Eucalyptus and Lavendar

I usually save my eccentric, borderline psychosis on everything natural for my other blog, but I am attempting to keep it centered around cooking. I will refrain from ranting about my opinions of doctors and traditional medicine. But I have discovered something new…to me that is.

My new venture into the unknown started when I was reading my friend’s blog (Maybe “friend” isn’t really accurate since I’ve never actually spoken with her, but I have read most of her blog, email chatted some, and have plans of getting together soon, so I am sticking to that term since we are obviously well-suited to be friends) she posted a great tip on A Coughless Night. Jarom, Layne and Brik have all been suffering from this so it caught my full attention. Shari (my future friend) blogs about her use of essential oils for treating injuries and ailments. I always thought of essential oils as aroma therapy, which I felt a bit sketchy about and Jarom is against anything extra smelly anyway. I spent half a day researching the uses of essential oils and decided it was worth a try.

I realized that I had been using an essential oil for years – tea tree oil – which I use for everything from cleaning to treating burns, cuts and repelling mosquitoes. I picked up some more oils at The Good Apple and last night I used my new remedy by mixing eucalyptus and lavender in coconut oil and rubbing it on the boys feet, then covering them with socks at bedtime. Layne is crazy ticklish so the process was a mess as he kicked his feet all over the place before I could get the socks on him. Brik is less ticklish and has much more self control, so that application went better. Jarom dealt with the smell that lingered, but he was still against the whole thing. He went as far as saying if they don’t cough tonight it is just because it had run its course and they finally happened to get better. Also, although he had been coughing all evening he thought the oils in the air was making him cough. Needless to say he was WAY more skeptical than me.

Two hours later, the kids had not coughed once and guess what? Jarom was suddenly in the mood for a foot rub. Now I may have totally OD-ed on the stuff with having to apply these three applications, but Hallelujah! A quite night once again, SERIOUSLY, it worked!

The cough did come back in the morning, especially the first hour they were up, it must have all been draining. Here is the start of Kara, the crazy witch doctor.