An Introduction

Since we started the GAPS diet just a couple of days ago, there will be lots of background to cover and lots to write about what we've experienced so far.  With seven children, who we homeschool, sometimes there is a wee bit lack of time!  That means my posts are sometimes long, sometimes short, a lot of times confusing, and hit and miss.  I actually have a paper journal to document the things we experience on the diet.  But I am well aware of how long (or in our case, NOT long) paper lasts in our house.  I didn't want to lose anything that I wrote down, so I decided to put it in an online journal (this blog). 

There are lots of things I would like to tell you about my family.  Who we are, what we do, and why we are on this crazy diet :-)  I am not the most concise in my writing.  Sometimes I leave things out, and other times I repeat myself.  I chronicle our family's daily (weekly) doings on our family blog.  But I know not everyone wants to either read about that, or people who do, may not want to read all about this diet.  So I decided to separate the two topics, but as you can imagine there will be some overlap.

I will be putting up a post that lists all of the reasons why we are doing GAPS. With nine people in our family it may be long!  For now here is a bit more about us:

Jeremiah and I have been married for 16 years.  We became Christians shortly after we married.  That tid bit of information is only important because it's the back bone of our family.  As listed on the side bar, we have seven children, their ages being: 14, 12, 9, 7, 5, 3, and currently the baby is 8 months old.  We are a homeschooling family.  We live in the south on a wee bit of land (2.5 acres) that we are trying to make something of.  Note the word "trying".  Always keep that in mind....the word "trying".  Ha!  Some people think that because I have so many children that I possess certain qualities or attributes.  I've had people think that I must be: brave, patient, organized, a super mom, diligent, and the list goes on.  Um, NOPE.  Yes, that 'nope' most certainly needs to be capitalized.  If it ever appears that I possess those attributes on this blog, then please forgive me, I have no intention of misleading people.  I have always been interested in health from as far back as I can remember.  We have tried various diets, all with good points, but something was always missing.  With the birth of our fifth child my desire for this mysterious thing we call health became consuming.  That is not a good thing, but it is reality.  This fifth child is now five years old.  He started me on a more urgent search of health as he had a few health issues as a wee babe, that continue on to this day.  He was diagnosed with failure to thrive at 7 months old.  He was tube fed since that time until he was 3.5 years old.  With various treatments we were able to see progress in his being able to eat on his own and his tube was removed.  He still continues to grow ever so slowly and has speech apraxia.  Although his health issues are the most prominent the rest of us aren't in too good of a shape either :-)  So on this diet we went.

I was hesitant to use the words "large family" in my title as that description is subject to relativity.  I certainly don't think of us as a large family.  But I know there are a lot of others who do! We know many families with more children than we have so it really never seems like we have 'all that many'.  But I do know, from experience, that there is a difference in having only one or two children and say five or seven children.  Logistics are different.  How much food you have to cook, how many loads of laundry, how long it takes to get out the door, etc.  So my hope here is to share our experiences on this diet, but also to give it the 'large family' spin.