  last week we were traveling through the various regions of the Southwest, we drove to Santa Fe, then Taos, back to Santa Fe, then on to El Paso and back home again. The kids enjoyed the trips, Aidan watched a jillion movies in the car, and pointed to a jillion cows and trains between movies.
This was the first trip that we didn't have to make any stops specifically for Ella. I crawled in the back and did my lean over her and nurse stunt a few times, but all in all she was pretty content to stare at Aidan (or me via her fisheye mirror) or play with toys. Just outside Quanah between Vernon and Amarillo is a reststop with a giant playground that we always stop at. Last time we stopped Aidan was just at the cusp of being able to reach the monkey bars, and by this time he could reach.
This was the first time we've stopped there that Ella was old enough to play around on it too. She climbed the stairs and crawled across the wobbly bridge, she climbed up the slides and slid back down backwards. That's a trick she's mastered at our own park here, she climbs up the slide on her hands and feet, then puts her knees down and picks her feet up and leans forward and she slides back down backwards (she has to be wearing pants for it to work).
Her face lights up so bright when she does it, you have to laugh out loud. The Kit Carson park in Taos is also a very nice park. We took the kids there when the sub-zero temps finally subsided on Friday. A couple of grandparents were also there, taking their three young grandsons to the park. I got to talking with the grandmother. She said she'd raised three boys, and now she has three grandsons.
I couldn't believe it, I said how do you raise three boys! I've got one and it's all I can do! She laughed and explained that she raised them in southern Colorado where they could just run wild and free all the time. I was pretty envious, since I know from staying at the Earthships how nice it is to say go outside and play for a while, Aidan.
But she also shared some golden, well articulated advice with me. She said you have to let them get hurt a lot on the small things, or else they'll grow up thinking they can't get hurt and they'll get hurt on the big things. As we talked, a couple struggled to slow down their one-year-old's trip down what was clearly his first slide, the mom eventually just couldn't handle the perceived danger and turned him over on his stomach so he was more stable and she could hold onto him better. It was timely. During the trip, Ella got the first big stomach flu we've seen as parents. She couldn't keep a thing down, even breastmilk, for about 30 hours straight.
For luck, I had bought a fantastic book just two days before she got sick that offers conventional,herbal, and homeopathic remedies for childhood illness. I sent John into town to buy herbs and roots--Taos is a great place to get sick if you have to! I made a ginger tea and mixed it with pure apple unsweetened apple juice and she was able to keep that down. That was her only source of hydration for almost a day. Then, as the stomach part progressed to intestinal gas and cramping, I made a tea of thyme, peppermint, anise, and fennel, again mixed with juice to make it pallatable enough for her to drink.
All of us only got the second part and we drank the same tea to rid ourselves of the sulfer gas and gastrointestinal upset. It worked so well! The book is called Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child , I'll be reviewing it formally soon. 
