Life on our corner

Today Jonah and I were working on some simple early math story problems.  The kind that set the foundation for addition and subtraction...how many more of this than that?  how many all together?  He did pretty well with it. Later this afternoon he and I had to have a pow wow about his behavior.  I explained a consequence he brought upon himself and said, "Jonah, you disobeyed twice at Miss Rachel's and once at the chiro."  He smiled and said, "Hey Mom!  That's one less!"  I think that he gets the math.  I hope that he gets the life lesson as well!

I am so excited!  Reuben has had baked in dairy for the last 5 days and done really well with it!  I have used milk in his pancakes and let him have "normal" chocolate chip cookies for Valentine's Day!  I am so curious to see how he would react to pizza or a grilled cheese.  I don't want to cause a reaction and go two steps back so I am going to try to proceed with caution.  I have hated this whole dairy-free thing.  I don't think that all the substitutes are healthy.  I hate that he now knows what he has is different, but can't understand why he needs a special diet.  I hate being "that mom" who makes everyone uncomfortable about what to serve and asks people to dig ingredient labels out of the trash!  I asked the Dr to run a test for Elise because I had a few concerns.  We are good to go for now.  (In this whole allergy/intolerance world a positive test result is positive but a negative is not always negative. ...

No time to write anymore but here are a few pictures from our trip to the Botanical Center and a little snow fun in the kitchen! This was what I say is my first trip out with four, but really we met a friend there and I couldn't have done it all by myself! Rock Star! Sleeping on a park bench enjoying the warmth of the Botanical Center... She is telling me quite the story! An army fort he made with a new friend.  (We needed to take a picture for Uncle Colin.) The fun factor was directly related to the age.  Reuben thought this was cool, but didn't last long. Snow fight!