our gluten-casein-soy-free thanksgiving

in my family it is no secret that my favorite holiday is thanksgiving.  the spirit of the holiday, coupled with feeding my family and friends good food and wine, really allows me to reflect on how grateful i am to have wonderful people in my life.
we found ourselves in a unique situation: our lucy and her allergies prevented me from planning the typical turkey day menu.  not to be dissuaded from creating a fabulous meal that my little ma'm (and everyone else) could enjoy; i began seeking out flours, recipes, and friends with ideas to pull off a fantastic menu.  it turned out splendidly and all tummies were happy.  in fact, i think it was the best menu so far.  and next year:  bigger and better!  check out the recipe i developed for gfcf stuffing at my food blog:  http://gluten-casein-soy-free.blogspot.com/2012/01/best-stuffing-ive-ever-made-really-not.html

the pumpkin patch

10/16/11

farms dot the landscape everywhere you turn in humboldt county.  with our little gal in tow, we ventured out to one of the biggest pumpkin patches we'd ever seen; pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere!  before we even entered the vast patch, we agreed that we would buy, at most, 6 pumpkins.  lucy ran around to pumpkin after pumpkin saying 'this one, this one', 'is this a lucy-size pumpkin', and 'no like this one'.  needless to say, 15 pumpkins later (oh, and some gourds, hay, and indian corn) we finally tore ourselves away from one of the best days ever.

lucy go to library pick new book about cats, take pumpkin book back....

12/1/11
so our little bean is now, constantly, speaking in sentences (omitting the conjunctions most of the time) and it is amazing to see this development unfolding.

i really began thinking about cognitive development awhile back while using animal flash cards with lucy; she is an animal lover and obsessed with the cards.  there are several categories of animals from insects to mammals with many representations of most classes.  i noticed the errors that she was making demonstrated classification.  allow me to clarify:  lucy would confuse grasshopper and ant (insects); squirrel, chipmunk, and mouse (rodents); tiger, jaguar, and lion (cats).  i love witnessing cognitive mapping and watching lucy's mind grow and make connections.  tbc.

life in eureka

our lives changed dramatically once we relocated to eureka from jacksonville: we left great friends behind, lucy's diet was finally figured out, and we embraced our beautiful new surroundings.  we met some really nice people here and caught up with some old friends; we visited our much closer family and they visited us; we hiked, biked, visited the wonderful farmers' market, some farms, watched the cows go by and all in all spent our time enjoying our surroundings.  and then we found out:  we were going back to florida.  the  news came right about the time lucy made some new pals, i found some fantastic running routes, and we were settled.  so now, at this late date, i will update lucy's blog and tell of the adventures in eureka.  stay tuned.