Diarrhea food

After having to deal with diarrhea in two kids in the span of two weeks (yeah, I know...lucky us...), we figured out some good tips:

1. Frozen banana popsicles (just halve a banana and stick a popsicle stick into it and freeze). It's one of the only fruits you can eat when you have the runs. It's a delicious snack even when you don't have the runs!

2. Gatorade powder. Rather than rushing out to buy a bottle or two of Gatorade every time someone has diarrhea, you can make it as you need it! It's great for rehydration. It's good on your wallet too! (two 750 mL bottles cost around $3 and a can of gatorade powder that can make 8L costs around $5)

3. Toilet train them!! The mess is much easier to clean up! We reaped the rewards of toilet training our kids super early. Our two year old was able to hold in his diarrhea with minimal leakage (sorry about he visual) until we got the potty for him! Our baby was even able to hold it in several times so that we could avoid big-time disaster (change of clothing, clean floors, launder sheets/blankets/etc). For little ones who have diarrhea, having a pair of training pants over top of diapers definitely helped contain the leakage.

4. Congee. Ancient chinese secret. It's a cheap-to-make, simple rice broth that allows you to digest easily when you have the runs, it also helps rehydrate you and helps you clear the virus in your gut.

Let's just say that we survived this last round of diarrhea (our first time dealing with it actually) with some good tips. Next time, we just need to remember: super good hand-washing when we're travelling with the kids...so we can avoid it altogether! Thank goodness we didn't have to deal with any diarrhea on our 5 hour flight home!!!

Summer's in full bloom

Wow...can't believe we haven't posted for almost 3 months! Well...we just got back from a month long (but it seemed like forever and a day) vacation to a place that was 3 time zones away. It nearly killed us. We have been back for over a week and we are still recovering and our kids are adjusting!!! We decided that a two week vacation is long enough...and that we need another week back at home before everything become somewhat normal again.

Anyway, great cheap and healthy (somewhat...considering all the other snack choices out there for kids) snack idea for toddlers and teething babies when you're holidaying or at home: ice cream cones sans ice cream. It kept our kids busy for a while, they loved the crunchiness of it, it melts almost immediately and it contains very little sugar, salt and food coloring, if any. The only warning is that it makes a terrible mess if you've got kids like ours...but who cares? When you're out, you're not the one cleaning up after them-- it'll likely just form a nice little "ground zero" around them.

Onto more green things...our garden has sprouted. All the transplants and seedlings that I've started myself and that I've moved out have died. My neighbor's father-in-law said that it was a waste of time and it rarely works. He's right!

So far, I've got 9 inch tall beans, peas, corn, gai lan, swiss chard, tomatoes, zucchini and green onions. How exciting! We just had our first harvest of green onions last night for these steamed green onion buns that I made and they were delicious! Hubby pointed out that the green onions tasted so "green" and fresh... and different. I told him to get used to eating fresh veggies!! Such a difference! It also reminded us that it's time to visit our farmer's market again for some fresh, locally grown goods!

We moved our raspberry bushes from the side of our house (looked like a disorganized mess of leaves) to a little patch in our backyard. We hope they survive the move and that we get to pick some of our own raspberries this summer!

I'm buzzing with excitement about what we'll produce from our own backyard this year!