Preparation Day #1

Today is day One of Preparation for the Gallbladder and Liver cleanse. I'm following the instructions from the book by Andreas Moritz.

He suggest eating no animal products/dairy...and since I"m on GAPS that leaves me with veggies, fruit and nuts. I decided to give a juice fast a try and see how it goes. The full cleanse is 7 days, I don't think it will be too big of a deal to do a juice fast. We have several fruits and veggies that need to be used up, so this will be a good opportunity to take care of those. I just hope I have the energy to do all the juicing and clean up. Totally dreading cleaning the juicer up several times a day

I must drink 32ounces of apple juice every day for 6 days. We purchased 150oz of jarred apple cider that I will drink over the week and finish off juicing apples.

I started the day with 2- 2liter salt water high enemas and a coffee enema. I could have used more rounds with the water but it was getting late and we had a busy day ahead of us and I didn't want to get the coffee in too late. I finished around 11:00.


Starting weight 131PM/130.5am
Sleep- woke up several times, dreamed strange dreams.
Basal Temp (not sure I got 3 hours of continous sleep before taking temp. 98.5
Average Daily Temperature 99.1
No supplements

32 ounces of Apple juice finished by 7:30pm
48 ounces of Kangen Water
(no juicing...the kitchen was a mess and I didn't want anything else to clean up! Mtostly laziness.

I felt pretty good today. I got some of the housecleaning caught up...nothing miraculous but much better than I've accomplished in the past few days. Could have been the Coffee enema partially, but I haven't had that much sugar (from the juice) in my system for a while either. It was WAY more fluids than I've been consuming...between the 4 liters of water from the enema, 1 liter of coffee enema, 32 ounces of juice and 48 ounces of water, I've been peeing a lot!


Used Young Living Oils before bed
Sandalwood: 3rd Eye and back of neck
Cedarwood: top of head
Release over Liver
Digize under tongue

The cycle of life takes a lot out of ya

Cycle Day 14. Been crampy for 3 days now. I woke up early this morning with a slight headache. 2L Salt water+EO (marjoram and peppermint) and a Coffee Enema at 6am....by 2pm headache progressed to a migraine, tried a couple rounds of water enemas (3-4liters) with salt and EO (marjoram and peppermint). Nauseated but never got sick. Ended up taking a Tylenol 3 and a nap. Woke up at about 6:00 felt better, had some dinner. Still crampy

I just randomly fed the kids whatever I could pull out of the fridge an hand to them.
They had meatballs, almond butter freezer treats, boiled eggs, yogurt, apples, dilly carrots, sunbutter with butter and honey and a shot glass of weak stock. Some of the things they had a few rounds of...breakfast, morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack all sorta blended together.

The boys had a pretty good day considering they woke up before 7 and had no nap....and a mama that could barely keep up with their requests for food.

I managed to get the roast in the crock pot before noon and vacuum the egg yolk covered part of the living room. There are Walnuts in the dehydrator that are ready to come out. Hopefully they will make it into a ziplock baggie before we hit the sack.


Eric saved the evening and prepared a proper meal.
Roast, carrots, cauliflower gravy and a baby romaine and cucumber salad. Banana cinnamon ice cream for dessert. Perfection.

Eric built our raised bed frame for the strawberry plants I plan to order.
Looking at the Azure list of plants that are available:

Here's our considering list
Cilantro
Sage
Basil
Thyme
Dill
Parsley

STRAWBERRIES!


Butternut Squash
Zucchini
Summer Squash
Bell Pepper
Celery
Cucumbers
Sugar Snap Peas
Shilling Peas
Tomatoes

Snapdragons
Marigolds
Borage

Day 41 Skinny Fingers

Nothing new added today.

Eric has dropped a ton of weight....or well maybe just 23lbs. He's at his lowest weight since I've known him and he's looking good! He noticed today even his wedding band is loose! My weight-loss has pretty much stalled out since the first couple weeks of GAPS. I still seem to be bouncing between 129-132, one morning I did hit 127.5, but that's my lowest so far.

I seem to be rather itchy today....I can't tell what is causing it either, there are no rashes or redness (except after I keep scratching) and its random places, like my palm of my left hand, the side of my face and the crook of my arm. Weird. I must be allergic to liver. HA.

Well I survived my first whole week on my own since Mid-January. I've been tapering off from my part time help for the past several weeks. I can tell my energy level is still not where it should be, but I am getting better at recognizing my limits....following them is more of a struggle.

Today's menu
Juice: Left over juice from yesterday + 1 egg and 2 extra yolks and 2TBS sour cream
Breakfast: Banana Carrot muffins and Cinnamon honey yogurt
Lunch: Liver and Onions and more muffins
Dinner: Scrambled Eggs (and Perry finished off the liver...hooray!)

Today's Prep
Spent most of the day working on the grocery list...trying to figure out what foods to add in next!
Also working on a plan to figure out what comes next as we journey further into full GAPS
Started a new batch of yogurt (1 1/2 gallons worth!)

I'm starting to lose track of the poop scoop. I don't think anyone went today...and no enemas for me.

Day 40 We Survived!

Full GAPS!

Weak Coffee (1tbs grounds/20oz water) for Eric,
I still take mine in the other end...full strength.
Cinnamon
Adult drink for Eric


Today's Menu:
Juice: red cabbage, celery, carrots and 2 apples
Breakfast: Yogurt with Apple Jam (1tsp)
Lunch: Roast and Carrots
Dinner: T-bones, Green Beans, Baby Romaine Salad with apples
Snack: meatballs
Treat: Apple Pie Ice Cream

Today's Prep:
Soaked Walnuts
Put Almonds in the dehydrator

Day 38 &39

Well, I didn't record much at all from yesterday. Energy is pretty low. The boys are waking up when Eric gets up for work (1.5 hours earlier than normal.) I followed the advice of my colonic technician and did a "quickie" this morning and went strait for the coffee, not sure if it was quite as effective, but it was nice to have the process over in about 40 minutes instead of 2 hours. Oh I did use half the amount of coffee because its the bottom of the jar and looked like it was possibly stronger and the time before I got pretty jittery...so it could be the combo of the weaker coffee and not doing the cleansing enema before the coffee.

Day 38:

Lunch Roast and carrots
Dinner: Chicken Wings and Green Beans
Day 39
Breakfast: Banana Egg and almond flour muffins....ended up making a second batch, I added some carrot pulp to that one the boys gobbled them down.
lunch: scrambled Eggs
Dinner: liver and onions
Treats: I tried the Russian custard, threw some raw almonds in it. Eric is making apple cinnamon ice cream at the moment....guess we will get a taste in a bit.

I have a feeling we are kinda bailing on intro and headed for full GAPS. I feel like I may be having issues but I'm not sure what to cut out, it isn't anything major, so I don't know what to do about it. I'd like to see Wyatt and Clayts bellies not bloat so much, they both seem to get rashy outside, I really don't like that either, but it doesn't seem to bother them. I don't feel like I have the energy to figure it out.


I also want to take note that Wyatt has started cutting one of his molars...one little sharp point poking through on the top "B" tooth. So that throws in the question was the yucky poop and rash from teething?

Also just as we were going to bed last night Wyatt woke up ANGRY again! Screaming mad, nothing we could do to help him. Anointed him with some cedarwood oil and he started calming down. He woke up again, about an hour later but wasn't quite as upset. He let me hold him and give him his water bottle. I prayed over him and rocked him for a bit and put him back in bed. I also decided to put some Melrose on his jaw line and around his ears, as he kept rubbing th side of his face. Then anointed myself with some cedarwood and slept well until morning.

Day 37: Early to Rise

Stage 6
Baking soda (not sure that was legal move...but we did it anyway!)

Well, the plan backfired a bit.

Here is what the mental picture looked like...Eric wake up at 5, get ready for work, while I prepare my enema stuff. Then he cooks breakfast, I have my "coffee break" and the boys wake up at their normal 7:30 wake time after I have everything cleaned up and breakfast cooking.

Here is what reality looked like: Eric get up at 5, get ready for work and cook breakfast. I get up at 5:25 start preparing my enema stuff, Corban wakes up and has to poop at 5:30 (He says "my poop made a C" ....nice #4s by the way). I continue getting everything ready. Just as I'm all set up, at about 6:00 here comes Clayt...he's gotta poop too! So while my salt water and oils are quickly cooling, I, as patiently as I can, I wait for him to get his business taken care of (#5's by the way). I send them back to their room, hoping they will lay quietly in there (was I DREAMING? LOL....anyway, it works for about 10 minutes.) I try to not make the enema procedure a mysterious, panic guarded event....we call it my "bottom medicine" to help my poops. So there's a bit of an open door policy, there were several visits...but we made it through the whole procedure....and in record time I was done by 8am. Sadly, I was pretty jittery from the coffee...I am counting on it to get me through this extra long morning. I"m praying that the early wake time means they all take good naps today! (yes, they DID...all 4 of them!



After Juicing and Cleaning up the kitchen we have spent the whole morning outside. As wonderful as it has mostly been.....Corban and Clayt got into a bit of a baby brawl. There was screaming, yelling, throwing toys at each other, biting, pinching, pushing, shoving and more YELLING. I let them duke it out, then they started on me. I let them. While I was trying to decipher if their behavior was food related or just poor parenting.... I talked to the biter and pincher and told him that wasn't nice and he should say he's sorry....and he did, of course Corban wouldn't listen to him. That made him SO mad, but I told him he did his part, and it was okay. Corban continued to have short bursts of testing his anger, pushing over and throwing toys and sand. I didn't ask him to stop. I talked to him plainly about breaking things and getting sand in people's eyes. He asked about throwing it over here....away from the people. I talked to him about not having sand to play with if we throw it out of the sandbox. A few minutes later Corban (4) came over and sat on the step next to me and said he was sorry and gave me hugs and kisses. My normal reaction is to break up the fight, punish the "worst" offender, scold the other...all while misbehaving myself and letting my emotions control the tone and then demand that they apologize to myself and each other.

I'd say, after letting the episode play out, even though in the middle it was looking pretty bad, (REALLY bad) that just maybe it was the right thing to do. They are all happily playing again. Guess it wasn't the food, or poor parenting. WHEW.

Today's Menu
Juice: 1/2 head of red cabbage, 1 bunch of celery, and some carrots. Added Raw egg and sour cream and had a full fledged "GAPS Milkshake"
Breakfast: Fend for yourself freezer Meatballs
Lunch: Chicken Soup and Almond bread with butter and Sunbutter
Dinner: Roast, Green Leaf and Cucumber Salad with our homemade dressing, Fermented Beets, and apple Slices


Today's Prep
Made almonds into Almond Flour (2 cups), and the rest into almond butter
Yogurt in the Dehydrator should be done about 4:30 tomorrow, just in time for afternoon snack!
Eric peeled about 20lbs of carrots for me and Sliced about 3lbs into rounds, 5lbs into carrot sticks, and 5lbs into 4inch pieces...yes that is a load of carrots and we still have about 50lbs worth to take care of. I Grated 1lb of carrots to make into ginger carrots....the whole process took me 5min 32seconds. I timed myself so we could see if knife chopping or using the processor was faster. My time included putting the processor together and cleaning and drying it. Eric helped a ton in the kitchen...after all the carrot business, we had a fun afternoon of playing mad dessert creationists. The Almond butter I was making turned un-creamy when I added the honey...Eric tasted it and thought it would make a perfect "pie crust" We were immediately dreaming of apple pie....but then I added some butter and it turned runny...

Eric tasted it again and thought COOKIE DOUGH...So we threw in a few more ingredients and WE MADE COOKIES!

So the best I can give ya, is a Ingredient list, because we didn't measure anything!

Almond Butter <1cup
Salt
Honey 2T?
Butter 3T?
1 egg
Baking soda (1/8 of a tsp, best guess)
Cook 350* for 7 minutes

There were little people anxiously awaiting cookies while I took the picture.....they were hounding me with each flash!

I also put some of the batter into the freezer molds because the dough looked and tasted so much like caramel...I can't decide if I like the cookies or the "dough" best! You could say we are going a little apple-honey-nut crazy. But it is SOOOO YUMMY!


I'm pretty sure that Eric has decided to stop the peanut butter as soon as this last jar is gone. He's gonna try sunbutter instead. Although, I haven't given the little boys any peanut butter and both Clayt and Wyatt seem to be reacting to being outside. Not as much as it was before GAPS, but they tend to get a bit red, and Wyatt has had an intermittent rash on the back of his neck for a couple weeks.




Today was day full of Poopin! Wyatt woke up from morning and naptime with a poopy diaper and was really rashy. It was very sore. He would walk around with his legs apart for a while after I got him cleaned up...and I let him go in the buff so he could have some air-out time. I also applied some Animal Scents ointment, he cried when I put it on, but he seems to do that no matter what I touch him with...even coconut oil he acts the same. Soon after dinner he pooped as well....so, it seems there's something in there bothering him. Maybe it is the raw apples? I am not sure. Corban pooped 2x today....that is a first I believe! Clayt pooped 3 times, upon waking, after lunch and dinner. Nothing from me except for what happened this morning with the enema.

Day 36 Early to bed

Stage 6
No new foods





Well, hopefully we will be drifting to dream land at about the time I'm usually STARTING to type up our daily update. We had a busy fun day today. I took Corban to the JBF sale to get him some shoes and shorts....we came home with 1 pair of sandals for Clayt, 2 pairs of Skidders for Wyatt (and for only $10 for both! I got two sizes) 3 pair of shoes for Corban...water shoes, sandals and tennis shoes. Birthday Presents for 2 of my nieces, 6 Tshirts, 3 pairs of shorts, a game and 4 books. Love the JBF sale...but its a good thing it only comes around 2x a year! After Corban and I got home, Eric and Clayt went on a fishing trip. Fishing was short lived (about 30 minutes), but they caught 6 fish! After a bit of playground time they headed home. Eric and Corban left to go by Grandma and Grandpa J's house to drop of our nieces birthday present then home for dinner, a little bit of playing outside and off to bed. They were tired from not having naps, but still did not want to go to bed! Eric is changing shifts for April, so he will be rising and shining about 2.5 hours earlier than we have been for the past 2 months. Tomorrow shall be interesting!

Today's Menu

Breakfast: meatballs, quac-treats, applesauce +probiotics
Lunch: Leftovers from last night: hamburger, celeriac and onion. 1 slice of almond bread (with butter) Boys had sunbutter on theirs as well, and raw apple slices.
Dinner: Ribeyes, Salad with cucumbers, kraut and apple slices
Snack: Almond flour pancake bites with sunbutter
Orange Guac-a-honey pudding



Today's Prep
Searching for a GAPS honey ham brine recipe
Put Marrow Bones and Roast in the crock pot
Peeled carrots

Orange Guac-a-Honey Pudding
Blend together equal parts of
Avocado (3T)
Sour Cream
Butter
1T of honey
2 drops of orange Essential oil
1T of lemon juice (optional)


Serve in a bowl, or freeze in small molds

First thing this morning Corban asked to go poop...back to #4! Yay!
Clayt went this morning, after lunch and Dinner, all #5
Wyatt had a poo-ey diaper after lunch....wonder if it was the almond bread and apple slices?

I think I'm going to skip the enema tonight and give it a try in the morning, hopefully the boys will get up at their normal wake time! I've had a few tummy rumbles this evening. I'm also pretty tired....but its not 8:00 yet...SO kinda hoping that 2nd wind doesn't come.