Sorry So Long

I apologize for the long break in posting. My wonderful mother has come to stay for a week and I am enjoying the help so much that I can't find time to post anything. I'll post some pictures in a few days. Here are some things that we've been up to lately that you can discuss:

1. Our family has started eating a mostly vegan diet. Basically, this means we stay away from all meat, dairy (yes, this means cheese and ice cream), plus we're off of synthetic sweeteners, sugar, and gluten (which is in all wheat). You might be asking, "Well, what in the world CAN you eat?" We can eat anything that grows (fruit, veggies, nuts, beans) and whole grains that do not contain wheat or gluten (oats, brown rice). We also replace sugar with natural honey and we replace milk with rice milk (which we actually like better). This diet helps all of us with all of our minor health issues (Riah's excema, Jack's Asperger's Syndrome, and my ADHD). Mostly, we just want to live long, healthy lives and this diet (along with exercise) is the best way to do that. To our Knoxville friends and family...we are social meat and dairy eaters, so don't feel like you can't have us over to cook out burgers and eat cheese dip.

2. The girls are pretty much potty trained. Yippeee!! Molly rarely has accidents (knock on wood:) and Riah only has accidents at night now. I am about to blow my brains out from changing the sheets all the time, but it is really nice to take diapers/pull ups off out of our budget--hence, the ability to afford to eat vegan!

3. Jack is no longer in occupational therapy. Going to preschool has been so great for him and we no longer feel like he need the OT. We are, however, continuing our petitions to the Knox County Schools to try to get him into speech therapy. His understanding of others around him needs some work. But, by God's grace, he gets better all the time. We are grateful for the therapy that he has been blessed to receive.

4. Thanks for the great comments about my last post on parenting. I've had many people say to me, "I love when you post stuff like that because you are honest--you talk about motherhood as it really is." Well, in response to this, those who know me at all know very well that I was holding back a lot of things I really wanted to say!! I think this is something we all struggle with, to a certain extent. Let me encourage you to be honest about yourself this week--be real. I'm not saying that it's okay to chase your children up the stairs and scream bloody murder like I did this morning when my kids wouldn't stop fighting over a toy! But, it is okay to talk about that sometimes. I would love to find a blog where the author wrote posts listing big mistakes they had made that day and what they learned from them. Let's stop airbrushing our lives so much.

Okay, so there ya go. That's the latest. I love you all. Bring on the comments!!