Friday, December 19, 2014

School ~ Fever ~ Candy ~ The difference in Schools

Today is James long awaited appointment. . .  and he woke up sick with a fever. The kids in his class have been dropping like flies. In fact over a hundred kids in his school were home sick by Wednesday and every day more succumbed. I should have just pulled him out of school.

Missy is not sick. It is one of the things we have noticed about her new school. There is no candy stream there at the Montessori. There are no cupcake and root beer float parties, either. She has had only one cold since September. Normally she is one snotty-nosed-kid most of the time. Her behavior is much more manageable. She does not have huge tantrums and kick and try to hurt anyone anymore. I think there are two factors at work here. LESS stress - and that is the most obvious thing, and less junk food being fed her. It really frustrated me last year how little control I had over her diet and sugar, dyes, dairy and "garbage" were a constant. She has no self-control. If you put it in front of her she's going to eat it all and her neighbor's portion, too. The Montessori teachers are all health conscious people. It makes a difference. The kiddo only eats what I send her. Nothing else is offered. 

Missy is still trying to learn place value in math. She demonstrated her ability to use the abacus to us last night. She can count money, and tell the time and use manipulative, but her understanding of place value is still non-existant. She has beautiful handwriting and she can spell okay, but her writing exposes her disorganized brain. She really cannot put her thoughts in order. The teacher has sweat with her over this, but to no avail so far.

I'm glad she is in this school even if it is expensive. So far, every month I have had enough little jobs to cover the whole thing. This is thanks to the providence of God.

We had a couple of Brianna's friends spend the weekend with us last weekend. It was great to get to know them. We had a really nice time. In a few hours Vanessa's friend, Glesni is arriving for this weekend. Hopefully we can keep James quarantined. I've made everyone kale, lemon, ginger, garlic, spinach shakes for breakfast and I'm dosing them all up with herbs and vitamins as if they are all sick. What won't cure will kill...

The sun is shining. What a blessing. We sure miss the sun when the grey fog settle in. We have had rain all week until this morning.

Monday, December 8, 2014

MTHFR

I have entered a world of which I have no desire to experience, but here goes... I had the twins DNA tested at 23andMe and it took me a couple of weeks but I found a website that interpreted the raw data for me. And it goes without saying they have mutations of MTHFR and several others. Missy has 7 heterozygous mutations and 3 homozygous and James has 5 heterozygous mutations and 3 homozygous mutations. Even though they are twins their mutations are not all the same...  I had a sneaking suspicion that James was having issues with B12. This shows that that could VERY well be the case.  I have an appointment for James next week with a doctor specifically to look at this data and to look for ways to support and help him. I have not made Missy's appointment yet. One thing at a time. Otherwise this gets overwhelming.

It might not be Greek, but yikes...