I [Heart] My Life

A Trip to the Zoo and a Minty Winter Ice Cream Recipe

This week I was SICK. Not sure if it was the flu or what, but it kicked my butt for a few days straight there. Fever, headache, sore throat, muscle aches, nausea. Ugh.

So at the beginning of the week, I was remembering fondly the weekend trip my kiddo and I took up the coast to the zoo. It was a day filled with moments to savor...

As a mom, it isn't easy being sick. I mean, it isn't easy for anyone. But I find it harder as a mom because my child still wants/needs me. She hates to see me in bed during the day. She hates that I'm not reading to her at bedtime.

Being sick brought back a lot of memories of being sick from chemo, too. That was unexpected and a little startling for me. It made me realize how deeply those months really affected me on a level that will always be with me. Vulnerable, stripped to the bone...

So yesterday afternoon when I discovered I had turned the corner on this illness and that I had energy and good spirits, Nia and I undertook a little cooking experiment that she'd been asking for for a couple of weeks: to make mint chip ice cream.

A rainy afternoon in the middle of winter seemed just right for this kid-pleaser. Especially since the mint is growing so happily right now in the rain. And who says ice cream is for the summer only anyway?

It turned out really good! I only had a spoonful, but from all the happy sighs around me, I knew this was a keeper!

Homemade Mint Chip Ice Cream

All ingredients are best organic, and the milk products are best pastured.

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1 c. sugar

3 c. heavy cream

1 TBSP vanilla extract

2 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract

Approx. 50 fresh mint leaves, chopped finely

1 bar of dark chocolate (I used 60% Ghiradelli), finally chopped (I used an electric chopper)

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, use a hand mixer or immersion blender to combine the milk and sugar until the sugar is dissolved, 1-2 mnutes. Stir in the cream, vanilla, peppermint extract, chopped mint, and chopped chocolate.

Turn on your ice cream maker (the bowl should be pre-frozen), and pour the mixture into the bowl. Mix for 20-25 minutes.

Transfer to an airtight container & freeze for at least 2 hours. (After two hours it will still resemble soft-serve; freeze overnight for more frozen ice cream).

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Our Read-Alouds Lately

It's been a long time since I posted about what books we are reading aloud to Nia, so I thought I'd try to catch up. I always love to hear what others are reading so be sure to leave a comment on what books you & your kiddos are enjoying these days.

• Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl - our version is one from Joe's childhood, published in 1978 and illustrated by Jill Bennett (most of the Dahl books are now illustrated by Quentin Blake). Bennett's illustrations are sweet and tender and accompany the story well. 
• The Moomintroll series by Tove Jannson -- here is a link to the first in the series
• The Cobble Street Cousins series by Cynthia Rylant -- here is a link to the first in the series. I picked these originally for their very sweet pencil illustrations but found the stories equally as sweet and entertaining. 
• The Mercy Watson series by Kate DiCamillo -- here is a link to the first in the series.
• The Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne -- here is a link to the first in the series. I read a handful of these and while I think the storyline is clever and really captures children's imaginations, I found reading them myself to be boring and tedious. So after reading a few, we checked some more out of the library on CD. They are good audio books, read by the author.
• The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner -- here is a link to the first in the series. This is one of those series that has 100+ books in it. I think have read the first 12 to Nia. The first book was our absolute favorite, but many in the 12 we read were good. I think the illustrations in the first are the best, and then are pretty lacking after that. That is my only complaint. 
• Beatrix Potter The Complete Tails by Beatrix Potter
• Stuart Little by E.B. White

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Ah. Good morning, world.

When Life Gives Ya Nuts... Crack 'Em!

Sorry, couldn't resist the title. Could have easily been something much more tame, like, "Give Her Something to Do With Her Hands" or "A Sweet Little Nutcracker." Anyway. You get the idea.

For Christmas, Santa deposited into Nia's stocking this wonderful little olivewood nutcracker and a bag of walnuts. Nia made quick work of those walnuts and we are now on to a 2 lb bag of mixed nuts: hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, pecans, almonds, and some more walnuts. 

As you can see from the picture, I keep the nuts and the cracker right on the kitchen table next to the fruit bowl for a little protien boost whenever the mood strikes. She visits it a couple times a day. 

She can't crack it initially on her own yet, but after one of us adults cracks it the first time, then she can do the rest of the cracking and shelling. The design of the nutcracker is perfect for small hands -- rather than squeeze to crack the nut, she twists, which seems much easy for her.

And how satisfying to hear that crack and feel the shell yield under pressure!

I'd recommend it to anyone -- young or old, big or small. 

Here's a nice little nut cookie recipe, too. 

 

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Another first...

Hope your weekend is fun-filled, too!

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Parenting with Cancer: The Sugar That Helps the Medicine Go Down

Last week, on a cold, gray morning, I stood on the playground side-by-side with another mom, arms folded across our chests, watching our girls becoming friends (via lots of growling and gnashing of teeth and pretending to be monsters). This mom and I didn't know each other, but we'd agreed to meet, ostensibly so our children could play, but so we could try each other on for size, too. 

All we knew we about each other at that moment could be summed up on one hand: 1) We both have daughters, 2) who are 4, 3) who go to the same preschool, 4) in the same town. That's it. Before I had Nia, I might have thought that was enough upon which to build a friendship. Now I know that is basically the same as having brown hair in common (which we do). 

But the lack of information about each other was refreshing, too.  

Here was someone who didn't know me before I had cancer -- running into people who I used to know who I now had to tell I had cancer was very awkward mostly because I'd end up consoling them. Here was someone I didn't meet me in the midst of cancer (with the neon sign that is a bald head). Here was the first brand-new person I was meeting post-cancer. 

Do I tell her?

Over the next two hours, we discovered many similarities between us -- a love of photography, attachment parenting beliefs, husbands who work over the hill, natural birth tendencies.

And so I decided to share with her that I'd had cancer last year. 

Her eyes grew wide for a second, during which time she flicked her gaze to my short haircut, and then she looked at Nia. 

"Wow," she said. "That must have been so hard as a parent."

Oh. My. God. She got it. *happy sigh*

~~

One of the hardest parts of parenting with cancer is knowing when to shield Nia, and when to include her. I've always  been as open as possible with her -- talking about the illness, the treatment, the side-effects. Letting her see me cry, but also showing her what makes me feel better, too.

But I've always been careful not to scare her, and have only given her what I thought she could handle. Sometimes we talk about cancer a lot, and other times it only comes up once or twice a week. 

Most of the time, when Nia has come to the doctor with me, it is because I think she needs it: She needs to see where I go, to see who is taking care of me, that it is a safe place and that I'm not in pain there.  

But yesterday I took her with me for me. 

I had yet another echocardiogram yesterday (an ultrasound of my heart). I don't know why, but this is my least favorite procedure. It is just tedious. It is at the hospital, so I have to first check in with the main hospital registration. They give me a piece of paper that I then have to carry all the way to the cardiopulminary department. I check in there, and then sit in the surgery waiting area (which is usually populated with stressed out people). Then I get called into the exam room where I don a hospital gown and lay on a bed. Electrodes are connected, gel is squirted and then my heart is viewed and recorded from various angles. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes, other times it takes an hour -- I always have a different tech.

Like I said, it is just tedious. (And it is hard not to worry about what is being seen or not seen on that ultrasound screen.)

So yesterday I invited my sidekick to join me. She was delighted! 

I passed her my camera -- a rare treat -- and she documented the whole thing. Afterward she got 2 chocolate kisses from the hospital gift shop -- another treat. And we skipped all the way to the car.

Because she had fun, so did I -- and we turned a tedious hospital/doctor visit into something I'll remember fondly. 

Lesson 792 in the Parenting with Cancer Guidebook: Oftentimes having a kiddo on this journey is really hard, but sometimes -- some truly glorious times -- it can be the sugar that helps the medicine go down. 

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Green Tea & Chocolate: The Blog

As a student, I always loved new school supplies, particularily brand new binders and notebooks. All those blank, fresh pages. Some people might have found them daunting. I, on the other hand, took them as both a challenge and an opportunity. 

January is sort of the same thing. A new year, all stretched out before us.

In turning over a fresh leaf I've decided to harken back to my school days and open a fresh notebook -- or in 2013 speak, to launch a new blog. I'll continue to post here about all my adventures with Nia and my thoughts on parenting with (or without) cancer. But I am embracing a new anticancer life now, and so will use the new blog, Green Tea & Chocolate, to chronicle my journey in health: mind, body, enviroment. 

I'm excited to share recipes and my ups and downs in charting this new-to-me territory.

I hope you'll follow me over there as well as here. 

Cheers!

Sketching Chickens

I looked up from putting away laundry, loading the dishwasher, packing away the Christmas decoration boxes -- the constant noise in my own head -- to see this lovely scene. 

There are SO many things about this that I love. Hope your Monday is going well, too. 

 

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Be Here Now... No, Really: Right Here, Right Now.

Living in Santa Cruz, it is not unusual for me to find myself at red lights reading the bumper stickers on the Prius car in front of me. More than half the time, there is a "Be Here Now" sticker there in the mix of "Obama 2012," "Santa Cruz" mermaids, and the Dalai Lama being "stoked."

Be. Here. Now.

It's a cliche, of course. And yet it resonates with me.  (You know, post-cancer and all).

Right here. Right now.

There is another phrase I often think along with it. It's one I started saying to myself when I was in college to remind myself to stop amid the hustle and bustle of classes and working and homework to smell the roses: "This is the perfect moment."

It's New Years once again and we are all making resolutions (even if we I adamantly refuse to acknowledge them as such). It is common for mindfulness to be high on my list of New Year's... um, promises, which is maybe why I'm thinking of these two phrases more often lately.

However. (Yes, there is a however.)

However, these phrases that used to give me comfort have recently taken on a slightly morbid tinge. I find myself thinking "Be here now... because you might not be here next year."

I don't mean that I might not be here, on the planet. I mean, I might not be here, at the Christmas Parade. I might not be here, making cookies. I might not be here, ice skating.

I can't help but think it. I might not be here because I might be back on chemo. I might be recovering from surgery. I might be too fatigued from an on-going battle to be out of bed.

I'm not trying to sound self-pitying. It's just a fact: Once cancer comes knocking -- once cancer knows where you live -- it never forgets. There is no moving without a forwarding address. There is no witness protection program.

Cancer is the mob. Once it knows your name, it always knows your name. With that comes awe, in the truest sense. And fear.

And trying to enjoy every God damn moment, just in case it comes roaring back.

So you live your everyday life -- working, pre-schooling, grocery shopping, house keeping, dinner making, comforting a sick kiddo, watching Downton Abby -- but you also try really hard to be present, to be right here. To laugh, to feel the sun on your face, to feel that growing-bigger-every-day hand in yours...To push the fear aside, yes, but to also let it be a lens that focuses your every waking moment into something a little bit shiny. Something ever so extraordinary.

Nia and I went ice skating together for the first time this week and I was present -- really present -- and I enjoyed it every so much, even though I'm terrible at it, and my feet hurt, and it was freezing. All I had to do was look at my child and all that slipped away. She was loving every second and I was so happy to be there to witness that.

I don't know if we'll get to ice skate together again next New Years. I hope so. I hope it becomes a long-standing tradition. But I have no idea.

Maybe we get to do it just this one New Years.

And maybe that's ok because unlike so many other moments in this life that I participated in only in so much as I was physically there, for this moment, I was really there and now I have this memory of our first time skating together in which we were both ever so happy.

No matter what this year brings, I think that is a darn good start.

....

(Two videos of our skating adventure can be found here and here  -- the second one shows the hip hop dance classes are paying off!)

So proud... both of us!

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