What do you do when you see a person standing on the side of the road holding up a sign telling you they need food and money?

I usually drive by, wishing I at least had a granola bar or something to give them, but unwilling to hand out money. And then I have a looooong conversation with my kids about why that person is standing there in the median and why I didn't give them any money.

One of the moms from my homeschool group got a great idea from her husband for what she started calling "Bags of Blessing" to help homeless people. (Shout out to ya, Angela!) Several families got together last week and put together ziploc bags (gallon-sized) filled with very helpful items that we can carry around in our cars and hand out to people we see in need. The bags include:

• water bottle
• 2 pkgs of vitamin-enhanced flavor powder (to add to the water)
• granola bar
• toothbrush (generously donated by a local dentist)
• toothpaste (ditto on the donation)
• hand sanitizer
• lip balm
• tarp or rain poncho
• Bible

I also hope to buy a roll of bus tokens to put in each bag as well.

Very simple and not very expensive (without the bus tokens, they're about $4 each) - and a ton of fun for a group of families to do together. And now I don't have to feel quite so helpless to help the homeless.

My son is driving me crazy.

"There's nothing to eeeeaat," he whines. "Nothing good, anyway."

I have just returned from a third-world country where children are quite literally starving to death. Malnourished babies aren't getting their prescribed nutritional supplement because they have to compete with other family members for it (and a baby can't stand up and say, "That's my mamba! You can't eat it!") People of all ages live on a staple diet of rice and beans and maybe some goat or chicken day after day after day.

And my son stands in front of a pantry and refrigerator fully stocked with a variety of nutritious food (some of which he begged me to buy for him) and complains about his choices.

I can't get that kid to Haiti fast enough.

cross-posted from the "Pneumas in Haiti" blog

Haiti gets into you.

It gets under your skin and up your nose and all over your feet.

It pours over your head like a cold shower and drips out of your pores.

It slams your vision with images of people - faces you may or may not remember, but in places you will never forget: thronging an open market, picking through a garbage heap, lying alone in a crib reaching up to be held.

It won't be silent, filling your ears with beeping horns, crowing roosters and enthusiastic music at all hours of the day and night.

As it jostles you down rutted roads, it jolts your expectations with startling contrasts: tin-roofed concrete block houses surrounded by lush mango trees, a beautiful home that lacks running water, families bathing and washing clothes in a muddy river minutes away from a clear blue ocean.

And, somehow, while you are distracted by all of its sights, sounds, and smells, Haiti creeps and seeps into your soul. Compassion for its people wraps around your heart and squeezes until you weep for the overwhelming multitude of needs. Who can fix it? No amount of money seems sufficient to satisfy all the starving children, build the necessary infrastructure, and educate millions of illiterates. You begin to understand the mindset of people who live only for today because there is no hope for tomorrow.

But there are bright beacons of hope shining with the love of Jesus all through Haiti. No one can fix everything, but each can help some. Offering hope to a handful of people at a time, they follow God's call to bring up a generation with hope beyond today or tomorrow ... hope into eternity.

Pray for these people who are committing their lives to serve the Lord in Haiti.

And pray for Kris, Andy, Linette, Rebecca, Shane, Michael and me as we seek how God wants to use us in and for Haiti's people. We can wash off our bodies, but we can never rinse Haiti's hold out of our hearts.

A friend of mine set up a blog for our Haiti team to blog about our trip. If you'd like to follow us, check it at http://pneumasinhaiti.blogspot.com.

I thought I'd pass on a few updates to some things going on in my life & family:

* Mom called yesterday. Because her lungs are still healing from the radiation treatments, her pulmonologist said it would be ill-advised for her to take a trip to our altitude. We're kind of bummed that she & Dad won't be able to make it for our daughter's music program graduation next week. And I'm praying hard for a full recovery so she will be able to visit us in the future. She loves our mountains!

* Speaking of music, yes, my daughter is finishing a 3 1/2 year program through Children's Music Academy. In that time, she has learned to play piano (very well, actually), read music, and understand basic music theory. The program has also provided fabulous ear training as well as instruction in singing, guitar and recorder. I am so proud of all the work she has done and especially that she has learned a very challenging piece of music (Hayden's "A Minuet Trio") all on her own.

* What a difference a diet change can make! My husband AND daughter are both living a dairy-free lifestyle, and both have seen significant improvements in their allergy-related asthma. My daughter had been coughing all the time for over a month, and now her cough has completely cleared up. But even better, I have noticed a huge change in her attitude. She has always had a "budding control freak" streak, and I have had to push hard for respectful speech and behavior from her. In the last 2 weeks, she is almost a different person. The sweet side of her personality has come out, and she tells me she feels much more rested all the time. My hubby has also found that eliminating all forms of dairy from his diet has significantly improved his digestion. So our family life is really improving - even if I have to change some of the ingredients I cook with and we have to be super careful about eating out.

* I leave for Haiti in a little over a week. Hard to imagine! God has already poured out His blessings on our trip preparations and provided abundantly for the financial needs. I'm really excited about the team who is going as well as the people standing behind us and praying for us. I will try to post some specific prayer requests before we leave.

Yesterday evening I had a wonderful time with my dear friends Dawn and Angela wrapping up our study this year of Sally Clarkson's book Seasons of a Mother's Heart. And, as you might expect, our discussion hit all kinds of tangents. As we talked about endurance, perseverance and encouraging one another, we got to talking about prayer. Dawn used a phrase that has gotten under my skin in the past: "the power of prayer." That phrase bugs me because I have heard it so often in the context of using prayer to get what we want. But Dawn spoke of submitting ourselves to the Lord as we pray and of prayer as a way for us to allow the Holy Spirit to intercede for God's will when we don't know how best to pray.

That phrase that has always bugged me took on new meaning last night as I realized that the real power of prayer is not that we use it to somehow manipulate God into doing what we want - but that God uses our prayers to change us as our eyes are opened to doing what He wants. It is through prayer that God has moved my heart towards adoption and compassion for the poor and now serving in Haiti. I didn't set out to ask for these things. I started by praying to have children, and God showed me the timing to adopt. I started by praying for friends serving in other parts of the world, and God opened my eyes to the needs of the poor and oppressed. I started by praying for God to show me something to do with that newfound compassion, and He moved my heart one day when I heard a simple statement about Haiti.

Yes, the real power of prayer is not that it changes our circumstances but that it changes us. I dare you to try it!

My husband had a philosophy of life: "You can never have too much cheese."

Now it seems he needs to change that to "Any cheese is too much cheese." After struggling with serious bouts of asthma and arthritis this spring, he decided to try some diet changes and see if they made a difference with how he felt. For the last week he decided to eliminate dairy products from his diet.

We were both surprised to see how quickly his asthma cleared up. He is still doing some research on connections between dairy allergies and asthma - and he'll ask about further testing for the dairy allergy when he goes for an allergy shot tomorrow. If it turns out that he does need to go permanently dairy free (DF), then we're already making some changes. It's not too hard to cook DF meals for dinner - I don't do many casseroles, and I can leave out cheese or have it on the side. But breakfasts are a challenge for a guy who has always loved his bowl of cereal every morning!

In the meantime, he has decided on a new philosophy of life: "You can never have too many hugs!"

             … a country where 80% of the population lives in abject poverty with average wages less than $2 per day for the few who can find work

            … a place where escalating food costs leave many unable to afford any food other than mud “cookies”

            … a population that buries one in eight children before the age of 5, children taken by malnutrition and preventable diseases

            … an island nation where nearly every water source has become contaminated with human waste

            … a home to more than one million orphans

… a country that lies less than 700 miles – only a 2-hour flight – from the coast of Florida

                                             … You have imagined Haiti.

Yet in the midst of such destitution, many are giving their lives to share the love of Jesus in meeting the needs of the Haitian people. Children’s Homes (crèches) care for and protect the most vulnerable children, finding adoptive homes in the US and Europe for children who have no hope for a future life in their home country. Others care for malnourished and sick children whose parents cannot afford any medical care, hoping to return healthy children to their families. Many missions organizations employ Haitians as nannies or train them in skills such as sewing that can provide them a living wage. Christian-funded schools provide free education for children who would otherwise remain illiterate.

  In June I will join a team on a one-week trip to visit Haiti, seeking ways to partner with those who are working to bring relief to its people. We will visit 6 orphan-centered ministries, bringing 500 pounds of life-giving supplies and making connections for a long-term ministry in Haiti. As I prepare to leave on June 10, I am looking for partners to join me in praying and to help with the costs of the trip. My travel and lodging costs will be about $800, and beyond that, I will be gathering supplies (food, clothing and other necessities) to donate to help Haitian orphans.

 In the next week or so, I will begin sending specific prayer requests and information about our contacts in Haiti by email. If you would like to receive that email, please send me a note at 3rsandahug@gmail.com. If you would like to donate supplies or help with the cost of the trip - or if you have other questions I can answer - please email me.

“I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for Me.” Jesus (Matthew 25:40)

DON'T PANIC! (Immortal words from The Hitchhiker's Guid to the Galaxy)

My daughter didn't have an unhappy pool experience ... quite the opposite, really.

We were swimming at our local rec center the other day, and the head lifeguard asked if she'd be willing to play a victim for a potential lifeguard who was interviewing for a job. She got to pretend to be a victim of all kinds of water emergencies: broken neck, floating on her belly, down at the bottom of the pool, and one or two others.

After all of her rescues, as the new lifeguard did the swim test portion of his interview, I spent a few minutes talking with the head lifeguard, and she commented that my kids were really good swimmers.

That was a shock, but I realized it was true!

See, back in February, I started taking the kids over to the pool a couple of times a week. They hadn't been in swim lessons for 4 or 5 years, but as a former swim team member myself, I felt I could teach them some basic swim skills. Amazingly, with just a few minutes of instruction out of one to two hours of playing in the pool, they started learning skills like treading water. Both have progressed from fear of deep water to happily jumping into the deep end and trying to reach the bottom. Neither could swim more than 6-8 feet back then - and my son can swim a full lap (2 lenghts of the pool) without stopping!

Three months ago, if my daughter were in the deep end of the pool, I would have been certain she would need a real-life rescue. It amazes me to think of how far she has come - how far they both have come - from children who would never leave water where they could stand up to children who really enjoy swimming and need only basic instruction in specific strokes to be proficient swimmers.

As we bring this school year to a close (only 13 days to go!), I'm starting to evaluate and pray about changes to make for next year. I know, I know, I'm a little late to this - most of you probably already had next year planned by mid-March!

One thing that I've realized is that as much as I enjoy having my kids at home with me and building our relationships with each other, all that time at home isn't really productive. My son gets bored and just wants to watch TV. And, to be honest, I'm not entirely cut out emotionally for 24/7 with the kids. When I get stressed and overwhelmed, I don't model the best attitude. A friend recently commented to me that she is building better relationships with her kids since putting them back in school because she is more emotionally able to handle the time with them. I understand what she's saying, but I'm not led to put my kids in school. (I recently joked with friends that God roped me into homeschooling, and He won't let me out of it.) There has to be a middle ground - one that allows me to keep my sanity and give them some productive activity without me feeling like I'm punishing my kids for the 3 of us not being perfect. Some of my friends accomplish this by putting their kids in a one-day-a-week school program, but when I had my kids in that program, it was just a huge stress on all of us. My son in particular finds the long day to be too much and utterly exhausting. And I was running around every morning getting lunches and backpacks put together, rushing my daughter out of bed, and then pushing everyone through breakfast so we could get out on time. So for now, I don't think that's a good option for us.

I'm praying about other options that might reduce our day-to-day stress. I thought about a 4-day school week, but that could drag our school year out a lot longer than I'm willing to do - and then we also have one full day of "what to do," so it wouldn't solve the boredom issue. I may look into enrolling them in one or two classes at a local homeschool-support program. Or I may look into the Christian school where my son attended Kindergarten - at the time, they were very supportive of homeschoolers and open to having kids attend one or two classes instead of a full day.

When I step back, I really do feel blessed to have my children at home with me. But I want to do what's best for all of us. So I'm thinking and praying about the next year and what changes, if any, I need to make.

We got home just over a week ago from a trip to Maryland & Washington, DC . My husband is doing some work with NASA, and he spent most of a week working at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. While he was working, the kids & I hopped on the Metro each day and headed into DC for fun sightseeing. Here are some of the pictures from those days:

I have been struggling to teach my son multiplication since September. Every curriculum I have used (and I'm on my 3rd math curriculum in 4 years) teaches multiplication based on skip-counting. For him, this method just doesn't seem to help him actually master and memorize the multiplication facts. After months, he still can't do multiplication by 3's or 5's without having to think through the skip counts. We have barely touched 4's and not even started some of the more complex multiplication like 6's, 7's and 8's.

Realizing that this approach wasn't working - and that he doesn't have any patience with manipulatives either - I searched online yesterday for "teaching multiplication facts" and ran across Timez Attack. I had heard of it in the past through one of the homeschooling Yahoo! groups I'm part of, so I thought it might work and went ahead and downloaded the free version. Little did I realize how much it would help him because it engages learning with something he loves - an adventure video game. In the course of playing one level yesterday, he easily memorized the 2x multiplication facts. Now, I realize the 2's are one of the easiest groups of multiplication facts to master because it's just a matter of doubling a number (using simple addition). But this morning I quizzed him on some of the facts, and he was able to answer from memory - not by doubling the number in his head. So I'm willing to let him play his way to learning multiplication facts. And, to be honest, it's really nice for me that he is working on this independently!

We have been learning about Russia in the past week, and today we learned about Faberge eggs. Then we did a little art project where we painted our own eggs (on paper, not actual eggs). And I had the kids name their eggs.

My son's eggs:

Dead Man Egg

Gate of Confusion Egg

Road of Chaos (not exactly an egg, though)

My daughter's eggs:

Noisy Puppy Egg

Magnificent Falls Egg

And I did an egg, too, titled September Egg:

Haiti.

It's practically off the coast of Florida. It shares the island of Hispaniola with one of the Caribbean's most desirable tourist destinations (the Dominican Republic). Yet it's the poorest nation in the entire western hemisphere. Plagued by corruption, skyrocketing food prices, hurricanes and a virtually non-existent government, the people press on day by day, trying to survive.

Watch this video (it's about 20 minutes long). And then I ask you to join me in praying for Haiti. And while this video doesn't address the crisis of Haiti's orphaned children, please pray also for their safety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbbM8OM9Dqw

This is what happened when I let my daughter borrow a couple of latex gloves the other day:

This has been going around Facebook, and it's pretty funny. Google (your name) "wants" and or (your name) "needs" and post the top 5 results. Since I've seen it both ways, I thought I'd do both.

What Karen wants:

1. to remember being a kid
2. to remember things as I paint them (or maybe to paint things as I want to remember them)
3. to not end up in a meeting like that, sitting helplessly
4. a fight
5. to have the Ohio plumber killed

What Karen needs:

1. to vacuum the floors, throw in a load of wash (how true that is!)
2. to go to Fredericksburg
3. to work in the garden
4. to make a plan to keep on top of the replacement plan (???)
5. additional citations for verification in a wikipedia entry that mentions my name

Very funny! (I really don't want anyone killed, though.) So what does the world according to Google think YOU want and need?

This week is shaping up to be a difficult one to get schoolwork done. We have 2 days when we'll have to take off: one day (praying it isn't more) when I have Jury Duty and one day is my son's birthday. As I sat down to teach this morning, I had to re-organize our 5 days of schoolwork in the curriculum to fit into 3. There are pencilled-in arrows all over our Bible and Geography lesson plans! But we should get it all in, even if some of our Bible gets pushed into next week.

However, I'm glad these things fall in this week and not last. Last week I was making triple-chocolate mousses and dinner rolls for our church's annual Valentine's dinner. It's actually a very special couples dinner - a cozy, restaurant-style dinner for two. My husband and I chose to help serve the meal this year and found that encouraging others' romance was good for ours. We had taken the kids out for dinner on Friday night and then stayed up late by ourselves watching the movie I.Q. - a sweet movie about romance and physics. Many things over the weekend gave me a renewed appreciation for my wonderful husband. I thank God for him daily!

Last Wednesday evening, my family drove me to the airport where I got on a plane (all by myself!) and flew to Oklahoma to visit my parents. Mom has told me that her radiation treatments have really sapped her energy, so imagine my surprise when I saw her with Dad to meet me at the airport for my 10:00 pm arrival!

I was able to take Mom for her final radiation treatment on Thursday and the last (for a while) chemotherapy treatment on Friday. We celebrated the end of radiation with some "retail therapy" together, and I was able to help out with some things around the house. The three of us had a wonderful time together - and being just the three of us has been rare since I was 2 years old!

We won't know any results of mom's treatments until after her next CAT scan on Monday. She meets with her oncologist again in about 3 weeks, and he wants to do 2 high-dose chemotherapy cycles to make sure all the cancer cells in her body are dead and gone. But it does seem likely at this point that her treatments have been very successful, and she'll be simply watching and managing the cancer after this Spring.

I can't begin to say how much my whole family has appreciated prayers for mom from around the country - around the world, really. God is good, regardless of the final outcome. And He is good to hear and answer our prayers.

but, holy cow, I wasn't ready for an instant return to the argumentative, hyper child who can't listen and respond to what he's told!

Our first few days of the NDD therapy have been exhausting. It's not the therapy/exercises themselves. The home work is one fairly simple exercise that my husband does with my son at bedtime. But the specific stimulation of the brain has led to some unexpected effects. While I did expect him to be more tired than usual, I didn't expect the hyperactivity and impulsiveness to increase dramatically and immediately. The other thing that's interesting is that this child who almost never sings has started spontaneously singing.

I'm finding a great need to be patient as he is having a hard time responding to instructions, especially when he's engaging in impulsive behavior. It seems like my instruction just isn't getting to the "respond" part of the brain very quickly. But we're persevering with the hope and expectation that the next few weeks will show improvement. Our therapist told us we could expect about 6 months of seeing things "fall apart" before they improved as we stripped away coping mechanisms in order to help his brain function properly. I just didn't expect to see it so dramatically so quickly.

4 years of Speech Therapy ... he can speak clearly enough to be understood, but still doesn't have the muscle control to close his mouth while eating.

3 years of Occupational Therapy ... he has significantly increased body awareness but still crashes into people and walls; he can ride a bike, rollerblade and scooter but can't walk heel-to-toe across a room or stand on one foot for more than 15 seconds.

7 months of Vision Therapy (aka torture) ... his eyes can converge on a tool for a test but not on paper to read; he still can't copy a group of simple pictures from one paper to another.

I started praying last fall because it appears my son has some kind of neurological delay or dysfunction that is limiting him in many areas. In November my friend told me about Anna Buck, a therapist who studied Neural Development Delay in Britain. Her NDD therapy focuses on 2 areas: correcting reflexive behaviors that are retained from infancy and improving vestibular system function.

I hope to blog about our journey with NDD therapy for my son in hopes that I can help others whose children may be in a similar situation. When all the other therapies have helped but haven't solved the problem, it's possible your child may be retaining infantile reflexes that can be corrected.

We took my son for an evaluation with Anna about 2 weeks ago, and right from the beginning, I could tell that he needed help. While he appears to have good balance and gross motor skills, his performance on many of these tests showed that he has developed compensating mechanisms that were stripped away when he was asked to perform tasks different from his normal activities. And he tired very quickly, beginning to yawn after only 10 or 15 minutes of what appeared to be simple activities.

The results of the evaluation showed that Jalen does have several retained reflexes. One is the "startle" reflex that causes an infant to suddenly spread their arms and react when surprised. Children who retain this reflex end up living in a "fight or flight" state - either extremely anxious or highly frustrated and angry. My son is one of the angry/frustrated ones - it's deeper than a discipline/self-control issue. I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses for sinful behavior, but in his case (and in a few other children I have seen), there is an automatic reaction to frustration that is far beyond simple anger. And other reflexes he has retained include those that move the head automatically along with the body as well as the baby's rooting/sucking reflex (now we understand the mouth issues).

Today he begins therapy. He and his dad will visit Anna this afternoon and learn the first of many exercises to perform daily to begin inhibiting one of these reflexes. After about a month, they'll go back and start working on another exercise. The exercises are designed around the way babies move their bodies to train the brain to overcome the infantile reflexes. It will be a long road for us - we expect 18 months to 2 years to fully complete the NDD therapy. Anna has treated many children with more serious issues (including her own daughter) and found miraculous success. (She documents many of these in her book Miracle Children.)

I'm trying not to pin great hopes on this new therapy, but we have come to the point where I don't expect lifelong success with academics or relationships without some kind of help. We are willing to make this long-term commitment to help our son become who God made him in body, mind and spirit, overcoming the physical weaknesses that have held him down for many years.