Chocolate Chocolate CHOCOLATE AAAAGH!

While my birthday was last Wednesday I did not really celebrate it at all.  My husband was sick that day and I had too much going on with kids to do much for myself.  Then Saturday I thought I had caught a break.  My older 2 kids were at their dad's, Kris went to work, and Autumn got invited to a friend's house for a couple of hours.  I was going to be......................ALONE!  I could do a few things around the house that I had wanted to get to, or I could sit on my butt and do nothing, or I could go for a walk, who knows!

Well that lasted for a very, very, VERY short time.  It was warm yet rainy.  Very rainy.  And because of the extreme cold we have had here over the past few weeks we had nothing but ice for that rain to fall upon.  Our basement, which is not finished off, got overwhelmed like everyone else's basement did during the flooding of 2011 that saw underground water tables rise to flood stage throughout Vermont.  Click HERE to view an album of photos from this historic and horrible event!  The water came up underneath my house and in through cracks in the floor of the basement.  We also had a time where it rained so hard in the winter that it came in through our large well window down there, breaking the seal of concrete.  That is easily remedied by sand bags.  This time the water was funneling off the road because of how the ice had formed and under my front porch, where there exists another smaller window.  That window could not take the ridiculous amount of water pressing into it and the seal broke and we had waterfalls. There goes my gym and photography studio. At least I found this incredible energy within myself and did things I did not know I could do, like practically heave a twin box spring up 14 stairs.  UP.

What does all this have to do with chocolate, you ask?  Well, because my husband and I had to spend all Saturday afternoon and evening trying desperately to save our basement and stop it from flooding worse than it already was, he was unable to calmly and slowly make me a cake that fit into my new dietary guidelines.  So instead he decided to make a from scratch chocolate cake, dubbed "The Best Chocolate Cake Ever" and found on addapinch.com  He did keep it mostly dairy free (although I learned after he put chocolate chips into the frosting), but in no universe was it SUGAR free.  Or even reduced.

We took it to my parents' house on the same day that he made it: yesterday.  The frosting was made with Coconut Milk instead of regular milk (it was supposed to have been made with coconut cream....) but was too runny so instead of frosting the cake with it I had the brilliant idea to pour it into dishes and we could dip the cake in.  Very fancy and decadent-like.  And easy to over eat the frosting.   I had already eaten probably 2 cups of Chex Mix which I did not realize had a stick of butter in it until I had gotten going on it.  Oh well, I just kept going.  Then we had the cake.  It really was THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE EVER, and the frosting "dip" was coconut-chocolate flavored which is one of my favorite things.  MY LORD.  I ate a very large piece.  And then had a tiny slice to help finish off the frosting.  Then I didn't eat dinner, but instead had another good sized piece about 4 hours after the first one.  SO GOOD.

However, even though it was so TASTY good I started feeling not so good.  After I had eaten the Chex Mix and first piece of cake my mom remarked on how tired I looked.  That's when I noticed I had started slumping and spacing out.  I felt very...blah.  I hadn't felt like that in 2 straight days which is a lot for me.  Then when I got home I entered the entire cake recipe into the MyFitnessPal recipe builder to find out just how badly I had hurt myself.  It was bad.  Real bad.  As demonstrated here in my sugar report:

My.  God.


MFP has this cute little button at the end of each day that you get to push that tells you how much you would weigh if you ate like that every day for 5 weeks.  Mine had me gaining just about 20 lb.  And that was without having any soda, ice cream, bread, dinner, etc.  In face I was only at about 17 g sugar until I ate that cake.  It really is eye opening.

Today I had a hard time getting out of bed.  I got dizzy when I woke up like before, and my stomach is not happy with me.  I'm also finding myself much hungrier than I have been.  I'm sticking with my dairy free today and as you can see above I have gone over my daily sugar goal and its only 3pm.  I will not be having any sweets for the rest of the day and hopefully dinner will be something like brown rice with tuna and black beans or something.

This really is a struggle.  All of our holidays and celebrations seem to rely heavily on sugar and it is considered rude and a bummer if you don't participate, especially in your own birthday party.  It was bad enough I had to turn down the Blue Bunny Birthday Ice Cream, which looked delicious.  

Sugar It Ain't Working Out or, There's Something About Dairy

For the past few years I have been using MyFitnessPal first as an app and then on my PC.  It's a great way to keep track of your food and exercise.  Yes, it takes time to enter what you are eating in, but if you are like me and you feel like poo all the time and you need to find out why it can be a great tool.

I have come to find out that something about dairy does not agree with my body.  Lactaid does not seem to help, neither does eating dairy items that do not contain lactose such as certain cheeses.  Even the small amount of ranch dressing I ate last night triggered intestinal...issues.  It may be a combination of things.  All I know is that no more creemees, no more cheese, no more yogurt.  Those have been staples throughout my life and so I have to develop an entirely new way of thinking about food.

My non-gastro symptoms over the past 6 months have been:

itchy flaky scalp
oily yet dry hair and skin
hair thinning
red bumps that form on my upper arms
dry feet
bloated stomach
bad mood swings, troubled thinking
flare ups of cystic acne anywhere on me
insomnia

Because I have a history of clinical depression I cannot pretend that it might not be from a history of eating poorly.   I have been taking liquid Vitamin D several times a month in 5,000 IU doses and that does seem to be helping with both the itching on my scalp (it has lessened but not disappeared) and with my depressive thinking.  I live in Vermont and its winter 80% of the year it seems!

I turned 35 on Wednesday of this week and that is a more important day to me than New Year's day so I have resolved that I will try eliminating things from my diet to see if that truly makes a difference.  And I'm not just saying that.  I have actually taken steps to do this.  Sometimes I talk about doing something but never get around to it.  Not this time.

So starting Thursday I eliminated dairy (except for a tiny bit of ranch which did cause intestinal distress!) and tried to halve my sugar intake.  I was doing great until I went to dinner with my friend Kim.  The food I ate was mostly sugar free, but then I automatically ordered a Coke.  I can't drink Diet Coke because it gives me UT issues (not infections, just pain) so I cut that out many months ago and haven't had a problem since.  But unfortunately Fountain Coke has 40g of sugar in a 12oz serving and that is what I had.  My sugar at the end of the day totaled 109 grams. Damn.

This is how I'm helping to supplement no dairy.  They taste a bit like butt after you have swallowed them.

Today I said, "Ok, I am not going to let that happen again."  I have eaten nothing but natural, healthy, mostly raw foods today.  However, my sugar total is up to 80 grams and I haven't had dinner yet.  My caloric intake is low, I need to eat more actually, but the sugar is off the charts.  I think I will just measure added sugar and not natural sugar because at this time I am not a diabetic.

My goal is 50 grams a day (still too much but way better) but I had almost reached half of that with my breakfast.  I had:
1 small hard boiled egg
1 piece of light toast with 1 tbsp of honey and 1 tsp cinnamon
1 clementine
1 cup energizing black tea
caltrate and adult gummy vitamins

these are quite tasty

Apparently the honey, while raw and full of goodness, is too much sugar.  But I don't want to give it up because honey and cinnamon has helped me coast through the sicknesses that have come and gone in my house with me only catching 1 head cold for 1 day!  That is unheard of for me.  Dairy substitutes I am using are Unsweetened Almond Milk and Earth Balance buttery spread.

I am eating snacks about 2 hours apart to keep from getting too hungry while my body deals with this diet change.  I'm not going to pretend I don't want to lose the 5 lb that have crept on since this time in 2012, so yes I am also eating lighter.  However, this is because most of the high calorie foods I was ingesting were dairy or sugar heavy.  I'm also switching my daily 2-3 "cups" (more like barrels) of coffee for 4oz cups of different kinds of tea.  Caffeinated in the morning, herbal in the afternoon and evening.  I can stand it straight but it isn't as delicious as french vanilla coffee with Almond Joy creamer in it.  Sigh.  I am not giving up my Friday morning coffee with my friend Becca though.  That will be my "binge" day.

Here is a chart I produced from MFP's site on my sugar intake.  Its over the last 90 days, and I wish I had entered more in the past couple of months or could go back even farther to see how high it was earlier in the year.

I mean really.  How am I not diabetic if that one back in November was my norm?

I'm slowly creeping down (the shortest bar is today, which is only half done) to my goal of 50.  I also wanted to try showing myself how much sugar I was taking in by dumping that many grams on a scale (I did a bit over 100g in this pic)

This is about 100 grams, which also equals 1/3 of a cup.  Yuck.

This is not an Aztec step pyramid.  This is 21 sugar cubes, which also equals 100 grams.

100 grams also equals 25 teaspoons.  

Seeing those equivalencies did do the trick for my brain to get a grasp of how much sugar I was pouring into my body.  My plan is to stick with how I'm eating for 7 days.  I'm a 3's kind of girl.  That means I give up usually after the third day, third week, or third month.  Today as I am writing this is Day 3 of my diet change.  

I did notice last night that I had way more energy, way less stomach pain, and fell asleep more easily than usual.  I will try to get up the nerve to take a before body pic so that I can see if any changes in shape take place.

Reflections.

Day 3: Science, My Favorite Subject

Today was hectic, but not because of things like yesterday.  I haven't been sleeping great so I woke up later than I should have for a day where I had to get Autumn ready for her first day of preschool this year.  She needs to be there at 9 but its only a mile and a half away from our house.  I came down, made breakfast, made coffee, and checked on the 5 Painted Lady chrysaliseseses that we have been waiting on to hatch.  I figured they had another day or so left when I looked at them yesterday.  Today they looked very dark and I could see some wing detail through 4 out of 5 of them (one caterpillar was later than the others).

I took the high heeled shoe jewelry hanger that I had strung them on out of its protective mesh house and set it on the counter so I could photograph them.  I went up to get my camera and find the dioptic attachment that would allow me to take extreme closeups with my Nikon D7000 and 18-55mm kit lens.  This is the same method I used when I did all those monarchs last year.

Diopter attachment with step-down ring

A side note about the diopters/dioptics:  They are similar to holding a magnifying glass up to your lens.  They are extremely cheap, about $12 for a set of 4 differing strengths on Amazon.com.  They only seem to work well on my 18-55mm kit lens extended to 55mm.  They do not work on my longer telephoto lens but I've never tried one on my prime lenses.  I bought the wrong size of diopters about 4 years ago and they collected dust until I found out about step up and step down rings, which are thin plastic rings that screw on to your lens to make up for missing millimeters.  They are also very cheap, only a couple of dollars on Amazon.  LIFESAVERS when you have an expensive filter or unique attachment that is not quite the right size.  I used to use duct tape.

When I came downstairs Alicia yelled "MOM there's a butterfly!!"

 Little stinker had emerged in the 5 minutes I had gone upstairs!!  I looked at the clock.  It was 8:35am.  I had not yet gotten Autumn ready for school other than feeding her.  I looked at the chrysalises, then back at Autumn, then at the clock.  "Autumn, go get dressed and go pee!" I yelled.  She ran upstairs so I whipped out the camera and started taking photos of the new butterfly and the remaining chrysalises.

One looked like it was about to emerge and I had to go so I set up my tripod and had Alicia stand post to take photos in case one came out.

You can see where the skin of the chrysalis is beginning to "unzip" in this photo

I dropped Autumn off at preschool and hurried back home.  Alicia was delightedly standing in the chair saying "One hatched Mommy!  I got TONS of pictures of it!"  I had showed her how to take photos for a time lapse video.  She took 105 pictures to make this time lapse:

Unfortunately it was focused on the wrong chrysalis but that's ok.  She did it all by herself.

Her idea next was to draw what the hanging, drying butterfly looked like.  I showed her the eye spots, and how the spiracles that we could see on the chrysalis had translated into spiracles that were present on the abdomen of the butterfly.  We also looked at its probiscus (tongue) as it curled and uncurled it, almost as if it was playing with it!

See the small slits on each segment of the abdomen?  Those are the spiracles that the butterfly breathes through!

You can see the curled up probiscus flanked by the butterfly's tiny little forelegs in this photo

The 4 eye spots and the scales of the butterfly's wings are visible in this photo

I decided to hang the next chrysalis that looked ready to go on the same hook I use for my coffee creamer measuring.  It is near the window and I figured it would be easier to photograph than being on the jewelry hanger.

Can you spot the chrysalis?

Here is a short video of the first one I hung there emerging:

My camera is NOT known for its video capabilities, and unfortunately you can hear my lens struggling to keep up with focusing so I suggest you watch it on mute as that noise gets irritating.  Its cool to see the little guy come out though.

Something else we observed was that once the butterfly had been hanging there for a bit a few drops of what I call "Butterfly Blood" but is really just excess "frass" drips out of their...butts:

As each butterfly hatched I would let one dry and then when it seemed that its wings were stiff enough I moved it into the Butterfly Pavilion where I placed a potted plant and a vase of Cosmos from my garden. 

 Each butterfly would hang for a while and then it would start pumping its wings and turn itself upright.  It takes 12 hours for their wings to completely stiffen.

This one is a female.  You can tell because males have more colorful eye spots on the bottom half of their wings.  Females also have thicker abdomens.

This is what the chrysalis looks like after it has been opened and emptied:

Back (dorsal) view

Front view

All in all it was a lot of fun to hatch these guys!  Not quite as rewarding as finding the eggs outside and raising them all the way through but it made my day to both see them myself and see Alicia appreciating the process and being involved and interested in them.  She is usually terrified of insects so I'm hoping this will give her a greater appreciation for them.  I'm looking forward to next year and will order a variety of butterfly eggs/caterpillars starting much earlier in the season.

Oh and she did some math today completely at her own pace and did an excellent job.  :)

Here is a great link for Painted Lady and other butterfly rearing info!

Yo Mama's School of Home Day 2: History and Reading Comp

First let me say that Windows 8 sucks.  Maybe if you have a touch screen computer it is fantabulous.  But on a regular PC I just don't get the point.  What was wrong with putting Windows 7 on all non-touch screen computers??    I went to turn on the laptop for Alicia to start her lessons at 8:45am and I see these words:

"Restarting.  Your computer will restart in 2 days with updates."  All while a circle of white dots just went around and around and around and around.  I thought it was joking.  I waited 15 minutes and the screen did not change.  So I hard booted the b-tard and it came up installing updates.  0% installed....................................................(5 min passes)....1% installed.................................................................  You get the picture.  We decided to do our Bible study while waiting.  We checked back with it and 30 min had gone by and it was at....15%!  Wow!  Awesome.  

seriously???  i know i know it isn't supposed to mean that it takes 2 days to restart, but it sure seemed like it would!

I instead had her work at my laptop in my bedroom and we started the Ancient Civilization: Mesopotamia unit that is within her online curriculum. She learned about how to read a physical map, where the Fertile Crescent was and what made it fertile, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the difference between a civilization and an empire. We went over calendars, B.C. vs A.D. (so glad they are not using the pointless "C.E." and "B.C.E." if it ain't broke don't fix it) and how to figure out how old something was if it was earlier than 1 AD vs. if it was later than 1 AD which involved mathematics as well.  I sat beside her the entire time, teaching her, showing her pictures of the hanging gardens and of present day Iraq.  I felt like I had done a pretty thorough job.

Then we did the quiz.  She seemed to forget 80% of what we had just talked about.  She ended up crying because it was stressing her out she said.  I went over the quiz with her and she seemed like she had retained nothing.  Apparently I am going to have to find some other way to teach to her other than sitting down and explaining it.  I think I need a good sized whiteboard.  

I gave her a break, and had her do "Gym Class" on the Wii Fit for 30 minutes.  

Yep, PJs all day!

Meanwhile, I put in the Kettle Worx DVD and did a 20 minute work out.  My Dad came at noon for our Wednesday Pizza Lunch and after we ate I had Alicia draw the chrysalis of the Painted Lady butterfly that we currently have 5 of. 

First she focused on drawing the hook that the chrysalis is hanging from. 

 

I restrung and hung them from the only thing with 5 hooks I could find...my jewelry holder!!

Then I realized that she wasn't understanding what I meant so I drew the outline of the chrysalis very large and had her use a flashlight to see the details and fill in the outline.  I spent a good half hour describing to her where each part of the butterfly was forming under the chrysalis shell and what the parts were called.  I am sort of an expert in this area as I did an extensive photographic study of the Monarchs I raised last year (over 50 of them) and learned SO much by observing and researching.  I realize that this means I DID teach some Science today.  Just not the one in the curriculum.

We finished the day with 2 hours of reading comprehension.  Again, I am seeing a lazy summer's effect on her reading abilities.  She doesn't normally like to read at all, which is something I am going to be focusing on with her as much as possible.  She scored pretty low on the quiz and I'm feeling a little discouraged.  I know, its only day 2.  I need to learn patience and adapt to her needs just like she needs to learn to listen and comprehend.  We are both learning here.  

I find myself excited to start again tomorrow despite feeling a bit overwhelmed by today's marathon sessions and am right now working on finding a way to make our day more realistic.  I'm not sure if I should just do one subject per day or try to mix up several subjects throughout each day in shorter spurts.  Or maybe 1 core subject and 1 "fun" subject (art, gym, photography, etc) per day...I feel like I should have started in August!  

Yo Mama's School Of Home Day 1

Well, I did it.  I took the plunge and decided to keep my middle child, Alicia, home this year for fourth grade and possibly longer.  I have a long history of proving the old adage "Never say never" to be right.  Prior to this year I was on the side of "Oh that's ok for YOU to do but I could NEVER do that!"  I was a scoffer.

Long story short, Alicia was not excelling in public school last year.  She started the year strong, and in Kindergarten through 2nd grade she had always scored high in math and, well, all the other subjects also.  But at the end of 3rd grade she had declined in her scores and I was getting notes telling me that my daughter was sweet, kind, and had anxiety.  I have had her in counseling for this anxiety for several months now but it just wasn't translating over into her daily life effectively.

I thought about it long and hard, talked to other people who were homeschooling, thought about getting her some kind of summer help.  Then a couple of weeks ago when she looked at me with her big hazel eyes and said "Mommy I just want to be home with you and have you as a teacher" I realized that I really needed to pray and make a decision fast.  She is a very sensitive child, and yes of course I was tempted to just say "Suck it up like everyone else!" but it just wasn't in my heart to do that.

Thus we had our first day today of learning at home.  It started out at 8:45am with the microwave timer as our "bell".  I was trying desperately to finish up the editing for the photos I took at the Champlain Valley Fair on Sunday.  I finished just in time.  We sat down at the table and I started with a short prayer asking Jesus to give me brains enough to do this thing.  Next we did the first of 100 daily devotionals in a book called "Mommy and Me", taking turns reading the passages and quotes.  Autumn quickly lost interest and demanded to do her "homework" which is one of several preschool workbooks that I bought at the Dollar General.

Next we turned on the laptop that we got for Alicia to use and logged in to Time4Learning.  Alicia chose to do Language Arts first.  She was delighted to see that this lesson was done with cartoons and silly voices.  She flew through the entire week's lesson plan in 40 minutes.  She scored 65% on the first quiz about synonyms and 85% on the second quiz.  I know she just needs to get back into learning again.  Perhaps this Calendar 2.0 that people are debating isn't such a bad idea after all...

After the Language Arts lessons were over I had her get up and do 5 minutes of cardio exercises and stretches.  She loved this.

Then we moved upstairs to my son's room (he's at school so free room!) and she started with Science.  This took her a bit longer to do as it involved drawing what she thought a scientist should look like and then comparing it to another drawing of one to examine the differences.  I explained to her that it was scientific to observe, compare, and note the differences between two people's perceptions.  Then we sat down together and did a study of Meteorology and Atmosphere in the book Our Weather & Water which is an Answers in Genesis text.

I am trying to combine both secular studies and Christian studies in a way that gives her an enriching view of the world.  What was nice is that we talked about much more than science.  We talked about Life.  I feel closer to her already.

Autumn is LOVING having her favorite girl home

After Science we went on a walk to the park, then headed to the library to pick up books about 4 types of scientists.  Her assignment for the week is to learn about 4 kinds of scientists and write a page about them.  She chose Volcanologist, Marine Biologist, Ecologist, and Astronomer.  I can't wait to start doing experiments with her!

Turtle we observed in the pond between rec parks

Beautiful female Banded Argiope in front of the Eagle's Club

After lunch we sat down to do Math.  She learned about expanding standard numbers, which means taking the word "four hundred and fifty-six million, five hundred and forty thousand, six hundred and three" and turning it into 456,540,603 and vice versa.  After three worksheets and a lot of patience she had it mastered.  It took much longer than I thought it would, but she seemed to have forgotten a lot over the summer.

I asked her what would make her the most comfortable physically to do her math problems.  She looked at the bed.  Boy, if I could have done math in bed I probably would have had an A+! 

We decided to finish the day at 3:15.  I'm actually really looking forward to tomorrow.  I'm excited to see how it all unfolds and changes our lives.