Busy busy busy

It's almost Thanksgiving.  Yep, turkey day in the US.  We celebrate it here, cause..well, why not?  It's Christmas Lite, really.  No ham, but most of the same recipes.  But we have a fun new way to do it.

Remember, I have (minor) food allergies.  Our oldest son has more severe ones, and now we've found out the younger (11 months) has 'em too.  This is now our list:

raw onions

raw carrots

raw celery

green Skittles

dairy

eggs

shellfish

strawberries

nuts

potato 

wheat

Just think what our breakfast table is like.  Forget that...we can't really do much takeaway anymore!

So with Christmas coming, at least I can test some recipes for Thanksgiving.  Since we're still learning how to bake with soy flour.  It's a whole new world, let me tell you.  I thought dairy and eggs were hard...HA!  

Anyway, Turkey Day is coming, and I have turkey. Will brine it tomorrow.  Now I need to hunt down fresh cranberries and sweet potatoes.  And make marshmallows.  What am I doing posting all this, instead of doing it?  Procrastinating :-D!

Football!

Shan's post about the match last night reminded me that we went to see Shamrock Rovers play last Friday night. I've never really been into football, nor has my husband, but two of the kids love it and we thought it would be fun. Anyway it was full of German soccer fans over for last weekends match against Ireland. We were totally surrounded by their very vocal chanting and shouting!
Of course the 5 year old, not being familiar with people speaking a different language thought that everything they said was "bad words" i.e curses! For all we know I'm sure most of them were!

More of the deep stuff

I can't remember which blog I posted this on (what?!  I have 5!), so I'm putting it here again, cause I don't think it was on this one.  No, it wasn't, cause someone who had the same situation, but on the other side, answered me, I'm remembering now.

We were at the lovely farmer's market they have on a Sunday, and said hello to a nice woman we peripherally know (I know her husband more).  I was out with the husband and the baby, pushing the baby in the pram.  And when we walked away, I felt *horrible*.

She and I were pregnant at the same time.  She with twins, and having a lovely pregnancy, me with just the one, with my head in the loo all the time.  The due date was about 3 months ahead of me, and we had the same doctor at Holles St. I heard then that she went in, and the babies were born okay (section, I think?).  But they were in ICU.  For a long time.  And then I heard, from the dad, that they were having problems breathing.  They were in ICU, and then they were transferred to a hospital in Sweden, for some specialist care.  And that's where the twins died.

God, it's tearing me up to write this.  I didn't know that they died until the Christmas concert in LittleBoy's school, when one of the moms, who was looking at BabyBoy started tearing up and explained why (see, she knew them too, and I didn't know we both knew 'em).  Since that day, I've felt freaking HORRIBLE every time I see them.  One time, I think the first time the Dad saw BabyBoy, he scooped him up out of the pram and was dancing on the street with him.  It was lovely, and he does give BabyBoy extra attention when we see him.  But it tears me up inside...the same feeling that I had when I saw the pregnancy test come up positive.  Why me?  Why not the people who *want* babies (I'm not one of those mums who always wanted to be a mum)?  I have plenty who have gone through too much IVF and heartache, they should be the ones getting pregnant (could that be why my pregnancy sucked so much?).

Anyway, we see her again, and the only thing I can think is "Is she thinking how old the twins would be now?"  I KNOW it's worse for her.  And that, while she'll never get over it, she's moving past it (another thing I know a little about, since my oldest brother died about 15 years ago).

Gods, this has gotten longer than I thought it would.  But it's one of those little things that really effects (affects?) you, when you're someone who is me.

Good child/bad child?

Apparently we have good kids.

My mother has said this.  Many others have said this too.  I think I'm starting to get it.  

The baby doesn't really fuss much, and is just kinda there.

The older one is relatively obedient, and will eat almost anything put in front of him (except banana).  I'm learning, during our lovely playdates with others in his class, that this is exceptional.  As in, he's the exception.  All others come with codicils..."I don't eat soup."  "I don't like crusts."  "I won't eat cucumber." "I don't like sandwiches." "Ham is yucky."

Dear lord in heaven.  I made a nice carrot and red pepper soup today (it's an Avoca recipe), mainly cause we needed to use up the peppers, and I have a cold, so hello soup!  This lovely playmate walks in and announces "I don't eat soup."  We don't have much else in the house that I can throw together, so I ask if he wants a ham sandwich.  A jam sandwich.  Plain bread and butter.  Pasta.  Tuna.  We end up at chocolate spread on bread.  Great.  Wait...what kind of bread? "I don't like brown bread."  AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.  I don't like having white bread in the house (not cause I don't like it, but cause I like it TOO much).  We happened to have a hot dog bun left over from yesterday, and there we go.  This took about 20 minutes.  

I'm looking at his plate (he continually got up and played with things while the rest of us sat and had a nice soup lunch, including said son, who had 2 bowls of carrot soup), which has one-half of one half eaten.  /headdesk 

The Fosterinos First Day at School!

Awwww. All round the country all this week kids are heading back to school and along side them are lots of little first-timers. Our local school, apparently the largest national school in Europe, had 6 classes of newbies. Sounds like a baby boom around our way doesn't it?! Anyway we had two little scaredy kids heading off this morning, one into a whole new school at the age of 11 and the other into junior infants. Well the little boy is home already, not a bother on him, loved every minute. Myself and my almost-16 year old daughter just collected him. The 11 year old girl has a full day till 2:30. The school were brilliant; the Principal welcomed her at the door, knew her name, told her where I'd be when she finished school etc. etc. and her special needs person was there too and brought her to her class. I'd even managed to get her the wrong tie and they quickly gave me another one.
Although these two are fostered it is thought there is a good chance they will be with us for a very long time. They are settling in well and I hope the girl makes new friends in school. She is quiet, but is slowly thawing out! She's the type of kid who is constantly wanting to help me, loves to cook and bake and always does what's she's told! She's an angel! The boy's a little mad thing who just wants to mill around on a bike all day! Super kids really! I'm so proud and happy!
Anyway, it's a big day for our family and I just wanted to share a little bit of it with you lot!

Quiet now

It's quiet here now (well, aside from the baby babbling and the 5 year old asking me questions about everything under the sun). It's the first time the house hasn't had a visitor here since we left, basically. It's a different feeling in the house, like it's a bit empty. Odd that.

3 weeks, and we're off back home ourselves. MW had two massive bags (I swear, her kids are going to think it's Christmas early!), and we're going to be having that much ourselves: two massive bags per passenger (so 8 big bags total!). I still have some bits that need to come home with me that will be ordered online...we're on an island, it's hard to get this stuff sometimes! We also have to get our new driver's licences here (sssshhhh, don't tell the Gardai! We still drive on our US lic, need to get our tests this year-ish). That's the one big thing that *has* to happen. All other stuff can fall behind. I'm going to start to pack boxes/bags this week, so that we know what we have to deal with, and if we have to leave anything behind.

So our efforts are going to ramp up now, finishing things, as well as trying to hit the local county fair in a week or two. Phew. Oh no! I forgot to do Christmas presents!!!! AArgh! Must run!

Back breaking work

Following on from Trigkidnometry, I've learned that the younger a child is, the more crap you must tote around with them.

Beware the fury of an angry parent

The road I live on leads to a cul-de-sac, so we don't get much through-traffic. However, enough homes are on the road that strangers who don't live here often visit those who do. No problem. We have family and friends do just that. But there's a behavior problem involved.

The "Children Playing" sign at the entry to the road needs to be twice its current size, and have lasers attached which will blow out the tires of the fuckers who go tearing up and down the road so maybe their car would flip and crush their useless skulls in a mesh of metal and glass.

Ahem.

There are more than six children on the road under the age of 10. They love to play together, and go running up and down the sidewalks or ride on their scooters or even their bikes. All of the parents are trying to get them into the habit of looking before the go running into the road, but reality being as it is, sometimes they don't follow our instructions.

A couple of days ago a lady was coming down the road from the cul-de-sac at an incredible speed. I'd just walked my son down to play with his friends, and wasn't in a glowing mood, so I stood in the middle of the road waving my arms. When they slowed down, I saw a woman with at least four children (not a seatbelt fastened around one of them) looking at me curious as to why I'd signaled her. I yelled (I won't be silly and try to suggest I was speaking calmly), "SLOW DOWN, there are CHILDREN on this road!" I was looking at her own kids more than her while I said it. She looked sheepish and drove away...a little more slowly.

Just now, I was walking home with my son's broken scooter as he went running with his friends up the sidewalk in some game I wasn't privy to. Down comes a red Volkswagen burning enough fuel to reach its 0-60mph rating pretty quickly. I repeated my Hit me, you fucker pose, and when he slowed to pass me I saw the 20 year-old (at best) looking at me like I was nuts when I yelled basically the same sentence again, word-for-word. To help him deal with the repercussions of his actions, he went tearing out around the corner---again, not losing control of his car, much to my dismay.

I don't want speed bumps on our road, but at the same time I want something better than the sign no one looks at. I know kids are going to come running out from behind parked cars, and I've yet to see more than a few people honor the 10mph rule for this sort of road.

Given that, I also don't want some useless sack of shit given the power to take away my son's life.

Jesus, time for some wine.

Slouchy

Now, I know that it's a favorite subject at Go Fug Yourself (you will always hear one of them saying "Stand up STRAIGHT!!!"), but I'm starting to understand why. I was watching a recorded episode of the Tonight Show (chat show from the US) with Jessica Alba. Lovely girl, very pretty, but my GOD does she slouch! It's not just her...we're all slouching. I have to keep reminding myself to sit up straight, and the husband too. I notice it on my friends as well.

Is it the computers? Cause we're chained to them, and the laptops are so NON ergonomic, and we're all slouching. I'm about to invest in a company that makes back braces, cause we're going to all be needing them as we get older!

I also think that it's part of the Hollywood culture, tho I don't know. But it's there. Our neighbor's daughter had to have back surgery, and because of this she has excellent posture, better than any dancers I know. And she stands out in her group of friends when they're walking, cause she's the one who seems...elegant? Together? Proper?

Or are we all just lazy shites?

Natural?

Okay, around the table a few days ago, we mentioned the jellies that were put out for the kids (and what little the adults left for the kids). They were from the Natural Confectionery Company, which I realized is quite interesting. Why, in our little circle of school and other friends, do we all serve up these jellies to our kids, compared to, say, the Haribo line? Cause they're *natural*? It's still freaking sugar and glucose syrup and flavoring. It's still crap! But in our little world, the natural part is the one we cling to, maybe to make ourselves feel better about buying candy for the kids?

There's just something funny about it, to me. We're the generation that is supposed to save the world. Are we starting with jellies and bring-your-own-bag shopping?