The girls are now in school, which is a monumental change. Another huge change that happened around the same time is that they can now have dairy. After 11 years of being comfortably moored in one place, we’ve starting a new journey, into waters that we haven’t charted or tested yet.

We’re zooming away from where we had been, like a motor boat speeding out of the harbor. A part of me doesn’t quite believe we can have dairy, and many of our favorite foods are still naturally dairy-free. However, now there are these new found treats – squeezable yogurt! Milk boxes! String cheese! Cheese popcorn! And “why, Mama, why won’t you buy me insert name of overly-processed, artificial edible food-like substance?” To which I reply that just because they can eat something, it doesn’t mean they will. Thankfully, many of the popular snack treats have natural or organic counterparts. I’m happy to inform my daughters, with a big smile on my face, that you can eat fruit in a roll without artificial colors, and the same is true for squeezable yogurt…

Is it the same? No. Do my kids complain about still being “different”? Yup. But you pick your battles, and keeping their bodies fueled with healthy foods is one of the battles I’m willing to fight. They don’t need artificial hormones, artificial colors, or overly-processed foods to be healthy or happy. If they want to be like the other kids, we’ll try to get something similar, or they can just start a new trend!

I remember reading a Celiac Disease book that told a story of a young man with Celiac who went to college. Rather than bemoaning that he couldn’t eat pizza or drink beer, he started a new group of wine-drinking cheese-eaters, and talked about how mature they all were. As with everything in life, it’s all in how you spin it!

So as we start to map out these new waters, we still have our map from where we have been, and we are finding that there’s a lot of overlap with where we are now. We just have some new things to add to our maps as well – and some of these waters are wonderful. (I’m still hoping we end up at a chocolate waterfall, myself…)

LG’s school is across the street from our house, and about a 5-10 minute walk from a local beach. Her teacher is truly wonderful, and planned a spontaneous trip to the beach. We packed up shovels & pails & tubs, and went down to collect shells and build sand castles!

We worked on matching skills (collecting 10 each of blue mussel, littorina, and lady slipper shells), and then worked on the physics of molecular bonding and surface tension by making sand castles. Apparently, as we determine how wet the sand needs to be to make the sand castle work, we are making many more connections than we realize consciously.

The class was divided into groups of three, and they set to work on their castles. Some kids worked on their own, some worked together with the group. It was very interesting to see how they worked, and the questions the teacher asked to help their thinking.

I’ve really enjoyed both field trips I’ve been on, and I’m loving learning the names and personalities of the other kids in LG’s class. They are all such sweet children, the teachers guide them gently, and the classroom is a very pleasant, welcoming place. I know I’ll be working soon, so I’m enjoying the field trips I can attend now!