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‘Tis the season to boost my willpower and not eat all things sugary, then feel like crap come January 1st. It’s easier said than done. About three weeks ago, I went to my college homecoming. We ate pizza, burritos, drank copious amounts of wine, and had a good time reminiscing until the wee hours of the morning at the home of one of my college roommates. Two days later, Larkin broke out in a weepy red puffy rash on her entire face and her legs. WTF. She’d always had a bit of baby eczema on her cheeks, but this was bad. Long about a week after my dairy-free diet, I was really wanting something sweet. I scoured Pinterest for energy bites, and played around with several recipes until I came up with something easy that tastes a lot like my mom’s homemade scones. The combination of orange and cranberry sings of Christmas morning rolls and special weekend breakfasts. Although we don’t eat these things often in our household, it’s funny how a combination of flavors can take you back. The Cranberry Orange energy bites were a holiday life saver!
After our pediatrician assured me it was eczema and that I should put hydrocortisone cream on it, I smiled and thanked him and did what I normally do. Go into psycho mom-with-a-sick-kid mega geek mode and spend all day on the internet researching alternative remedies. Because I really do not want to use a steroid cream on my 6-month old unless it’s absolutely necessary. It turns out that no one knows what causes eczema, although many folks have a good idea. Anything from an allergy to dust to a food sensitivity can cause the skin to react. Usually the best natural course of action seems to be to heal the gut (hello probiotics and bone broth… oh wait, my baby is breastfed so this shouldn’t be an issue) and keep the skin comfortable.
Since the end of October I have not eaten dairy or gluten or sugar (and I even went a week without eggs to see if that made a difference — I was starving so eggs made a comeback). Larkin gets 1-3 doses of probiotics a day, and her usual 1/2 tsp of cod liver oil plus vitamin D drops. She has not eaten dairy or eggs since. I have bathed her in epsom salt baths 1-2 times a week, I wipe her face down with saltwater twice a day, and at night I lather her cheeks with Lanolin (it helps!). So far I’ve kept the major outbreak from returning and I’m hoping that as her gut matures it disappears because I have no idea how people deal with life-long eczema.
Did I mention these are super easy? Just throw the ingredients in the food processor, blend, and roll into balls. Happy early holidays!
CRANBERRY ORANGE ENERGY BITES
Place into a food processor:
- 1/2 cup craisins
- 1/2 cup dates
- 1/2 cup almond meal
- 1/2 cup walnuts
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 Tbsp coconut oil
- grated rind of 1 small orange or clementine
- pinch of sea salt
Blend until everything is chopped and sticky, about 2-3 minutes. Roll into 1-inch balls and store at room temperature. I’m sure these would last a week, but in our house we’re lucky to have them for two days. I usually double this recipe.
Night number two was not so nice. The tent Larkin and I shared had a hole in the rainfly, so we had to cover it with a tarp (hey, it is almost 15 years old). And boy did that tarp sound like being inside a popcorn kettle when it poured all night long. She couldn’t sleep. It was ridiculously loud. I spend the night awake nursing her so that she could (sort of) sleep. And in the morning everything was covered in mud. The other tent had leaked and all the pillows were wet. At least it was memorable and the kids can’t wait to go again (hence the whole point of camping with young-ins). Because this mama spent the entire next day guzzling coffee and doing laundry and drying out camping gear. That is a chore I do not enjoy.
I have been attempting to get a post up here for about a month, I kid you not. First things first — I re-vamped my blog page so that I am now self hosted, which is pretty cool! But this mama of three thing is no joke. I can barely find five minutes to throw the closest pile of dirty looking fabric into the wash, let alone form a coherent thought and type it onto a page.
we scramble around the house to find a key and save the little rascal.
Decide how big your sign will be. Mine is going above my fireplace, so I wanted it to be approximately
our playground and cut it to size. You want these to be thin pieces of wood too. Keep in mind that once the sign is complete, all the wood together makes it rather heavy.
6. Sketch your letters first. In pencil. I’ve been obsessed with lettering and hand-lettered wall prints for years, and every time I’ve created a sign like this I’ve relied on fonts found on my computer. If there is not one I’m looking for, I download a free one (just google “free fonts). Type the word(s) in a word document and copy them (for those who are comfortable free handing) OR print out the letters in the size you need, cut them out, then trace them onto the sign. To get the curved look of my Lemonade sign below, you can either use a photo editing software like photoshop to curve the letters or draw a bottom line curve on which to place/trace the letters.
It terrifies me because it’s everything I’ve worked hard not to do with my youngsters, yet I feel the pull of society calling me to enroll my oldest (4.5 years) in summer camp. Or preschool. Or a sport. She’s just 4.5!” says my inner voice. Let her be a child! She will have 13 years to be in school more hours than she plays, to be inside more than she is outside, and to endure waaaaaay more academic pressure than children should. Yet I still feel the lure of a society that values busy-ness and find myself wondering if I’m making the right choices.
You ask how is my heart? Right now it is often exhausted from being in full-time parent mode. But on this sunny morning it is joyous, because my colicky newborn is actually sleeping and my older kiddos are outside inventing games in mud puddles and picking blueberries. And that is exactly where they should be.
