hand, foot and mouth strikes again

Yesterday afternoon, Henry suddenly become very cranky and only wanted to be held. Then I noticed that he felt hot and sure enough, he had a fever. My first thought was that he had an ear infection, because he had one not too long ago. We gave him Motrin and Tylenol for the night, and this morning we went in to the doctor. It turns out that his ears are fine, but he has the hand, foot and mouth virus. I'm wondering if I have it too because I've had what I thought were terrible canker sores in my mouth, but maybe it's actually hand, foot and mouth. Ugh. Hopefully it won't last long, and mine won't get any worse. When Celia was a toddler she got hand, foot and mouth, and I ended up having a much worse case of it than she did. Oh, and here's a funny story (sort of). When I started thinking maybe Henry had an ear infection, I began putting a few drops of breast milk in his ears every time he nursed. It's a natural antibiotic and a good natural treatment for ear infections. I thought this was fairly mainstream knowledge, and I know our pediatrician would think it was a good route to take. So this morning we ended up seeing one of the nurse practitioners and I mentioned that was using the breast milk just in case it was an ear infection, and she looked at me like I was absolutely insane. So I'm pretty sure "mom crazy" is now part of Henry's medical record. I guess the NP is not as progressive as our pediatrician is... 

They always like the play house in the doctor's waiting room.

Luckily Celia is being so good today. She usually likes to help when Henry is sick.

Henry wasn't feeling well when he woke up this morning, but I gave him another dose of Motrin and he perked up after a while. He actually had a good breakfast and was in a pretty good mood for the doctor. Then we went home and he was really not doing so well again. I let him nap for a while while nursing, and Celia played a game on my phone, and then we woke Henry up, played and had lunch. He perked up again for a while around lunch time.

After lunch we played "wedding" for quite a while. The wedding involved Henry and me as guests and Celia as the bride. I'm not sure there was a groom. We were directed to bring her gifts and then watched her put on a show. Ha! Then she prepared a vegan meal in the play kitchen and we ate, had cake and sang Happy Birthday and had a tea party. It was quite an unusual wedding. Then Henry was getting tired again, so we read books and luckily he seems to be taking a good nap! Poor little guy. Celia and I are having some down time on the deck, and I'm hoping Henry will feel good enough for us to play at the water table when he wakes up. Celia is asking me constant questions right now. How do you make a rock? What happens when you eat food? What happens when you talk? (She wants to know what happens in your body when you do different things.) How does paper get made? The four year old mind just never stops. We just looked up a kids website that showed how the digestive system works. She loved it. 

Now to go and figure out what we're having for dinner tonight! Something that won't hurt Henry's throat or my mouth... 

bananas, guac and oreos, oh my!

I mentioned in the past week that I have a long term goal to move more toward a vegan diet. So much information about this subject is cluttering my brain that I think I need to start writing about it to get organized. 

If you're about to close this tab on your browser, stop! I haven't gone off the deep end and into some dark bizarro land of twigs and berries and plots to blow up animal laboratories. I'm the same, boring old person you've been reading about all along :). I'm just trying to eat healthier, have done a lot of research about where our food comes from, and am concerned enough about what I've learned that I want to change my diet even more.

If you'd like to know how this journey of mine started, check out Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver. I listened to it on CD. Kingsolver reads it herself, beautifully. Her voice is like a lullaby. Listen to this book while you're driving in the car. It's a fascinating story and it will change your life. This is what started me on a path to change my diet, and led me to read more about diet, nutrition, and factory farming. In the last two years we've made big changes to how we eat and buy food. We joined a CSA, buy local and in season, and buy organic produce both for health and environmental reasons. I've done lots of reading and research on factory farming. We eat limited meat and buy meat and eggs from small local farms where the animals and environment are treated as they should be.

For a few reasons I've now decided to further reduce my consumption of animal products. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with eating animal products. It's perfectly natural. I've just decided to do a lot less of it for my health and because of the way most animal products are produced.
 

There's a problem. Everyone thinks I'm a loony when I say I'd like to go vegan. This includes my Blub and my family. Big problem. Eating is kind of a major part of life, and if the people around me are constantly judging what I eat and telling me I'm doing something wrong this is going to be very stressful. Rather than showing a willingness to learn about current research on vegan nutrition, they fall back on myths about it and are absolutely convinced that one cannot be healthy without eating animal products.

The funny thing is, if I decided to try a popular fad diet, everyone would think that was great. Never mind that most of those are likely to be ultimately unhealthy for our bodies, while well-planned vegetarian diets have strong research to back up their health benefits. There is such a stigma around the word "vegan". That word is associated with the social and political fringe of society. Vegans are stinky, mentally unstable, emaciated looking weirdos. I'll admit, some are. I'll even admit that I'm a weirdo too, but not in that way. Think about this: a banana is vegan. Chips and guacamole are vegan. Freaking Oreos are vegan, people! Yes, going vegan means eating new and different foods, but it isn't as out there as some make it out to be. In some parts of the world, vegetarian diets are very common.

So, what do I do? I've considered keeping the vegan switch a secret from my family and friends, but that doesn't seem very practical. I can just picture myself trying to hide slices of Easter ham in my lap this Sunday...

I've decided to continue moving more fully into a vegan diet without making it a big deal. As it becomes normal for me, others will get used to it and will see that it's not so strange after all.