Update on almost raw, school and home

Almost raw ...

Summer break is ending soon. L's asthma has improved a lot. He is able to enter grandma's house w/o reacting but not the garage where the dog is sleeping.

I've done some reading but because of the constant interruption, I don't think I retained much. However, one thing I learned is that animal fat is toxic. Why?

Liver cleans out the toxin from our food. What are the toxins? They are the additives, food colorings, white sugar, preservatives, all the by-products of cooked foods etc. The liver's job is to extract all these toxins and make them water-soluble. The cooked and processed foods contain so much toxins that it overwhelms the liver so the liver has to store all this toxins in the fat before it can clean them up.

Liver produces bile that digests fat. Vegies and fruits improve the production of bile. The bile gets sent to the intestines where it waits to be eliminated. If it stays too long in the gut, the bile will get reabsorbed into the system. We don't want that to happen and fiber rich foods will help us with that.

There's so much more that I don't know ...

I also learned that it's easier to wash pesticides off produce than to get the toxins out of meat.

I put the theory to test by reducing L's meat consumption. His nightly cough improved. I was shocked. I've increased his fruits and vegie intake by making him drink green smoothies and eat fruits in-between mealtimes. He still gets to eat his 'junk food' (usually dried fruits) as long as he keeps up with a high-intake of fresh fiber-rich food. He needs all that fiber to pull the gunk out of his system.

I tell L that soft stool (minus stomach cramps) is good so he proudly announces to me whenever he gets a good output.

I also learned that meat is bad for asthma. Starchy foods is bad for eczema. I am trying to cut down starchy foods for J b/c the eczema on his legs can get quite bad. Unfortunately, he is very resistant towards the change. I can only handle one kid at a time and so I will have to postpone my effort on J until later. However, he has renege on his previous stand against green smoothies. He drinks 4oz of green smoothies in the morning along with his brother. Just that 4oz makes a difference on his good skin. His upper body is smoother and less prone to blotches / hives.

Schooling...

The kids have been doing some lessons during the summer. We had 'school' a few days out of the week. J is beginning to like it too. He didn't mind sitting there learning his alphabets and numbers. It was fun. He is such a curious and creative fella. When he gets bored coloring with a single color, he would use several crayons instead.

We took him to a preschool near L's school. He liked the place. Ran around it happily until he saw a teacher yelling at a student. After that he said he didn't want to go there. I asked him why when we got home and he said he didn't like the teacher. I agreed with him. The woman's action scared me too. So, I decided to homeschool him instead. He is a joy to teach because he likes to interact.

A few months ago, he attended an enrichment class 2x a week but it made him shy around strangers after that. I pulled him out of school and it took several weeks for him to come out of his shell. BTW, the reason he didn't like school was because a bigger kid was pushing him around.

As for L, I hope there will be some more headway with his speech therapy. Currently he only achieved 50-60% of the goals in the IEP.

Home ...

DH has rented a space to put his tools and exercising equipment. Previously an entire room is taken up by his exercising equipment. Once it's cleared up, I plan to convert it to a toy room. We hope that the new plan will contain the toys to that area. The boys do have too many toys. Problem is that they play with nearly everything. Even simple packing material makes good play.

V has also taken out some books from the book room. Unfortunately they are too old for donation altho' they are all in good condition. We'll have to throw them away. I called Fremont Waste and they said it will cost us $32 per 'haul'. We are going to accumulate a big pile before we head over there.

Guess that's about it. Phew ... what a long post. I am a little sleepy after eating a packet of instant noodles. I feel bad every time I eat 'junk food' so I usually drink 2 C of green smoothies to balance the bad food.

Oh, and I've also installed Debian on my old laptop. I will need to read up on some UNIX sys admin book and I should be able to get around it with a little more ease. Currently, I don't remember anything. It's scary. What if I need to work suddenly?? So, my goal for the next 3 months (once L starts school) is to improve on my UNIX skills by getting the laptop to run various servers.