(Got a new camera.)
Author: Phoebe Gleeson
Worth a thousand words
No, no, this isn’t going to be my long-awaited picture post. Instead, it’s about picture books! On Twitter, Melissa Wiley mentioned the favorites at her house right now, and I started to reply with ours but quickly hit the 140 limit.
Gloria’s favorite is unquestionably “the big book!”, the HarperCollins Treasury of Picture Book Classics. According to Amazon, I purchased it a year and a half ago and I don’t think a day has gone by since that it hasn’t been read from. It is a great book, and a steal compared to purchasing the titles individually. Unlike many compendiums of kids’ books these are not abridged in word or illustration, nor are the illustrations reduced in size. The paper is heavy and holds up to repeated (and repeated!) readings, although I have had to tape the binding and use a bit of glue to hold the covers to the front papers. It consists of:
Goodnight Moon
Caps for Sale
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Crictor
A Baby Sister for Frances
Leo the Late Bloomer
William’s Doll
If You Give A Mouse a Cookie
George Shrinks
Baby Says
From Head to Toe
Pete’s a Pizza
(The only one I could honestly do without is the very outdated William’s Doll. It introduced the idea that it was weird for boys to have dolls to my children which is what the story was trying to prevent. Heavy-handed writing is heavy-handed.)
Trixie is VERY into the whole If You Give A… series. Her favorite is If You Give a Pig a Party, but really any of them will do. Have you ever noticed the kids in those books look dismayed pretty quickly as they deal with the capricous whims of their charges? Heh heh. Welcome to my world, buddy.
Gilbert likes the Pigeon series, especially Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! Gilbert has the melodramatic nature of many five-year olds, and he simultaneously feels for the pigeon, who just wants to drive the bus, fer cryin’ out loud, and yet loves beyond reason the power of telling him NO. Great, great book.
Bede is all about Seuss and Eastman right now. His decoding skills are mad but his ability to follow a plot is significantly delayed, so he really likes books like The Cat in the Hat and similar. A favorite of his is The BIG Blue Book of Beginner Books, which has six stories in it:
Put Me in the Zoo
A Fly Went By
Are You My Mother?
Go, Dog. Go!
The Best Nest
It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny
Again, a steal to get them all for one price. Bede likes to read them all, out loud, to me and Gloria. My favorite is Go, Dog. Go! but I am also fond of A Fly Went By.
So, yeah, busted that 140 character limit pretty hard, huh?
HarperCollins Treasury of Picture Book Classics
doctor doctor gimme the news
We found a doctor and she’s great! She was respectful, kind, and competent. We will be returning. She is fine with our weird selective vaccination plans.
Trixie does indeed have asthma, as I feared. She was prescribed Singulair, which blocks leukotrienes. I am almost certain the Federation fought the leukotrienes along the edge of the Neutral Zone, so I’m really glad they won’t be in Trixie’s lungs any longer.
(Also daily fluticasone propionate (Flonase) and albuterol as needed.)
Gloria’s bizarre rash is healing and merited no treatment. The doctor said to bring her in if it comes back though.
And last but not least both girls were immunized today against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and polio.
I hope this brings the Saga of Medical Discontent to an end.
dominoes, posting policy, camera
The children have been playing with a set of dominoes all afternoon. They aren’t playing dominoes proper, they’re setting them up and knocking them down. I don’t have the nerves for that as a pastime, especially with six kids all gamboling about.
I read a Salon.com article about divided attention and how the Internet is rotting our brains. In honor of that, well, in honor of trying to stop brain rot, I’m going to stop making in-text links as a general rule.
I hope to get a new camera next week, which will stop the pictureless posting.
[Yes, the Internet is rotting your brain](http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/05/09/the_shallows)
is there a doctor in the house
There’s not, you know. Today I called ten doctors and none of them could take us, either because they flat-out don’t take Medicaid or because they aren’t accepting new Medicaid patients. The latter is what really bothers me. The office staff was all pleased to talk to me (and said they were admitting new patients) and then they heard “Medicaid” and BOOM down came the Gates of Discrimination.
The only places we can get in are Resident-O-Matic clinics, where we never see the same doctor twice, the staff is rude and the wait times are thirty to forty-five minutes in the waiting room and as much again in the examining room. If you do luck out and get a doctor you like, she’s gone in a year because she’s done with her residency.
It really makes me mad.
I haven’t checked recently, but a few years ago over half the children born ithat year n Oklahoma were SoonerCare clients. There’s a huge disconnect here, do you see it?
I had an idea for health care. What if all children under 18 got free health care, regardless of income? Just like all children get free education through 12th grade. And just like all adults over 65 get free health care, regardless of income.
Huh? Equalize the playing field a little? Could it work?
Pediatrician or family practioner
toothbrushing update
Bede has requested toothbrushing on his own at least twice (“You want some brush your teeth? Okaysure, I getchoo some brush your teeth.”) and tonight allowed his entire mouth to be very thoroughly brushed, making appropriate “eee” and “aaah” sounds. Milestone! He’s not shown any interest in doing the brushing himself but I don’t care about that yet.
I feel like dental hygiene is especially important with Bede as he might be unable to articulate tooth problems before they become emergencies. Now that we’ve progressed to home brushing my next goal is a dental visit. It won’t be for months, and the first visit should be very short and maybe we can get him to let them count his teeth, no more. When he gets older I will definitely be getting sealants for him, even if he has to be sedated. I want everything to be very positive, and no forcing or coercing, you know? Better to have Bede After Dentist.
plus ça change
all in the family
It’s been very familial around here, which is how I like it. First of all, we were given the wonderful, amazing and almost unbelievable news that my older brother Troy’s lung cancer has done R-U-N-N-O-F-T. The hateful tumor in the upper part of his lung is gone. There is a questionable spot in one of his lymph nodes that will be biopsied and nailed with radiation if it proves “hot”, as they say. So, yes, really brilliant, fantastic news.
My niece and her children (the above brother’s oldest child) came to visit on Wednesday. Faith and Michaelie are such peas in a pod. Two smart, funny, weird kids within about a month of each other in age with the same focused interests and both homeschooled. (They both like Doctor Who, Phineas and Ferb, and the Warriors books.)
And tonight, two more of Troy’s kids came to dinner and brought their main squeezes. I made a huge pot of cauliflower-chickpea-potato curry and maaaaan was it delicious. The meal was largely silent but for the sounds of gulping, and everyone looking drugged afterward as we all regarded our distended abdomens and belched softly. So. Freaking. Good. Any time you can make eleven people happy with one meal you’ve done Very Well.
And now G-Lo the little night owl is finally compliant enough to go to sleep without yelling at me, so off we go.
The play’s the thing
on high rotation this week
warshin’ with homemade laundry soap
I made laundry soap today. I don’t think I’ve blogged about that here.
One to one and a half cups grated (non-moisurizing) bar soap (any kind)
One cup Borax or other powdered boric acid
One cup baking soda
Use one to two heaping tablespoons per load, depending on water level. I hope to make our own bar soap soon too and be completely old skool.
Okay, okay, okay!
What does OK mean, Mommy?
[What indeed](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/503/what-does-ok-stand-for)?
The letters, not to keep you guessing, stand for “oll korrect.” They’re the result of a fad for comical abbreviations that flourished in the late 1830s and 1840s.
The abbreviation fad began in Boston in the summer of 1838 and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839. The Boston newspapers began referring satirically to the local swells as OFM, “our first men,” and used expressions like NG, “no go,” GT, “gone to Texas,” and SP, “small potatoes.”
Many of the abbreviated expressions were exaggerated misspellings, a stock in trade of the humorists of the day. One predecessor of OK was OW, “oll wright,” and there was also KY, “know yuse,” KG, “know go,” and NS, “nuff said.”
Most of these acronyms enjoyed only a brief popularity. But OK was an exception, no doubt because it came in so handy. It first found its way into print in Boston in March of 1839 and soon became widespread among the hipper element.
LOL.
nature’s whirligigs
Step one: Plant maple seed.
Step two: Wait.
Step three: Obtain copious amounts of maple seeds in springtime.
Step four: Fling in air.
Step five: Repeat steps three, four and five.
[Make an autorotating helicopter out of paper, based on a maple seed](http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/TRC/Aeronautics/Maple_Seed.html)
My name is feebeeglee and I’m a Facebook addict.
I’ve given up Facebook. When I gave it up for Lent I got so much more done during the day. Coming back to it the last few weeks has shown me that I really can’t moderate it, so I’m cutting it out entirely. I read an article a while back about the addictive nature of Facebook and how each new update primes your brain to seek more, like a hit off a pipe. Yeah, that’s me. So, no more!
But that means I’ll be blogging more! Yay! I haven’t been blogging because I’ve been waffling about photo storage and haven’t wanted to upload pictures. And I feel like endless text is boring. But I’m going to soldier through that and just blog, pictureless, until I decide what to do.
We’re building a new playset with some of our tax refund. Well, by “we” I mean “Sean”. It’s the biggest carpentry project Sean’s ever attempted. It will look a lot like this:
Only with different kids playing on it, you know. I assume. Need to ask Sean.
Autism Awareness Month: Repetitive behavior
*This doesn’t even touch on restricted interests, which goes hand in hand with repetitive behavior. That one gets its own post.*
Bede has never been a guy who’s much into toys. We recently rediscovered his favorite (such as it was) toy as an infant: it’s a device you can twist and shake that makes different dings and rattles depending on which part is manipulated. But Bede never did that; he just set it on the floor and spun it like a top. Over and over and over.
He went through a long period of playing with blocks, the classic kind that have alphabet letters printed on them. (That’s how we learned he knew what they all were, and their sounds.) He would line them up on the edge of the table and scream when they fell, then try again. Over and over and over.
When he got a little older, he started to watch television. He was tyrannical with the DVD player, and made it impossible to watch anything but what he wanted to watch, which was invariably the same program. Disney’s Very Merry Christmas Songs and Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas were the only thing on our TV for a year. Then the Cars root menu. Just the root menu! Over and over and over.
I have a theory about this sort of repetitive behavior (which has diminished greatly as Bede has gotten older.) I think he liked the utter sameness of one thing compared with the highly variable world around it. Was it the same movie if it was on when Faith was in the room? Yeah. How bout when he was eating pizza? Uh-huh. But wait, what if he was under a blanket on the sofa? If there were toys on the shelf? Yep. And so on. Over and over and over.
Up next: restricted interests – hyperlexia supreme!
Autism Awareness Month: Teeth
For Autism Awareness Month, I’ll be posting about life with autism. Tonight it’s about toothbrushing, which can be very difficult to accomplish with autistic children.
Bede has not had his teeth brushed for ten months. Yes, ten months. One night, I stupidly used an electric toothbrush and powerful mint toothpaste and he’s been against it ever since. I offered about once every two weeks to try to get him to agree to it and it has been frantic, panicked NO. However, I thought that maybe the move to the new house would help since everything here is “new”. I bought a new (non-electric!) toothbrush and some much milder toddler toothpaste and here’s how it went.
Me: Hey, I got a new toothbrush for you.
Bede: No, not a toothbrush.
Me: Yes, a toothbrush.
Bede: NO. NOT. A. TOOTHBRUSH.
Me: -gets toothbrush, adds microscopic amount of Tom’s Silly Strawberry-
Bede: That’s Mama’s toothbrush.
Me: It’s Bede’s toothbrush.
Bede: NO. MAMA’S. TOOTHBRUSH. -pushes my hand to my mouth-
(*Notice he’s not leaving, though, which is why I pressed on*)
Me: Okay. My turn, then, your turn. -skims own teeth with brush- Say, “Eeeeee”
Bede: Eeee – NO.
Me: It’s okay. “Eeeeee”
Bede: Eeeee… -allows brush to touch his teeth and go back and forth for less than three seconds-
Me: Hey, Bede! Great toothbrushing! Way to GO, buddy!
Bede: (triumphantly) Good job! Toothbrushing! That’s Bede’s toothbrush!
-fin-
It was SO HARD not to push my luck, and try to get him to open his mouth. But I know I can get there, and if I force the issue now, he might never let me near him with a toothbrush again. Over the next few weeks I’ll do a little more each time, brushing twice or three times a week. I’ll be simultaneously pushing him to do it himself. My goal is in six months to have a seven year old boy who can simply brush his teeth when told to do so.
update of randomness
Last November, I committed to baking all our bread and cookies. Since then, we have saved at least 25% of our former food budget each month! Go, me!
We’re in the other house now. I’ll get pictures sometime.
I’ve downloaded a few books to this netbook, with Kindle for PC. I like it very much with one problem… can’t lend the book! Going to be paper for me from now on. Didn’t Amazon have some deal where you could buy the digital rights for a few bucks extra after buying a paper copy? I might do that sometimes if I Just Couldn’t Wait.
Going to go check on dinner now. Venison, carrots, potatoes and fresh whole wheat bread. NOM.
oxfords: a query.
my best birthday present
was the O’Melays, who were the visiting friends! I didn’t want to out them until they got back to their lovely farm. It was such a delight to finally meet Tabitha who I have known for almost seven years. The kids all got along swimmingly. Tabitha’s children are generally between my kids in age: Tristan is one year younger than Abby, Kassi is nine months older than Gilbert, Toly is nine months younger than Trixie, and Rome is nine months younger than Gloria. This meant that there were multiple playmates for each O’Melay. Tristan flitted between the older girls and Gilbert and Kassi played with Gloria and Faith. Toly and Bede wrestled with each other like puppies, and Rome floated around the edges.
Everyone got a mild cold and stuffy nose but the only one really sidelined by it was Tristan, who spiked a fever too. Poor dude!
Overall the visit was wonderful. They came down so Karl could build a wall in our new garage to partition it off for Sean’s office, and that was accomplished. Karl is amazing. Tabitha and I made food, as previously noted.
I also got other gifts: Sean got me The Complete Sherlock Holmes
So all told, a Very Happy Birthday!
WLH++, feeding the horde, computer upgrade
Today is Wirt L. Harris’s birthday! Happy birthday, Dad!
My friends are here and have been here since Saturday morning. The house has ten kids and four adults and it is loud and happy! We eat a lot. On Saturday we cooked three dozen eggs, two pounds of sausage, a pound of bacon, two pints of beans and about eight pounds of venison. (Saturday was to feed sixteen people since Sophia nd Josh came too.) Sunday we ate some of the Saturday leftovers and also cooked eighteen eggs, a couple pounds of ham, two five pound chickens and two pounds of broccoli, along with three loaves of bread and twelve dozen cookies. Today we made an enormous pot of venison chili, ate it all, (again, with Sophia and Josh’s help) and finished off three-fourths of the cookies and another thirteen eggs.
I have to make bread tonight so I can bake it in the morning. Yum!
In other news, my birthday is tomorrow and I have my birthday present to myself: hardware and software upgrades for my beloved Dell Mini 9. He (his name is Aristotle) got a new hard drive, new RAM and a new OS! I’ve been accruing these bits and bobs for months and got the last piece of hardware today, an external DVD drive. It was all I was waiting on and now I’m installing Windows 7. I’m very excited!
upcoming visit, a birthday
We have guests coming this weekend. It’s a perfect time to visit because for the next month we have two houses, see, so there’s room! We’re going to build an interior wall to partition off part of the garage and get an idea of what new flooring will be needed.
I’m thrilled to see the folks who are coming. I plan to cook a lot today and tomorrow. I hope my friends don’t mind the mess. It’s a pity they know me so well, I can’t blame it on moving.
In other news, Beatrice Anna snuck in and turned four when nobody was looking. I’ve turned my birthday photographer hat over to my eldest, and she has yet to post the pictures, but when she does I’ll link a few. In the meantime, [you might like to read her birth story](http://sean.gleeson.us/2006/02/23/beatrice-birth-1). It was very exciting, in retrospect. The day it happened, it was like a moment caught out of time, and absolutely the most divine of all my births.
Indoctrinating anglophilia
When I was in fifth grade, I switched schools. Someone there asked if I had been born in the UK, because I had a trace of the Queen’s English in my speech. I assure you it was not affected by me, but a natural byproduct of being raised in a home where the only thing on television was PBS, then recycled British children’s shows via 1985 Nickelodeon. The Third Eye, anyone? How about The Tomorrow People? The strongest, quickest and best, Dangermouse. And of course Doctor Who!
Thanks to the wonder of the internet I can continue this tradition with my kids. They are Whovians through and through, and Gilbert and Bede currently love Alphablocks, a CBeebies programme. Enjoy!
remember that house I mentioned?
food, new house thoughts
Sean just got back from a grocery run. It’s so satisfying to suddenly have the problem of too much food in my kitchen. I feel so rich when I open the cabinet and see twelve cans of tomato paste. It’s the little things.
I’ve been planning things for the new house in my mind. The kitchen there is much larger than the kitchen here, which has five square feet of counter space. We have room for a microwave, a coffee pot and a toaster and absolutely nothing else, no room to prep cook, nothing. Standing in the new kitchen is marvelous.
I’m going to take Trixie and Gilbert over there this evening, let them see it. I’m not taking Bede until we’ve finished the flooring changes because I don’t want him to have one image in his mind and get it all confused. I don’t anticipate him having much trouble with this move (well, no more trouble than a nonautistic six year old) but why take chances. Man, I am so looking forward to NOT HAVING STAIRS. While they have rocked my glutes with no effort (woohoo!) they are so dangerous. I worry daily that someone will be angrily shoved near the top of the flight and then tumble down, down in a sickening heap. Shudder! Soon, soon.
We’re going to get vinyl plank flooring for the living/dining room. Stuff’s badass, I tell you what. I’m willing to trade natural for waterproof, inexpensive and resilient.
a visit, dinner dither, Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam
My niece and her children came to see us today. Her daughter is Faith’s age and her son is a little younger than Gloria. The lot of them get on famously. After they left I finished baking bread and apathetically wondered what to have for dinner. I’ve decided on pasta with red sauce because the kids all like it and any leftovers can still be eaten tomorrow but honestly I’m in such a rut. I need to plan meals out for the week on Sunday and be done with it.
Gilbert has been trying to say words with no vowels and he sounds like he’s speaking Klingon. Cute, lispy, five year old Klingon. Think Alexander Rozhenko.
The apathy on my part is not shared by the ravenous children who are damn tired of their mother not feeding them dinner. So long, Internets.
By the way
You can sign in with your Facebook ID here. I mean, I don’t see it or anything, it uses Facebook Connect, which is made by Facebook. Anyway. Just sayin. And it should keep you signed in here if you do that.
So all of you who comment on Facebook and not here (Traci Foust, I’m looking at you!) have *no excuse*.
Gilbert Gleeson, Sam Wiggle.
Gilbert’s favorite Wiggle is Sam Wiggle. (He is also partial to Greg.)
So I knit him this Sam Wiggle Sweater, which is to say, a taxicab yellow sweater.
He likes it very much!
Better shot of the actual sweater, vs. the boy in the sweater.
Our eyes are the same color, me and Gil.
Look, two little sisters as well!
Sweater pattern is the raglan from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns
House pictures
Another day! I’ve been sick the past few days and today I finally felt near human again. I had the worst sore throat ever. It hurt so much to swallow that I whimpered. Ugh! But I am Much Improved.
I have house pictures.
The front:
The hearth:
Side door – you get a sense of the height of the ceiling, here:
The kitchen:
The master bedroom, also with the high ceiling:
taco taco!
I made taco meat tonight without a little plastic packet of taco seasoning. For the first time I made my own. And dang, it was goooood. I modified a recipe from AllRecipes as follows:
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon minced dried onion
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
I used 2 tablespoons of the seasoning mix to 1 pound of meat. I also added a can of diced tomato and green chili. It’s pretty heated, but not painfully so. If you don’t add the can of tomatoes you’d want to add a half-cup or so of water. Very good! Next time a little less salt and a little more cumin. We used ground venison but I expect it would be great with pork or beef or turkey, too.