My new life...

 

 I am a busy momma these days. And it's not even just because of Luella! But man, do I have a new life right now. I feel like for the first 4-5 years of my kids' life I had nothing going on. I mean, I did, but I didn't. I was trying to figure out how to fill our days...our very long days. But now I feel like a chicken with my head cut off!

One day I ordered a book from the library called Real Food. That led me to the book Nourishing Traditions. Both books are about eatting healthy, but they take it to a whole new level. Don't just think "organic". Think making your own everything. Think resurecting all the old ways of cooking and preserving food. But now that I'm completely convinced that we are all dying from degenerative diseases brought on by poor nutrition, I'm obsessed. .

So one of my projects has been starting an organic meat and produce co-op program at Sammy's school. Well, I didn't start it;  I just organized making our school a drop-off for the food. The lady at this store, True Nature Foods, on the north side of Chicago is the actual woman behind the operation. She runs produce and meat co-ops out of her little community grocery store and she helped me get a delivery of the same things down to City Garden on Fridays. The vegetables from Farmer Tom are beautiful and getting a big box of random veggies every week is making me learn how to make things using foods like celery root and swiss chard.

Isn't her store beautiful? I may have bought such items as agave nectar, raw milk cheese, coconut oil, sprouted grain bread, grade B maple syrup, and a few other things at her store today. I felt healthy just looking around in that store. It smells like a smoothy bar.

. It's so nice in there. And Ms. Paula is very nice as well.

The meat is from this farm, Triple S Farm, and it is supposed to be some of the best meat around. It's grass fed and all that good stuff. So now we can pick up meat and produce at Sam's school on Fridays! Thank you Ms. Paula for helping me organize this. Now I can rest easy tonight.

 On a totally other subject, I think some part of a movie or show was filmed at the house across the street from me this past weekend! These light crew hipster guys were there all day setting up lights and stuff. I had big plans to sneak out and take pictures while they filmed whatever they were filming, but then I ended up puking all night Saturday night and missed whatever happened. Bummer.

Another project I'm into is starting a "girl scout troup" for Claire and some of her friends on Monday nights. It's not the real thing because I like to do it the way I want to do it and I have no time for doing things that require training or reporting to some scout master or anything. So we just started the "West Side Ladies" ourselves and we're going to make up our own badges and things.

To kick it off we had a little pizza party and made the rainbow cake. We made plans for badges we want to earn and the moms drank a couple glasses of wine and chatted in the meantime. See what I mean? You can't do that at real girl scouts I'm sure. ;) And our friends who have the chicken coop in Garfield Park are going to help us do a maple tree tapping this winter. Did you know you can just walk around the city streets in your neighborhood and tap trees? Apparently you can in their 'hood. We'll make a badge of it!

So, between holding and feeding Wella, homeschooling, keeping Sammy busy (lots of hammer and nails lately), teaching Sunday school (except for the morning when I was puking), starting girl scouts and doing the farm co-op, I'm SLAMMED!

So every once in a while (okay daily) Claire and I just quit any school that we're doing and play with our little Wella-Wella. Because I might just busy myself right past her baby years and not stop to appreciate them if I'm not careful.

And that would be no good.

Did I say our "little Wella"? Because I use that term loosely. She's a giant ball of chub. Giant!