Healthy stuff ideas

I've been immersing myself in all things "healthy" beginning in earnest when Cedric was born. I get so excited over it and find a lot of satisfaction in making those life changes one by one. Of course, that means I like to talk about it, too. :) I know it can be a boring, if not annoying, subject to some, but since this is my blog, it's probably one of the best places to talk all I want about it. :)

I wanted to share an easy recipe for a breakfast drink that Aunt Margaret gave me. I've begun making it daily for myself over the past few weeks. Fruit is mostly digested in the intestines, so it's best to eat fruit first thing in the morning when your stomach is empty so that there's nothing to impede it's journey straight through to where it can do the most good. Here's the recipe:

10 almonds
1 TB flax seeds
3 to 5 kinds of fruit
A bit of water

I guess soaking the almonds in water overnight in the frig is beneficial, also. I've also begun adding 2 TB of wheat germ. I'll soon be getting my order of brewer's yeast from Azure Standard, so will most likely begin adding some of that as well. I'll have to use another posting to list all of the benefits of wheat germ and brewer's yeast. Or you can look them up yourself. They're amazing! :)

I don't so much like eating fruit, so I find this is a great way to get all my fruit servings for the day taken care of first thing, which also just happens to be the healthiest time to eat fruit anyway. Very convenient and so easy!

I've recently learned and been impressed with the healing power of another "superfood": cod liver oil. Check out some of the benefits:

• Improves brain function, memory, learning disorders.
• Healthy nervous system.
• Prevention and improvement of depression and other mood disorders, including bipolar syndrome and manic-depression.
• Protective against childhood leukemia.
• Improves stress response.
• Improves immune response.
• Allergies.
• Asthma.
• Healthy joints, strong bones and teeth.
• Arthritis.
• Preventing and reversing rickets in children.
• Improvement of muscle pain and muscle strength.
• Healthy skin, minimize wrinkles.
• Improves heart function. Treats heart disease even in advanced stages.
• Healthy lining for your digestive tract.
• Stroke prevention.
• Prevents infections.
• Lowers childhood risk of juvenile type 1 diabetes and onset of adult diabetes.
• Protective against cancer.

Cod liver oil and fish oil have very quality omega-3 fats and are high in vitamin A & D. It's recommended to take cod liver oil throughout the winter and begin taking regular fish oil in the summer if you get a lot of sun. This is because regular fish oil is lower in vitamin D than cod liver oil, and since the sun is another natural source of vitamin D, switching to fish oil in the high-sun exposure months will keep you from getting too much vitamin D. Be aware that wearing sunscreen blocks your absorption of vitamin D from the sun. If you always have to wear sunscreen, you should probably stick with cod liver oil all year.

I found a liquid orange-flavored cod liver oil at Wal-Mart that I give to Cedric. He get's a teaspoon a day and he loves it! Nevertheless, Tim and I stick with the caplets. :)

Ok, enough. It's getting late. Off to a shower and bed.

Various things

I'm on the tail end of a cold. Luckily, Cedric has not caught it yet. Tim has it bad though. Colds usually hit me worse than him, but this time he's still in the thick of it while I'm coming out. Poor guy.

Tim has shaved his head again. He had let it grow out a bit because it was getting cold, but he decided that he just didn't like the look so he went back to skin. No more simple baseball caps though. He now wears only beanies to prevent brain freeze. :)

The other night Cedric was using his fork to eat broccoli. Every time he'd get a piece in his mouth, he'd set the fork down with a big smile and clap. He did it the whole dinner! Of course, we couldn't resist clapping along with him. :)

Oh, here's one more cute thing that Cedric did a while back: I was gathering stuff to go somewhere and mentioning that we were going to go bye-bye. Once Cedric had his jacket on, he found his set of keys (which are some of our old keys) and said "car". As we headed out to the parking lot, he chose 1 key on the ring and tried to unlock the car. I hadn't realized he knew that much!

Random thoughts and happenings

Man, belly dancing is hard! Now, I’m good at patting my head and rubbing my tummy at the same time but try shaking your shoulders at a rate of about 2 beats per second while making your hips go in a big circle at a rate of about 1 every 2 seconds! Oh my goodness, I cannot describe how rediculous I look! I dare you to try it sometime. :P

I’ve finally gotten Tim hooked on going to espresso stands! He’s moved beyond flavored steamers and now loves chocolate Chai tea. Yay! : ) He is now much more likely to splurge when we’re running errands or just surprise me with a drink on his way home from work. It’s great.

Cedric realized yesterday that he had trucks on his shirt. Out of no where he was looking down at his shirt and saying “kuck, kuck”, which of course means “truck”. Here’s a couple pics of his discovery:

Oh! And on Tuesday he went potty in the toilet for the first time!!! Over the last five days or so he’ll grab his diaper and say something, and I’d ask him if he needed to go potty. That would send him off running to get his stool and he’d set it in front of the toilet. I’d take down his pants and just let him stand there for a couple minutes. Nothing ever happened until Tim was helping him on Tuesday night and he went! We were so proud. : ) I’m sure he’s a long way off from being potty trained but it’s a great start.

Tim must have a magic touch with Cedric because he was the one to teach Cedric to crawl, to walk, and now to go in the toilet. : ) I love it. Absolutely love it.

Here is Cedric playing in his first pile of leaves today:

I've been waiting for this day. Cedric can now sing! On our closet doors we have a poster of the Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee and also a poster of a guitar. Every morning Cedric must be picked up to see the posters, saying "caaarrr" (with a growly voice) and "daddy", pointing to both posters. Tim often plays his guitar at least a couple times a week for Cedric, and I commented this morning when Cedric was admiring the guitar poster about singing and dancing when Daddy plays. Well he started belting out "Doooh, dooooh, DOOOOHHH, whoa, wow, wooow, wob, dooohh, doooooooohhh!" He sang like that for a minute and has been doing the same off and on all day whenever we bring up singing. This is one of the sweetest landmarks to me. Yes, better than going potty in the toilet. It's the most precious thing.

Tuesday night

Here is a picture of the bump Cedric got the day before yesterday. He did well posing somberly to show it off. :) It's healing well and doesn't ever seem to bother him. He had had a scratch on his hand earlier in the week that is nearly healed now, and he still seems more concerned about that. He keeps asking for a band aide for it. Why do little kids always seem to be addicted to band aides?

As you can see, he is really doing just fine. :)

He's been teething this past week or two as well but that seems to bother him more at night.

I'm sorry if you get tired of hearing about Cedric, but he is what fills my day. He's the most entertaining part of the day really, he even rivals Tim in that department, and I figured you would be more interested in Cedric's antics than Tim's anyway. So you'll just have to bear with me. :)

It was so cute, I wish I had gotten a picture of it, but this late afternoon when I was changing Cedric's diaper, he brought a book with him up onto the changing table and looked through it while I changed his diaper. It was a big book (8.5 x 11) and paperback, so he had it resting on his tummy while he flipped through the pages calling all the cows (it was a book about flying cows) "horses". It was just such a cute thing.

I forgot to mention that when Tim came home from his weekend away, he brought me a bag of Starbucks decaf Sumatra coffee! That is my all time favorite kind of coffee and he found it in decaf for me. What a sweetie! Gave me those warm and fuzzy feelings. :)

Cedric is a good little helper when it comes to cleaning up after Hemi. Hemi does not like to stay out in the cold long enough to go #2, so he tends to go inside on the hardwood floor in Cedric's room. Luckily, somehow, Cedric knew from the beginning that those cute little logs were gross. Any time he finds a pile, he comes and tells me that he's found some, saying "bock", meaning "bocki", our word for poo/gross. If I'm distracted, he is insistent until I follow him and take a look and clean it up. I rather appreciate his help.

Blog with a video

Do you remember that monster of a black widow that I had found on the outside of our front-door jam a while back? Well, yesterday I found what has been the 4th black widow outside our door. All of them have been huge. It is just so weird that those huge spiders who are supposed to like dark, quiet places choose to setup by a busy door that is always bright because of the porch light. It's just freaky. And nasty.

Yesterday, Cedric bonked his himself right above his right eye on Mom and Dad's coffee table. He hit hard enough that is split a little. Luckily, it didn't really bleed much, but it is swollen and a little blue today. I hope it doesn't turn into a black eye.

Tim had a really good time going to the Warm Beach Convention Center for a Christian highschool retreat. He and Aaron, our youth pastor, brought 5 boys. I guess it was a great 'guy' time. :) Tim really likes Aaron's approach to teaching. He is more about serious discipleship and not so much about numbers. As expected, since they've been here, the youth group has shrunk a bit but has brought out the seriously dedicated kids. They're able to go deeper and are passionate. Tim said that he likes the smaller youth group because he can get to know each kid individually. I think the leaders have to do a lot of crowd control in a really big youth group and are not able to really forge influential relationships. There is a place for those youth groups that strive to at least get the kids off the street and into a safe, positive environment, but I think the higher expectation-approach is the right thing for our church at this time.

Most days when Tim comes home from work I show Cedric how to take his daddy's shoes off, and then Cedric picks up the shoes and puts them in the closet. We didn't even have to coax him into doing it, he just watched me do it a couple times and then hopped right to it himself. It's so precious and a tradition I think we'll keep going until he outgrows it. :)

Heater problems

Our heater has been having trouble since last winter. We had to manually control the temperature by turning off the heater when it got too hot and turning it on when it was too cold. The thermostat never kept an even room temperature. This did a number on our power bill, as you can imagine (no pun intended :). Well, our landlord finally came out to look at it and replaced it while he was here and it seemed to click on and off at the correct place so we hoped it was fixed. Well, a half hour after he left we realized that the heater was not on even though the thermostat had clicked on. Tim fiddled around with it to no avail. So we don't have a heater in the living room anymore and that's our main heater! :( We have another message into the landlord so hopefully they are able to come out again right away. We aren't freezing though because we've got heaters in the bedrooms and a small spaceheater to use out here. It's just frustrating, especially when it's messing with our power bill.

Silly

Today Cedric came up to me with a concerned look, making his "I'm stuck" sound, and holding a carboard book. He was holding it closed with his left hand and had his right thumb stuck between the pages. It's precious how much he doesn't know about this world. :)

Pics and their stories

Last night Cedric wanted to try on our headphones, not for the first time, but he got a kick out of it, and I like the pictures. :)

Cedric found a new, hidden (though I can see it from the kitchen sink window) place to play in our front yard. It's behind this pine tree that is planted up close to a corner in the fence. It's a neat place for him to crawl around. He likes to play with the needles. He'll stay back there for a good long time.

Earlier this weak Cedric and I were playing around and we put these rings on his ears. He had fun showing his daddy when he got home. :P

Tim and I are listening to the audio book of "Eragon". The movie got us interested, though I must say that the book is waayyy better than the movie. I can't stand the voice they chose for the dragon, Saphira. It's way too wimpy for a dragon, unless, say, it's name is Puff the Magic Dragon. We are really enjoying the book! I would definitely recommend it to all you Lord of the Rings and fantasy fans. "Eragon" is book 1 in the Inheritence Trilogy. "Eldest" is the 2nd, and book 3 is soon to come out. Did you know that it's written by a 24-year-old in Alaska? http://www.alagaesia.com/

Lately, whenever Cedric bumps his head on something he'll announce it by patting his head and saying "bonk" over and over until you comment on it. And sometimes he goes and bumps his head against whatever he had originally ran into to show us what happened. It's so adorable. :)

Boring day

Today was an especially long and boring day for some reason. We took a walk today but since it's been down in the 30's all week, we had to pile on the layers. No snow yet, though. I'm glad for that.

I baked the pumpkin seeds today after soaking them in salt water for a couple days. I split the batch in half and seasoned one batch with Tapatio (hot sauce) and the other with Worchestershire sauce. They both turned out well I think. Tim likes the spicy ones, of course. :)

Don't laugh, but I got myself a belly dancing workout DVD. :) Of course, I'm not going to watch it when Tim is home, but it's really fun! Man, it's hard though. So beautiful and so feminine.... I love anything Middle Eastern anyway, so this is perfect.

There are these whole wheat crackers that Cedric enjoys snacking on, and I found him with the whole box today. :) Notice Hemi in the lower left waiting for crumbs:

We usually have to keep the books up because Cedric can be tough on them, but often times when they are down, I'll find him sitting and looking through them, just like this:

He really enjoys being read to. When he says "book", it sounds like "buck". Very cute. :)