Cod liver oil

I know that at this point I am a blogging failure but I figured since I am regularly stuck under a sleeping infant (as is the case now) I should start to do something productive with that time.

A few days ago we dressed up for Halloween. I was a tree. I know what you're thinking, "Kelin, your creative costume-making skills set the bar too high for the rest of us" but let me tell you how you can make a tree costume like mine: 1. Collect leaves. 2. Glue onto headband you find in your closet and place on head. 3. Wear green shirt. Hopefully I didn't lose you. Eloise's monkey costume was creatively made by me ordering it on Ebay.

It's the time of year again that makes me ask myself, "why do I live in northern Scotland?". It's been raining all day and the sun went down at 5pm so needless to say, my family has been little hermits in our apartment.

Since the weather is becoming worse and worse, in addition to the cod liver oil Loic and I take I've started giving some to Eloise as well. Cod liver oil is so important for neurological development (plenty of DHA and EPA), retinol (an animal form of vitamin A that is so important), and vitamin D for those people like us who are sun-deprived, among other benefits. Anyway, we chose probably the most disgusting one we could find but it's also the highest-quality one out there, Green Pasture Blue Ice. The fact that they called something from a cod "green pasture" is highly suspect but just trust me that I did a lot of research and it is as good as it gets...it is fermented rather than being treated with heat or chemicals to preserve it so it retains the natural vitamin A and D rather than having them added back in (or destroyed and replaced with synthetic ones, gasp)! 

The cod liver oil comes with a syringe and I think I have given Eloise a lifelong fear of syringes from putting that stuff in the poor thing's mouth. The first time she coughed a lot afterward and then cried and I freaked out and called my doctor because I thought maybe she breathed it in. He told me in more or less words, "she didn't breathe it in or she would have turned blue, she reacted like that because cod liver oil tastes like crap." I gave it to Loic to see what he thought (ours is in capsules) and he had pretty much the same reaction she did. So now my quest is to find creative ways to inject Oil of Nastiness into her mouth without her rejecting it because she tries to escape every time she sees that syringe coming. Poor baby! I just want what's best for her. I can't wait until she's got some good eating habits established and I can give it to her with a bit of juice. 

So that's my exciting life, rain and darkness and cod liver oil. I have some amazing life-changing recipes I will post next time I'm stuck under a sleeping bug.