Don’t Eat Your Wheaties

Where did the last month go? I keep waiting for a chance to relax, and it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me.

Earlier this month, we went to the coast with some friends from college. They meet there every summer to catch up as we all live in different cities now. It was fun but chaotic, as 4 of the 5 married couples who made it now have children (all of which were between the ages of 10 and 22 months). A vacation isn’t the same when you can’t just be on a lazy carefree schedule, and trying to make 4 infant/toddler schedules mesh is nothing short of insane.

We did not start that week off well, either. I came home on Monday the 9th with a headache and generally not feeling well. It got worse and worse, and by the time I put Elijah to be around 8, I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach. Less than two hours later, I was hit hard with food poisoning. It was the sickest I have ever been. And without divulging the nasty details, I will say that even the blood vessels in my face suffered. Unfortunately, John ended up getting it as well — he was just 2 hours behind me (he ate his lunch about 2 hours after me — found the culprit!). On the bright side, we are thankful we got sick at night when Elijah was sleeping. There’s no way we could have cared for him during that torture. Fortunately, too, John’s stepmom came to get Elijah in the morning and take him to school, which allowed us to recover. It took until that evening for us to start regaining strength, and neither of us ate much for 3 days. We finally started to get our appetite back on our drive to the coast.

This past weekend, we hosted family for an Olympic opening ceremony-watching party. It was fun, but poor Elijah got unbelievably overstimulated. Neither John nor I had ever seen him so hyper. He was nearly running back and forth between our living room and den yelling, laughing and screaming. Thankfully, he still went to bed easily.

Oh, so…yes, Elijah is now walking. I don’t have the exact day written down here, but I did write it in his baby book. It took him about 3 weeks to get incredibly solid on his feet, but he doesn’t fall much anymore. He also hasn’t crawled in about 2 weeks now. I am sad to see that go. Now I have a toddler. I can’t even joke that I have an infant anymore.

The other big news lately is that we think Elijah may have a gluten sensitivity. We won’t be going to the pediatrician for two more weeks (when I am off work), but we have kept him on a gluten-free diet for the past week and have seen a marked improvement. I did not know that gluten passes through breastmilk, and as I am still nursing Elijah twice a day, he got some gluten from my hamburger bun on Saturday night. Sunday morning, he woke up with an upset tummy (hadn’t had any of these since going gluten-free), and he was biting and hitting again, He was incredibly fussy all morning until after his nap and was largely refusing food. He hasn’t had gluten since Saturday night and seems back to good already. I do not want him to have to deal with that, but if he does have a gluten sensitivity, I am so glad we found it earlier rather than later.

I am toying with giving up my “professional” blog, which means I will post here more often. After all, I care more about chronicling family memories than spending hours upon hours a day maintaining a site that is still just a hobby. And to be honest, I do not think it would ever go past being a hobby, because I hardly have time for it as it is, and in order to push the site to the next level, I would need time that I quite honestly do not have between being a wife and mommy, working and all the other adult responsibilities that are just oh so fun.