A little piece of heaven

People often tell me, “I don’t know how you do it.  You have so much on your plate.”  The thing is, to someone looking from the outside there’s a facade that looks pretty good.  It’s like one of those fake houses at Universal Studios, the ones you see from the tram tour?  They look like these perfect beautiful houses.  But when you go around the back you see that there’s nothing there, it was just a facade, all you had was the APPEARANCE of this perfectly beautiful house.

When you come around to the inside of our lives you see all the cracks, chips and creases.  You see all the things that don’t get done.  You see all of the compromises that have to be made in order to make it all work.  You see a little bit of chaos, a little bit of insanity, a lot of busy-ness, a lot of juggling of needs.  I keep it together.  But there is always a cost.

Like all of those things that I don’t get to do.  Like reply back to emails.  Like talk on the phone.  Like vacuuming the house.  Like making it to all of our appointments.  Like being on time to appointments.

I wish I could do so much more for my children.  I wish I could be better about staying in touch with people, replying to emails, phone calls, text messages.  But my brain can only handle so much.  Pre-chronic fatigue, I could keep up with it all, my brain had so much more computing space.  Post-chronic fatigue, I can only handle about a fifth of what I used to handle.

I wish I could keep it together better, I really do.  There’s so much I wish I had the energy to do, especially staying in touch with so many of you who I truly love, admire, respect, appreciate.  But I just can’t do it.  Mentally, physically, emotionally.  Do you remember your old old computer, the one you first got 10 years ago?  The one that would sporadically give you the blue screen of death?  The one that would shut down if you tried to do too much too fast?  The one that was VERY SLOW and took forever for every command?  That’s a little bit like I feel these days.

I do appreciate your feedback & support, very much.  Everyone’s comments about nutrition and medicines were very helpful.  I really took them into consideration and came up with some conclusions.

I decided to give Singulair a try.  It seems like a benign enough drug, and I figure I can try it, and since I know Nathan so well I should be able to notice a difference in him if it is having side effects, at which time I can just stop giving it to him (I don’t have to wean him off).  I consulted Nathan’s naturopath and she felt it was worth a try.

As for nutrition, I decided to apply the 80/20 rule.  So long as 80% of the kid’s intake is healthy, I’ll let them have some not so healthy stuff the rest of the time.  Seems like a good compromise.  I already started this week by buying more gluten casein free snacks, more fruits, and slowly changing the snacks I give the kids.

This was a good week for us.  The kids have had lots of health checkups.  We saw the MD, naturopath, and homeopath.  Friday we see a new chiropractor.  Izzy is getting tested by both the naturopath and MD for her chronic diarrhea, which both believe is affecting her behavior.  Nathan is getting some new supplements (Transfer Factor, Colostrum) as well as getting a few more tests to see if we can find ways to improve his health.

We are keeping it together.  Sometimes it’s not pretty.  Other times, like today, when I am in total overwhelm, I simply have to call in for help and walk out to a yoga class so I can de-stress and recoup.  I am grateful for my support system, both physical and online.  That’s how we keep it together.

* It was 6 am when Izzy woke up wanting her Tete (bottle).  I was nursing Gryffin so I explained to her that she had to wait for Gryffin to finish his milk before I could get her Tete.  So she points to Gryffin’s crib and says, “Gryffin night night”, points at herself and says, “more Tete please.”  In other words, mommy, get rid of Gryffin so you can take care of me!

* We went to Disneyland on Sunday.  We were watching ” The world of color” at California adventure but after about 15 min’s she was bored of it.  So she grabbed my hand and walked me out of the viewing area, off to the left, and around the corner into the “Ariel” ride that we had ridden a couple of hours earlier.  She got in line, dragging me by the hand, and then dragged me right onto the ride, pulling the handle down after she sat down.  After we finished the ride, I stepped off, she ran to the edge of the cart, closed the door behind me, and ran to the other side, sat back down, and pulled the handle down.  They had to stop the ride to pull her off 🙂

* I still love getting in the bath with the kids and I do it whenever I can.   The other day I was in the bath with all 3 of them.  Izzy has this thing about grabbing my breasts, and she knows she’s not allowed.  So instead, she took Nathan’s hand and used his hand to grab my boob, all the while looking at me with a glint in her eye, look, it’s not me, it’s Nathan that’s grabbing!

This little girl is a force of nature.

I went out to dinner with somebody who will remain unnamed, and we were talking about our kids.  Eventually the conversation swung to our kids and what they like to eat, and we talked about how under-weight Nathan is.  In a very nice way she said if I wasn’t such a health nut, Nathan could eat more foods and be chunkier.

Here’s the thing.  Yes, I have become a health nut.  Through research I learned that your body is what you eat, and I became very conscious of the things I put into my body and into my kid’s bodies.  Because without health you have nothing and I want us all to be healthy.  Because I want us all to be as happy as can be and cranky over sugared children are not happy.  Because sick manlourished kids are not happy.  Because whenever I eat sugar I feel bloated and anxious and it’s not a good feeling.  So yes, I am health conscious and diet is a very important aspect of health.

But.  It became really hard.  I felt like an army general policing what the kids ate.  I was the scrooge telling everyone not to give my kids hot dogs or lollipops or ice cream.  So I gave up.  And as of a few months ago, my kids eat junk.  I try to make sure they at least eat a healthy breakfast and lunch.  But dinner is up for grabs.  The dinner menu rarely varies from hot dogs, pizza, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, ice cream.  Nathan eats a chocolate for dessert with lunch every day.  Izzy demands an ice cream every time we go to the mall, and a chocolate chip cookie every time we go to the mall in Hollywood (often).   She goes to the junk food cabinet at least once a day and demands something from it.  Sometimes I feel that a whole day will go by and Izzy ate little more than sugar.  I do my best to get her to eat good stuff but she’ll refuse to eat unless she gets what she wants.  Sometimes I give in because I’d rather know that she at least has something in her stomach, even if it’s a bad something.

I ask myself all the time.  What’s more important, to be right or to be happy?  I want to be happy more than I want to be right.  I know the right thing is to make sure the kids eat a healthy diet.  But we kept Nathan casein and gluten free for 2 years and it was HARD.  And stressful.  I don’t want to go through that again.  I’d rather be happy.   I posted yesterday about Nathan’s allergies.  I know that if he was eating better the allergy situation would improve.  But then his appetite would decrease because he likes junk food, he’d get skeletal again, which makes him vulnerable when illness attacks.

So. What do you think?  What’s the balance here?  How do you guys do it?