Nourishing Traditions

I just have to mention this book I've been reading, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. It's absolutely amazing - I haven't been able to put it down! It's a combination of a cookbook and textbook about traditional nutrition and cooking.

A lot of it is based on the research of Weston A. Price who traveled throughout the world studying native groups who had excellent health, and documenting what they ate. The idea is that before processed food and the development of processed sugar, groups who ate "traditionally" (meaning animal products, raw dairy and soaked and fermented grains) had excellent health with virtually no cancer, birth defects, or chronic illness.

At this point, Americans are eating less saturated fat, dairy, and animal products than ever before and yet our cancer and heart disease rates are growing. As recently as 50 years ago heart disease was uncommon and now it is a leading killer. Why? According to this book animal products and saturated fats are necessary for your body to function and have antioxidant and anticarcinogenic properties. The problem is in vegetable oils, especially hydrogenated oils. These are extremely toxic to the body and they believe are one of the leading causes of heart disease. The fact that American's consumption of saturated fats has gone down while the incidence of heart disease has gone up should be reason enough to consider this theory!

These are not this one woman's ideas - there are excerpts throughout the book from many, many articles and other books on the same subject. I loved the way the book was organized as well, with some major articles in the front but a lot of the content is spread through out the "cookbook" part (which is huge) in sidebars. I was absolutely fascinated by the idea of fermentation and the necessity of it in order for us to digest things properly. I was unaware of the extent to which this was (and is) used throughout the world in every culture. I've already made whey and a batch of apple butter through fermentation (which uses whey) and I'm excited to try some other things.

Stefan is totally on-board with it, which is amazing and wonderful. He is actively helping me get rid of plastic in our lives (more on that later), stop using the microwave, and start having a more traditional diet. Hooray for great husbands!

Favorite

This morning Aidan came into our room to snuggle before Bridget woke up. He cuddled up to me after a minute and said, "My favorite part of the day is when I'm with you, Mommy." Has anything more wonderful ever been said?

Boring, Boring

This blog is looking very "wordy" so I had to add some pictures. We're just not very good about taking pictures of the kids on a regular basis, because the camera is always at school with Stefan but here are a few recent ones. Bridget and Aidan were at school with Stefan for an after school hacky-sack club and then we took some pics of Bridget on Saturday morning so everyone could see just how much hair she really has! It seriously covers her eyes and I have to pin it back as soon as she wakes up just so she doesn't run into things :)

Parenting 101 . . . sort of

This weekend we had our first two sessions of Parenting in Process - courses on adoptive parenting. These weren't so much about the process of adopting as they were about the challenges involved in adoption. We talked about the developmental stages of children and how they can be different with adopted children because of their early experiences. We talked about strategies for talking to our kids about adoption, dealing with unwanted comments from strangers, attachment issues, losses and gains in adoption and issues specific to transracial adoptions. We were able to talk to an adult adoptee from Korea and hear her story and ask questions, which I thought was the most valuable part of it all. Some of her answers surprised me and some were what I expected but everything was helpful.

The classes were spread out over two half-days and I thought that the second day was most helpful because the 8 people in our class had gotten more comfortable with each other by that point and were able to share some of our experiences. We met a couple from the Coos Bay area who are adopting from Ethiopia and are in about the same part of the process as we are. It was good to talk to them and I think we were able to help each other out in understanding some things or passing on some information that we had. I hope we can stay in contact with them and apparently Holt will arrange a reunion for all of us when we are all home with our children. That could be a while because the other two couples were adopting from Korea and Thailand which have different timelines than Ethiopia.

Another great thing about these sessions was that we got a real sense of how devoted Holt is to these kids. They provide so much support for the families that are already home and have lifetime relationships with many families. There are a lot of adult adoptees who were adopted through Holt who have come back and worked for them which says a lot about their experiences. We watched a really good video with adult adoptees talking about the challenges they faced and the ways their parents could have helped them more with those challenges, and the amazing thing was that though they had struggled with things, they were still positive about their adoptions and wanted to help other families who were adopting.

I'm really excited about the annual Holt camp outs, which are for all adoptive families, and the Holt camp which is for older adoptees who are really starting to deal with the tough issues. The camp is completely staffed by adoptees and seems like a great resource, which is something that many other agencies don't offer. It made me so glad that we chose Holt and gave me a lot of resources that I think we will need somewhere along this journey.

So though it wasn't a typical parenting class, I think it was incredibly valuable for us and helped us really think through some difficult issues. Surprisingly, though some of these things were hard to talk about and think about, we both came out of it more excited than ever about this adoption.

The Evan Song

Aidan's cousin Evan came to visit today, which Aidan has been waiting for all week. This morning he came into our room at about 7 am and climbed in bed with us. This was unusual because the standard morning consists of him calling to us to come and get him out of bed which we do so that he doesn't wake Bridget up, but apparently the excitement got him going on his own. As he cuddled up next to me he whispered, "I sang the Evan song when I was coming to your room this morning Mommy." I was too tired to ask how "the Evan song" went . . .

Don't tell Poppop!

Saturday morning while Stefan slept in we were watching a show on the Food Network (the name of which I can't remember) starring Jamie Oliver and he was hunting mushrooms and then making a meal using the ones he found. He prepared a delicious looking risotto and I said, "Wow, doesn't that look good?" Aidan's response was, "Ummmm . . . Mom, I'm not exactly a mushroom fan . . . " He just kind of trailed off after that, maybe because he was watching the show, or maybe because he realized what a dangerous thing that is to say when you're a Czarnecki.

Home Study

Yay! We finally got all the documents put together for our home study! Tomorrow I can send everything to Holt and then they can look through it all and schedule our interviews. One of those will be at the office and the other will be at our home. I'm hoping we can get those done by the end of the month or at least the beginning of March. Once those are done we wait for them to write up and notarize the final home study and then once we get the notarized copy we can send it in to the Immigration Department along with more documents and an application to adopt an orphan from overseas. We'll have to get fingerprinted and then hopefully they'll approve us and we'll be able to send in our dossier, which will start the process of waiting for a referral. So we're still at the beginning of the process, but it feels like we're making progress!