cue the sappy violin...

Do you hear it yet? Keep listening... there... there it is, playing quite loud...

Now I can start:

I am tired.

Most of you know that we have been having health problems with Emma from the day she was born. Ear infections, colic, thrush, eye infections, breastfeeding issues with yeast... and so on...

Well, here's the latest.

I have a clogged milk duct, probably from the yeast that we keep passing back and forth.

It is quite painful, but is responding somewhat to treatment...I won't go into detail about that, just suffice to say that it (the treatment) has been painful and time consuming. And is supposed to include lots of REST! HA!

Also, Emma has thrush in her mouth again and a yeast diaper rash, so the yeast is all through her little body.

AND her eye infection that we have been treating for over 2 months, is back. The new pediatrician that I took her to thinks that it is a clogged tear duct. She had me do one more round of a different antibiotic eyedrop and naso-lacrimal massage (massaging her tear duct and nasal area) to see if we could unclog it. Today was the first day off of the antibiotics and the gunk is back. This means that she will have to be scheduled for a surgical procedure where they stick a wire through the tear duct opening to unclog it... umm, can you say OUCH! They do use general anesthesia, which freaks me out a little to tell the truth. I will keep everyone updated on this, but in the meantime, pray that it will just unclog itself before the surgery. PLEASE!

Are you still hearing the music, because I am.

Meanwhile, the treatments for all of this include the following:

Pills, several times a day, of garlic, multi-vitamin, probiotics, enzymes, vitamin c, fish oil, and B-12;

Tinctures, several times a day, of Echinacea, Grapefruit Seed Extract, and Oregon Grape Root (NASTY);

Boiling pacifiers after every use; and washing everything that touches her mouth or my breast in hot, hot water with vinegar.

Painting us both with Gentian Violet for four days, and then dealing with the funny looks at the store from those who think I let my child play with magic markers... :)

Nystatin ointment on her bottom every diaper change, which is much more frequent now with the cloth diapers.

The other treatments for my clogged duct, that I will spare you the details of.

Oh, the naso-lacrimal massage thing, which I still have to continue, and the eyedrops, which were three times a day, into the eyes of a screaming, thrashing, eyes squinched shut baby!!! AARGHH. I will be stopping the eyedrops, but will use breastmilk as a natural antibiotic until the surgery.

Ummmm. And last but certainly not least, the "Yeast connection Diet" that is about to kill me. NO sugar, NO dairy, NO bread, NO vinegar based anything, NO peanut butter, NO fruit, NO grains, NO corn or corn products, NO beans....and so on. I have to do that for at least 3 weeks. I am on day 2.

And she's still teething, only 1 tooth has actually popped through yet.

There's that violin again...

If you read my earlier post about baking bread... Not only can I now not eat my own bread, but we had to spend so much money on the supplements and stuff, that now all the overtime Tim is working this week, is going to replace that rather than buy my new mill. I am very disappointed.

All this right when I am trying to get a very late start on the homeschool year. We had to wait to purchase the necessary books, and I still actually have a few more to get later. I suppose we will begin sometime this week. That is the plan anyway.

I am trying with everything in me not to be discouraged and overwhelmed, but I truly am struggling.

Please keep me in your prayers. I know that God is with us, and cares and provides for our every need, but I also believe that He uses us to help one another in prayer. He expects us to encourage and lift each other up when we are down.

I need some lifting.

The End.

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wherefore art thou, bloggers?

Okay now... I know that there HAS to be some closet bloggers out there that are reading my blog... I want to see your blog too. Or website or Pictures or whatever! Send me your links...
And to the rest of you that are saying, "Not me...!": GET WITH THE TIMES! :)
No really, bloggging is really easy and it is sooo fun to stay in touch this way. So just give it a try. Go to blogger.com and set one up. It only takes a few minutes and it's free! I can also help with shorter ways to post pics and stuff like that for anyone that is intimidated by that!
YOU CAN DOOOO IT! :)
Either leave your links as a comment for me or send me an e-mail to allthebaileys@gmail.com

Bring it.

Jen

whole lotta whole wheat...

and some small beer...




I haven't made bread in so long...
I had run completely out of wheat berries and my milling buddy, Noelle, of course, left me high and dry with no mill when she up and moved to Texas... What was she thinking! :)
I haven't been able to make it all the way to Atlanta to get more wheat and I am so glad now...
I found a new place that is not too far that I can buy wheat berries for significantly cheaper than Breadbeckers in Atlanta. It is a small Amish grocery store in Abbeville, SC. It took a little more than an hour to get there.
They not only had bulk wheat, but also dry beans, rolled oats, organic pastas, oh I could go on and on. One cool thing was the milk...It is very hard to find inexpensive local organic non-homogenized, low pastuerized milk! I found it! And it is cheaper than the grocery store, how cool is that!
I got real homemade Amish butter, yogurt cultured cheese, sucanat, ummmm... all kinds of yummy stuff. And it's all cheaper than the grocery store because they buy it in bulk.
Me thinks I will be a new habitue of this place

My friend Nichole, who went with me to the shop, is going to let me borrow her mill off and on until I can get my own.
For those of you that have no clue what I am talking about when I say wheat berries and mill and stuff... Basically I grind my own wheat. I buy the actual wheat berries and put them through a high speed electric mill and out comes whole wheat flour... with all it's nutrients intact!
Here is a link to an article about the benefits of milling wheat and baking your own bread:
www.urbanhomemaker.com/articles/index.php?page=index_v2&id=504&c=6
All that to say, that I baked today!
I tried a new recipe for bread and it turned out beautifully! Speaking of which, the recipe is the one in the above article.
Timmy said that this bread recipe was even better than the Breadbeckers recipe. We went through almost a whole loaf when it was hot out of the oven. We spread it with the Amish butter and raw honey...so good.
Anyway, I have been wanting to buy a mill for sooo long and we just could never afford it. We finally decided that we have to get one. So Tim is going to work some more overtime next week, and we are going to specifically use it for that.
I am so excited about having my own mill. I am thinking about selling bread again also, if I can get a customer base going. I am looking into the legalities though. I may need to get a license and so on and so forth. We'll see.
For now, I CAN BAKE AGAIN!!!!
I made yummy cheese biscuits with our pot roast tonight. Maybe I'll put up that recipe one of these days... They are really tasty.
Anyway, here's my bread...
Noelle, Can you believe that rise?

Labor Day "Fall-Out"...

Tim had the day off on Monday, so we decided to head to Crawfordville for the annual Labor Day Fair. We had never been, but had heard good things about it. We were going to pack a lunch, but Tim had just gotten paid from a side job he did last week and so we thought we would just use that and have a true vacation from "labor" :) .

When we arrived, we immediately went looking for FOOD! We weaved our way through the crowds until we saw smoke...then we smelled the smoke...Yeah, BABY! Smoked Ribs, that's what I'm talkin' about! They were sooooo good! The kids just had BBQ sandwiches and Tim had some smoked chicken that was so-so. But I had the ribs.... yum.

Although I have to give props to Denise Infante, whose ribs and CHICKEN WINGS are the best ever! Really, they are, I'm not just saying that.

Anyway, so then we watched the parade, which was okay, but Chloe was so cute, she just waved at everything that passed by. About halfway through, she turned back to me, with sad eyes, and said, "Mommy, they can't see me.... Nobody's looking at me!!!" How pathetic is that... :(

Regarding the parade, Tim said he could understand the firetrucks, the clowns, the horses and the hot rods, but just didn't get the 4-wheelers... I didn't get pics, but it was kinda funny because they were just ratty old things...

After this we found the liquor-free margarita stand and began the LONG wait in line to get a frozen concoction in a pretty cup with a paper flower on top. The proprietors were raking in the bucks, let me tell you. Can't you just see all the redneck teeny-boppers with their plastic margarita cups... yeah.

For the record, it was CRAZY hot! We were carrying around the umbrella just to use for shade.

So, the next thing I know, Nicole has fallen on the ground, bloodied her knee and can't get up.

Turns out, that although we were carrying around the requisite cool bottles of water, and had been trying to say hydrated, she passed out from heat exhaustion...

We quickly got her to an air-conditioned storefront and cooled her down with wet napkins and so forth. There was a little elderly black woman in the restaurant who helped with everything, she was awesome.

Quite the dramatic day, I say.

I soaked Emma's blankie with cold water and made Nicole wear it around her neck, until we got to the van.

On the way back to the van, Chloe saw the pony rides and we had to make a quick detour and let her ride. Her horse was named "Hot Dog". Go figure.

After we made the long trek back to the van, we realized that Timmy had not had the chance to slide on the big inflatable slide thingee that he had seen, so we drove around to the other side of the fair and I hopped out with him and let him expend some energy... he is such a boy. Before long, the other two, including Nini, who was feeling 100% better, were hopping out and sliding too.

We headed home soon after that to have some fried tilapia fillets on buttered, toasted, onion kaiser rolls with homemade remolaude sauce and shredded lettuce...yum, YUM!

I guess I did work after all didn't I?

A mother's job truly never ends, I acquiesce... :)

Worth every minute.

Here's the pics from the day:

(Guess who had the camera the whole time...hmmm...)

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small beer (?)

Word of the Day for Friday, September 8, 2006

small beer \small beer\, noun:
1. Weak beer.
2. Insignificant matters; something of little importance.
3. Unimportant; trivial.

We dined early upon stale bread and old mutton with small beer. -- Ferdinand Mount,, Jem (and Sam)

I was not born for this kind of small beer, says Joan the wife of the colonial governor, who imagines leading armies or "droves of inflamed poets." -- Nancy Willard, "The Nameless Women of the World", New York Times, December 18, 1988

Call me a geek, but for biologists, marvels like the parasitic flatworm are on tap every day, making the reveries of Hollywood seem like small beer. -- Jerry A. Coyne, "The Truth Is Way Out There", New York Times, October 10, 1999

Small beer is beer of only slight alcoholic strength; the other senses are derivative.

Gmail - small beer: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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verisimilitude

Word of the Day for Wednesday, September 6, 2006

verisimilitude \ver-uh-suh-MIL-uh-tood; -tyood\, noun:

1. The appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true.

2. Something that has the appearance of being true or real.

In an attempt to create verisimilitude, in addition to the usual vulgarities, the dialogue is full of street slang. -- Wilborn Hampton, "Sugar Down Billie Hoak': An Unexpected Spot to Find a Father", New York Times, August 1, 1997

For those plays, Ms. Smith interviewed hundreds of people of different races and ages, somehow managing to internalize their expressions, anger and quirks enough to be able to portray them with astonishing verisimilitude. -- Sarah Boxer, "An Experiment in Artistic Democracy", New York Times, August 7, 2000

The old man's massive forehead, penetrating eyes and enormous beard lent verisimilitude to this unappealing portrait. -- "Charm itself", Economist, October 16, 1999

Verisimilitude comes from Latin verisimilitudo, from verisimilis, from verus, "true" + similis, "like, resembling, similar." The adjective form is verisimilar.

Gmail - verisimilitude: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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link to slideshow...

I put a permanent link to the post with the homebirth slideshow on the right sidebar so it is easier to find now. It has been viewed on U-Tube over 15,000 times. Is that crazy or what?
I have also had requests by several childbirth educators to have a hard copy for their classes. A major childbirth association, CAPPA, is going to play it at their upcoming conference this weekend. Who would have known that such a simple thing would do so much. I am truly amazed.
It has been such a blessing to meet new friends and help others with their decisions about homebirth.
One of these days soon, I will finish writing out the whole birth story and post it. Maybe by her first birthday. :)
Anyway, I guess that is all for now.

brocamole

(Another) Word of the day for Friday, September 1, 2006

brocamole \brock-a-MOL-ee\ noun;

That green stuff, made from avocados, onions and jalapenos, that you put on your fajitas... usually along with cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, beans and meat.

"Mom, I only want a little brokamolee on mine, please." -- Chloe Renee Bailey, while enjoying homemade fajitas, September 1, 2006

wwww.thebaileysblog.blogspot.com Chloe's Word of the Day!

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recent pics of the big ones...

Nicole Elizabeth Bailey

I can't even believe that she is 10 years old! She is so good with her new little sister. Emma just loves her to death. I need to post some of her artwork too. She is quite an artist.

Walter Timothy Bailey Jr. (aka Timmy)

And this one....almost 12!! He is starting to fill out a little... A friend of ours just gave them a PS2 and Timmy has been pretty psyched about that lately. He still loves Legos though. I told him he should condsider architecture in the future because he likes to build things so much. He said, "Yeah, that sounds cool..." :)

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acquiesce

Word of the Day for Friday, September 1, 2006
acquiesce \ak-wee-ES\, intransitive verb:
To accept or consent passively or without objection -- usually used with 'in' or 'to'.
At the same time, sellers might acquiesce to mafia involvement in their business as a way of ensuring payment for goods: if the buyer defaults, the mafioso will collect. -- Louis S. Warren, The Hunter's Game
The British were not prepared to acquiesce to the return of the Chinese to Tibet, and determined to counter the reassertion of Chinese influence. -- Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows
France would probably express regret that a military strike had become necessary, but would acquiesce in it. -- Craig R. Whitney, "France Pushes for Last-Ditch Diplomatic Solution.", New York Times, February 20, 1998
Acquiesce comes from Latin acquiescere, "to give oneself to rest, hence to find one's rest or peace (in something)," from ad, "to" + quiescere, "to rest, to be or keep quiet."

Gmail - acquiesce: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

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