We’re all seemingly healthy. Max is slowly working towards his pre-sick sleeping habits. We’re still struggling to get Clark to eat, but he’s doing ok right now. It’s helpful knowing he’s not allergic to cheese. The kids are on Mid Winter Break this week, so I’m making them help with the Monday-morning-reclaim-the-house-from-being-trashed-over-the-weekend chores.

I’m torn trying to decide how to spend my free time, what little I have of it. I’m on a roll with the songwriting, but I also really want to card some batts and knit a Pi shawl, not to mention the other little shawls I wanted to get done this spring.

And I think I’m going to start exercising regularly again. (Oh please, oh please). I’ve done pretty good at cutting down bad snacking and sweets over the last few weeks and I feel a lot better about myself for it. I really want to fit into my clothes better.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to post this week with the kids being home and all. I haven’t felt very talkative the past couple of weeks, but if I have anything interesting to say, I’ll be here.

So, I found out on Saturday night that a friend of mine just got a job as the new Editorial Director of Interweave Press, books division.

How cool is that?

I’m totally geeking out, and very excited for her! If anyone has an idea for books they’d like to see, tell me, and I’ll tell her.

I know I’ve been scarce around the blog recently. Max is mostly better, I think, but he’s still not sleeping. I can’t decide if I’m actually sick myself, or if I’m just so sleep deprived that I might as well be. When Max was sick, he couldn’t sleep longer than 2 hours at a time without waking up choking.

Now that he’s better, he thinks he’s starving to death and can’t sleep for more than 40 minutes to an hour without eating.

I’m going to die.

To add to our family fun, Clark has a fever and threw up last night.

Seriously, does mothering get any better than this?

I have one final complaint before sinking back down into my reclusive hole. Yesterday, Clark broke from his tradition of being careful around my musical equipment and knocked my Gibson (my gorgeous, gorgeous guitar) off the stand and flat onto its face on the hardwood floor. I keep this particular guitar cased. All the time. Just to be safe. And Clark has never knocked a guitar onto the floor before. But I had set the Gibson on a stand for 30 seconds while listening to a recording, and I was standing right next to it. But I couldn’t save it, and now it has a small dent in the front (which is really ok) and an ugly gash in the side of the headstock. (Not ok).

Dangit.

I think it’s fixable. At some point, I’ll take it in to my luthier to see what it’ll cost me.

Last night, I dreamt that chunks of wood kept falling off the front of the guitar, and every time I looked at it, I saw more damage. Which means that the little bit of interrupted sleep I actually got last night, was stressful.

How’s that for a “Happy Tuesday” post? Sorry. I’m going to slink back into oblivion now.

Well, almost. My songwriting is really coming along. I’ve got a lot of positive feedback and my sister thinks I should get my songs registered and find someone to promote them for me, trying to get an artist to record them.

I don’t really know where to start, and from what I’ve read, it’s nearly impossible to get anyone to listen to your stuff unless you “know somebody.”

My throat hurts. I’m not sure if it’s perpetual lack of sleep, or if I’m getting sick. I hope I’m not getting sick, but if I do, I hope I don’t get sick ’til tomorrow, because I’m planning to go to the Songwriter’s Guild mtg tonight. I’ve only been one other time, and it was a year ago, which also happened to be the first night I felt pregnant-sick with Max. It was a rough night and they probably all thought I was mental, if they even noticed, squirming around in my chair the whole time. It was a bunch of men I didn’t know, though, so I couldn’t really say anything without it getting awkward.

I’m so tired. We slept ok last night, outside of the hour between 2 and 3 am, when Max threw up three times. Poor thing. We went to the doctor today, for what was supposed to be his 4 month well-check. He’s dealing with the illness fine, doesn’t have an infection and his lungs are clear.

Thank goodness for that! ‘Cause he sounds awful!

Here he is, watching me make dinner last night

We had margherita pizza, our first attempt, and it was fabulous!

My youngest brother-in-law spent 2 years on a mission in Italy, and we had him over to teach us how to make pizza a few weeks ago. His method is “throw it all in a bowl ’til it looks right” so we did our best to extract measurements of ingredients. This is what I got-

3 cups flour
1 egg
1T or so olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast
about 1 cup warm water

You throw it all in a bowl and poke at it with a rubber spatula ’til it’s more or less mixed. Then you punch it around ’til it’s a dough. (I cheated last night and did some light kneading instead of the punching). Cool thing is, if it’s too wet, you can add a lot more flour and it still comes out. Ask me how I know :-).

Then I washed out the bowl, sprayed it with cooking spray put the ball of dough back in and covered it with a damp towel.

There’s no sugar in the dough, how weird is that? I thought yeast needed sugar, but apparently not.

So that’s it. It rises for an hour or so. I pinch off a handful and shape/stretch it into a circle (if you need help with that, email me or comment), I even tried my hand at tossing it in the air with moderate success. It got paper thin. We put thin slices of roma tomatoes on the dough, and a medium amount of mozzarella cheese. Baked it on a hot pizza stone for 7 minutes (500 degrees), pulled it out, put fresh basil on the top, some coarse salt (french gray this time) and drizzled it with olive oil. It made two large pizzas, plus the one small one in the picture.

Mmmmmm.

They’re not remotely filling, unfortunately. It’s a very light pizza. But the same crust works great with sauce and sausages and such, that’s what we did last week and it’s quite filling that way.

He has a great sauce recipe, too if you’re interested.

1 can tomato sauce (Safeway’s organic is my favorite. It’s sweet and less acidic tasting than the S&W)
1T dry basil
1/4 cup olive oil (you could probably get by with 3 T)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp + minced garlic (or 1 clove)

let it sit for awhile for the flavors to blend. It’s really good on pasta, too.

So there you go, easy pizza recipe. I like the fact that it only uses a mixing bowl, so cleanup is really easy and I don’t have to haul out my mixer and wash attachments.

I’m so tired. I had three hours of sleep last night, and 4 or so interrupted hours the night before. My throat hurts and I can’t walk in a straight line. I hope I can nap this morning.

Max is sick and I’ve been up with him. He had a very croup-y cough on Saturday, so we started boiling a stockpot of water on the stove for 12 hours a day, putting several gallons of water into the air and now he just has a phlegm-y cough. And a fever. Poor guy. He’s been throwing up, too. Fortunately, he can still breath out of his nose, so he can still eat. And while it’s obvious at times that he doesn’t feel good, he’s still trying to smile.

I have a lot going on this week. Not much that is critical, but some running of the girls here and there, a dr appt, parent luncheon, etc. Oh, and I’m hosting preschool tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

So, the doctor’s office wants me to go to a GI pediatrician at the hospital to see what’s wrong with Clark. Weird thing is, right now, there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s eating, (finicky as all heck, but he’s eating), his system is moving ok with a daily dose of Miralax, he looks healthier in skin tone and the circles under his eyes are lighter…

I don’t know what to do. It seems like there should be some symptoms before taking him to a specialist.

So, I’m going to wait it out, I think, and focus on trying to get him to eat as well as possible, which takes some considerable effort. If he has trouble again, I’ll take him in. He still claims his stomach hurts, but only when I ask, and he’s not very convincing anymore. The last time I asked, he said “no. Um, yes.”

Uh, huh.

Thanks for your input. It’s both helpful and overwhelming, hearing about how many different issues it could be. But I like the information because if something really rings true, it’s a lead to follow.

Stephanie, I need to call you. I’m curious about what kind of reactions Conner is having to wheat.

Clark is on a meatball kick right now. He and I just spent an hour making 80+ turkey meatballs that are in the oven now, and he’s anxious for them to come out. I’m relieved. For awhile, I couldn’t get ANY protein down him, with the exception of the occasional peanut butter sandwich on white bread- no jelly. And THAT’S not healthy. Once he started turning down chicken nuggets, which are a rare treat anyway, I kinda panicked.

I’m wondering if the vitamins are helping him to feel better?

I have some knitting to do, but I haven’t been able to leave my guitar alone. All of my free time finds me playing with it, and I finished writing another song last week!

I’ll check in again soon. The oven is done and Clark is not going to leave me alone ’til I get the meatballs out.

While I was truly not looking forward to hearing that Clark is allergic to most things edible, I was expecting it. The test came back negative for everything, as in, he’s not allergic to anything, food or enviornment. Not even milk.

This scares me. What the heck is wrong with my child?

His stomach always hurts. I don’t know where to go from here. And I can tell you right now, he’s not going to be thrilled at the prospect of more blood tests.

Dr. is out ’til Monday, so I get to spend my weekend “trying not to worry about it.”

Lovely.

While Max was perfectly willing to smile for me, he wasn’t giving it up for the camera.

He’s such a big boy!

Speaking of big boys, Clark had his blood drawn today for an allergy test.

He was super brave. I had him look away when they stuck in the needle, but the tech asked him to look before he took it out so Clark would know what was happening to his arm. That was probably a good call. Clark handled it well and didn’t say much as we were walking to the car. I asked him if it hurt a little. He said, “yes.” Then, with a little more vigor, he said, “it hurt a LOT! I didn’t like it.”

He’s so very sweet.

Out of the blue, Veronica noticed the wool she dyed over the summer, and asked me if she could spin it. Her attempts at spinning over the summer didn’t go so well, so I was braced and determined to be patient, despite the difficulty. And she hardly needed my help at all. She spun a bobbin full and is working on the second. How fun!

I took some pictures. This camera I’m borrowing from Carol takes really nice flash pictures, better than any of my cameras have,

but I still go for the non-flash pictures.

They’re so much more… alive.

My mother-in-law had surgery on Friday. The surgery went well. They think they got everything, said it didn’t look like it had spread, and didn’t have to reconstruct much if anything. There have been complications since the surgery that were scary, but as far as I know, she’s stabilized now and should be out of ICU today. We’re still concerned about her blood, which has to clot in the right places and not in the wrong places, as she has artificial valves in her heart. So we’re not out of the woods yet. Once she’s recovered, she gets to enjoy six months of weekly chemo. Prior to surgery, it was monthly.

I’ve changed my mind about the shawl I’m knitting. Instead of a half circle, I’m going to try a faroese from the top down with shoulder shaping.

Those of you who have been around awhile, like, a LONG while, will remember my green tweed shrug?

I frogged it.

It was kind of fun, actually. At first, I just freed the yarn and walked down the hall, unravelling stitches, then winding the yarn onto my niddy noddy as I walked back to the shrug in the living room. When that became tedious, I sat in the living room with the niddy noddy, and the KIDS walked down the hall, carrying the shrug and unravelling stitches, and I wound the yarn up as they walked back towards me.

I now have two huge skeins of moss green Kathmandu Aran yarn that I’m going to re-knit into a vest. I’m very excited, as I need some new sweaters. Today, I picked out a cable stitch to work into the front/center and all that’s left to do in preparation is soak the yarn to get the kinks out. I have a picture, but it’s on the other computer because I forgot to email it to my laptop before putting Monsters Inc on for Clark.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have pictures :-). I just don’t have THAT one.

Here’s what Max is doing, as I type…

He is getting SO big! Veronica has a hard time carrying him now. I’m guessing he’s about 30% of her body weight and catching up quickly. Of course, she’s a shrimp.

We had a bit of a tragedy this week. I have shawls on the brain, and as I pulled out all of my knits from the hall closet… my big, red shawl

is full of holes. New, unintentional holes.

The wrong kind of holes.

I can’t find any evidence that it was actually eaten, as everything else in the bin is just fine, and I don’t see any moth waste… but I’m not sure it’s fixable. It’ll take a phenomenal amount of time and eyestrain. I’ve counted 7 holes so far, but that was a quick lookover. I’m sure there’s more. One of them is unfixable, but I don’t think that one will spread.

Moving on, because it’s too depressing to linger-

I am planning to frog my huge, Donegal Tweed poncho to re-work into a cardigan. I’m excited. It’s a gorgeous turquoise color with red flecks of tweed in it.

Also, I went through the stash and pulled out two different compilations of yarn for shawls. This one will be a large, half Pi shawl (half circle)

and I found nearly 3000 yards of sock yarn, mostly Koigu with a few skeins of Carol’s yarn which matches up nicely, that will look great together in a full Pi shawl. I didn’t buy them to coordinate, they’ve been acquired over time and happen to be gorgeous together.

All this, combined with a few girl shawls I have planned for this spring (shhhhhh… don’t tell), and I have a year (or more, depending on how distracted I get) of knitting at my fingertips without buying a thing! It’ll make a serious dent in my stash, as all of my yarn fits in that little bin you see under the last picture, and maybe by the time it’s all done, I can afford to buy more!

Well, maybe on that last part.

But I’m looking forward to it, despite the fact that my elbows are really bothering me. I’m not sure why, but I notice it the most when I’m carrying Max, both in and out of his carseat. Infant carseats are brutal and I already make efforts not to carry it, but I really need to stop lugging that thing around.