Gracious Guests

Circumstances have dictated that Ben and Shira have to attend a birthday party without a parent present. This is the first for all of. I can't believe how nervous I am about them going to something filled with sugar and excitement without me.

We've just had a good old role playing tutorial about how gracious guests behave. Cross your fingers that my little munchkins remain gracious guests despite all the excitement of a party.

Celiac Disease

I find it interesting and weird to see how many people define themselves by their diseases. Everyone in my family has celiac disease. What it means to us is that we avoid gluten in our diet and life goes on as normal.

I belong to a large, international email list for people with celiac disease. When I read posts on this list I realize that this is definitely not the case with many people with celiac disease. So many people appear to let this little dietary hiccup take over their lives. Before I go on, I belong to this list, not to talk about our disease, but to find out news about products which suddenly become unsafe and to find out about good restaurants that are safe for us in various cities.

One of my biggest bugbears is a post that I see with startling regularity. Someone will want to know how to get their medical insurance or the IRS to pay for their gluten free food. My other one is how people see the gluten free diet as restrictive and how they worry about what they are going to eat.

I just don't understand why people feel the need to duplicate the Standard American Diet (SAD) when they go gluten free. Instead of concentrating on all the wonderful, naturally gluten free foods, they insist on trying to make fake versions of the hideous baked goods that flood the American market. Then, because it is expensive to do this, they expect someone else to foot the bill. WTF? You insist on eating an unhealthy diet and then think that it's medically necessary and someone else should pay for it?

A post came through to the list a few weeks ago that had me totally floored. This woman was complaining about how refined the gluten free flours were and how gluten free baked goods were not vitamin enriched. She felt that it was a slight to the celiac community because gluten containing breads etc are vitamin enriched, but not gluten free ones. In her mind gluten free foods should get the same treatment in the interest of fairness. Ahh, fairness, that's a topic for another rant on another day.

Do these people have no concept about good nutrition? Stripping food of it's natural nutrition and then adding in synthetic vitamins does not make it healthy. Why not eat unprocessed foods the way nature made them? Instead of eating a gluten free slice of bread that contributes nothing but calories, why not eat an apple, brimming with phytonutrients?

Whenever I come across someone newly diagnosed with celiac I try to explain to them that we have almost unlimited food choices but that we willingly limit those choices every day. When we discover that we have celiac disease, we are just changing how we limit our choices. It is impossible to eat every food available to us, so we have to self select. What's so hard about changing the selection? I wish people would stop seeing a gluten free diet as restrictive.

What my disability means to my kids.

Ben and Shira have no memory of having a mom who was like everyone else. They are used to a mom who has osteonecrosis, who has to use crutches more often than not, who cannot run and jump, who is blind in her left eye and who has to wear dark glasses all the time because of a blown pupil.

I think I have the only kids in the world who beg their mom to use her disability Scootie to get around the neighborhood and to not use the van. We look like a little SE Asian family.
The three of us pile onto the Scootie and off we go around the neighborhood. The highlight of the trip is when I allow the children to do the steering and to beep the horn. The real treat is if I sit outside the garage and allow them to drive up and down the quiet road behind our house.

Scooties are wonderful things.

Shira and I have discovered that it is a huge amount of fun if I hold onto her while she's on her plasma car and I drive my Scootie at full speed (which is not very fast LOL). The Plasma Car is so much lower to the ground than the Scootie that the Scootie's top speed of 13 mph feels really fast.

My disability has turned them into activists. They were involved with my campaign to get handicap ramps built into the sidewalks in our neighborhood. You should hear them when they spy a sidewalk without a ramp. They become very indignant.

It's also forced them to become more responsible than other 6 year olds as they often have to be my legs and sometimes my eyes. We're lucky that we live in little old Norfolk. We're surrounded by independent stores, not big box stores. I can pull up outside the pharmacy and be comfortable that my child is safe while he goes inside to have a prescription filled as the pharmacist knows my family and I can see the door the entire time. Ben and Shira get a real kick out of having to sign their name in cursive when they pick up prescriptions.

They love doing a grocery shop at the Organic Food Depot. They make out the list at home and then do the shopping. The highlight of course, is getting to pay for the groceries.

I've noticed that they are so much more empathetic than most children their age. My heart swells with pride when I see them naturally holding open doors for people who need help, or offering to reach things on shelves. Better still, I love how they see no difference between a disabled person and a person who has full use of her body.

I started writing this blog post to try to find the positive things about having a disabled mom. I've been feeling exceedingly guilty for these past 6 weeks since I fell and broke part of my knee. I feel like I've short changed my kids because I am yet again stuck in bed and not able to do what I want to with them. However, as I wrote it, I realized that in a way my health problems has not been an issue as the three of us have worked ways around it and we still have loads of fun.

Purim costumes

Purim is just around the corner and we're busy choosing costumes. I am so glad that I suggested to the children that they should decide what wear. They are so much more creative than I ever could be.

Their current favorite idea is for them to go as Moses and the burning bush. Ben's Moses is a no brainer. Ben loves the blanket I turned into a "monk's" robe for him. He hates dress up costumes but loves his soft, blanket robe. He told me that he is going to wear underpants (a huge concession) and his robe. We could add a light sabre and he could be a Jedi knight or he could just go sans light sabre and as Moses. I'm loathe to give him a staff because a 6 year old boy and a staff are not a good combo.

As soon as Shira heard that Ben was going to be Moses, she decided that she was going as the burning bush. I must admit to being very proud of my daughter. Most of the little girls in our acquaintance are going as Queen Esthers or brides. I hope that her ability to swim against the tide lives on till adulthood.

4-H and fibre arts

All the homeschoolers I know are uber crafty. Everyone always seems to have a piece of knitting, crocheting or embroidering in their hands. They talk of spinning and felting. I feel so craft challenged. It's not that I can't do these things, it's just that I don't feel a need to do them.

The other day I thought I'd do some crochet work. OK, so now what? I don't wear sweaters, nor does any member of my family wear sweaters. That ruled out a sweater. How about a felted purse? Colyn across at Apron Strings made an absolutely beautiful felted tote that inspired me. The only problem was that I have no need of an extra tote. I went on and on through the list and realized that I didn't want or need anything crocheted. Since I didn't need anything, I couldn't see the point in doing any crocheting. Same went for knitting and sewing.

Looks like I am going to continue to be the lone uncrafty homeschooler in our group.

Ben and Shira are desperate to learn to knit, crochet and sew. Both have made hats with those knifty knitter thingies and as I wrote on my blog the other day, Shira is learning to sew. The problem is that their mom is just not inspired to teach them.

Yesterday I happened on the perfect solution to this little problem. Shelley, a very talented and energetic homeschooler in Norfolk is starting a 4-H club dedicated to fibre arts. I quickly signed up the sprogs before all the spaces filled up. I even offered to be a volunteer, but as Marc said, what use will I be at a fiber arts club. I think I'll be the crowd control volunteer.

Math in our Homeschool

We've developed a great math system in our homeschool. We use Professor B for concepts and some drill and Big Math Time for additional drill.

What drew me to Prof B was the lack of manipulatives and fancy colors. It's a simple, computer based program that scripts the story for the teacher. Every concept is taught by means of a story which makes it so much easier for the child to grasp and process as children have already been taught how to listen to stories. He also does a masterful job of building connections between concepts, thus further enhancing the learning. This means that all concepts are connected and flow into one another, no fragmentation like I saw in the other math programs I looked at.

On his website, Prof B says:
"- Kindergarten and first graders mastering the lower/higher addition/subtraction facts and reading numbers in the hundreds of trillions (fifteen-digit numbers).
- Second graders mastering all multiplication facts and long division.
- Fifth graders mastering “seventh grade math.”
- Fifth and sixth grade classes in the most disadvantaged communities outperforming ninth graders on statewide algebra exams."


I am seeing the truth of the first grade claim and will soon be working on second grade with my kids. I get such a kick out of them adding and subtracting 15 digit numbers with nary a blink. I couldn't believe how easy it was to teach place value. I think it took around 10 min. For years I've read plaintive emails from homeschoolers who have battled to teach place value to their children. I've heard stories about houses, visitors and hotels - and even stranger things, all manipulatives that attempt to teach place value. Prof B uses none of that. His lessons build slowly and deliberately so that when you approach the concept of place value, most of the concepts needed to understand place value are already in place.

The program works exceptionally well with my very verbal daughter. The stories mean something to her. My math whizz son is always a step ahead of what I am explaining. Prof B's methods have given him the tools to work things out for himself.

I must be sounding like an advertisement for Prof B, but I can't help myself. I truly love this math program.

Watch One, Do One, Teach One

My kids have boundless self confidence. The latest example is tickling me no end. Last week Shira asked me to teach her to sew. We cut out a dolly from felt and I taught her how to sew a running stitch. She did her running stitch around the doll's outline and then because the stitches were rather large, I had her do another round.

The doll looked cute once it was finished. However, in her mind, she is now an expert. She is busy making herself another doll and has plans to teach our sitter how to sew tomorrow. I love it.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever.

Last week I received a care package of gluten free, casein free and soy free goodies from McGovern's Organics . This was the first time since I went GFCF 3 years ago that I tasted cookies and cakes that tasted as good as, and in fact better than, any gluten containing baked goods I had ever tasted.

I loved the chocolate chip cookies so much that I have just ordered 4 dozen of them. What makes them even more appealing is that the McGovern sisters only use the highest quality organic ingredients and they haven't jumped onto the "Oats is safe for celiacs bandwagon".

We found out to our great dismay, when we ate Dr Lucy's GF cookies , that we are celiacs who cannot tolerate oats.

I've been mulling this oats business and am very confused. The current recommendation is that it is safe for celiacs to eat certified GF oats, but only a max of 1/2 a cup a day. Am I the only one who finds this particularly odd. It's safe, but if you eat more than 1/2 cup a day, then it isn't? Doesn't ring true to me. I think that celiacs should continue to avoid oats.

More and more gluten free goodies are being made with oats as this makes the cooking process easier. All it means for us is that we have to read labels even more carefully than before and that we can't trust "gluten free" labels.

Of course, I shouldn't even be having this discussion. I should be eschewing all baked goods and living on unprocessed fruit and vegetables like I do most of the time. Right now I feel like some indulgence is called for. The knee surgery I just had was more painful than I could possibly have imagined and I think that McGovern's Organics chocolate chip cookies are just what the doctor ordered.

Surrounded by music

This afternoon I realized that dreams do come true. I've had a dream for years where I would hear music, played by my children, fill the house. I knew that there was a chance that this would not happen because my side of the gene pool did not bring musical gifts, unlike Marc's which abounds in them.

Ben's been taking piano lessons since September last year and finally the music he plays is recognizable as music and actually often sounds rather pretty. Shira's been singing with the Virginia Children's Chorus since September and each week has a new piece of music to learn off by heart. For the last month both of them have been taking recorder lessons.

For the last hour they have been practicing their music. First the recorders and now Ben is on the piano and Shira is learning her memory solo for choir. It's just so beautiful and joyous. They love their music and their instruments and that shines through very brightly.

Ben's enjoying piano so much that I no longer need to remind him to practice. He practices of his own accord 2-4 times a day. Shira has always loved singing but during the first semester at VCC she was overwhelmed and didn't trust her ability to learn each memory solo. This semester she is flying. I am in awe of her. She's learning complex pieces which are often not in English. She's learned songs in Latin, Spanish and Italian. Right now she is learning A La Puerta del Cielo.

I'm a very happy, and proud mommy.

Surfing

We live at the ocean but you'd never guess it. I dislike the beach intensely. Can't stand the sand and mess so I rarely take the kids to the beach. Last week, while I was in hospital, Marc took the kids to Port Discovery to help pass the time. This is as close as my kids are going to get to surfing until they are able to get to the beach under their own steam.

Face Painting

Shira decided to try her hand at painting her face this evening. She's now on a roll. She plans on taking the face paints to co-op and painting faces during lunch time. I hope the moms will be willing.

Tales for Tails

The Friends of the Norfolk Public Library hold a great program for struggling readers called "Tales for Tails". Therapy dogs sit quietly and listen, non-judgementally, to young children read.

I was very excited when I heard about the program, not because Ben and Shira are struggling readers, but because Shira is totally terrified of dogs. A rambunctious lab puppy knocked her over when she was 2 years old and ever since then her fear of dogs has increased. It had become so bad that she became paralyzed with fear if a dog even walked past on the opposite side of the road.

I thought the therapy dogs at the library might be a great way to help her. We spoke about how the dogs are specially trained to never jump on children and how they are special "doctor" dogs. We read all about therapy dogs and spoke about them ad nauseum.

Shira finally agreed to go to the 'Tales for Tail's" program at the library. The poor child was terrified, but adamant that she was going through with it. Initially she and I sat on the floor, well away from the dogs and she watched other children read. We spoke about how quiet and calm the dogs were. Then we moved into the circle of children and waited for a while. Finally Shira decided to read to the dogs.



She even petted the dogs. She is not completely over her fears yet, but reading to the therapy dogs has made a huge dent in her phobia. We plan on going to the "Tales for Tails" every month until Shira is over her phobia.

Ben read to the dogs for good measure.

Legodiles

Lydia over at Little Blue School coaches our homeschool Lego League team. I am in awe of Lydia as she manages to get the two Benjamins (hers and mine) to focus AT THE SAME TIME. The kids have had a blast learning about simple machines and energy sources.

Yesterday they took part in the Tidewater Homeschool Lego League Tournament and won the Inquiring Minds award.

This has been an outstanding project. Our children learned to work as a team, to solve problems and to present their project to strange people. We're looking forward to next year's Lego League Challenge.

In the mean time our group isn't disbanding. We're going to continue learning out simple machines and basic physics. Our next project is the Virginia Air and Space's Egg Drop Contest. Our Legodiles are meeting tomorrow, under Lydia's fine tutelage to learn about the physics of dropping eggs from great heights. The meeting after that is the fun one, the kids get to test out their designs.

Slow Sunday Mornings

Slow Sunday mornings are a Silverberg family tradition. Each of us spends the morning doing his/her own "thing". Marc and I tend to read and the kids indulge in all sorts of creative activities. This morning the kids made balloon people, boats, pan pipes, an Indian camp site and Shira started work on her Purim costume.

Thinking about it, the only slow parts of Sunday mornings in our household are the parents. The kids are anything but slow.





Notice the importance of tape in Ben's and Shira's projects. I buy tape in bulk from BJ's. I can see that they are going to be duct tape adults as in their mind there is nothing tape can't fix or do.

Bye, bye blackbird

The other day at Shira and her friend Benny discovered a dead blackbird at the park. Shira was devastated over the bird's death and wept copious tears in the van over the way the cruel world cut short its life. Ben, on the other hand, was much more prosaic. "you live, you die", was his response. That's my boy!

I tried to use this as a chance to explain the cycle of life and that death is a natural part of living, that without death, you can't have life. That there is nothing to mourn about a creature's moving through the cycle. That we should give thanks to that bird for giving it's nutrients back to the earth to feed something else. Shira wasn't buying it. LOL

Benny's mom took some videos of the kids burying the bird. Here's the vid of Benny and Shira burying the bird (fear not, they did not touch the bird with their hands)


Here's a video of Benny and Jillian (another homeschooler) giving the bird a funeral.

Travel Broadens the Mind.

I realized today that you don't even have to leave home for travel to broaden the mind. Ben and Shira are taking a "world cultures" class at our homeschool co-op. Last week they studied Italy and this week they made Italian food. Ben and Shira couldn't eat the food as it contained bread and cheese. However, their teacher told them how they could make a tomato and basil salad.

This afternoon Shira made one all on her own. Over the last few months, I have spent a fair bit of time with Shira teaching her how to use sharp knives, but up till now has steadfastly refused to use them. This afternoon she chopped tomatoes all on her own, shredded basil and topped it with freshly ground black pepper and some EVOO. I was so proud of her. She seems to have a feel for food because the proportions were perfect. She's on a roll, now she wants to make another dish for us.

The bigger news was that Ben ate an entire bowl of this salad. He has steadfastly refused to eat salads, tomatoes or basil for nearly 7 years. Two world cultures classes and here he is, eating salad like a champ.

I am looking forward to next week's co-op. I can't wait to see what Shira is going to cook for us and what new food Ben is going to eat.

It's OK!

3 years ago when I was diagnosed with osteonecrosis in 3 joints, Shira internalized it as "mommy is nearly dead, one more bone and she'll be dead". We unfortunately only realized this last year and have spent a fair bit of time trying to help her realize that this is not the case. Things seemed to be working well until a few weeks ago when part of my knee broke off. It's been back onto crutches for me and next week I am having surgery.

It's all thrown Shira for a loop. All her fears about me dying have come to the fore. Yesterday the two of us spent a lot of time talking about it. When we were finished talking she said she wanted to make a book about it.

The title of the book is, "It's OK". She's drawn a cross section of the knee as seen on an MRI on the first page, labeled it dead knee and then in large letters has written, "it's ok". The next page has a broken piece of bone with "It's OK" across the top. The third has a pic of her, Ben and Marc with tears streaming down their faces and of course, "it's OK". Finally there was a picture of a happy heart and a final "it's OK".

She gave me the book and told me that she made it for me because I was so nervous and she wanted to help me feel OK about it all. Love that transferrance. LOL. We've spent rather a lot of time reading this book and talking about things being OK. I think it is working to help calm her fears.

Cyber Obliviots

I wonder if the majority of website designers ever test their websites? I am always floored at the number of user unfriendly websites. Do you have any bugbears? Here are some of mine.

- videos that start playing when you click on links. This drives me batty. I wish that they would load, but not play. Sometimes I am surfing while Marc is asleep next to me and I don't want to wake him.
- links that download when you click on them without giving you notice that this is a link to a download.
- sites that don't give you the parameters for usernames and passwords. I've just been at a website and this is how registration went. I typed in a user name and password and received an error message that said the user name needed at least one uppercase letter so I retyped it with the first letter capitalized. Then I received another message saying that I couldn't use special characters. I fixed that and then received another message saying that it needed to include numbers. I fixed that thinking I had covered all my bases only to find out that I had a message about the password. Same deal with the password. Wouldn't it just have been easier to write the list of requirements for both items on the same page you start the registration process?
- American websites that have the drop down menus for "country" that has the US all the way at the bottom of the list.
- flash intro's. I just want the info, not all the crap.
- short webpages. The Mayo Clinic is a good example of what I am talking about. You go there to look up a disease and instead of having a single webpage that you can scroll down, it has multiple short pages so you end up waiting for pages to load all the time.
- background music, especially cheezey background music. The other day I went to a website to look at Passover vacations and then started watching a movie. it took me five minutes to work out why an Inspector Lynley movie was playing Israeli music. LOL. OK I'm the obliviot here, but the website only started playing the music after I left it. I suppose that this is a lesson to me to stop leaving so many windows open. It drives Marc crazy that I have a zillion windows open at any one time.

Sometimes I feel so sorry for Shira. I don't know how the poor child puts up with having Ben as her brother. When the kids do their school work, I have had to start putting them in different rooms. The only time they are in the same room is if I am teaching the two of them together.

Ben has just finished doing his math problems. He was adding and subtracting fifteen digit numbers. Apparently he is incapable of writing down the answers without singing them in an ascending scale. I can hear how far he is in a problem by the note he has reached. Then when he checks his answer and realizes he has it correct, we hear a huge cowboy whoop.

He also has to talk his way through the problem. I often wonder if this isn't my fault. At 2 yrs 4 mnths Ben had around 20 words. I was beside myself with worry so a friend lent me a book on how to promote speech in a child. It said that I should narrate everything I do. So off I was, narrating my way through the day. I never shut up. Two months later Ben started talking in sentences and has not shut up since. If his eyes are open, he's talking. He narrates everything, just like I did after reading that book.

I also read a book by Jane Healy that spoke about how the frontal lobe acts as the executive and only starts developing at around age 7. Before that children don't have the ability to have good impulse control. She suggested talking through the steps required to control behavior with the children. So off I went again. For years I have narrated the steps we take and questions we ask that enable us to have good behavior.

Shira has somehow internalized this and has all her dialogues internally, but Ben appears to be unable to have them internally and everything is out in the open.

I must admit, that as tiring as it is having him talk all the time, it is very amusing listening to the inner workings of his brain. He's either a budding genius or well onto his way to a lock up ward.

it's all very trying for Shira. She needs absolute quiet when she works and Ben likes noise, especially noise he makes himself. I often think that it is just as well that he is homeschooled. there is no way a teacher could put up with his noise in a class of 30 kids.

More on Obliviots

Shira and I were at CWD Kids this morning. While we were at the check out a woman came into the store and asked the store manager to remove her display from outside the store. Her reason was that her daughter and friend were playing outside and they kept on touching the display. What happened to good old parental discipline? "Girls, we don't touch stuff that doesn't belong to us!".

No wonder we're a nation that expects things done for us. This parent saw nothing wrong in asking a store to move its display rather than control her children.