Caleb's Video

He asked me to post this online!  The explosion at the end is inspired by the explosion at the end of the Rhett and Link T-shirt War Video.

Correction

They do sell these at Publix...

They had them labeled at mamoncillo.  It was a better deal than the street vendor too.

You've Been Warned...(by Annalise)

And it's true!

Mako Update

Mako went back to the vet today to have his blood sugar checked.  It is lower, but the vet wants us to increase his insulin to bring it down more.  He has to go back next week and have it checked again.

Giving him the shots has had a learning curve.  You have to give it under the skin, but not in the muscle.  Being an old dog, he has plenty of skin to pull around on, but twice I have given him a shot only to realize I poked the needle back out on the other side and wasted all the insulin.  

In some ways he has improved a lot - his appetite is back, but he still drinks a lot more water.   He is back to stealing food and begging by the highchair.  (Irene thinks his big pink tongue is funny, so she likes to offer him a bite!)    He barks when someone comes to the door again.  He is able to keep up on a short walk, but is pretty tired when he comes home.  His eyes both have a cloudy look to them.  We don't think he is blind, but he bit one of the kids' friends when she offered him a piece of cracker.  I don't think he meant to bite her.

The whole experience is very thought provoking for the kids.  The girls both want to be veterinarians now.  And of course all of them are much more knowledgeable about diabetes than they were 2 weeks ago.  So as Ma said - there is no great loss without some small gain.

Irene's 1st Birthday!

I hope (so that I will not say something unfeeling) I will always remember how hard the first year of a child's life is.  I hope instead I can find some gentle way to encourage mothers to see that it is also a sweet, brisk, and wonder-filled time not to be wished away.  Today is Irene's 1st birthday.

For her birthday we gave her a little plastic pool.  She has heaps of toys and piles of clothes.  The kids wanted to get her gifts, but we decided this year their gift would be enjoying the pool with her. 

We set it up on the porch because it was threatening to storm - although the backlight doesn't make it look like that!

I made a sprinkle covered cake for her birthday - mostly because I thought it would be funny to see her lips covered in sprinkles.  (It was!)  It was not too hard to cover the cake in sprinkles, but it was not "pinterest perfect".  I had a hard time estimating how much sprinkle I would need for the cake and bought 15oz and only used about 4.  I guess that is still a quarter of a pound!  15oz would have been an awful lot wouldn't it!

(the I is from an old set of candles that spell out congratulations - most of the other letters are broken)

Her smash cake:

She liked it :)

We also made lemonade ice cream, which was too sour and I wish we'd made chocolate instead!  Live and learn!

Milestones of note:
*not quite walking, she is a very fast, efficient crawler!  She crawls on hand and feet if she is on concrete (outside), which is funny.
*talking a lot, but not a lot of clarity!  She says dada, dog, hi, and bye-bye.  She will repeat all sorts of words.  None of our other babies repeated things the way she does.  Sometimes she seems to understand what she repeats, other times I think she just does it for fun.  She does not sign - except to occasionally motion all done when she wants out of the high chair (she will repeat "all done" if I say it)
*loves to high five!
*eight teeth
*height and weight will have to wait.  Her check up is next week.

Week in Review

We dressed like cows for free food at chic-fil-a.

Rob did too - he took the picture.

The girls made jar salads together (and Caleb tossed in a few tomatoes too)

We took good care of Mako.  He seems almost back to normal.

A & N found somewhat matching outfits in the hand-me-downs.

Rob went to Haiti for the 4th time and we made a banner to welcome him home.

It says "akeyi papa lakay" - Welcome Home Dad.

Next week - Swimming lesson and Irene turns 1!

Dog Days

I guess any time you neglect something for a long time, it is prone to decay.  Or maybe it's that years pass quickly and pets get old before you realize it.  And we have had a few distractions...

Wasn't me...I swear.

A year ago, when my parents were here, my mom noticed that Mako drank all his water several times a day.  (I usually was too busy to notice or refill it.)  After they left, I got him a bigger water container and that seemed to solve the problem.  Read: BANDAID.

This weekend we noticed Mako was slowing down very quickly.  He was having trouble getting up, wasn't interested in food, and slept a lot.  Rob took him to the vet on Monday and Mako has diabetes.

Today

After years of being placed farther and farther down on the line of priority, suddenly his needs can supersede Irene's.  At least at 8am and 8pm.  He has to eat - by force if necessary and needs a shot of insulin.   

He's had 5 doses so far and it has really helped him a lot.  He took a short walk today and barked at the little dogs next door.  His bark did seems more like an old man telling kids to be quiet, rather than joining in the fray!   Mako is 11 1/2 years old.  We know his time is short.  We want to take better care of him even if we only have a little while longer with him.  He's a great dog, a faithful watch dog, and we are thankful for him.

Kids Wielding Knives or Mason Jar Salads

It is easy for the kids to eat healthy lunches. They don't usually fix the meals and can't reach the chips!  For those of us in control and in a hurry (and in the know about where the dark chocolate is hidden), lunch is not always the best meal in our day.  So one day when pinteresting, I was taken with the beautiful and healthful looking Mason jar salads.  Here is how that is going for us:

Annalise especially likes to help prepare the jars - so I let her! 

(pardon the crummy cell phone pics, I misplaced the camera)

Natalie helps!

Caleb is actually chopping garlic for another meal, but it fits in with all the knives.  He thought it would be funny to pretend he'd cut his finger.

Ready for the fridge.

To assemble the salads, you build the salad upside down - crunchy veggies on the bottom, then proteins and cheese, then fill the top with lettuce.  Some people put dressing at the bottom, but as we are eating them at home, this is not necessary.  The result:

By this picture I had found the camera, but why mess with a theme?

I usually eat what the children eat, so Rob eats most of these and he has really liked them.  They are big enough to make a modest side salad to serve with a meal too (for all of us).  With Annalise's eager help, it is not much work to put them together, and hopefully we can keep this up!

My Project

One of our neighbors has made a little front porch with paving stones and it made me start thinking about the little area next to the front door where we had a forest of philodendron growing. The philodendron was getting overgrown and I knew it needed to be thinned, plus there were some plants called "oyster plants" growing along the back corner that I wanted to get out permanently (just touching them causes skin irritation).  The kids helped me tear all that out and measure the area - even though it looks small it is about 42 square feet and the pavers are square foot pavers.  Being a penny pincher, I thought there had to be a DIY way, so I began looking into homemade paving stones.  In the end, I am not sure this will be much cheaper, but it is easy and fun to make the stones look unique.

Here are some stones drying:

And here are some finished stones:

I'm using cardboard boxes from Aldi for the forms.  It works very well - they hold up long enough for the concrete to set and tear away easily when the stones are dry.  (Plus they are free!)

As with anything, it has gotten easier as I've made more and more of these.  Fortunately, the only hard part of making concrete is lifting the 80 lb bag.  If you can make ramen noodles, you can make concrete.  Because I am dealing with small amounts of concrete, I've found it best to start with some water in my bucket and add scoops of concrete individually, mixing well between each scoop.  We have a drill attachment that makes this very easy.  Once the mix is about the thickness of pancake batter (for fat fluffy pancakes, not thin crepey pancakes), pour it into the mold.  At that point I pick leaves to leave an impression.  I wanted to go for sort of a concrete garden.  So far I have 16 stones - the product of two 80 lb bags.

The kids want to make a hand imprint stone, so that will probably happen before the project is finished!

SO Miami : Street Food

When we first moved to our part of Miami, it was relatively American and while the main intersections on US 1 had a lot of pan handlers, it did not boast many street vendors. The first two years I lived down here, I worked in the Sweetwater area, which is not relatively American, so I was already familiar with the offerings from these vendors and have been on the look out for bags of little green fruits for a while.  I am still waiting for a churro guy.  Definitely a day I hope the automatic windows aren't stuck closed!

I bought a little yellow mesh bag of these green fruits - easily googled, they are Spanish Limes or Quenepa Fruit or one of a huge assortment of Latin names. 

 To consume, after washing, you bite the outer layer to crack it open:

And pull the shell/skin/rind off.  Inside there is a slimy yellow ball.

The slimy part is sort of sweet-tart and you mostly suck the juice out of it.  It is firmly stuck to a seed that is about the size of a large marble.  The kids liked it and if you can believe the internet, they are really good for you.  You cannot find them in the grocery stores around here though...

We love Water Balloons

even Irene!

4th of July T-shirts

 Since Natalie and Irene had fun patriotic dresses to wear for the parade, we wanted the big kids to have something unique to wear too.  We picked some Pinterest inspirations and got to work.

Caleb's shirt was an American flag design.  We made the stripes with masking tape and the stars with little star stickers.  The paint is just cheap acrylics.  He and I dabbed it on lightly to give it a distressed look (and because too much acrylic paint can make fabric stiff).

Annalise chose to make a firework design.  She used sharpie markers to make circles of dots and lines and then dripped rubbing alcohol over the dots.  They smeared in a very firework-y way!  I wrote Happy 4th of July on it with a black sharpie.  I thought it looked "sharp"!

Caleb's result:

He liked Annalise's so much, he couldn't resist adding some fireworks to the back!

Annalise's shirt:

4th of July Parade

One of our favorite 4th of July traditions! I'm always surprised when I talk to a neighbor who doesn't know about this.

Rob and Caleb drove the station van in the parade (and threw candy!)

Irene waiting for the action to start.

Girl Power!

Festive Four

Rob took this picture from the van, I like it so much - if you look in the rear view mirror you can see the guy who dresses as Abraham Lincoln every year on top of a van.  Natalie, whose understanding of history is still pretty vague, wasn't completely sure he wasn't the real deal!

A Berry Happy First Fourth of July

Fourth of July Eve

Bring it!