I’ve had kids for more than 10 years. I haven’t taken any trips away from them, though they have spent time as a group away for me with their grandparents for a bit.

This week marks my first trip away from them. I have come to stay with my grandmother and her husband to help them as she starts recovering from her stroke. Her prognosis looks good, but every difference between “before” and “after” is difficult.

This is both one of the hardest things I’ve done and one of the easiest choices I’ve ever made. I am torn between my children and my grandmother, but being here feels very right. My heart is full.

Internet connectivity is spotty, as is email, but I’ll be back on Monday with book reviews, reviews of some new Gluten-Free/Dairy-Free products, recipes, a review of a Solar Science lab, and more random musings.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking to stock up on cool t-shirts for the summer, UneeTee is having a big sale, all t’s are $13 through June 1. The Summer-themed shirt.woot winners will be on sale Friday, Saturday, and Sunday starting at midnight Central time. You can get more than 20 shirts from their Reckoning List for $15, but the shirt of the day is $10 - shipped!

I have been lucky enough to have a really close relationship with my grandparents. When I was little I would go for week long trips to “Nana camp”, which was special 1:1 time with my grandmothers - I would go to one grandmother’s house while my brother went to the other’s house, and then we’d swap. I’ve got wonderful memories of that time. I’m trying to facilitate my daughters having that same bond with their grandparents, too.

When we moved from TX to CT, I had a lot of sadness about leaving a wonderful support system and fabulous friends. However, we ended up living 5 minutes from one grandmother, and 15 minutes from the other. Nothing is better than being there for people when they need you, and I was able to be there for them when my grandfather died and when my other grandmother was hospitalized.

I’m incredibly lucky to still have 2 grandmothers - one is 85 and the other is 90. What I think is even luckier is that the girls are now old enough that they should remember my grandmothers for the loving people they are.

This morning my Nana M. (pictured here with my Grandpa Bob) had a stroke. She had some left side weakness, slurring of speech, and confusion. She’s improving, but it’s really upsetting, and now that we’re in MA it’s a bit longer than 15m to go see her. My mom and I are going tomorrow, though, and the girls will stay home with Bill for the day.

Prayers, vibes, and good wishes are all accepted for my grandmother. I’m worried, and I’m not ready to let go of her. That grandparent bond is a strong one.

I’ve written several times about the fabulous books by Katie MacAlister. If you’ve been waiting for something great to read, don’t wait any longer - Katie has a started a new series! If you liked the Aisling Grey Guardian Series, starting with You Slay Me, the Silver Dragon series will pull you in quickly, as it is a spin-off of that. We’ve seen Gabriel, the leader (wyvern) Silver Dragons before, and we see him in new lights and shadows in Playing with Fire (Silver Dragons, Book 1).
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I’ve got a job interview tomorrow afternoon.

Eeeeeeep!

I haven’t done one of those in a long time. Like 3 or 4 years long time. This should be interesting.

I may get to grocery shop alone afterwards, which would be cool as well.

So any lovely vibes tomorrow at 1:30 Eastern would be happily accepted. Starbucks gift cards, too.

We are a family which loves to play games. Card games, board games, outside games, and other games that seem to defy description. When Parent Bloggers Network was looking for someone to test the Discovery Store game Rapelli, we were happy to give it a try. The Rapelli Game is a 15 minute game which is part of the Discovery Store’s new line of bamboo products, and is designed for kids ages 4+.

Bamboo is a renewable resource which has become popular for creating everything from sheets to flooring. Bamboo grows and matures quickly, making it easy to harvest and then plant another crop, unlike slow-growing trees. Bamboo’s versatility is well-utilized in Rapelli, the pieces are multi-sectioned caterpillars, dice, and a cylinder, all of which look just like wood. Discovery has a pop-up window which explains more about their eco-friendly products, the natural materials, and environmental sustainability. Usually the consumer is torn between wood, which is natural but requires cutting down trees, and plastic, which could contain any number of chemicals, but doesn’t use up the forests. Bamboo offers a third choice which combines the benefits of both, without the negatives of either. Bamboo grows well in China, and the Discovery Store collection of bamboo toys are made in China in conjunction with several agencies.

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The party is done for BG. She had fun, and so did all her friends. We held the party at a local rollerskating rink, it’s a place that I went to as a kid, and it’s in some kind of time warp.

We had about 10 or 15 kids, and lots of skating and falling-down was done by all. Plus lots of pizza eating (for the non-allergy people, and followed by hand-washing), and lots of cake eating.

The cake is a fun(ish) story. We made a white cake and a chocolate cake Friday night. And the white cake was fine, but the chocolate cake not so much - more like a brown brick. I planned to make another after diner, but I whacked my foot and it was iced and painful until I fell asleep a little after 3am. Then we tried to make another chocolate cake, but the oven wouldn’t preheat. The oven, she is broken. I kn has sadness. However, my mom brought cupcakes and all was right with the cake-and-party world.

BG was so happy with her party, and so glad that most of her friends could come. It was great to see cousins playing with eachother including cousins from opposite sides of the family! A nice mix of relatives and friends. I thought my dad was going to have a heart-attack, though, from all the bouncing around happening to the kids! He gets nervous they’ll get injured. I just cross my fingers and hope for no (serious) injuries.

We left here a little after 12, and came home around 4:30. I was wiped out and laid down for a nap a bit after 6. I woke up 16 hours later. that was a good nap!

Now to start worrying about MG’s birthday next month…

Spring and Summer have arrived, so it’s time to break out the outdoor games! Gamewright has been our favorite source for games for the past year and a half, and with its new releases, it looks like that trend will continue. (and not just because they send us games for review!) We spend the winter (and evenings) playing games from Gamewright, so it is only fitting that we are playing one of their new games, Boochie, outside!

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We live in a world filled with creepy-crawlies. We’ve also become more and more aware of them each year. From dust mites to mosquitoes, seemingly nuisance pests are wreacking more and more havoc. Then, each spring moms are starting to cut their boys’ hair to make it easier to do tick checks (all our friends are nervous about ticks after our Lyme Disease issues). Other than ticks, our biggest tiny bug anxiety is about lice.

Do you remember that feeling of squickiness and shame when the school nurse found out you had lice? ick But now parents are not only worried about eliminating the lice and nits, but also worried about using pesticides on their children’s heads in order to kill off the lice. Everyone needs to comb every strand of hair, but coating the head in olive oil or mayonnaise and then a hair thingie for 3 hours seems to work, but not everyone can do that. The kind folks at MomCentral have teamed up with Lice MD to show parents that there’s an alternative to pesticides sitting on their pharmacy shelf.
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This week is Food Allergy Awareness week, and this month is Celiac Disease Awareness month. To honor both of these, we are participating on the bi-weekly Food Allergy carnival and talking about summer camp despite food restrictions

Our family has Celiac Disease, an intolerance to dairy, and LG has a severe berry allergy. We bring our own food to birthday parties, parks, and playdates, but I never wanted the dietary restrictions to restrict the girls’ access to activities. Occasionally an event is so food-centered that we can’t participate, but as food restrictions become more well-known, we can go to more and more events without risking a reaction.

Some days, it feels like our food allergies are a complete non-issue. Kids play here or in the neighborhood and they eat popcorn, we go to the park and have some chips, we hang out at the beach with some trail mix, etcetera. Some days it is an issue - my girls take some treats when they go over to a friend’s house, or they can’t stay for dinner with a friend, or there’s an activity that looks great except that it includes cooking with flour or using play-doh, or when a friend’s been eating a sandwich then puts their hand in your chips, which means you can’t eat the chips any more. Those are the hard days, and the days that keep me on my toes, keep me from becoming complacent.

Last year BG and MG went to camp for 2 weeks (check out BG in the above photo from the camp brochure!). It’s a day camp, and they had a week off at home to rest in between the two camp sessions. Thanks to their grandparents, they were able to go to a wonderful camp on an island, taking a boat to and from the island each day. To make it even more special, it’s a camp I attended for 10 years. Is it tricky to attend camp when you can’t eat a regular sandwich and need to have kids wash up after they eat a sandwich? Yes, but it’s totally worth it. Their heads are filled with memories from those weeks, and we are happy to do the prep work so they can attend.

My mother talked to the camp and counselors about the girls’ dietary needs, and so did I. We discussed lunch and snack times, papier maché (no flour/water paste), play-doh, and the need for hand-washing. While I am saddened by the number of children with peanut allergies, their existence has really helped raise awareness about food allergies and restrictions. Everyone at the camp was comfortable with the girls dietary needs and happy to help out. This was key for me - if you find what looks like a great camp, but they seem clueless about food allergies, back away! You don’t want to risk your child’s health for summer camp - find another camp.

This year they’re attending camp for 2 consecutive weeks and it will also include a sleep-over on the island. We will continue to work in advance to help keep camp safe for the girls, and I’m sure the counselors will continue to be as helpful this summer as they were last summer! First, we asked that our girls wash hands before they eat, and have their friends wash hands after they eat. This reduces the chances of cross-contamination, and is generally a healthy idea anyhow. Food sharing is a no-no at most camps now, but a reminder about that printed on lunch bags is a great idea, too.

In advance we bought a variety of favorite snacks, and plenty of snack-size and sandwich size ziplocs. This is much more economical than buying everything in single size bags, and it gives you a greater range of snacks - not everything is sold in little bags! We also froze bottles of water so they would keep the food cold and give the girls cold water later in the day. We don’t usually do a lot of juice, so it was special to have juice boxes or pouches for their lunch!

One trick for us was to include a fair amount of protein, as camp requires a lot of energy, and low amounts of protein tend to make my kids grumpy! Peanuts and nuts are safe for us, and great for a protein kick (we all love Larabar Bars Variety Pack and KIND Bar Almond & Apricot), but they aren’t allowed in most schools or camps. Instead, we added meat sticks (such as Jack Links Super Size Beef Sticks), beef jerky (such as World Kitchens Brown Sugar Beef Jerky), and nut-free trail mix (such as Enjoy Life Trail Mix Not Nuts! Beach Bash). If you’re looking to stock up, you can get great prices on allergy-safe and gluten-free treats at Amazon.

LG has an epi-pen and is the one with the severe berry allergy. She’s still too young for the day camp on the island, and I’m grateful. I wouldn’t be comfortable with having her on an island with a potentially anaphylactic allergy. We can hope she outgrows it in the next two years! I’m still working out my comfort level with having her go on field trips with people who aren’t me, her dad, or her grandparents.

What accommodations have your kids needed for camp? Check back tomorrow for a link to the Food Allergy Carnival!

I hope all of you had a wonderful mother’s day!

On Friday afternoon Jack was giving Ra a hard time, so I was separating them. Stupidly, I did so with my hands. Ra accidentally nipped me, and even though it’s a tiny cut, it whacked a nerve. So until now my thumb on my left hand was basically useless. It’s a bit better, but not a ton, so I’m going to the doctor tomorrow. wheee! I think it’s been a couple months since I was last there!

I had a lovely mother’s day with sleeping in, a great bbq linner made by my step-dad, visits with my mom & step-mom, and general rest & chatting. My brother was visiting, which was a lot of fun for everyone. He grew a mustache, and now suddenly looks so much like my dad. It’s surprising.

It’s great to feel special, isn’t it? Of course, sleeping in and having meals cooked for you is a day in the life of many of the people in this house, but ah well. No pictures from Mother’s day - no new camera yet.