Changes

So many changes this year.  First, our family went "no dairy."  I instigated this on the advice of an acquaintance who said her son's allergies improved when he cut out dairy from his diet.  It works.  We are allergy-free!  It's so nice to be able to make it through spring without resenting the budding trees and the yellow pollen that covers everything here in Dallas.  We just never understood WHY it helps.  We are not lactose intolerant because we can drink raw milk without any issues.  I was reading an article on the best diet for an athlete (Ben plays lacrosse) and came across these two sentences:

Dairy foods, especially commercial dairy (as opposed to raw dairy) are also highly inflammatory. Dairy contains a lot of histamines, which will add to the inflammation already present in the body.

So.  There's a beginning to knowledge.  I hope to eventually find more info on this topic.

We are also now practically gluten-free.  This came about because our son, Jack, was covered in hives.  We had already cut-out dairy, so that couldn't have been the problem.  Jack suggested that it might be wheat causing the problem, so he immediately went cold turkey.  The rest of us are not completely wheat/gluten free, but for logistics sake, we have cut down on wheat quite a bit.  I cannot physically make two different dinners.  Here's another interesting excerpt from the article I mentioned above:

Many athletes are switching to a gluten-free training diet, even if they do not have gluten issues. It has been found that gluten is an inflammatory agent in most people to some degree. Athletes who avoid gluten feel more energetic, less sluggish, lose a little weight, sleep better, have better digestion and generally feel better all around.

We are all carb addicts around here, so it has been hard to go without The Good Gluten.  I found this recipe for Buckwheat Pancakes (buckwheat is not a "wheat"...go figure) that has been heartily approved of by all.  It is quadrupled for my crew, and I added the bananas cause we like some fruit in our pancakes.  The interesting thing is that these taste more like blueberry pancakes than banana pancakes.  I'm guessing it's the flavor of the buckwheat. 

Banana Buckwheat Pancakes

4 c. buckwheat
4 t. baking powder
1/2 c. sugar
2 t. salt
4 eggs

4 c. kefir (or milk)

1/2 c. coconut oil (or butter), melted

6 pureed bananas

We eat our pancakes with maple syrup.  Yum.  But only organic maple syrup.  I recently found out that non-organic maple syrup is processed with formaldehyde.  Bleh.  After a lot of searching for the best price, I finallly subscribed to Amazon's "Subscribe and Save" Coombs Family Farms Organic Maple Syrup.  It's delievered to our house once each month.  I love that I don't have to do anything to get it.  It's automatically shipped (no shipping!) without me having to think about it.

Last big change is cloth diapering.  Not something I ever imagined doing, but diapers have been dramatically increasing in price.  Darin and I did the math, and of course cloth diapering is the cheaper route, so here we go!  Trial run starts tomorrow.  I'm a little nervous.  I don't imagine it's going to be any fun to rinse a "stinky" out in the toilet, but I've got rubber gloves on stand-by. 

Dishrags

There's not much free time in my daily schedule for me to incorporate hobbies into the routine, but there are some things I hate to do without.  Knitting dishrags is one of those things. 

Dishrags, I know, are a very personal thing.  We all have a rag that we swear by, and I absolutely swear by my knitted rags.  I'm a "tight" knitter.  I pull my stitches tight - most knitters would cringe if they saw me.  I know this because I have had a couple of knitting-mamas cringe when they saw me give my stitch a good yank.  But I'm an all-or-nothing personality...heavy on the "all."  It is the predetermined fate of my dishrags to be pulled tight.  I can't bear to have a loosely knitted rag. 

I know from experience that a tightly-stitched rag lasts longest.  My Mom is the better knitter and gives her creations a little more breathing room than I do, but her rags, although pretty, don't last as long as mine.  Right now the oldest rag I have in my kitchen drawer is about four years old.  Not bad when one considers that our family of 8 just went 1 1/2 years without a dishwasher.  That's a lot of hand-washed dishes!

I love sitting down on the couch with my daughter to knit.  We have a lot of fun just sitting and knitting.  It's been a great activity for her to flex her patience.  She does not enjoy having to work as long as it takes to knit a dishrag, and we have some interesting rags in the drawer because of that.  But with every rag she works on, she gets more patient and careful and interested in what she's doing.

I am a member of a yahoogroup called Monthly Dishcloths.  It's fun!  For the first 10 days of the month, 10 rows of a dishrag pattern are sent to my inbox each day.  At the end of 10 days, voila!  A new rag.  These are called "knitalongs."  In the middle of the month, another pattern is sent which is used to teach a new technique.  One month I had a cable knit dishrag - I sweated over that one!

A few years ago, I knitted my heart out for my neighbors.  I knitted each of them three dishrags for Christmas, and I think they're probably about ready for more.  ;-)  Darin is one of those wonderful Renaissance Men and can do just about anything I challenge him with.  He wrote this poem for me to include with our dishrags those few Christmases ago:

Christmas is a time for giving,
So it must mean the neighbors are coming.
So get the milk ready,
The chances are steady
That cookies are forthcoming.

But what else is this they are giving?
Something made by knitting.
It seems a bit small
For a blanket or shawl.
We just don’t know what we are getting.

So let me explain what you have received.
There is no reason to be grieved.
It’s a rag for dishes,
With soap and swishes.
Your plates will certainly be cleaned.

It was knitted with care and love
And thoughts of you to be sure of.
Too pretty to use,
Oh, but please do!
And Merry Christmas from Heaven above.

Movie Night at the Beard's

We host a movie night with our neighborhood friends every now and then.  We have a lot of fun, and it's a great way for Darin and me to get to know the kids our kids play with a little better.  They're a fun bunch of kids and we really enjoy them. 

We made brownies and popcorn, but these crazy boys ended up filling up on my beef stew. 
Warms a mother's heart, I tell ya.

Dare I say it? 

Girls, they wanna have fu-un. Oh, girls! They wanna have fun!
(my 80's roots are showing)

Boys....they just wanna wrestle. 

ChickaChickaBirthday

I'm turning 43 on Saturday and can't wait. I've found myself slipping over the last couple of months and telling people that I am already 43. Whoops! ONLY 42. ;-)

It's been a blessing to grow old...er. Older. I feel like every year that goes by I am shedding the ignorance and silliness of youth. Oh, to go back and do it again with what I know now. But I can't, so I look forward to moving "onward and upward." God is good.

One of my favorite things about age is that I feel like now I know how to properly read my kids their books. Back in my 20s, I read with feeling. Reading with feeling is good. A lot better than monotone. But now....NOW I have let go my inhibitions and can really slam dunk a read-through of those books that I used to try to skirt around when my kids would bring them to me because REALLY. How does an author think to put the phrase "ChickaChickaBoomBoom" in the middle of a story about the lowercase alphabet that climbs a tree together? Well....ChickaCHIckaBOOMBOOM! My kids don't care. They just think it's fun to hear me read it with ChickaChickaBoomBOOM-Pizazz, and I enjoy giggling with, and snuggling them in my arms as we "read it again!"  God is REALLY ChickaChickaBoomBoom-GOOD!

Eight O'Clock Pick-Up

An excerpt from 401 Ways to Get Your Kids to Work at Home: Household tested and proven effective! Techniques, tips, tricks, and strategies on how to get your kids to ... become self-reliant, responsible adults
I mean, really, if you can't find something that works after reading 401 suggestions, it's time to send the kids back to wherever they came from.  ;-):

Carolyn discovered a natural consequence that worked wonders.  The incident that motivated Carolyn, and her husband, Bob, to try this program was the mess they came home to one night.  Books, toys, clothes, towels and dishes were everywhere.  Rather than wake everyone in their anger, they laid out a plan.  The next morning they explained to the children, "We will go through the house twoice a day at eight o'clock.  anything left out in the general living areas will be put in the Extra-Service Box and will have to be redeemed with a chore sometime before Saturday at noon.  Consider yourselves warned."  That night, Carolyn and Bob picked up twelve things.  Next morning, when the children noticed the Extra-Service Box sitting in a conspicuous place on top of the refrigerator, they were all curious about who had things in the box.  "What do I need to do for you, Mom, to earn back my shoes?"  "Wipe off the TV screen" was the answer.

Carolyn had unsuccessfully tried using a similar technique before, where she would pick up an item left out at any time.  This was asking for perfection from the child and the parent had to stand guard all the time.  It was unenforceable.  Her real purpose was not to make the child perfect but to get him or her to notice and put away their own things.  She did not mind so much that things were left out in temporary spots once in a while, but it angered her when those temporary spots became permanent and the child never noticed the item until it was needed several days later.  For example, one of her sons had three coats.  He would go to the closet every time he needed a coat and only when there was not a coat in the closet would he think about where he could have left them.
This time, as Carolyn used this behavior modification technique, it was easier to be consistent with the consequence because it only happened twice a day.  She also watched for chances to reinforce the desired behavior when a child did pick up something: "Becky is saving herself an extra-service chore by picking up her shoes." An important ingredient for changing a habit is giving positive recognition for the desired action.

The evening of the second day, the fifteen-year-old could be seen picking up a whole arm load as she headed toward her bedroom.  Succes!  It was working.  This young lady was very involved in school activities but was especially careless at home.  It was this teen who put her dad's shoes in the box because they were out after eight o'clock and declared he would have to do her an extra chore.  The fourth morning was Saturday.  As the eleven-year-old boy appeared for breakfast, he noticed the service box and started checking to see if he had to redeem anything.  "What do I need to do to redeem my coat, Mom?"  Carolyn had him take the newspapers out to the garage.  This young man not only redeemed his own items, but everyone else's too.  Then he proudly took each item to the owner, telling about his generosity.  Carolyn's eight-year-old daughter had a spurt of energy while her mother was gone, and emptied the dish drainer and washed a sinkful of dishes.  "Did you like the way I helped out?  Does that mean I have redeemed something ahead of time?"  Success again!  She was noticing things that needed to be done without being told.

This eight o'clock pick-up was used by Carolyn every day for several weeks and then she let it die because the childen were much improved at picking up after themselves.  Three months later, she used it again for a few days to reinforce the principle.  Why did the eight o'clock pick-up work?

1. The children were mature enough to understand.

2. The eight o'clock rounds were easier to enforce than the "all the time" rule.

3. The Extra-Service Box was left out where it could be seen.

4. Redemption chores were kept very, very simple - less than five minutes and chores that were normally not theirs.

5. Special efforts were made to give lots of positive attention when the children picked up and put things away at other times.

6. A gentle, one-time reminder was often given before the parent's rounds were made.

7. The child's things left out in his own bedroom did not count; rather, they were treated with the daily pick-up chore by the child in the room and on Saturday when the bedroom was thoroughly cleaned. 

God's Vision, God's Passion

Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.

2 Corinthians 5:9

It's sometimes hard to remember that we should be raising our kids so that we glorify God - to be "well pleasing to Him" rather than to pump-up our own parenting egos.  I struggle with keeping that right frame-of-mind.  My upbringing was a little skewed, so I find myself trying to compensate for it by doing all the things I think should be done in order raise good kids.  A lot of times that means that I pile on book after book, after fun activity, after meaningful discussion. Bleh.

The biggest danger in me making the list of priorities for the kids is that there is the very real possibility of losing sight of the vision God has given me as a mother.  My little things can muddy the waters and make me forget The Big Thing that God has given me to do.  Constantly asking God to give me His vision for my family has kept me going strong.  With the vision, comes a passion, a yearning to fulfill and live up to God's goals.  What a blessing and a joy it becomes to "do all to the glory of God." (1 Cor. 10:31)

With that said, it doesn't mean that I sit idly by, waiting for God to pick me up from the couch and give me a kick in the right direction.  That's not the point!  The point is to "do all to the glory of God."  When I do that, the unimportant is easy to shake off as I focus on the true calling God has given for me as a mother. 

One thing I come back to over and over again, is spending time with our kids.  How can I win their hearts if I won't even have a conversation with them?  So I'm always looking for any amount of time that I can give to them - even if it means I'll never get to read for pleasure again - it's worth it.  ;-) 



Can one ever have too much cinnamon & sugar?



I found a book titled "Mothers and Daughters at Home: 35 Projects to Make Together" (check out my Amazon widget over in the sidebar).  The book is divided up into projects that take an hour, half a day, all day, and an indefinite amount of time.  I gave Lydia the book and told her to pick our first project together and she picked a half-day project.  We made homemade cinnamon rolls together.  We like to cook and bake together.  Something we like to do most often is what I call "Every Other Cooking."  Silly name.  All we do is alternate putting in ingredients and following directions for a recipe.  But we do it together and that makes it time well-spent.   



CARAMEL Cinnamon Rolls.  Yum!





 

He's daydreaming about all that cinnamon-y goodness.
CAN'T WAIT!



The finished product!  (don't look at my dirty oven)





 

Lay Hold

It's so easy to forget that the day that God blesses us with a desire for children, He is calling us into parenthood. That calling, and the importance of it, is taken for granted by so many.  Our culture looks at children and parenting without understanding the deep importance of what it means to parent and disciple.  It has become a selfish-driven desire.  We want children because babies are so sweet, or because our biological clocks are ticking, or because isn't that what married people do?  Parenting is a marathon, and the issues become more complex as the kids get older.  We can never abdicate our God-given roles to teachers, preachers, neighbors and the culture in general. 

I picked up a copy of My Utmost for His Highest this afternoon and was thumbing through it when I came upon the June 28th entry. These words, meant for those called into the ministry, still ring true for any calling from God:

"...when once God has put His call on you, woe be to you if you turn to the right hand or to the left.  We are not here to work for God because we have chosen to do so, but because God has apprehended us.  There is never any thought of - 'Oh, well, I am not fitted for this.' "

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Philippians 3:12