IKEA's Freezer is Secretly Gluten-Free

Since the prospect of playing in the ball pit at IKEA is what motivated Scott for potty training, we took him to the "big blue store" on Good Friday for his big debut. We expected it to be busy. We expected to have to wait. In that respect, we got what we expected.


Sadly, when we moved through the waiting throng to the counter, we saw a sign that said "The ball pit is closed until further notice." The rest of the play area was open, so we still went ahead and signed up for a time slot.

I asked the attendant what was going on with the balls. He said that somebody had peed in there earlier in the day.

Outrageous.

Scott still enjoyed it, even without the balls, and R and I simply wandered around the store during his 45 minute shift.

We recently read on a Celiac blog that IKEA has a gluten-free dessert that is pretty good -- good enought that the blog author said she buys several to keep in her freezer. Since we were there anyway, we thought we should check it out.

With our 45 minutes of freedom, we taste-tested the "Almondy" cake in the cafeteria upstairs and found it to our liking. It's amazing, in fact. It is this almond-based tart with a creamy layer and a chocolate topping with Daim candy sprinkled on top.

We bought 4 of those and 2 of the Blabarskaka (blueberry).

So Scott didn't get his romp in the ball pit, but he got to climb on a hippo thing, eat another ice cream cone and enjoy Blabarskaka for dessert after dinner. Being diaper-free has its benefits.

The Wild Things

R and Scott got season passes to the Calgary Zoo this year, and we hit up the zoo on the first warm Saturday of the year so far.

We went along with a white-headed family of Nacho Libre fanatics -- we are big fans, but their kids take it a whole new level.

They have installed lots of ninja robot dinosaurs in the prehistoric park. One of the children was absolutely freaked out. I think he summoned his eagle powers to gather his courage and press on. Speaking of magestic birds, how about this wild goose chase?

I think it's funny that they found this goose as thrilling as any elephant, lion or tiger -- probably more thrilling, judging by all the screeching.

My Mom the Acrobat

[An online chat with my oldest brother J a few days after my parents visited for Katie's baby blessing at the beginning of March]

me: Just wanted to say that I think you are the best. Hope you are having a great day.

J: oh, wow thanks how was sunday? wish we could have been there

me: Sunday was great. It was so nice to have the parentals here. Got some sweet pics of Pops and Scott on the playground. And watched mom nearly kill herself trying to go on a zip line at the playground. Unbelievable.

J: geez

me: I should send you a photo.

J: yeah, do

[This photo is not from the actual incident -- this was a safer version]

me: I went on this thing and then she's like "hey, I want to try that" and then she goes off the platform and promptly slips off the handle and lands on her back in the pebbles.

J: oh no

me: I thought she was going to be dead, but she just popped back up to her feet with that trademark momma laugh and brushed herself off.

J: was she ok?

me: No big deal.

J: amazing


me: She comes from pretty hardy stock, I guess. It wasn't a very big zip line, but still...

J: yeah, would have killed me

me: Haha. Anyway, no harm no foul. I'll send you the photo.

J: cool your kids are cute

me: So are yours.

Gluten Moon Begins April 16th

The Hellenic calendars, the Hebrew Lunisolar calendar and the Islamic Lunar calendar started the month with the first appearance of the thin crescent of the new moon.
- "Month", Wikipedia

This year, April 14th is a new moon. It closely coincides with the beginning of a one-time, 34-day feast in our house that will be observed starting on April 16th. We will call this day Gluten Day, and the period until May 19th will be Gluten Moon.


Back in October, when R was pregnant, she was a diagnosed with a gluten intolerance following a blood test. However, we've held onto a dim hope that the intolerance was brought on by the pregnancy, rather than Celiac Disease. Normally, a positive blood test is followed by a biopsy to make an accurate diagnosis for Celiac Disease. You have to keep eating gluten until the biopsy, but R had to get off the gluten immediately for the sake of the pregnancy, so the biopsy was scheduled for May 19th. In order to make a conclusive test, she has to eat gluten for several weeks leading up to the test -- our doctor said about a month.

Technically, a lunar month is about 29 days, so we're stretching it a bit. But who can blame us? If you were given one last chance to eat gluten, you would want to make it a good one.

R is going to make a ranked list of things that she will miss the most and we are going to make sure we hit as many as we can without making her terribly ill. Because some things are harder to replace than others, there are some items (that aren't necessarily her #1 favourites) that will make the list just because she'll likely never get to eat them again (at least not quite like she is used to):

- submarine sandwiches & restaurant club sandwiches
- hamburger buns & most fast food fries
- pizza (especially delivery)
- German pancake, French toast and Cora's Surprise
- ginger beef and lemon chicken (but we've probably found a replacement)
- fresh-baked rolls, pastries, cookies, etc
- angel food cake and a host of other desserts
- flour tortilla burritos
- regular, flour-thickened beef gravy (ie: Sunday dinner & poutine)

IKEA Potty-Trained Our Boy

The first attempt at potty training did not go well because Scott got deathly ill at the end of the first day. This despite the best of preparations -- R had amassed all kinds of instructional information, gallons of juice, some Lightning McQueen underpants and a Little Tikes potty. She had stickers and a container of jelly beans to use as prizes, plus a few Thomas Trains held in reserve for big milestones. She cleared her schedule and braced herself for several days of soaking him in juice and sitting him on the potty at regular intervals until he HAD to succeed.


Then he got something feverish ailment akin to Swine Flu and nearly coughed out a lung, so he was not in the mood to participate.

The whole thing was a fairly negative experience for him (and us) so nothing more happened on that front for several months. With a new baby sister on the way, we knew he had plenty to cope with already.

About a month ago we went to IKEA to get a few things and we told Scott about all the fun he would have playing in the balls with the other kids. When we approached the counter the attendant asked, "Does he wear diapers? Has he been potty trained? Children in diapers cannot come in the play area."

One look at his face and my heart broke for him. I led him a few steps away from the counter and crouched down to confirm what he had already suspected: diaper-wearers are second-class citizens in Sweden. Through some nearby windows he watched children with elevated bladder control running to and fro in the play area. He asked, "I can't play in the balls because I have a diaper?" It was more than I could take, so I led him away to get an ice cream cone. We discussed it a little more, and it was quite clear to him that if he could get free of his diaper habit, he would be eligible to play in the balls.


He finished his ice cream and the conversation ended there (I ate a cinnamon bun, for the record).

Suddenly, on Wednesday morning last week, I got a call from home. It was Scotty and R on the speaker phone. "Scotty has something to tell you" said R. Then Scotty came on the line with his trademark falsetto telephone voice. "Dad, I went pee in the potty and now I have big boy underwear on and I can go in the balls at the big blue store!" I was shocked. I wasn't sure what was going on or how to respond. Then R came on the line and explained what had happened.

That morning Scott had come to R and had said, "I want to wear big boy underwear and play in the balls at the big blue store." R told him that he would have to be able to use the potty and keep his underwear dry if he was going to do that. Scott immediately agreed to her terms and she immediately panicked. Her mind started racing, thinking of the implications for the day's schedule, wondering if she had all the necessary supplies -- including the requisite patience.

So it began. Fortunately, R had a carton of juice on hand and Scott was delighted to get an extra ration (we have a standing breakfast-only policy on juice in our house). They set a timer for 5 minute intervals when he had to try sitting on the potty.

And then it happened. He peed in the potty. And then he did it again.

That first one wasn't perfect, but it was enough to get him started and he never looked back. He has been pretty much 100% since that morning, which puts him at nearly a week. It's crazy. With one exception, he hasn't even wet his pull-ups at night or at nap time. It's like he wasn't ready to do it until he could do it perfectly. Early on, R had been reading a strategy for a 3-day potty training campaign. When the time came, he was potty trained in about 3 hours.

It's funny, even though several months had passed from the first attempt, he remembered all the details. He remembered the trains, the stickers, the jelly beans, the juice, the underpants, the pull-ups for night time. All of this information had been accumulating in his mind, and the IKEA incident must have been the tipping point.

So, thank you IKEA. Thank you for helping to potty train our boy.

Wipeout

First bike wipeout in years

1. My left elbow

2. My left hip

I was wearing my biking jacket and a spandex sleeve on my arm, and it tore a hole through the jacket. I had spandex shorts on under a pair of cotton shorts and it tore through the pocket of my shorts. It also tore a hole in the palm of my left glove but didn't really take any skin.

Edge of the handlebar got a bit roughed up but the bike came away almost unscathed. I have a steady, dull ache down my left side and a pair of bandaids on my elbow.

I was coming off of a pathway onto a road where I needed to make an immediate left turn, and there was a pretty big patch of gravel. I made this same turn without incident 3 times last week, but this time I hit it a lot faster and needed a much wider arc, which pushed me out into the gravel. It all seemed like slow motion and I remember saying, "aw, shoot" as I was skidding sideways through the gravel and reaching out to break my fall.

Not just a regular Buffalo...

Saw this today when I went curling for a work activity. I guess the name "buffalos" was already taken so they chose the next best thing.

I Wuv Pocsiples

Since my previous post about nuances of Scott's speech, we have noticed several more trademark words and sayings:

Pocsiple = popsicle
Hootball = football
Bakseball = basketball
Gollum = Goblin

His current method of counting:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 12, 13, 9, 12 ... (if he needs a large number, he uses 50, because that's the number of forests burned up by the dragon in The Paperbag Princess)

"Big Pants"
The other day we were driving into downtown to drop my bike off at the shop. He knows that I work "downtown at the big buildings", so I pointed them out to him. He said, "When I grow big I can work at the big buildings like you Dad... and wear big pants." At least he knows what it takes to find a job in this day and age -- big pants.

"Wipe my eyes"
Scott's gone through some emotional times lately. He often wants to be first to go somewhere (even walking down the hall) or he wants things done in a certain way, and if that doesn't work out, he breaks down into tears. Then, even if issues have resolved themselves, he can't continue until the tears are completely cleared from his eyes. He's much better now about just wiping his own eyes, but there was a period there when he would burst into tears because he wanted to be the one who would close the front door, but he wouldn't actually close the door until someone helped wipe his eyes. This problem with tears in his eyes would cause him to cry all over again. Let me tell you, it is tough to get all the tears from your eyes if having tears in your eyes makes you cry. Like I said, he's getting better about it now (he wipes his own tears quite thoroughly).

"Does that make you happy?"
When he was quite young, we would try to show a distinction between social and antisocial behaviour by pointing out when things made us sad or when things helped make us happy. That concept really caught on, and now he will occasionally do something very innocuous and inquire in his most chipper of voices, "Does that make you happy?" He usually comes striding up quite close and cocks his head nearly sideways when he asks.

"The Scotty on the bus says..."
Scotty and I were out for a walk and we started to sing the Wheels On the Bus Go Round and Round song. He likes to do some of the actions and he sings along a little bit. To help him participate a bit more, I would ask him to tell what came next in each verse, and he would say, "Driver", "Baby", "Mommy", etc. So I would sing, "The Driver on the bus says... what?" and Scott would tell me what to fill there. Finally, we ran out of the standard verses and I added a new one: "The Scotty on the bus says... what?" Scott grinned and said, "Beagh!", which is pretty much his favourite exclamation to make, and therefore entirely appropriate.
The Scott on the bus says Beagh! Beagh! Beagh, all through the town.

Bad Guys Have Beards
I have to apologize to all those men with beards out there, because I have set my son against you, possibly forever. He was doing some water-painting in a Pinoccio book this week and I pointed out the Bad Guys in the book, including black-bearded puppetmaster Stromboli/Mangiafuoco. I told him that the bad guy had a beard, and then I exaggerated a bit and said something about lots of bad guys having beards. Things got a bit confused for while there while we clarified that the Green Goblin did not have a beard. Scott wondered if Spiderman (his ultimate hero) had a beard. No, he wears a mask. It was a bit unclear to him what a beard really was, even though I tried to explain that it was hair that grows on your face. He listened quite intently and asked a few questions, but I'm still not sure what he took away from the conversation. It is quite possible that he will mistrust people with masks (which is usually OK), but he may also mistrust anyone with hair on their face. My apologies to all three of my brothers, since they all have beards of one sort or another. You are all supervillains now.

What the Hulk Does
Scotty has dubbed himself "Spiderman Boy" and any sidekick is invariably called the Hulk, because (as everyone knows) the Hulk is Spiderman's friend and they are both Good Guys. The other day Scott was talking about the Hulk and he said, "The Hulk rides a green bike to work at the green buildings. Then he goes to the green doctor." You would be surprised that he has this kind of inside information about the Hulk, but you have to realize that he is Spiderman Boy and a close friend of the Hulk. and the details make even better sense if you know that I often get to play the role of the Hulk, largely because I own a green shirt. I ride a bike to work. I work downtown where there are big buildings. I am not so sure about the doctor part. I have been to the doctor before, not that frequently. Maybe that's where the Hulk and I are different -- the Hulk has to see the doctor every day after work, whereas I just do the whole apple-a-day thing.

Chasing the Turtle
Recently he told us a story that went something like this: "I was Spiderman and I was in a boat and a pirate ship and my big bakseball went in the water and got wet and then I went and chased the turtle really fast and I caught the turtle...
...And I hit it."
He has several versions of this tale with some variation in the details but the same basic formula.

Katie Blessing Day

On Sunday at church we put Katie in a cute little white dress and she was given a name and a blessing (somewhat similar to a christening). It was tons of fun to have my parents come up and visit for the occasion. Everything went wonderfully except that R's grandparents got a flat tire, but my brothers-in-law had that spare swapped on in a matter of minutes, so that was no big deal.

We just think Katie is the cutest little thing.

Nodding Off

Scott has really taken to those paint-with-water books for kids. He will sit at the table for an hour and methodically paint a stack of them if you'll keep him supplied. However, if he hasn't had a nap (like yesterday), then his creative energy may fade and leave him awfully drowsy. I was delighted that I was able to catch some of it with the camera.

Later on in the evening, I noticed a similar wobble in Katie's struggle with the sandman. She has much less control of her neck and head, but it's cute all the same.

Hugs & Kisses

 

 

 

 

A Pattern of Baldness

Katie was born with a dusting of brown hair that swirled and spun into the most interesting hairline -- she has a cowlick on one side and a swirling crown on the other, fairly similar to Scott. Sadly, just like Scott she lost all of the hair on the top of her head, leaving only the hair on the sides and back: male pattern baldness.

Normally, you would expect the hair loss to follow the opposite pattern, since a child spends so much time reclined in a car seat, a swing or a crib. I've seen lots of kids with bald spots on the back of their heads. Sure, Katie prefers to sleep with her head cocked to the right, but she whips her head all over the place during her waking hours. In addition, she can rock the house during "tummy time" -- she lifts her head like a champ.

Still, Katie has not been doing any headspins, so we figure the hair loss must be genetic, especially since Scott's hair did the same thing. In Scott's case, his hair grew back thicker and darker where it had fallen out, giving him a fabulous widow's peak. Perhaps Katie will follow suit?

Shopping with Mr Anonymous

Yes, he picked his own outfit to go to the grocery store ... at night. Apparently he prefers to view the world in 3D.

More Lookalike Photos

Scott (1 week old)

Katie (3 weeks old)

More Igloo Analysis

We did our big igloo camp last weekend and we put multiple construction methods into practice (preliminary tests were in January).

I wasn't able to be there the first day, but the group built several quinzees and part of an igloo. The area had seen quite a bit of variation in temperatures and the snow was very sugary as a result and hardly wanted to stick together when they tried using the igloo kit. In fact, they found the blocks of the third row were collapsing in place and they gave up on the structure in favour of quinzees. However, the so leaders were too aggressive in hollowing theirs out and it collapsed on them before it was ready. one leader slept in the foundation of the igloo while the other crammed himself into his car for a poor night's sleep.

My arrival the following day with a fresh batch of blazer scouts renewed the group's waning enthusiasm for igloo-building. This corresponded nicely with some afternoon sun that made the top layer of snowy soft and sticky.

We managed to build the rest of the igloo In about 75 minutes, working with just two people for much of the time. We were almost incredulous that the device worked so well -- the snow seemed to defy gravity.

With the top closed off, our inside man had to dig his way out with a shovel. We found that there was about 6 feet from floor to ceiling in this igloo, which was 8 feet in diameter across the floor. There was enough space for about 6 or 7 people to sit comfortably in a circle along the inside walls, and the light from outside showed through the walls enough to light the interior reasonably well.

Although I was pretty jazzed to spend the night inside our new igloo, I gave up my place to the boys who had laboured to build the foundations the previous day. Since they didn't block off the entrance when they went to bed, they found it wasn't any warmer in there than it had been in their quinzee the night before. The big difference for them was how much space they had to move around without rubbing up against a wall of snow and ice.

Instead of sleeping in the igloo, I spent the night in this elegant quinzee, which we expropriated from two scouts. They were each a foot shorter than your average leader, so we spent a few minutes hollowing it out before we settled in. The evening temperature was about -4C when we went to bed at 10:30 pm, and my thermometer in the quinzee read about +6C or so, which is several tons better than the -20C that I experienced the previous year sleeping in a tent by myself. I had a thicker sleeping pad (with no leaks!) and a bivy sac. I found it so warm in there that I didn't have to zip up my mummy bag past my chest (the bivy sac kept things pretty airtight as it was.

The next day, we were able to get seven of us on top of the igloo before the roof collapsed.

We didn't try out the Eskimold blocks on this trip, since the snow had been poor and this method seemed obviously inferior to the Ice Box kit. However, on Saturday Scott and I gave it a try in the front yard, with snow that was bordering on slushy because of the warm weather.

The sticky snow produced results much better than we'd seen with the sugary snow earlier in January. Scott and I were able to build up a decent-sized wall in about 10 or 15 minutes. We couldn't really go any higher without an additional helper to keep it from, so we left it at 3 rows. Two days later the wall collapsed because of rapid melting. Scott was sad at first, but then I told him to run over and kick at the rubble and that made him happy again.

Green Sludge is Good For You

Recently, one of our favourite afternoon snacks has been a green smoothie. Scott loves to help. First, he heaps several fists full of spinach into the blender with a cup of water to help blend it.

We follow that up with a banana, some yogourt and whichever frozen fruits and berries we have on hand. Scott loves to help by eating the strawberries and mangoes out of the package and pressing the buttons on the blender. The strawberries change the colour of the sludge from a vivid green to something a bit more pink.

You would think that a green drink loaded with spinach would taste a bit nasty, but the banana manages to shroud most all of the spinach taste without crowding out the berries. It's a fantastic drink and much better than munching on a bag of chips in the afternoon.