Honeybee*Hill

We had been busy visiting with Aaron’s mom all week — Sulivan’s Grammy (or Grr — as he likes to call her). And Wednesday we were preparing for a big send-off dinner of gnocchi with sauteed garden veggies, fig and orange goat cheese bruschetta and blueberry tart, when Joanne (Grr) noticed something… funny in Freyja’s diaper. That is, she noticed a diaper full of blood. It was still early in the afternoon, so I called Freyja’s pediatrician and they were able to see her right away. She had been throwing up after every feeding for the past few days, and I just figured it was some kind of reflux until I saw the bloody diaper — but our pediatrician said that it was much more severe than she was used to seeing for just an allergic reaction. She advised us to take her to the emergency room at Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis (which is about an hour and a half away) to see a pediatric gastrointestinal specialist.

It seemed like a pain and it wasn’t at all how we planned to spend our last evening with Joanne in town, but Aaron and I ran home real quick to pick up some extra diapers. We left Sullivan happy with his Grammy and drove to Indy. We honestly figured we’d be there for an hour or two — have some out-patient tests run and then go home.

Long story short — we ended up staying overnight. They wanted to run all kinds of tests on her and each time they decided to do another test, it took an hour for them to get around to doing it — and then another hour of waiting around for the results. Aaron left around 11 p.m. or midnight and I stayed with Freyja. I was in an emergency room cubicle from around seven p.m. to 4:30 a.m. the next day, when they finally decided they needed to admit her to the infant unit. That whole time all they did was put her on an IV, take four vials of blood — twice because the first round of blood tests didn’t work right — and run two ex rays. Once we got a room I was able to doze in a more comfortable chair on and off for a few hours.

Aaron came back up with Sullivan around 11 a.m. By that time they were nearly ready to do an upper GI test. All the tests were coming back inconclusive. Anatomically, she was perfectly fine. By 4 p.m. Thursday, the doctors determined that it was a severe allergic reaction to something in my breastmilk. They advised we put her on formula till her gut stopped bleeding. In the meanwhile I should cut out all dairy and dairy-derivatives. If that doesn’t work we can try soy, wheat, eggs and nuts.

I felt so awful because I didn’t realize how dehydrated she was until we got to the hospital. And it was either watch her throw up and pass blood or put her on formula and fill her belly with something that wouldn’t make her wretch or bleed internally, you know? So that’s what we did. She was feeling kind of crappy yesterday, but today she’s much better.

I’ve been off diary since Wednesday (I just happened to not eat any Wednesday and Thursday while at the hospital). I’ve been able to breastfeed her a little bit, but we’ve had to supplement with the bottle because my supply is so diminished already. I also don’t want to overwhelm her little tummy, so she’s mostly getting a bottle. I have all kinds of emotional roller-coaster feelings about this, so I’m going to kindly request that no one make comments about my decision to put her on the bottle. I honestly feel guilty enough about what happened, but also so grateful that she’s happy and feeling better now.

Cutting out dairy has rendered me effectively a vegan. I won’t be able to eat the gnocchi and Alfredo that we had planned — and tonight I had to make my blueberry tart dairy-free, which was really no fun at all. I really love cheese pizza, so that will be hard for me. Aaron picked up some Earth Balance and some soy milk for me. It’s all just really depressing. If her allergy continues, I’m not sure I’m willing to give up wheat or soy — so we’d probably just keep her on the bottle. Luckily I do have some experience with vegan cooking. It won’t be that bad, I just have to re-train myself like I did when I went veg so many years ago. I also have to read all the ingredients on all prepared foods because her allergy is very severe. Oiy!

While toting around a crabby baby, we did some gardening yesterday and this was our harvest:

Sullivan is doing well. He’s really missing his Grammy, but we’re actually heading to the Poconos to visit her next week!

He says so many things now and likes to tell me how it is. We can sing the ABCs and the “If you’re happy and you know it” song. He can count to six and he’s learning colors. He’s been such a good big brother and he even thinks  “Freyja is nice” (though the other day he did call her a vacuum, which in Sullivan’s world is the most terrible thing ever).

Somewhere between reading Don Quixote and dealing with a sick bebe, I managed to work up this little girl. She only took probably two or three hours total, but I have to work in ten-minute blocks. I think I like crochet so much because it doesn’t require a lot of set-up, tear-down and clean up, like sewing does. I can leave my yarn and a hook in a basket and pick it up whenever I have a few minutes. This pattern is from an etsy seller Shop AmyGurumi. Here’s a hint: follow her on twitter for sales on the patterns!

I’m behind on sending etsy orders out and I think I’ve got a swap package or two that needs to go out. Hopefully I will get caught up before we go out of town. Hopefully Freyja gets better and I don’t have to deal with anymore emergency room visits. Hopefully I can figure out a way to use up all that zucchini (and do it without butter or cheese). Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully. That’s how I operate these days.

When my husband and I bought the house we live in, we were just two crazy single kids in love. We had been living in an apartment downtown over the city’s Republican headquarters (we weren’t spying, I swear!) and were shopping for a house because it was in the middle of that housing market thing where everyone and their dog was getting mortgages. We saw this house and thought it was just perfect for the two of us — two bedrooms, just enough space to be cozy but not cramped, tiny backyard we could put a garden in, monthly payments lower than our rent.

I remember the day we went to sign the papers. I had a gig that night at a local bar (in my past life I was a singer/songwriter with the guitar) and I dedicated my performance to Aaron because he “bought me a house” (I remember saying that in the mic to the bar and being really proud of him). After we got home though I didn’t feel so hot and got this weird sinking feeling. We stopped off at CVS and I picked up a pregnancy test. Surprise!!

Anyway, we’ve lived here for three years and we’ve made TONS of progress on the house, but it’s really tiny for our soon-to-be family of four. I find that I spend almost 90% of my home-time in one of two places and I thought I’d write a little about them both: my creative space/sewing area and my garden.

I share a sewing studio with my husband who uses the room as an office and all of this actually happens in our dining room. We’re in the process of finishing the attic for a studio but I honestly don’t know if it’ll happen. In the meanwhile, I make do with one bookshelf and have to keep most of my fabric and all of my bolts up in closets and wrapped up in storage.

I got my sewing desk at a thrift shop for $2, changed the hardware and painted it blue. It’s *just* big enough to fit my sewing machine and serger, but nothing else. Next to it, I have a shelf where I keep fabrics larger than half a yard that have been pre-washed.

The bookshelf opposite holds my inkpads, tape, the wraps that I use when I package orders, buttons and notions for yoyos. The second shelf is fat quarters and scraps and the third shelf has unwashed yardage and embroidery notions. In my dream world, this shelf is replaced by an Expedit shelf from Ikea (maybe this weekend cause they’re going to be on sale). The unfortunate thing about the dining room is that there isn’t a lot of wall space to put shelves.I’d love to have some place I can keep all my fabric and notions readily available, but that will not be my dining room for sure! One of the nice features of my dining room though is that our table has two extra leafs that pull out and it makes a nice cutting table (I just have to keep the rotary cutter off the tabletop).

My second sanctuary in this house is the garden, which I’ve blogged about before. In the last few weeks we’ve gotten a lot of progress done in the garden. We’ve installed rain barrels to collect the run-off water from our roof and that’s been AWESOME for watering our plots. Here’s our garden as of today:

We do square foot gardening and I’ve got three boxes. Two are veggies and one is just a wild herb bed. We also have a pepper patch, a strawberry patch, rhubarb (you can’t have strawberries without rhubarb!), some random eggplants and cabbage planted throughout our yard, and a big plot for garlic. This week we’re going to dig three trenches to try trench gardening some zucchini, squash and melons.

I think our garlic plot is my favorite so far this year because we did all the hard work for it last fall and it’s grown as if by magic (I’ve totally forgotten all the work we put in to it). I also like it because it’s along the side of our house next to the alley and I wonder what people think of it when they walk by! The elephant garlic plants are near the end and they are HUGE already! They probably stand nearly three feet tall at this point. We need to mulch it down again before it gets too hot, but I’m pretty stoked about all the garlic that is going to come up from this.

I probably spend as much time outside gardening this time of year as I do sewing. It helps that Sullivan is totally happy to be outside as much as possible (me sewing doesn’t seem to entertain him as much). It seems that we’re going to be living here for the next several years anyway and we’re both of the opinion that we need to make the most of it.

What is your creative space like? Do you have a sanctuary in your home? Blog about it and let me know the link!

I don’t usually get to watch movies. Ever. In fact, the only television I ever watch is American Idol — and I only get to watch the little clips of the performances after the show airs because I’m in class. Anyway, I digress.

My husband sent me a link to this movie on Hulu called The Future of Food. Sullivan was napping today and I was cutting fabric so I watched it. Wow. If you have the time, go watch the movie. For me, this is like a horror movie.

Food is something that’s super important to my family — and farmers are at the heart of everything we eat. My family is vegetarian. Sullivan has been a vegetarian since birth. I have been a vegetarian for years. My husband has been a vegetarian for a year and half now (I think). We actually have a website where we share vegetarian resources in our community (it’s called WayneCountyVeg.org — if you happen to be a vegetarian in Wayne County, Indiana).

We’re lucky to live in a community where there are progressive food-related events and groups popping up. A few weeks ago I was part of a panel on urban gardening speaking to a group of seminarians. There is a 100-mile potluck every month and talks about community gardens. There are several CSA programs and we have a few farmers markets in the summer months that are really fabulous.

Still, the GMO stuff does scare me. In 2001 I was one of those people who had experienced a severe allergic reaction because of GMO corn in tortillas. I don’t want my kids to be guniea pigs for GMO foods and I’d prefer to know whether or not what I’m feeding them in good faith has been created in a laboratory by a company whose business ethics I do not agree with at all.

One of the things that we do is garden. And I am a seed-saver myself. Our garden is pretty small scale — just three four-by-four foot plots in our back yard. We have some other garden-patches where we grow random veggies and herbs, but mostly we grow pretty standard stuf — lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, beans. Stuff we like to eat. Stuff we eat every day. Stuff that I think I know is safe. But is it?

As we embark on our garden this year, I’ll take pictures and post our progress for you. Because of our hectic school schedules, we haven’t gotten much done — only two of the plots are planted (and our garlic, of course). All the photos in this post are of our garden last year.

I don’t know what the answer is to the GMO thing. I don’t know how we can win against big companies that want to control our dollars so badly they’re willing to hurt our children. I think that if everyone planted just a little garden like ours though — and did so by purchasing their seeds from safe sources — that might be someplace to start.