A Louisiana Girl's Iowa Observations

First of all, everyone here is blonde.  Everyone.  It is uncanny how many blonde haired, blue eyed adults and children live here.  Someone said they are of scandinavian descent, but I'm not sure.

Snow does not kill weeds.  I thought for sure it would.  It does not kill grass, either.  It melts and the grass is just as green as it was in Autumn, and the weeds you left in the Fall are still there.

Snow also doesn't melt like I thought it would, into rivers of water.  It melts slowly, from the top of the pile, like your snowball does.  It also retreats from the edge of the curb like the waves at the beach.  Curb to sidewalk.  For some reason I didn't think it would go that way.

Avatar's Pain

I have been thinking about writing this since the Super Bowl, but it wasn't until I saw the movie Avatar that it was clear why.  If you haven't seen it, it is about people who transform themselves into another life form, and live on a distant planet much like Earth, to learn about the native's culture, so that they can excavate their energy source and bring it back to Earth.  The main character goes through a process of becoming more and more like the natives, and eventually decides to stay.

But that is not the pain part I am talking about, the pain of learning a new language, and culture, and way of life.  I'm talking about the pain of seeing your hometown on TV when your reality is something completely different.

May!

Hello everyone,

Hope you are all well, time for an update...

Miles is doing ok, he is talking a lot more now. He says "ready, swing, peek a boo, mommy, daddy, elle belle, apple, nana (banana), monkey, quack (when I sign duck), finished, fish, water, flower, shoe, sock, eat, stop...", and he signs finished, fish, claps for more, doggie,

So his speech is improving, I started using coconut oil for the yeast we still have (no it did not go away), which is antifungal. It seems that the antibiotics just tipped his system in the direction of the yeast over good bacteria in his gut, because he is still only pooping twice a week, and is very uncomfortable when he does, and I'm not sure what else to do. We did 7 weeks of grapefruit seed extract and cranberry juice in our smoothies, oregano oil occasionally (which is fungicidal and bactericidal), I quit eating chocolate, we have cut down on the white rice flour products, and we are on our second round of two weeks of Diflucan (which is about the third line medicine for yeast).

What happens with yeast is that sometimes it gains a foothold in the gut and converts from its spore form to an aggressive hyphal form, which can attach to things, and is the yeast responsible for punching holes in the gut. So to say I'm concerned about his little system is an understatement. I finally found however a very strong probiotic from Klaire labs that I have been giving him and Justin, and it seems to be helping a lot. I didn't realize until my current chiropractor pointed out that the probiotic I have been using for months for Justin only has 1 billion viable cells, which is fine for a kid with a normal gut, but for our family it doesn't even cut it. 5 billion is the minimum for Miles, and 50 is the minimum for Justin. Right now I'm taking 200 billion to try to get my gut in the right direction- away from the yeast.