A Box, a Virus, and a Baby

Okay, first of all, I remembered something I forgot to blog about. If you're a reader of my frugal blog, you know that we joined a food co-op this year. Basically, we pay less than $200 to get fresh fruit and vegetables from local farms every other week. We chose to do every other week not knowing how much food was coming (and me knowing how picky Stephen is about his fruits and vegetables.) Now don't get me wrong, he eats fruits and veggies all day long. But he likes specific ones. It's hard to get him to try a new one. I'm not sure how I convinced him to try asparagus when we got married but now he'd eat it every night if we could have it.

ANYWAY. First pickup was Wednesday for us! Included in our box: carrots, lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions.


My plan of action? So far the carrots and one tomato have been going in salads made with Stephen's aunt Leanne's lettuce from her garden. The strawberries have been in Stephen's lunch and they're my dessert at night. The sweet potatoes will be pureed and frozen for Brianna. The onions will be chopped and frozen for future consumption. The rest of the tomatoes and lettuce will be used for tacos Saturday night.

(The salad has been a great addition to lasagna leftovers! Topped with $0.25 turkey bacon of course!)

Actually, I really would love to save an onion for this incredible spinach salad recipe I found, but I want to use spinach from the box too, and since we didn't get any, I don't want the onion to go bad before we get any spinach.

Anyway. Again. Next on the agenda. What is wrong with this picture?


Our child who once had pure ivory skin now has freckles! Yesterday I noticed a rash starting to appear on Brianna's entire body. I mean, under her hair, on the bottoms of her feet, EVERYWHERE! It didn't seem to bother her so I wasn't very worried, although I did call the doctor's office to see if they thought it was an allergic reaction and if they thought I could still take her to church nursery. The nurse's informal diagnosis was that it might be due to her taking amoxicillin for the first time, to take her off of that and give her a 1/2 teaspoon of Benadryl and see if that did the trick. She didn't think there would be any problem taking her to nursery.

Fortunately, between Stephen and I, the decision was made to keep her home. I really didn't want to be the cause of some epidemic outbreak at church. Good thing too, because she skipped her nap (morning and afternoon!) so she was ready for bed in the middle of when we would normally be at church!! She slept long and hard last night, and when she woke up this morning... the spots were still there, redder, and REALLY standing out!! Bless her heart, she looked awful! But she was her normal cheerful self still. Luckily the doctor's office opened in ten minutes, so I called and made an early morning appointment. Turns out we were right to keep her home from church. She has Roseola, which is an extremely common childhood illness. The doctor said most kids get it before they enter kindergarten because your immune system doesn't build up against for the first three years of life or something. She has an extremely mild case. Many children who get it have a sudden fever of 103 or higher which can cause a febrile seizure, and then the rash appears. Bri never had a fever that we know of, just the rash. There is no treatment except waiting it out, and the rash should go away within three days or less. As far as viruses go, this one is an easy fix! And thank God the only symptoms are fever and rash, and the rash is not known to cause any pain or itching. Brianna certainly hasn't shown any signs of not feeling well. If she had to get any illness I'm glad it's this one!

Okay... last but not least, we have found out what Baby Talbert is! I would post a picture but they're all quite inappropriate. Let me see... we got:

• two shots between the legs
• 1 shot of the face staring right at us (FREAKY!!!)
• 1 shot of a hand
• 1 profile
• 2 shots of feet

The hand picture is really the only good one. But all that matters is that we saw what was or was not between the legs right?

Well, there is something there. IT'S A BOY! We can actually produce boys in our family! It's a miracle! Now we just have to find out what Jenn and Matt are having, which will be very soon!!

Oh, and if anyone wants a pink stroller, we won't be needing it anymore.



(Just kidding - you never know when another girl will come along for us!)

P.S. Let it be known publicly that Gail was correct about Baby T. being a boy :)