The Family

This is going to be a long laundry list of things that I have though of that would be helpful.

I don’t need anyone to do all of these things. I’m listing all the things that come to mind specifically because I don’t want you all to think you have to do all the things. Pick the things that seem good and doable and fun to you. They will all be helpful to me.

And if a thought I’ve listed suggests some permutation to you, it is very likely a good thought. Feel free to ask, but also feel free to innovate and surprise.

Childcare
ANYTHING helps for childcare. Eleanor is a handful for two fully focused, healthy adults. Someone over here for a few hours on a weekend that would let us catch up on the kitchen, or the laundry, or the sitting and staring at a wall, or shopping, or anything, would be great.

Quiet time toys for Eleanor. Got to keep her occupied in lots of waiting rooms. Finally managed to get her some crayons (I was embarrassed to admit I hadn’t, so I just made a special trip for the 8-pack of large crayons). Mom found some great ideas for a DIY i-spy bag. Our book selection is pretty well destroyed, so new books, or anything else that you know of that has worked as a quiet time activity would be lovely.

Ideas for portable things to feed her. After Mom’s suggestions, here’s where we are now.

• What works: Sesame sticks, dried cherries, cheerios, cashews, selected purees (butternut squash, sweet potatoes)
• What sometimes works: cheese, olives, peanut butter
• What we’re still testing: rice cakes, pumpkin seeds, Nature Valley breakfast bars, prunes (other dried fruits will be tested in time)
• What does not work: fruit loops, bananas, white grapes (tons of fun to squish … utterly mystified that I keep trying to feed them to her)

Meals, Nutrition
We have been following a standard American diet – too much protein, not enough veggies. Suddenly EXTREMELY motivated to change that, but all I can get going right now is adding broccoli to every meal. I’m slowly making more substantial changes, but it would help to have someone to sit down with us and our menu and talk through what changes to make.

We have a 4-week rotating menu. I don’t want to change every item, but I want to have a better idea of what veggies to add to which meal, which meals are the worst and should be subbed out for super vegetarian power meals, and what those SVPMs would be. Need a person to sit down with the menu and just talk through it.

And along the way, to figure out where to add growing toddler nutrition to the mix.

OR, instead of the sit-down menu review, a couple of super veggie-dense meals that you make & enjoy that I could work on.

Recipes for kale chips. A recipe for broccoli cheese soup that isn’t based on velveeta. Ideas for how to incorporate the dark leafy green (or purple) veggies. We have a all-but-unused recipe category, after all.

Suggestions (and research) on which supplements would be beneficial would be good. I’m finding that a bit overwhelming and confusing.

Or there’s just plain getting stuff. We’re going to be doing more of our meat & eggs shopping from Yonder Way farms, and we’ll be getting Daily Greens more often, but these are all pretty expensive things to get all the time. You want to throw in an occasional bottle of Elevate Daily Greens or a dozen eggs, that would be lovely. Or anything else you think is awesome.

Things & Stuff

There’s an Amazon list for things. Some items should be familiar from elsewhere on the list.

One of the things we need, silly as it sounds, are things to laugh at. Especially things that don’t take a whole lot of effort to engage with. At night, it gets really easy to get stressed out. I think that might get worse when we’re in the middle of chemo itself. So there are a couple of sit coms seasons on there – ridiculous situational comedies. There are some funny shirts. If there’s something that just makes you laugh, that would make you at least smile or chortle if you engaged with it when you were super, super sick, then that is a good idea and we would be interested.

Around the House

There are projects around the house that we had planned. Some are small, some are large; some are indoors and some are outdoors. Most of them are on hold, but it would be nice to have some of them done. Like maybe our lives aren’t completely on hold.

• installing a corner shelf in Eleanor’s room
• getting boards cut to make new shelves in the kitchen & installing them
• reorganizing the kitchen (baby to toddler transition)
• organizing the garage (okay, this is watching Eleanor so we can get those last 3 boxes sorted and unpacked and so some stuff in the attic)
• setting up flower beds in the backyard
• working up the terraces in the backyard (this involves some cement work and a whole lot of dirt)