand there and diligently read all the labels. It appears that all the Arnold's brand breads are HFCS-free (which I can get at BJs for no more than I was paying for our regular brand).  Applesauce was easy as long as you get the "Natural" kind or "no sugar added" which means it's nothing but apples and water..... the standard regular version is loaded with HFCS.

I was relieved that a lot of the major things that I feed my kids are good to go....... 90% of their juices (which I have always watered down by at least 100% anyway), waffles, cereals, etc.  I'm still having trouble with pancake syrup because there does not seem to be a LITE HFCS-free option...... Log Cabin brand does not contain high fructose corn syrup but they don't have a lite version. I'm not sure which is worse. I'm sure the kids can stand a few extra calories.

The more you know, the more you should be afraid of everything. Ugh. It's a messed up world.

Fun in Boston

My friends Candy and Christina and I decided to take a trip to Boston for the Boston Flower Show. It was an awesome day--we headed out early and caught the Boston Express bus from Londonderry and enjoyed a stress-free ride right into South Station. No traffic, no parking, no hassle...perfect!   We were a little bit like country come to town trying to figure out how to purchase T tickets and get to the World Trade Center, but we figured it out eventually and made it there.

One of my favorite things we saw was this tiny little diorama thingy.... a miniature garden! Every detail was so perfect. So cute! I just love the waterhose all snaked around the garden.

After spending a few hours at the Flower Show, it was time to get our grub on! We had researched ahead of time to find a restaurant near where we would be, and thanks to Yelp reviews and other innernets indications, we went to Lucky's Lounge. It was not entirely within "quick" walking distance of the World Trade Center as we had read, but we did find it-eventually-but not because of their abundant signage!! It was pretty obscure to find.

This place had a really cool vibe to it..... usually when places try to be all vintage/retro they end up looking just weird. But in this case it really felt authentic, like it hadn't changed much in 50 years.

I ordered the Lucky Burger for my meal, and the Boston Cream Pie for dessert....should I be offended that the waitress brought me THREE spoons for my dessert, when everybody else in my party had ordered their own dessert as well? Hmm.

 

Big Wheel!

Spring is here! Time to get outside!

Drew is not a kid who automatically enjoys hanging out outside, so he needs to have some very specific activities that he enjoys to motivate him to stay outside. He always loved his tricycle, but last year he totally trashed his front tire and wore it out. It was pathetic to see him try to ride that thing with the plastic wheel going WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP as he flopped around the cul-de-sac on it.  And he's not entirely at a great comfort level with his big boy bike yet. He does ride it, but it's hard for him, and he's a little nervous about it.

So Dave and I knew that we needed to get him a FUN option for this year. Clearly his old tricycle was not going to cut it, and he's not quite ready for the big bike yet as a fun option, so Dave found him this crazy big wheel and it goes FAST. He loves it. It has an awesome flag, too, and he has such a big dopey grin when he's ZOOMING around on this thing.

Yesterday, 80 degrees......

I have some fun HDSLR video too, but I have no idea how to edit it....... ;)

The day of Erika

Last week Dave asked me, "Do you want to be surprised, or do you want something to look forward to?"  Without missing a beat I said, "I need something to look forward to." So he said we're going out to lunch on Friday! Woooohhhoooooooooooo! To the Copper Door! Babysitting had been arranged, thanks to Grammie, and we were going to go.

My Christmas gift from him to me was a gift certificate to The Copper Door, so we were finally going to get to use it. That morning I went to the gym with the boys, and we came home in time to quickly get changed and leave for lunch. Something was weird about the house. The carpets had been vacuumed!  The layer of crushed cheerios and goldfish was gone! And then in the kitchen I noticed a big bouquet of red roses! I was floored. That's for me, too??  I was just so excited about the vacuuming, honestly......

It was like Christmas and Valentine's day all in one day! We finally got to use my Christmas gift after all this time, and I got a Valentine's gift!  (he had tried to give me flowers on Feb. 14th but they never showed up due to some craptastic customer service, so.....) AND after we got back I was able to go shopping and spend my TJ Maxx gift cards that my parents got me for Christmas. So it was LITERALLY a day of Christmas and Valentine's day all in one. Waiting until March 2nd to enjoy it all was very nice, especially since I had no previous realistic timeframe worked out for when any of it would happen, if at all. Gift cards for anything (either food or shopping) are usually a "haha, yeah right.... as IF......" kind of thing.

Thanks to Dave for a great time, and letting me have lots of fun on that one day!

Drew's Autistic Superpowers

It was right at the end of January that we started to become aware of some neat abilities that Drew has with regard to memorization of small details. Like the vast majority of autistic kids, he's a highly visual learner. Because his receptive and expressive language skills are a little bit lacking, when he hears things being told to him, it's hard for him to process right away. But if he can SEE something written down, or shown to him in pictures, it becomes ironclad in his brain and locked away forever. He's always been so observant, and notices such tiny little details and differences. Classic autism.

So we have this wipe-board calendar on the wall in the kitchen that we scribble all our appointments, therapists, events, etc on throughout the month, like any normal family.  As Drew became increasingly aware of months, dates, days of the week, time, clocks, etc.... he became sort of obsessed with the calendar too. It was like he would constantly study it and soak it all up, trying to find reason and predictability about it. Every morning he would get out of bed and fly to the kitchen to stand in front of the calendar and see what was going to happen that day, what happened yesterday, what was now coming up sooner than it was the day before.  He loved the fact that he could SEE it, and the great thing about it is that now he can read so we don't have to depend on his picture schedule so much. He can look at a calendar or day planner like any other person and just READ it.

He loves his routine, depends on it, and loves a schedule. His whole day and demeanor gets thrown off if he doesn't have his schedule outlined. Something visual that he can look at and know it's predictable and know what's coming next.

So I have a point...... I'm getting to it...... the calendar. We began to notice that he was memorizing the whole thing. He knew exactly which dates he did not have school that month, and could rattle them all off. When asked what days he saw Cass in January, he thought for a second and said, "6, 13, and 20." Which was correct. All 4 of us plus our cats had dentist appointments in January, and he could recall the dates and times for all of those appointments.  Obviously he had been staring at that calendar for the whole month so maybe it wasn't that impressive that someone witha  good memory could remember all that (although I know I sure couldn't!). So then Dave erased the whole board and started to write up everything for February. Drew was standing there watching in mind-blown fascination, and you could tell he was excited to see what he was going to write down. So Dave wrote down everything that we knew of at that point, and as soon as he got done, turned Drew around and started quizzing him about what he saw. And he got all of it right. Immediately.

Now I can't remember a damned thing from one moment to the next; that's why I write it all down. But Drew actually looked at it, and filed it away in his brain. Crazy.

So then we started testing him some more. We wrote down our address, and it was instantly memorized. Dave wrote down his cell phone number and after looking at it and repeating it a few times, it was memorized. He can even recall this stuff the next day without looking at anything.  It doesn't matter that he doesn't really know what the heck a phone number or an address IS, but he can memorize anything. He can barely even pronounce Goffstown, but he knows that's what he's supposed to say. 

One day in the car I verbally told him my cell phone number. And he was able to repeat it back to me like one time, but couldn't remember after that. It wasn't until I actually wrote it down for him that BOOM it was memorized. So he really does have to see it and lock it away. (it took me probably a good year to learn my own cell phone number, just for comparison...... sad, but true).

So finally we were joking about it with his therapists, and Dave said jokingly he was going to teach him Pi. And that night, he did. He wrote out Pi to eight decimal places and it was memorized. Here's Drew reciting it the next morning without having looked at anything since the night before:

I'm not convinced yet that he has a photographic memory, but I do know he has an extremely good memory from visual cues, so we will see. I think it's neat how his autistic superpowers are developing! 

Guest Post

I was so flattered when a longtime faraway blog reader in Australia asked me to do a guest post for her blog! Brooke from Brisbane put together a series of 5 guest posts and asked me to contribute tips for food photography. I was so happy to do it, and thrilled that someone thinks I know something about something (anything!)! :D Ha! I'm pretty sure it's the first time anybody has ever done that.

Without further ado, please visit Brooke way down under and say hello!

Five Tips for Photographing Food

(also--yikes--I didn't realize it has been a month since I blogged!!)

Shameless Dorkery

Go ahead and laugh. I will understand. But you know that feeling when you occasionally get a great haircut. Something so simple makes you feel so good. I haven't had a look change in many, many years, and I haven't had bangs since 2002.