March 6, 2012

morning routine

Every day, it's a joint effort getting Finn and Calvin ready for school. The night before, I set out their clothes, and pack their lunches. Daddy gets them up and feeds them breakfast. And then I help them get dressed, brush their hair & teeth and get them out the door.

Then Ollie, Twain and I eat breakfast.

One of our morning rituals is to eat eggs, toast and applesauce.

I try to sneak some extras into the applesauce: Probiotics and Vitamin C powder. And when they are sick, I also like to add drops of Children's Echinacea(the brown stuff).

Ollie asks, "Is the brown stuff sugar mommy?"

How am I supposed to answer that?

"No honey, but it's very yummy, so just eat it!"

We all had some version of the flu/cold that is going around and so I was very busy mixing echinacea into their applesauce last week.

1. The vitamin C powder(Calcium Ascorbate) is seen on the left. It was recommended by our homeopathic doctor in santa cruz. I guess it's easy to just put some in their food when it's in the powder form. And it helps the immune system.

2. The Children's Echinacea is in the brown dropper bottle in the middle. It's by a company called herb pharm. Nice product. We only use it when we are sick though. I use the adult version when I am sick.

3. People often ask me what type of probiotic I use. For the kids, I use the Natren Life Start2, goat milk formula, seen in the right of this photo. They come in capsules and I sprinkle 1/3 of the capsule into each bowl of applesauce. This type of probiotic must be refrigerated(The kind that do not require refrigeration are not as potent and do not work as well). I buy it from Dr. W and she says it comes to her house on a refrigerated truck, so that is important.

For me, I use a probiotic called Trenev Trio, also by Natren. I also like to take a few other supplements here and there. Like fish oil and Vitamin C.

I am sure there are many other supplements that are super useful...but this is all I am doing right now. I don't really want to take a lot of things anyway, so that's fine by me.

Last week, I ended up getting really sick from the head flu...which turned into a sinus infection. I am slowly improving, as long as I just take it easy and putz around the house. These sinus infections knock me out and I am learning that I just have to cancel all my plans and stay home resting, if I want to get better. Novel concept right? Stay home and rest? But it's SOOOO hard for me to cancel certain plans because I feel so terrible disappointing people! But I am learning that if I don't stay home and take it easy, I pay for it big time.