This week we've had the pleasure of watching a spider wrap it's prey, a praying mantis masticate - boy can they eat fast with such a tiny little head- and a black swallowtail take flight.  That last one I was the only one to witness as it "hatched" while the kids were at grandma's house.  That's ok though, they got to set a yellow swallowtail free last week.  Grandma finds the best caterpillars out at her place!

My eldest caught two bullfrogs this summer- up from one last year.  He also caught a really large lizard- ugly!  My daughter has been chasing butterflies and today unfortunately got a sting from a wasp.  But she's a trooper and ready to go outside and catch some new critters.  Even the not-quite 3 year old has found a caterpillar or two.  He's got good eyes and can find the really tiny ones. 

This spring after a flood we got to take a quick look at a deceased beaver.  I had no idea how big their tails really were!  And the kids have been able to see a racoon (caught and released in a 'humane' trap) after witnesses it's footprints for several weeks.  They were happy to finally see the feet that match those tracks.

Yesterday, the kids harvested over 100 tomatoes at grandma's house and have shared in several ears of corn from our own garden.  A robin placed her nest in a tree right outside our front window so we were able to watch her little family progress from start to finish and we have a wild rabbit who has decided that our back yard is the place to be.  

That's just a little of the wonderful things the children have been able to see and share this spring and summer.  I can't begin to name it all.  We are so very blessed to not only have our own little yard with it's peeks at nature but grandma's garden full of all kinds of plants and animal to visit.  Her yard is actually a certified wildlife habitat- how cool is that!  So if you have some land, start planting some flowers and trees.  You could create a wildflower field that the birds will love.  Have bushes that give small animals and burns cover from predators or just plant a small butterfly and hummingbird garden.   If you have no yard at all- consider a small terrarium or container garden.  Just a few beetles or crickets and a spider or two (definitely contained!) can teach you and your child a lot about the little creatures living all around us. 

It is amazing to be able to see and show your children how God provides for all his creatures. 

LOL!

We have modelling clay but my son mentioned wanting to make clay marbles after we purchased some while on vacation last year.  So I bought actual clay that will harden- the real (though not rustic) Crayola clay that dries.  Wow, is it messy to work with!  My daughter had no problem getting clay up to her elbows but DS and I were a little more reluctant to "dig in". 

Nonetheless, it was an opportunity to learn about yet another art medium and get real feel for it.  I think that will come in handy when we study folks who made their pots and other items out of clay. 

In a few days we'll paint our creations.  More fun and more mess.  Don't the two go hand in hand often? 

I’m guessing most of you already knew that.  There have been four earthquakes in my life that I’m aware of, and actually I’m not sure of one of those.  Only three have occurred in my adult lifetime.  Two of them took place in the last 24 hours.  I did not like the experience- not one bit!  I was actually awake when the first tremors hit our area.  The window in the bedroom began shaking without any of the advanced warning you’d feel during a thunderstorm.  It sounded like a freight train, or at least close enough to trigger my panic instincts. 

You see, friends of ours had lived through a tornado that leveled many homes in their neighborhood a few years ago and they described it as hearing the sound of a freight train and then the tornado hitting their home before they even had time to grab the kid(s) and get down the stairs.  Thankfully, their home did not suffer major damage and they were kept safe.  Ever since I have drilled the procedure in my head- hear the sound, yell at DH, grab two kids and run for the basement. 

So, that’s what I did.  Well, first I muttered some mild expletives under my breath, as I don’t handle stressful situations well.  Then I hissed, “grab the kids, grab the kids, grab the kids” at my poor befuddled DH who had been sound asleep at the time.  He gathered his thoughts enough to ask what was happening and my brilliant reply was “I don’t know, just get the kids and go, go, go.”  So, we did.  DH later reports that on the way down the steps his charge, my 7-year-old son asked, “Why are we going downstairs?” to which DH could only reply “I don’t know. “  I may need to work on my communications skills.  

Anyway, the local news was already airing their sunrise edition when the first quake hit, a 5-point-something, so at least I had proof from an unbiased source that I was not insane. 

So, after waiting a few hours for the adrenaline in my system to dissipate and the nausea to go away, I was able to fall back asleep.  Oh ho, you say, foolish Midwesterner, didn’t you know?  Earthquakes have aftershocks.  Well, no.  Apparently despite having heard the term many times, I hadn’t put together what “after” and “shock” meant.  So, I’m sleeping away (yes, very late in the morning) when the entire bed starts to shimmy.  I get up and go downstairs to ask my DH whether there was another earthquake and he says “no.”  In fact he’s so certain that there was not another tremor that he told me I must have dreamed it.  Well friends, dreams don’t shake the whole room.  I tuned into the local news to learn that this one was a 4-point-something.  Again, I was relieved to have my sanity confirmed.  Apparently I am the only one in our household who notices when the walls start shaking. 

You know how cats just seem “tense” sometimes, a little jumpy?  Well that was me for the next few hours.  Despite the fact that our house was fine, we were fine and there was really no consequence from our experience- I just don’t like the earth moving underneath me in quite that fashion. 

So there you have it.  Earthquakes are unsettling, literally and figuratively. 

So we started our day at the allergists' office.  We were scheduled to do a food trial for my oldest son.  Two and a half hours later and he can eat soy.  Yay!  We started out 6 years ago with a one year old child whose body was so messed up from his allergens that he could not eat any foods.  He was on a formula-only diet for two years.  We thought we were blessed beyond belief when he was able to eat foods at the age of 3.  To imagine him actually eating the foods he was allergic to at that point was beyond anything I considered. 

But, after 6 long years of sacrifice, of being "over protective" and keeping him away from anything that might set back our efforts we have seen even more blessings. This year he regained wheat, barley and now soy.  WOW!  You guys without allergies can eat a lot of fun foods.  Oreo cookies, here we come!  LOL!

However, that's not the strange part of the day.  My day actually wasn't so strange but poor DH- he had a doozey.  He came home from a shopping trip, my birthday gift in his arms and tripped.  The gift kept him from catching himself, so he hit his head on our front door putting a mark on the top of his head and on the door.  Ouch! 

So, though he wasn't fully recovered from his frightening fall, he and I went out to eat.  We had seafood, which is something we eat often.  DH does not, or "did not" I should say, have any allergies.  We come home and he takes some aspirin and a bath to assist his recovery from the fall.  Then he notices that his hands are itchy.  Then he notices that his tongue feels a little funny.  He has a little congestion in his throat and... HIVES!

Now, as an allergy mom I am trained to respond one way.  Two symptoms= epi-pen and ER.  I didn't give him the epi-pen because the hives weren't that big  but I did pack up DH and all three kids and off to the ER we went.  The hospital handled things great and he didn't have to have the epi-pen, just benadryl and steroids.  But all the staff agreed that we did the right thing by coming in (DH did have an epi ready to go in the car and if he'd started coughing or the hives had gotten bigger we would've jabbed him!) 

So now poor DH is either allergic to shellfish or aspirin and will have to get tested to find out which.  I am stunned that my first allergy ER trip was for my spouse and not my child and we are all home for the next few days as DH can't take Benadryl on his job. 

DH has also learned a great deal of empathy today.  He's a very empathetic guy anyway, but he'd never fallen hard or had a severe allergic reaction (I have).  He said of both experiences that they were "scary."   Oh, and since we were there anyway, the ER doc also made sure he got a tetanus shot for his head injury. 

 Very strange day.

ETA: Someone asked about the tetanus shot, so I'll just add a little explanation.  The head wound actually was open- there were two parallel scratches where he'd hit the door frame/brick.  It wasn't anything requiring stitches, but it wasn't just a bruise either.  The door is an exterior door where our cat and others have "marked" and I'm sure there were many other contaminants as well.  Tetanus can be present in dirt and other matter so the doctor offered as a precaution and we accepted.   Who are we to say that the sole reason he had a reaction was because he needed to be there to get that shot?   I am opposed to mandatory vaccination, but not opposed to vaccines themselves.  I was pleased that the doctor even bothered to check his fall injuries since we were there for other reasons.  We actually saw the same physician a year ago when we took my daughter in for severe vomitting and I found her to be very competent. 

As promised in a previous post, this is the explanation of why we've not baked bread here for 6 years. 

(This is copied from my post on the Five in a Row discussion boards, so if you visit there- yes, it should look familiar.  )

My son was diagnosed with many food allergies at age 1, after a year of fussiness, skin rashes and about 6 months of failure to gain weight. His body was so damaged by the exposures to these foods over that time that eliminating the foods did not allow him to fully recover. We had to place him on a hypoallergenic formula-only diet. His symptoms were so severe that we thought he would never be able to consume anything other than the formula. We were very relieved when he was tested and it was determined that he did not suffer from any other digestive disorders. It was truly a miracle for us when a year later we were able to successfully introduce solid foods to his diet.

Two years later when most children have left their infant allergies far behind we had him tested only to find that his were still very much with him. We had tried so diligently to avoid any exposure and surely thought that two years on formula would have let his body "forget" those allergens. That hadn't happened for him, in fact allergies that we thought would be long gone were actually much worse. I was disappointed and really struggled with my fears for awhile. But eventually I saw these results as an indication that he simply was not to ever eat these foods. He was set apart in that way for reasons beyond my understanding or need to know.

Last year, we did the testing again. We had put it off for 6 months as I saw no point in bothering. But we went in just to see if the numbers had changed. The results this time were so improved that I thought they had tested someone else's blood sample. We were given the go-ahead to begin in-office food trials to test these foods one at a time by feeding them to our little guy.

It took me 4 months to actually keep an appointment to test our first food. I cancelled twice. We finally went in last week and my brave little boy made it through. He did not react when he ate wheat (chocolate cake) in the office and hasn't reacted since. For this time in his life, our son has been given wheat.


He is still severely allergic to cats and dogs and several foods, but he has been given this gift for which we are all very grateful. I know that there is a purpose in us receiving back this food- and in the months to come we may gain several others, though I cannot know what that purpose is to be.

Food allergies cannot be cured by man but are only removed by God's will. So we humbly share the news of this blessing as news of God's power over things both great and small.

--In His time, by His will.

This is one of the steam tractor-powered machines that we saw on Friday when we visited a local old time tractor show:

This is the machine that my son built over the two days following the visit to the steam tractor show:

Those pulleys, for those of you who don't live and breath Lego, are actually wheel bases.  (Now you know why I'm looking forward to those 14 additional wheel sets. )  Don't tell DS, but grandma is getting the Kinex set that integrates with the Legos and includes gear pieces.  He is going to be buiding some awesome things in January! 

If the question "How does my body make blood?" leads you here: http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/smallgut/lifecycle.html

and your child insists that you read and explain the diagrams.

Ladies, I DID NOT learn stuff like this in school.  I am going to have to do some homework. 

Oh- now he wants to know what holds his bones together (you know, like after they break and go back together).  Wish me luck!

The best way to talk him into getting blood drawn is to tell him what kind of tests they are going to use the blood to perform.  And the best way to keep him calm during a blood draw is to have him watch the needle go into his arm and then discuss step by step how the blood is being transferred into the vial. 

Me, I'm a cringing mess when I get a blood draw.  My son, studying every step until they pulled the needle out.  (Then he almost fainted!) 

He was really upset to find out that he couldn't actually watch them perform the lab tests with his blood.  I promised to try to find some pictures online.  Wish me luck!

We also got to look at picture and 3-D forms of noses and lungs and such while we waited for the doctor to see us.  AND, DS met a man with an artifical leg- one of the old school kind with a tennis shoe stuck to a metal stick!  He was thrilled to see it and the man was so amused he took the thing off and showed DS how it attached to his knee.  The man says he lost his leg due to a poor diet complicating his diabetes, so now he tells everyone that he lost his legs because he didn't eat his fruits and vegetables.  He's hoping it will help others remember to eat healthy. 

So, that's science class for today.   You know, it's no wonder I have trouble cracking a school book some days. 

Nope, not opening any school books. Yup, slacker mom all the way.  You see, we've just been too busy to do school.  First there was the tiny praying mantis we captured.  He had to have food so that required a cricket hunt.  Have you ever seen a praying mantis eat a cricket?  I haven't, fortunately. My husband and son got to watch that one all on their own. LOL!

Then there was the bullfrog grandma captured, finally after a full summer of trying.  She used a clever trick to achieve this long sought goal.  She set up a wire spring loaded trap usually used to catch small varmits!  So my son got to hold a live (and very large bull frog) and he also got some crickets for his dinner. (The bullfrog, not my son). 

Did I mention we have a pet turtle?  For the record, we did not go out and buy a turtle.  We already had a habitat set up in our home for two larger turtles that had been rescued as infants from a dried up pond.  The pond refilled and we set them free.  About the same time, one of our friend's had a step-child that received a turtle as a gift.  It came in one of those tiny little cages that just aren't big enough to keep a turtle happy.  Needless to say, mom and step-dad did not love this gift.  So we adopted their little friend and now "Scooter" lives happily in a 75 gallon tank.  She got to eat quite a few crickets yesterday as the container from the bait shop came open in grandma's purse and there were crickets everywhere!

(If you are beginning to think my kids have the best grandma ever- you are right.  She bakes them dairy, soy, egg and wheat free cookies too.)   

Oh, then there's the harvest.  Tomatoes, corn, sunflowers.  We really aren't harvesting the sunflowers though.  Those are for the birds.  We have been watching an adolescent cardinal molt this week and two gold finches set up housekeeping in the fruit trees.  Last week there were two male goldfinches vying for territory.  This week we observed that there was a victor and he closely guarded his new mate as she sampled our garden delicacies. 

Um, lets see, then we had to ID a new caterpillar.  I think it is a cabbage something or other (considered a pest, but it will turn into a pretty moth).  My son is hoping it's the orage something or other that will turn into a lovely yellow butterfly.  We have compared the two pictures at What's This Caterpillar and they are pretty similar.  Though due to habitat constraints, I think I'm correct.  If it creates a chrysalis and transforms- then well find out.

Speaking of chrysali (hmmm... how do you spell that?)  Anyway, did you know that several breeds of wasp lay their eggs in the back of living caterpillars who then unwittingly form their chrysalis with these tiny parasites already eating away at them???!!  So what you get from your lovely caterpillar experiment is a chrysalis with a big hole in the side and a wasp in a jar!  My son's reaction- "At least we have a baby wasp to look at!"  LOL!

So as you can see, we've just not had a lot of time to "learn" anything in the last week or so.  Ah well, maybe we can do some math next week. 

Have you ever heard the phrase, "I read them the riot act?"  Do you know what it means?  My DH and I recently had just this question on our minds.  I being a literalist, assumed that there in fact was at one point a "Riot Act" and the phrase arose from reference to it.  Yay for me, I was right. 

There was in fact a "Riot Act" passed on July 20th of 1715 in England.  When an assembly was made to disburse, this act would actually be read to the crowd and those not obeying would be arrested. 

You can read the Riot Act yourself at Project Gutenberg.

Now here's my DH's suggestion.  In typical homeschool dad fashion, he proposes that when our chlidren misbehave and are old enough to write, one of their punishments may be to copy the Riot Act a given number of times.  

By Dads3Chicks who wants me to share 5 reasons why I blog.  Hmm....

Well, I first started to blog because I couldn't "store" all my news and updates neatly on my website.  It was getting a little crowded on that one page.  So the blog allows me to "say" more to my website visitors.

Then, I found that every once in awhile I did have something serious to say.  So I am glad for the ability to share those thoughts when it feels really important for me to do so.

Third, (and this will only work if I save the entries) I want to keep a little history ofr my children.  I'd like for them to look back and see what mommy said about them someday.

Fourth, I'm an introvert in real life.  Actually the whole "comment" thing scares me too.  So this is a nice way for me to "talk" to others.

Fifth- surely I can come up with a fifth...  Oh, I know.  I read a lot of stuff and think "Oh so -and-so could use that information."  But I just don't have time to e-mail every so-and-so. LOL!  I can enter what I've learned here and hopefully the person who can best use it will come across it. 

My son has severe allergies.  They are so bad that he is sometimes limited in where he can go and what he can do. While he can handle going into most stores for a limited period of time and can usually handle the library, he has trouble visiting people's homes.  We've visited several places and if they have carpeting, he just can't stay long.  We do have some carpeting in our home, but it is short berber and relatively new.  I'm not sure if it's the dust mites that get him or food residue (as both are problems for him). 

He also has a life-threatening allergy to dogs and cats. I know, you've probably never heard of such a thing.  I hadn't either until we saw the allergist after his eyes got blisters on them from a dog lick. 

Talk about heart-stoping panic. 

(I'll spare you the shots of the hives and red marks on the rest of his skin. I have a hard enough time looking at this picture.)

Needless to say, people with in-home pets are not friends we can visit.  Unless they are very careful about their clothing, they can't even visit us. 

 As soon as she learned of my son's limitations, my neighbor became very diligent in making sure her children understood just how serious our situation was.  Many times they've come over to visit and before coming in announced "I've washed my hands and changed my clothes." or "Phoenix (the betwen neighbor's dog) tried to get to me but I didn't touch him because I knew I was coming here."  What sweet and thoughtful children! 

Yesterday one of the girls came over to play.  The kids were playing outside in the snow and I quickly noticed she was not wearing gloves.  So I asked her where they were.  She had taken them off  before she came over because a neigborhood dog had licked them.  This sweet little girl fully intended to freeze her hands off just to keep my son safe.  I nearly cried.  I of course found the dear a pair of gloves to wear and the kids had a great time playing outside an later inside the house.  But I was just so touched by her thoughtfulness that I had to share. 

I am also so thankful to God that he prompted me to step outside my comfort zone and "make friends" with the family down the street.  These are the only children/parents who have ever really been willing  to take the steps necessary to make playtime safe for my son.  We get a lot of "Hey you wanna' meet at McDonald's? Oh yeah, you can't." Or "Hey you want to come over? Oh, yeah we have a dog so you can't."  Don't get me wrong, these are good people too, they just can't seem to find a way around our limitations.  And I tend to be an introvert, so it's real hard for me to ask someone to come over and give them a list of restrictions a mile long.   

So I thank God that he put this family with this very thoughtful mom and her children on our street. 

If you meet someone and it seems like working out the details of getting together is just too hard.  Remember, nothing is impossible with God.  Children with special needs need friends too.  And a child with very few friends will treasure those that he has even more. 

Mom: Rosie, if you go pee on the potty I'll give you a marshmallow each time.  (Yes, it is bribery- any questions?)

Rosie: Yes, and a Peep.

Mom: Yes, you get a Peep until they run out but only 1 a day.

Rosie: (with a very stern look) And a computer.

Mom: Yes, once you start going on the potty every single time you get your own computer.

Rosie: I want games on my computer.  I want the Larry game.  [Veggie Tales Larry]

Mom: Uh-huh you'll have games.

Rosie: I'll need lots of games.

Mom: Uh-huh, you'll have your own games.

Rosie: ... and I'll need a chair.

"Rosie" doesn't miss much.  LOL!  She has a plan and she's going to get what she wants.  Now, had I "trained" her much earlier I wouldn't have to resort to this type of bribery.  But I was busy being pregnant back then.  So a computer it is.  (My husband builds computers as a hobby so it's not a great financial hardship to throw one together for the kids.  We may have to do some shopping for that chair though.  )