New Nate-ism

Driving along in the car with three cookies in a little plastic bag.

Nate: Can I have one of those Chanukkah cookies?
Me: sure
Nate: (after inhaling cookie number one) Can I have one more of those cookies?
Me: OK.  But this is the last one because we are headed home to have dinner.
Nate: Can I have that last cookie?
Me:  No.  I told you, it's almost time for dinner.
Nate: (after a longish silence from the backseat): Mr. Cookie, are you crying some tears? You are lonely in your bag and miss your mommy and daddy in my tummy.  You should come in my tummy and see your mommy.

Thanksgiving 2011

I want to preface this by saying that I mean no disrespect to anyone who observes dietary restrictions for philosophical reasons.  I was a vegetarian for a while in college and Dave and I kept kosher for a couple years so while neither of them seemed to enhance my life enough to keep it up, I understand the urge that leads people to embrace a particular dietary lifestyle.  It's just that in our house all the dietary restrictions are  driven by health concerns and one way to deal with it is to make light of it.  It's also convenient to have a shorthand way to convey the list of forbidden items to others.

So, describing Nate as a carnivorous soy-free vegan is accurate and useful.  (Now of course we have to add the caveat that he can't have any nuts except almonds, but that is a fairly new addendum and we haven't worked it in yet.)

This year, as I did last year, I made a Thanksgiving dinner that was completely Nate-safe.

It was a soy-free vegan menu - - -  except for the turkey and the bacon.

Here's the menu:

For breakfast:

Mimosas - a tradition Dave and I originated with our first Thanksgiving and have never given up.  Some years it has been cool enough to chill the OJ and champagne in the snow on the porch.  This year we needed some space in the refrigerator.

Dave and I had pumpkin spice lattes (not pictured) and Nate had almond milk hot chocolate while we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I made cinnamon rolls the night before that I could just pop in the oven in the morning.  They were deliciously vegan-ly gooey (No one should EVER confuse vegan and healthy as synonyms)

Dinner:

The turkey - dry brined in a lemon oregano salt crust and brushed with lemon oil while cooking.  A little large for 4 1/2 people, but I wanted leftovers.

Cranberry Agrodolce, the same I make every year since Dave tasted it at our dear friend Bree's house.

Mashed potatoes and gravy (made from the turkey drippings and addictively good - though the brining made it pretty salty and if I did it again I think I'd grind some diuretics into it)

Stuffing (that never saw the inside of the turkey) made from home-made bread, onions, celery, spinach, and home-made stock.

Sweet potato hash with bacon and green apples

Ultimately the star of the show was this coconut pull apart bread - sweet but not too much, tender and moist and so, so fragrant. Nate ate about a quarter of a loaf.

And for dessert:  vegan pumpkin pie (adapted from Pim Techamuamvivit -  recipe to follow in another post)

 We pounced on it!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!!

P&Q

Maybe you already love quinoa.  In which case, I have nothing to offer you.  Maybe, however, you are like me and find it OK but with a bitterness that you don't love.  Maybe you've tried soaking it before cooking as some recommend and found no difference.  Maybe you have a child who is allergic to beans, milk, nuts, and soy - limiting his source of protein to chicken and occasional pork - but can actually eat and enjoy this protein rich grain.
Maybe you'd jut like to expand your horizons a little.  If so, I offer you this delicious recipe:

1 medium onion - chopped
3-4 carrots, chopped
3-4 parsnips, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 pound chicken (I use boneless, skinless chicken thighs b/c they are cheap in bulk at cost but I'm sure anything would be fine)
1 cup quinoa
2 cups chicken or veggie broth
salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat 1tbsp of oil in large skillet with lid.
2. Pat chicken dry, sprinkle with salt and pepper and brown in hot oil just a couple of mites on each side - want brown and tasty but not cooked through.
3. Remove chicken to a plate and cover
4. Add 1 tbsp of oil and when hot, sauté onion 5-7 mints until soft and just starting to caramelize (can cook for a shorter time if in a hurry, but caramelized onion is TASTY!)
5. Add chopped carrot and parsnips and cook for 5-7 minutes until slightly softened.
6. Add quinoa, broth, chicken, and any juices on plate and bring to a boil.
7. Cover, reduce to simmer, and cook for about 20 minutes until broth absorbed.
8. Season to taste with salt and pepper and eat.

The sweetness of the parsnips really balances the bitterness of the quinoa.  I bet sweet potato would be good if you didn't have parsnips.

Anaphylaxis

I guess they give you an Epi-Pen 'cause they think you might need it.  Despite the ads, you really don't have to ask your doctor if Epi-pen is right for you.  If you have life-threatening allergic reactions, then someone is going to prescribe one for you.  They'll teach you how to use it.  Then you'll go home, put it in the diaper bag or purse and hope you never have to use it.

Nate's allergies are a problematic set from an anxiety standpoint because a lot of the stuff he is "allergic" to is really better defined as an intolerance.  If he gets milk or soy or peanuts he's not going to stop breathing.  He's just going to throw up, and probably not until hours later.  What we've seen from beans and peas has been only hives and a stomach ache.  Even the sesame, which is the worse we have seen to date, resulted in hives and vomiting that went away with benadryl.  OK, and yes, he did develop some stridor, but he never needed epinephrine and he got better before we went to the hospital.  And eggs?  Well, we avoid eggs.  We don't keep the crumbly liquid little devils in the house because we've never seen what happens and frankly don't want to.  His blood and skin testing for egg was so over the top impressive that we avoided it on principle for a while and when we finally got brave enough to let them into the house, Nate got a whole body skin rash after I put lotion on him after touching a hard boiled egg.  So, no, then.  No eggs 'round here.

It turns out, though, that danger can be lurking where you least expect it.
In a 1 1/2 pound Costco bag of pine nuts.
When Nate, cruising around the kitchen while we were getting ready for dinner, asked if he could try some, I said yes.  He's never had problems with nuts.  Eats almond butter, had cashews on the way to school in the morning that very morning, and loves macadamia nuts, but who doesn't really?

He loved the pine nuts, too.  He was smiling and scooping them into his mouth.  At some point he stopped and told me "some of those pine nuts taste kind of yucky" and requested some juice to get the taste out.  He spilled rather than drank his juice but left the kitchen to work on a puzzle in the living room.  It was dark in there, so I didn't notice the hives on his face until the sight of him scratching his tongue made me take a closer look.

With hives erupting on his face and the ongoing tongue scratching Dave and I rushed him upstairs for some benadryl.  Still, he quickly got worse with a cough, some gagging, and a speech impediment that sounded like he was trying to talk around a mouthful of marbles.

Here's what it's like to use the Epi-pen.  First of all, you'd better have a helpful adult ready to subdue the toddler.  Secondly, you are not going to remember how to use it and reading the directions when you are just a shade below panic is not easy.  The click of the needle release mechanism sounds like a gun went off and the baby screams "I don't like that pokey thing!" over and over in a voice made horrible by his too small throat and too large tongue and too copious saliva. You feel brilliant to have remembered to count to ten before pulling the needle out.  Then he cries and retches until the fire truck pulls up, sirens and lights on, and he is suddenly way more fascinated with the outside world than he is with his own misery.

A little unsolicited advice:  If an ambulance comes to your house, ride it to the hospital even if the driver doesn't think you need it.  Because no matter how good the Epi-pen has made the baby look, if you let the ambulance drive away empty, the epinephrine will start to wear off and you my find yourself in a a car with a screaming toddler who is breaking out in alarmingly red hives and scratching himself bloody while screaming that his tummy hurts and it hurts to breathe.

Later, when the emergency room physician tells you that you saved your child's life, you will feel a little light-headed.  You might even get teary.

You will be incredibly grateful when he is at home the next day, no worse for wear and managing to get on your nerves.

L'shana Tovah!  May 5772 be a year without anaphylaxis!

Up, up, and away

We went to the airshow this last weekend.
Nate has been an airplane ever since.
"You want to cover your ears" he will call from the next room, "There is a loud jet coming!"
"Zzzzzzzzzz" he soars into the room, arms outstretched, and opens his "nose cone" to take his medicine.

This morning he was a helicopter, twirling around the room with one arm over his head and desperately trying to keep his "tail propeller" going at the same time.

Whe he got to school on Monday morning he bounced into class and sat down for breakfast.  "Miss Sharon, we saw some airplanes. And two helicopters.  One was a "Korsky"!"
"A what?"
"A Sakorsky," I told her.
"A what?" she repeated.
"Don't worry," I said, "I hadn't heard of it either."

We also, due to the 9/11 memorial at Somerset, witnessed the landing of Air Force One.
"And we saw Marine One," Nate chimes in when we tell the story.

Oh, yeah, and he got to "fly" a jet too.

Garden Update

I promised some pictures of the watermelons.

From this . . . 

 To this . . . 

 Plus the now famous "secret watermelon" that was hidden in our neighbor's weeds.

Here is the recalcitrant tomato that has grown and grown but refused to turn red, finally showing an early blush.

And finally, a little harvest on its way to becoming our dinner.

I am basically in love with the garden.  Next year we might just till up the whole backyard.

Dinosaurs are big in the city of Pittsburgh.  Andrew Carnegie funded a huge excavation to bring a dinosaur skeleton here to his museum.  That skeleton is now replicated all over the world.  Consequently, when the city wants to say something cool, it usually says it with dinos.

The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts has a T-Rex out in front that the students outfit as appropriate for weather, current events, etc.  I've seen it in a Santa Hat, in gay pride gear, in Harry Potter glasses and a cape for the opening of the last movie.  It's cool to drive by and see what they've got going on.

*****

As you may or may not know, they have been shooting the latest Batman film in Pittsburgh.  They destroyed traffic with rolling street closures in downtown, made it snow in the middle of August, and even convinced thousands of Pittsburghers to show up to the Steelers' stadium in winter parkas to serve as extras for the shoot of a football game.  A lot of the filming has been within a few block radius of Dave's work, sometimes right outside his door, so he has kept us updated and inundated with pictures.  Nate has deduced, from dinnertime conversations, that "Daddy works with Batman."

We took a Ducky tour with Papa ken and Grandma Nancy that passed Batman filming and then Dave's building, and I think this really cemented the two ideas together.  Now every morning when Dave leaves for work, Nate announces that he is going to work with Batman.  

I am convinced he doesn't actually know who Batman is, couldn't pick him out of a lineup, wouldn't recognize him if he swung in on one of his cool toys and had his way with Catwoman right in front of us.

So this morning I asked. "Nate, do you know who Batman is?

Nate: "Uh huh.  Batman is a dinosaur."

Me: "A dinosaur?"

Nate: "Uh huh.  With a black hat."

Taken by Papa Ken on our Ducky Boat Ride (while we all pointed and chorused, "look at the Batman Dinosaur!").  

So nothing gets by our boy.

Duly noted.

Quote of the Week

Nate: "Don't squeeze me.  I'm not Play-Doh."

****

In the course of a 10 minute car drive, Dave taught Nate some meteorological facts.  Low pressure brings rain clouds and high pressure brings sun.
When Nate got home he proudly explained this to me - complete with squeaky voice and tiptoes for "high pressure" and assumed bass and squat for "low pressure."
Two days later he woke up in the midst of a truly impressive thunderstorm.  He looked around and said "We have thunder and lightning and rain.  We have low pressure."
If only the weathermen were so reliable.

Not exactly a car wash

Nate helped me unload the dishwasher before work this morning.  He very carefully took out the small plastic valves for his zippy cup and put them first into a later plastic container and then put the whole hint into a cabinet.
He got a special sticker for helping me out and he was VERY pleased with himself.
He then went on to entertain himself with his shoes and sunglasses while I loaded the dirty dishes and started the dishwasher.  It came to be time to leave and I could not find my car key.  It is a little brick of a key with a metal key that comes out like a switchblade and a couple buttons for remote entry.  I have had it for ten years and it has been dropped a lot.  It is held together by scotch tape.  At one point I asked the dealer for a new key.  "Sure," they said.  "for a mere $300."  I declined.
So, back to this morning and the missing key.
After hunting for a few minutes I said, "Hey, does anyone know where my car key is?"
"Oh!" exclaimed Nate, sprinting toward the kitchen.  He stopped next to the dishwasher.  "It's in there."
And it was, nestled into the silverware holder between two spoons.
Squeaky clean and thankfully still functional.

Branching Out

I was overjoyed when I discovered, through a chance encounter, that it would be possible to make my carnivorous vegan son a tasty chocolate cake.  He has eaten many of these depression-era chocolate cupcakes and had a dinosaur birthday cake made from the batter as well.  The frosting, made by necessity with Blue Bonnet light margarine was a little soft with an unfortunate tendency to separate, but all in all the cake was a success.
Given my recent discovery of vegan buttermilk, I felt ready to branch out and Grandma Nancy's birthday gave me the perfect occasion.
I was inspired by a friend from residency and her food/fashion/family blog but ultimately ended up settling on a slightly more time consuming but beautiful plan.
I used a vegan vanilla cupcake recipe I found on line (Note: do not consider the addition of the almond extract optional.  It was amazing.) and ended up using a triple recipe, but I made one batch at a time to keep it from going flat while waiting for the layers to be colored and baked.

 (I learned, actually, that our oven is not level, not that anything in our 70+ year old house is.  The resultant fat-on-one-side-skinny-on-another layers required some engineering skill to layer into a level cake.)
The finished product was supposed to be a rainbow but I got distracted in my ROYGBIV and it was just a colorful hodge-podge instead.

The addition of shortening to the buttercream improved the situation significantly though I lacked the diabetic determination necessary to put enough between the layers to really separate the colors.

A thin layer of chocolate on the outside because I firmly believe a birthday cake without chocolate is heresy, some rainbow candles, and voila, birthday magic.

More Nate

Things Nate has said in the last few days.

When we were at the Butler Fair a few weeks ago we saw a white chicken that was throwing up.  It was super gross but Nate was fascinated and has talked about "that throwing up white hen" ever since.  When we were talking about what we might see at the Ohio State Fair, he announced that he wanted to see the "throwing up white hen".  Trying to prepare for the inevitable I said "Well, they may not have a throwing up white hen at this fair."
"No, just a brown one," he shot right back.
He then talked ceaselessly about when we would see the "throwing up brown hen, not a white one at this fair, Mommy Dactyl".

Getting out of the bathtub:
"Don't dry me.  I want to be wet and naked.  And cold."
Um, Ok.  I guess.

Yesterday and today when I dropped something in the kitchen:
"What happened, Hon?"
Me: "Did you just call me hon?"
All I got back was a sneaky look.

Putting on PJ's, the top, like many things, was a tight fit over his brainiac melon.
"I have a big head.  I don't like that big head."

After being tickled by his pediatrician:
"Mommy, that man was using his hand spider."

Dave remarked the other night that Nate was "scary smart".
"I'm not scary," Nate piped up.  "I'm nice."

We got a lollipop at his pediatrician.  Nate chose a purple one.  Driving home in the car, he had a revelation.
"This purple popsicle tastes like grape!"
"Well, Nate, purple popsicles usually taste like grape."
"Uh huh! And those red popsicles taste like cherry, and those pink popsicles taste like watermelon and those green popsicles taste like grass!"
"Grass? Really?"
"Yes, they do.  And those yellow popsicles taste like Mr. Sun."

When he repeated this observation about the rainbow birthday cake, Grandma Nancy asked if green might taste like lime.  "No," he insisted, "just grass."
Pause.
"Actually those limes taste like grass."
Touche.

So Big!

Nate has been telling us for a while now that when he is "so big" he will ride in a boat. Well, this weekend we went to the Ohio State Fair and he rode in an alligator boat. It was a kiddie ride with no parents allowed and after some initial reticence, he finally agreed to get on alone.

And he had a BALL!!!!!!!

Then, confidence boosted, he also went on "the bug ride" by himself.  Also a big hit.

I kept looking at him this weekend and thinking that I didn't know where this very big boy had come from.

Having Kids ROCKS!

Nate is a two year old boy.  He likes trucks and police cars and fire engines.  Oh, how he loves fire engines.  A few nights ago when we got home for the day there were two fire engines (a mommy and a baby per Nate) idling up the street.  Such excitement ensued.
Today we stopped by fire station number 3 in the Strip District.  It was awesome.  He gave Nate a coloring book and stickers.  But that is not all.  Oh no, that is not all.  He turned on the lights on the engine.  He let Nate talk into the intercom that went all through the station.  ("Hi" he said.  And "baba ganoosh").  He let Nate sit in the drivers seat and turned on the engine.  It was loud.  And then, the ultimate fire truck experience, he pulled it out of the garage.
And. Shot. Off. The. Water. Cannon.
It went high, high in the sky.  He said they can hit the top of the bridge about three stories up and a half a block away but he didn't want anyone to wreck their car so he just sent it over their own roof.
It was awesome and a demo that I doubt Dave and I would have gotten if we hadn't had a two year old in tow.

 

Having kids ROCKS!

Green Space

My mom is great with plants.  For years and years she had violets.  I know next to nothing about violets, but I do know they need special food and they don't like to be touched and the sun has to be just right.  They're beautiful.  And I would never even try to grow them.

Her yard and garden is always pretty and creative.  Her plants thrive. 

*****

I have trouble keeping plants alive.  One of the first gifts Dave ever gave me was a miniature rose bush.  It came with a beautiful speech comparing our relationship to the rose bush.  It was immensely touching.  A few weeks later I had effectively killed the poor thing, and he begged me to forget the analogy.

*****

Despite this history (and the bunny scourge) our garden is actually flourishing.

I LOVE having fresh basil outside my back door.  Caprese salad has figured heavily into our diet this week.  There will also be pesto.  Lots of pesto.


Nate is most excited about the cherry tomatoes - one of his favorite foods, though he does prefer the orange ones.

Dave chose these heirloom "Mr. Stripey"s and they are doing well.

Of all the pepper plants (multicolored bell and Holey Moley) the green bell pepper (blech) is the only one with fruit, but I'm staying optimistic.

I could not get a photo that does the watermelons justice.  I (or rather Nathan) planted three watermelon seeds.  Three.  Those three seeds have generated about 50 feet of vine and about a million flowers.  They are invading our neighbor's yard.  They are climbing the other plants in the garden.  They are probably  making enough O2 to keep our family alive for the summer.  They are not yet making any watermelons, however.   I am patiently using positive imagery to conjure watermelon and grilled watermelon salad and watermelon slushies.  It may be that our friends will be getting some watermelons as well.

Stay tuned to find out what I learn to do with a million tomatoes and a bushel of basil.

Yum!!

Don't Say That in Public

A few mornings ago Nate observed the ritual of deodorant application.
"What are you doing?" he asked, brow furrowed.
"I'm just making sure I'm not stinky" I replied.
After a moment of consideration:
"You're a skunk! You're a stinky skunk!"

Except he doesn't start any words with "S"'s so what he said was
"You're a kunk.  You're a tinky kunk."
It sounded bad.  Really, really bad.
I'm waiting to get called into the principal's office, but it seems that thus far no one at school has been a "kunk".

Tummy Troubles - an update

Yes, it is that time again. 

I am going to force you to consider my son's growth chart.

He's growing.

I will not include his height chart because it looks as though he has actually shrunk.  However, they measured him standing, which was fairly ineffective after 1+ hours in the waiting room.  He was antsy and giggly and it was impossible to get him to stand straight with his feet against the wall and his head up at the same time.  Especially since he kept turning his head to look up at the measuring tape.

As one of two adults who daily watches the "safe" areas on our high counters and tables shrink, I can tell you he is getting taller.  Either that or he is getting chimp arms.

He is overall doing a lot better.  Eating OK usually - as good as any toddler I suppose.  Occasional complaints of "yellow spills" but no actual throwing up except the "ice cream incident".  

While Dave and I were both hoping for a small change/addition, the doctor vetoed all my proffered suggestions.  She said he is growing but "just eking along" with all the support we are giving him.  That sounds a little scary but I think it just means we don't have much wiggle room so lets not rock the boat.

So we will go on without milk, eggs, soy, sesame, peas, beans, and peanuts and do another endocscopy in 6 months.  I think it's really all good.  He's doing great.  This will give me an opportunity to try out some more vegan soy-free recipes. (And yes, I did make vegan buttermilk.  It seems anything is possible.)  His new teacher at school, Miss Susie, is very aware of making sure he doesn't get left out of food related things.  Though it has presented Dave and I with some challenges in terms of food prep and delivery, we are very grateful.  And, last night, Dave made a tasty cheese sauce with almond milk and vegan rice cheese so Nate can have mac and cheese like any other toddler.

Sick Days

Nate and I had planned to spend Saturday alone together.  Daddy had to work and Nate and I planned all sorts of fun.
Friday night we transitioned to the "big boy bed".

The ensuing chain of night time wakings that seemed to signal an inauspicious beginning to this transition was proven, by the wee hours of the morning, to actually be due to a 102F fever.
Tylenol administered and breakfast ignored, Nate and I decided to run some errands, with the hope of making it home by the time the medicine wore off and the febrile shaking screaming beast reemerged.  A comedy of errors involving a missing Costco Card and a parking snafu somehow led us to the Children's Museum.  Yes, I have to confess, I contributed to the general seething cauldron of potential disease.
We did mostly stay outside.

When we left and I took his sunglasses off, his right eye was surrounded by an atrocious ring of eye goop and sand that I had completely missed the accumulation of.  Thankfully no other parent saw before I had a chance to diaper wipe it off his face.

He was still feeling fine, so we ran a few of our errands after all and ended up at Chicken Latino, one of our favorites in Pittsburgh for a cool watermelon slushie.

Freeing the Hostages

We sent Nate to bed last night essentially without dinner.
If that doesn't shock you, you haven't been paying attention.  The earnest care and angst with which we coax every possible calorie into our son is exhausting.  Moreover, I think he understands on some level that we'll do just about anything to get him to eat - bribery, silly dances, games, reverse psychology.  Now, he's in the heart of the twos, looking for a way to assert himself and be independent, and the struggles about food have been escalating.  We coax, he refuses, then sweetly acquiesces, then refuses, then agrees to some new point of negotiation.
Last night he was overtired, Dave was sick, I was recovering from the fever-virus-from-hades, and the second time he pushed his nearly untouched dinner plate away and said he didn't want it, I did not push it back.  I took it into the kitchen and took him out of his seat and declared dinner over.
It's fair to say he never did really calm down again.  He cried and wailed about wanting his food, wanting to be held, wanting to eat dinner.  Most of it was incoherent but we did manage to determine that if the price of eating was sitting in his chair like a big boy, he was not interested.
We bathed and pajama-ed a weeping boy and put him to bed almost an hour early.  He was out like a light and was more pleasant though still "two" this morning.

Dave and I have agreed to let him go without eating if necessary.  He's on the growth chart, respectably chubby, and except for the "ice cream incident" at the fair, he hasn't thrown up in months.  It seems that at this point not eating is more likely to be a behavioral symptom than a medical one.
Sometimes toddlers eat and sometimes they don't.  They all seem to get by without their own personal short order cook. Nate is loosing his.

Mind-works

Due to an unscheduled monsoon, we did not see any fireworks on Fourth of July.  Dave's parents had staked out a great spot down at the point and were protecting it from the expressed eminent domain of several large Pittsburghers.  We had planned to me them after spending some time at the New Fellow Welcome picnic.  It was literally as we were getting ready to walk out the door that the skies opened up and the water level in the pool started to rise.

No fireworks for us.

It was a bummer too because I had spent most of the day preparing Nate for the spectacle of loud explosions in the sky right above him.  We watched some videos on YouTube.  Talked about how Fireworks are pretty but loud and discussed strategies, such as giving big hugs and covering his ears, to deal with the noise if it got to be too much.

I also told him that the last time I saw Fireworks he lived in my belly and that he got so excited he was moving and kicking inside.  Initially, this did not get much of a response.  A while later, however, as we were on our way to the picnic, he piped up from the back seat, clearly at the end of a long period of thoughtfulness.

"Those fireworks be little loud. Scare Nate. Nate go back in your tummy and be safe."

*****

We had a hasty bath because it got late while we were planting our apple tree (more on that later).  Nathan was sitting in barely an inch of water, waiting for the tub to fill when he started loudly requesting "cold, cold water" which he gets, after the bath is filled, when I turn the tap down to a slow trickle for him to fill his various bottles and cups.  I told him no, not yet, when the water got up to his nipples, then he could have cold water.

He sort of listlessly stirred the water with his hands and then perked up.  he filled up his little bottle, poured it on his chest and announced "Yay! That water on my nipples.  Now I have cold, cold water. That's right!"

And, of course, because he is adorable and smart, we relented.

June: A summary

1. Gardening - After lovingly and laboriously planting, watering, and watching over our garden, it was discovered by the bunnies and completely deforested.  Well, except the cilantro and the basil.  But tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, carrots, dill - all gone.  We were left with two small patches of herbs, two watermelon plants, and some straggly green onions.

We, however, refused to be as decimated as our garden.  We persevered with the help of Lowe's and the farmer's market.  We bought some small plants and built a fence.  The tomatoes are flowering and we seem to be back in business.

2. Health - I have been sick for what is starting to feel like years.  A progression of stubborn colds and a general malaise, and a lymph node in my neck that just wouldn't go away.  Finally, the oncologist within me on red alert, I had a biopsy of the offending node.  The diagnosis is Kikuchi disease, a self-limited autoimmune condition that should resolve within 6 months at the most.  As the name might imply, this is found most commonly among the Japanese.  Since I am decidedly caucasian, this diagnosis confirms my general classification as unusual.  I feel pretty confident that my PCP and I know exactly the same amount about this disease because we read the same E-medicine article.  In any case, I am slowly getting better.  I have had laryngitis for almost two weeks, but even that is getting better and I am loosing my husky, sexy baritone.

3. Running - Because of the above mentioned malaise, I have not been as consistent in my gym attendance as previously, but I am still eking along, genuinely loosing weight and  . . . drumroll please . . . I jogged for a full 20 minutes for the first time since I was in med school.  I went back this morning and it wasn't exactly a skip through the tulips.  More like roses.  Really thorny roses.  But I made it.  And really my biggest problem was this cough so I am confident I'll be back to three times a week this week.

4. Work - Dave started a new job - he is now a trainee in the financial planning program for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.  Starting in November he will be available for all your financial planning needs.  This is a big exciting change for him and one that he has needed to make for a while.  But it is also throwing our household into chaos.  He actually has a schedule and work hours and an immense lack of flexibility.  We're getting up earlier which makes EVERYONE, even the little one, cranky.  But it's good and he's studying like he's back in school.  This will be his "first year of fellowship".

5. Research - July first starts what was going to be my last year at Pitt but that may be changing slightly.  I just found out I won a grant from the St. Baldrick's Foundation - remember the folks Dave shaved his head for? - and it is a two year grant.  So, between Dave's training program and the awe-inspiring fact that someone wants to pay me real money to do what I am loving doing, we may be here a titch longer than originally planned.  Things are going along swimmingly and I even presented my data at a local research symposium.  Seeing that this was my first real research presentation ever and that most of the other presenters had PhD's and had clearly done this before, I was shocked to win an "Outstanding Presentation" Award. (And thrilled by the cash.)

6. School - Nate graduated to the "Toddler" program at school.  Complete with certificate and room change.  He LOVES his new teachers and talks nonstop about all the fun he had at school when he comes home.  I think he had really outgrown the stimulation available in the Tot room which pretty much consisted of looking at picture books and listening to the same CD.  Now there is s train table and a "kitchen" and shopping carts and "babies" to feed.  Plus dress up clothes and playing in the little pool two times a week.  Plus, wait for it, a pretend vacuum cleaner.  He is playing with this almost every time I pick him up.  This morning, clutching a kiss a la "The Kissing Hand" he sat down to eat his breakfast "like a big boy" and did not cry when I dropped him off.  I have all fingers and toes crossed and a braid in my hair in hopes that this will continue.

7. Growth - Nate is firmly over 25 pounds and tall enough to climb whatever he wants and to harvest any item of his choice from all but the very center of the dining table.  I am proud of him, so happy that he feels well, and unabashedly acknowledge that there were advantages to a pee wee boy.

Overall June has been a good month for our family.  I am sorry I was away so long.  I can't promise that it will never happen again, but I have a lot swirling around in my mind to write about so it may be more consistent for a while.