Not that I celebrate it or anything, but...

Happy Earth Day.

May your environment be... uhh... Earth.

sickie in the house

On Saturday morning Abi played normally after eating a normal breakfast of cereal and milk, but right before lunch she suddenly complained of a stomachache. She'd complained of stomachache in the past and sometimes it turned out to be because of diarrhea, but many times it turned out to be nothing, just a call for attention. Anyway, her stomachache on Saturday quickly turned into vomiting. After her nap she said she was hungry, so I gave her yogurt, which she promptly vomited back after ravenously snarfing it down. She ended up throwing up 4 times on Saturday. I tried to limit her intake for the rest of that day, basically giving her popsicles and apple juice.

At the end of the day, though, she kept saying she was hungry, so I gave her a few bites of plain watered-down rice. She kept it down okay, and was fine all day Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, playing, eating and pooping normally.

I had had a pretty unpleasant case of stomachache/vomiting/diarrhea the week before, beginning Saturday and ending on Tuesday, so I thought she had what I had, until I saw that she was fine and didn’t even have loose stools.

Fast forward to today. She had a normal breakfast of yogurt, half-bagel, and cream cheese, and a sippy of milk. After breakfast, however, she lay on the floor, which is totally not normal of her. She’s usually busy playing and running around. Anyways, she said her tummy hurt (sometimes she’ll say that right before she goes poop), so she went to the bathroom, but only peed – she said her poop wouldn’t come out. I don’t think she’s constipated though – she had a normal poop yesterday, and she’s never been constipated, even as a baby. She then went back to lying down, took a five-minute catnap, and then woke up saying her stomach hurt again. I asked if she needed to throw up, and she said she did. This turned out to be about a three-second warning – she ended up barfing her whole breakfast again, all over her clothes, her hair, and the living room carpet.

So off to the shower we go, and now that she's all cleaned up and I finally got the carpet de-nastified, she's playing like normal and claiming she's hungry.

Color Abi sick :-( , color me confused :-/.

the Mommy Voice

Like most mommies, I've developed that Mommy Voice. You know the kind: the one that says "I mean business, and you better obey me or else the toys will revolt and all run away in separate directions in a blink of an eye."

Well, today I was folding socks and underwear with the girls, and Elizabeth, in true form, tried to sneak away to play in the middle of matching socks. Many times. Finally, I said in my sternest Mommy Voice: "Elizabeth, you come right back here and finish your folding." (Don't worry, I just make her do her own while I do the rest of the family's. I try to get Abigail to do her share, but her attention span is about the size of a gnat.) Thankfully the Mommy Voice worked, since really, it's hard to look authoritative while holding up a pair of undies.

Do you have smelly foods from your childhood?

Whether it's kimchi or gefilte fish or some kind of curry, we all have food that smells up our childhoods.

-- Amy Sue Nathan

I found this quote today and it reminded me of a time when my parents would brew han-yak in the garage. Basically it's this nasty concoction of all kinds of herbs and strange things, darker and smellier than burnt coffee, but supposed to be oh-so-good for you.

A quick Korean lesson: "Han" = Korean. "Yak" = Medicine.

So han-yak is, quite literally, Korean medicine.

And whenever somebody in the house got sick or injured or something, and medicines from the drugstore didn't cut it, out came the han-yak. And then the whole house would smell (even when it's brewing in the garage!) for weeks and weeks (at least it seemed like it at the time).

And I really have no idea who Amy Sue Nathan is. Hopefully she's somebody I'd like to have coffee with, not That Embarrassing Friend whose calls I have to screen via caller ID.

wild things just running around all over the place

so we're getting on the freeway this morning on the way to preschool, and we see this huge field of yellow wildflowers growing on a grassy hill. eliz asks me what kind of flowers they are, and i really don't know, so i say "maybe they're wildflowers," figuring that's good enough of an answer.

eliz: wildflowers?
me: yes.
eliz: do they run around?