Avivah Werner

Author: Avivah

  • Pulling the plug on the pacifier

    Recently, I was noticing that the baby has been fussy, and I felt it was directly tied to his pacifier use.  To share with you my position on pacifiers, here it is!  We use the pacifier from about 1 month until 5- 6 months, usually, when they begin solids.  Or at least three babies used them for about that long.  One used it for 12 weeks, another four months, and the longest was for 9 months.  The only one who didn’t have a pacifier was my oldest, because I was adamantly against them.  He ended up sucking his thumb for years.  Now you know why I changed my position on pacifiers for the next babies.  🙂

    Anyway, back to the fussiness.  The reason for using a pacifier is to help a baby, but at a certain point, I’ve found it becomes self-defeating.  When a baby gets used to having it in their mouth so often that they cry when it’s not in, then in my opinion, it’s time to break the habit because they’re more unhappy than they should be, and so is the parent.  The pacifier isn’t helping much in that situation.  And because we have some people in the house, and particularly visitors, who feel a need to push the pacifier in every time the baby makes a sound, he’s gotten more used to it than I would have liked.  So last week I pulled the plug.  When we drop the pacifier, we go cold turkey, and since we do it at such a young age, it usually only takes three days until they’ve totally forgotten that they ever had it. 

    So I resigned myself to three days of crankiness.  It was a pleasant surprise when he started sleeping longer in the daytime and nighttime (probably because he didn’t wake up when he realized the pacifier had fallen out :)).  And he got so much cuter!  Really – when he was happier, he was really happy.  You know those huge smiles and beaming faces that make you feel like he really knows who you are and loves you?  I just love it!  And when he wasn’t happy, we were able to pretty quickly figure out what was causing instead of pushing a plug in (for example, if he was tired, put him to sleep).  Not being able to use the pacifier forced us to be more in tune with what he really needed.

    But – I have to be honest and say that this past week has been a tough one.  In the back of my mind I was kind of wondering why he wasn’t as happy as he was the first few days off the pacifier.  That is, until yesterday one of my kids looked at the baby and saw the tiniest bit of a tooth coming through his gum.  If you’ve had a teething baby, you know that they aren’t much fun.  Lots of crying, and there isn’t much that seems to help for long.  Around here, I’ve been doing lots of baby holding and not much else except for basically keeping my house functioning.  Which I shouldn’t minimize, because that’s a really big job that I don’t give myself enough appreciation for.  But that’s another topic….

    Avivah

  • Bubblegum fun

    Today was my second son’s birthday – he turned 9.  He started the celebrations by having a sleepover at my inlaws (usually just done in the summer) several days ago, and came home the next morning with a bag of 90 pieces of bubble gum that they bought – just for him, he hastened to let me know.  What is it that makes a grandparent think that this would be a good idea??  It must be some hormonal shift that takes place when they become grandparents that overrides the logical and responsible part of the brain.   But ds has been very generous about sharing his windfall with his siblings.

    So tonight my 7 yo dd decided to, as her now 9 yo brother informed me,  act like Violet Beauregard (I’m sure I spelled that wrong).   Violet is an obnoxious character in Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who chews gum nonstop and puts her gum behind her ear each night when she goes to sleep, then wakes up in the morning and begins chewing the same piece again.  Lovely, hmm?

    It seems when I sent this dd to brush her teeth, she decided to stick it behind her ear to keep it safe.  This wasn’t the greatest idea, since she has hair that goes almost to her waist and it was loosely cascading around her shoulders.  You can guess what the next thing someone came to run to tell me about was, right?  Yep.  It was stuck in her hair.  (If you’ve been reading my blog a while, you may remember that this same child managed to entangle lots of homemade Goop in her hair a year ago.)

    The great thing about being a more experienced parent is that you’ve seen so many things that they don’t phase you so much.  So when I was notified about this, I just said, ‘oh’, and turned my head away so they didn’t see me smile.  There are some things I would get upset about, but this kind of thing is just not a big deal.  In fact, I thought it was funny.  So I got out the scissors, snipped it out, offered it to her and told her she was welcome to continue chewing it.  She took one look at the big hairy clump and burst out laughing.

    If you’re wondering what is happening with the rest of that huge bag of gum, I don’t know.  I still haven’t decided how to deal with it.  On the positive side, ds has learned to blow bubbles as big as his head today – that’s what comes from having so much opportunity to practice in just three days.  Amazing, isn’t it? 😆

    Avivah

  • Making sourdough bread

    Here’s another of my new culinary experiments – sourdough bread.  I began my making the starter, and I’ve found it very interesting to see how it works.  I never knew much about it, but it seemed intimidating to me.  Basically, a starter is homemade yeast.  You just mix some water and flour, leaving it covered at room temperature for a day.  Then the next day add a cup of flour and water each, and continue this for seven days, while it continues to stay at room temperature (covered so nothing gets in it).  I found it fascinating to see how the microorganisms all around us can be grown in a way that contributes to our health. (Ideally you should use non chlorinated water but I’ve done it with sink water and it’s still worked.  You can also let the water sit overnight so that the chlorine evaporates.)

    At the end of seven days, you use some of the starter as the leavening agent for bread, and mix in some more water, flour, and salt.  (I used the recipe in Nourishing Traditions.)  Stick it in a loaf pan, place it in y0ur unheated oven, and let it rise overnight.  Letting it rise long enough is really important to the quality of the final loaf – the second time we made it, dd13 was doing it and she let it rise for only an hour in a warm oven (she’s used to baking yeasted doughs) and the final result was so heavy that it was hard to chew.  Bake for about an hour at 350 degrees.  We baked it when we got up in the morning and enjoyed it fresh from the oven with butter for breakfast.  Yum!  It was a dense loaf, but very flavorful.  Since it was so much heavier than regular yeast loaves, it only took a couple of slices to be satisfied.

    I think that I’ll start to make this once a week since everyone is enjoying it.

  • Replacing white sugar

    Okay, so the last three weeks I’ve been in super healthy mode.  Every once in a while I decide to upgrade the nutritional status of my family, when I’ve gotten used to past upgrades.

    The first major, major change is I’ve finally decided to totally get rid of white sugar in the house.  I don’t really buy processed food, so the sugar that we were using was just in the foods we made, mostly baked goods.  But since white sugar has absolutely no nutritional value and contributes to most diseases, it seemed like there wasn’t any reason to keep it in.  I’ve resisted this for a while because the sugar substitutes are so much more expensive.

    But I’ve finally done it!

    I bought honey, stevia, and sucanat, and have settled on using sucanat as our main sweetener.  Well, for the family, anyway, because I’m back to my sweetener free food plan, which I went off during pregnancy after a long time on it.  I haven’t really found a way to use the stevia yet, the honey I’m using for hot drinks for the most part, and the sucanat is easy to use when replacing sugar because it’s such a similar consistency.

    In case you’re wondering what sucanat is, it’s dehydrated natural cane juice.  It’s the color of brown sugar but grainier.  You can get in health food stores, but after buying one bag there to try it out, I went to my bulk food supplier and got it for much cheaper.  Just because it’s a healthy sweetener doesn’t mean that I’m using lots of it – I’m not.  I try to remember the idea that sweet baked goods are treats, not everyday foods.  I’ve been making less muffins as a result.

    If you’re wondering how the kids are taking to this, it really hasn’t been a big deal.  Part of it is that I don’t spring these kind of things on my family and leave them feeling like I forced it on them.  I really believe in getting them on board by sharing the info that changed my thinking on – I don’t actively try to convince them.  And because there are easy replacements for the sugar, they don’t miss anything.  In fact, they really like knowing that the sweeteners we’re using are good for them!

    Avivah

  • Happy New Year!

    I’ve had a busy two weeks, and I’ve been unable to get into my blog and share with you all the things I’ve wanted to.   I had some computer repair work done and all the cookies were wiped off of my computer (that included all the passwords into any site I frequent, including my own!).  Somehow, I didn’t have the right password and username to get onto my blog, and I kept getting the message that my email address didn’t exist so they couldn’t send me the necessary info.  I was so frustrated!

    Fortunately tonight my website designer came to the rescue – it turns out she set up the username and password and she had a record of it.  It’s nice to be back!

    Since all of my thoughts that I planned to share about consumerism, how to enjoy the holidays, affordable gift giving and more are too late to be relevant, I’ll just wish all of you a very happy New Year.  Here in my neighborhood, the fireworks have been going off for an hour already, and we still have a few minutes until midnight!  May the coming year be filled with good things for us all.

    Avivah

  • Sprouting grains

    Today I did something I’ve thought about doing for a long time but never did – I sprouted wheat grains!  Are you wondering why in the world I would want to do that? 

    Grains have phytic acid in them, and this blocks the nutrients present in the grains from being fully utilized.  So while you might feel really healthy when your diet is filled with whole grains, not nearly as many of the nutrients are  absorbed by your body as you might expect.  There are a couple of ways to remedy this.  The suggestion I’ve seen most often recommended for improving the quality of flour is to soak the flour in an acidic medium before baking with it.  But this didn’t appeal to me since it would change the quality of the bread. 

    Then I remembered reading somewhere about someone who soaked and sprouted her wheat, then dehydrated it, and then ground it.  That option would give me a good quality flour and the flour would maintain it’s usual consistency for baking.  So I decided to try that.

    The sprouting went much more quickly than I expected.  I needed to sprout a large amount of wheat, so I couldn’t use the usual quart jar that I use for sprouting salad sprouts.  I filled up a large pot a little more than halfway with grain, then filled it up close to the top with water.  In the morning, the pot was almost full since the water was mostly absorbed.  I poured out the remaining water and rinsed the wheat with fresh water before draining it again.  I was concerned about how effectively it would sprout due to the large amount that I was working with, but it really worked out fine.  I stirred it around when I swished water in, so that whatever was in the middle or top would switch places.  I did this a total of three times.

    The wheat sprouted after a day and a half, much faster than I was expecting.   I didn’t even notice the tiny sprouts at first; my kids had to bring it to my attention.  Then I put all of the sprouted wheat into a big turkey roaster to dehydrate on a low temp in the oven, and periodically stirred it.

    On one of the early stirrings, dd decided to taste one of the grains, and thought it was so good that she asked if she could eat some.  At first I thought she was joking, but then I realized it would potentially make a nice dish, so I agreed that we could cook a few cupfuls up.  I served it with butter and honey, and everyone gobbled it all up for lunch, and requested more.  I agreed again, but told them we would need to start more wheat sprouting so we would have the flour to bake with when we needed – that was the point of doing all this!  Today we started another large amount of wheat soaking, maybe about 15 cups or so (two potfuls this time). 

    It’s amazing how easy this was – I initially envisioned it would be very time consuming (which is why I was reluctant to try it for so long), but the hands on time for it was maybe ten minutes total.  Most of the time involved was waiting.  I think the hardest part is just thinking and planning a couple of days ahead so that the grains are ready for grinding when you want to make bread.

    Avivah

  • Using up turkey bones

    After two weeks of no food shopping, I went out last night and stocked up on chicken for the month, as well as a few other things.  Without checking, I assumed I would have room in the freezer for it (especially since I hadn’t put anything in for two weeks), which is usually true.  Well, that was a mistake.  My freezer is very full, for which I’m grateful.  But since I didn’t realize this until I got home, I put myself in a challenging situation of having alot of perishable food and no place to store it.  Believe me, I’m not complaining about having too much food.  But I was very busy for hours last night trying to find a solution (and I’m still working on it today!).

    I started by rearranging the fridge to make room for the new groceries.  Since earlier in the day I defrosted a large amount of fish to make two new recipes in bulk, I took that out.  Then I prepared two fish pies and several loaves of a three layer fish dish – so there was more room in the fridge – but then I needed freezer space to store it!  It was a classic catch 22 situation, and one that was repeated every time I tried to make more room.

    I realized last night that I had some fresh turkey bones in the fridge so I made a pot of stock (that now needs to go into the freezer).  I deboned it and have a pan full of turkey for a stir fry or pot pie now, but then my kids told me we have more turkey bones in the freezer.  So I figured I would just cook up another batch and be finished with all of the bones at once.

    Because of their shape, they take up a disproportionate amount of room, so even though I would need to put stock and a pan or two of shredded turkey back in the freezer, I figured I would have some space gain.  I asked my ds8 to bring up all the bones – and he brought up three big supermarket bags full!  I didn’t realize they had been accumulating – I vaguely remember dh bringing them home and asking what to do with them, and me telling him to put them in the freezer.  But I didn’t see how much he had, and assumed it was the same amount as usual (enough for one pot of soup).  Usually I don’t  have more than one batch in the freezer at a time at the very most, but there was a lot after Thanksgiving (in case you’re wondering how we could possibly have so many turkey carcasses, we got them for free from a friend who owns a restaurant).  I’m now on my second bagful, so we’re down about 8 carcasses.  Just 10 or so carcasses still waiting to be dealt with!!  My sink and counter are full of them!

    I’ve decided to spend all day making stock and since it’s so concentrated, I can freeze it in small amounts.  When I defrost it, I’ll add plenty of water and each container of stock will be the base for a delicious soup.  Since I’ll have an entire shelf available in the freezer with all of those bones taken out, I’m planning to spend some time cooking ahead all the chicken I brought home and then pans of chicken will replace the bones.  And then I should have a little more room in the fridge – so I can go shopping for vegetables. 🙂

    By the way, do you know how extremely good for you properly prepared bone broths/stocks are (not the stuff that comes in a can from the supermarket)?  I didn’t, until reading Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon a couple of years ago, a combination of a cookbook and nutritional information resource.  She goes into detail about the benefits – a gelatin rich broth (the gelatin is released by the bones that are cooked for a long time) supply hydrophilic colloids to the diet (you’ll have to read the book to know what that means!), and are protein sparing and thereby allow the body to fully utilize the proteins taken in.  Gelatin also is useful in the treatment of many chronic diseases.   Broths also contain amino acids, cartilage, and collagen, which have been used to treat a number of health ills.  In short, they are very nourishing and if you are on a limited food budget, they are not only inexpensive to make, but can substitute for meat in the diet.  You can cook your grains in them, use it to flavor other dishes, or use it as a base for incredibly flavorful soup.  I always marvel at how everyone seems to think that you need a powdered MSG filled soup mix to give a soup flavor – definitely not!

    Last winter I posted instructions on how to make stock from scratch, so if you want to try your hand at it, you can click here.

    Avivah

  • How do homeschooling moms get a break?

    ‘As a homeschooler who is around your kids all the time, when and how do you get a break?    What do you do when your kids are driving you crazy?’

    For me this is an issue that has become much less of an issue over the years – maybe partially because I don’t have negative judgement of myself or my kids when some days are harder than others, and partially because we’re used to being around each other and enjoy each other for the most part.  If I see someone is having a hard time (and this includes me), I try to see where it’s coming from, and address the source.  For example, an overtired child will be sent to take a nap, or go to sleep early, and I’ll remind myself that the behavior I’m seeing is because of exhaustion. Sometimes I haven’t been as consistent in the discipline area as I needed to be and I had to tighten up, and sometimes I’ve been too uptight and needed to loosen up.  It just depends on what is going on and addressing the root issue vs. the symptom is what has worked for me. 

    Since I now have older kids around, I can physically take a break if I need to, which  obviously won’t be a helpful suggestion for a mom with much younger kids.:)  But I didn’t have this option for years!  I think that a daily rest time can be helpful, and is something I sometimes did when everyone was younger.  They didn’t have to sleep, but they had to be quiet – reading, listening to a cassette, etc – and they had to stay in their room – for the designated amount of time.  I would coordinate this time for when the toddler or baby was taking a nap.  This gave me a chance to have a breather, and this daily recharging kept me going even during the less pleasant days (and we all have them).  

    When a mom is feeling positive and relaxed, she transmits that and the kids tend to be lots more enjoyable to be around in that case.  It’s usually when we’re tired, tense, burnt out, or overwhelmed in general that our kids seem to be the most challenging, and I’ve come to realize that it’s not coincidental!  They pick up on our signals.

    Also, it was very helpful when I respected my needs as a parent and let my children know what kind of behavior I wanted to see.  When I clarified this and consistently gave this same message, supporting my words with action, things became much more enjoyable as I didn’t feel myself getting tense about lots of annoying things – if it really bugged me, I made it clear the actions were off limits, even if it wouldn’t bother other moms – and for the most part, the kids stopped doing it (after learning that there would be decisive action if they did). 

    Here are some starter questions you can ask yourself if you’re feeling burnt out and like you want a break from your child.  Do you expect too much of your child?  Do you expect too much of yourself?  Is this behavior normal for a child his/her age?  Are you dealing with a lot outside of the homeschooling arena that is affecting your energy?  Everyone will have different answers, but clarifying your answers will help you find the the best solution for you.  

    Avivah

  • Parenting well takes a lot of work

    Today I’m feeling discouraged.  I love helping other moms work through issues I’ve worked through, because I know how hard it can be.  That’s what I try to do here and on some other boards that I sometimes frequent.  But sometimes it seems really hard to effectively communicate and not be misunderstood. Parenting is such a charged issue that it’s hard to say  anything too non-generic without eliciting defensiveness or negativity from someone.   I’ve experienced this myself, and I’ve seen this dynamic a number of times in various venues with others. 

    I’ve never tried to portray myself as perfect, and I’ve never tried to gloss over the challenges of raising kids.  I don’t have perfect kids – there’s no such thing.  Sometimes they misbehave, aren’t respectful, or do the wrong thing.  But having made that disclaimer, all in all they are really great kids. And putting aside false modesty – whenever you see a really nice family, you have to realize that it didn’t happen by default.  (I met a mom with three kids in the library and after noticing the interactions between her kids while I was there, commented favorably to her on her oldest child treated her younger siblings.  She said, ‘Yes, she’s a good kid,” and I told her, “You have to take credit for creating the environment where that developed, because something like that doesn’t happen by itself.”)

    Let me be really clear – parenting is hard work.  I realize that some of my suggestions sound simplistic to some people.  I strongly advocate active and involved parenting, keeping your kids close by, and supervising closely.  Is that the answer to everything?  Of course not.  But it’s amazing what a big difference it makes.  When you combine that with actively and regularly building the relationship, it’s very powerful and effective.

    Some people think that my suggestions are too hard and unrealistic.   That’s okay.  As the saying goes, ‘Take what you like and leave the rest.”   I can only share my experience and what’s worked for me.  My intent is never to hurt or slight anyone, or to judge anyone who does things differently than I do.  What works for me isn’t necessarily going to be the best approach for everyone.  But I really hope that anyone who’s been reading my blog for a while knows my intent is to share and be helpful.  I’ve finally come to the realization that I can’t keep people from reading into what I say/write intentions that I don’t have, no matter how careful I try to be. 

    Please feel free to ask for clarifications if something I say doesn’t make sense, or to disagree (that’s what the ‘comments’ are for). 

    Avivah

  • Holiday coupons for gift giving

    As far as gift giving goes, one thing that we do is give the kids a homemade coupon book as a gift – I mentioned this last year.  This is really popular with our kids.  This year when I created them I looked at my files of what we gave last year to see what was most used.  That helped me to create coupons I was sure would all be well received.  Basically, I use coupons as the gift of our time/personal attention, or for things they like to do but we don’t usually agree to.  I also offered 2 chore replacements for the older kids (out of a booklet of 10).

    One of the coupons we gave our three younger kids (8.5,7,5) is for a sleepover on the pullout couch in the living room with a sibling.  These three children regularly request this, and usually get told ‘no’.  So last night the 5 yo used his coupon for a sleepover and invited his 8.5 year old brother to be his sibling of choice.  (That was after asking his 11 yo sister, who really didn’t want to accept the honor. :))

    The two oldest girls also used a coupon right away, a couple of nights ago.  We have family video night once a month, along with educational videos that relate to what we’re studying.  So one coupon was for each child to watch a video of their choice, by him or herself, with me or dh.  (DVD player is in our room.)  Because they have similar interests in movies, I allowed them to each use ‘half’ a video credit and watch the movie they chose together, and then they can use the other half to watch another movie together.  They chose Ice Princess, which they loved – it’s a G rated Disney movie, but not something I would choose for a family video.  I recently showed them some clips of ice skating footage from past competitions and they enjoyed it very much, and this was an ice skating movie – so, perfect. 

    I really like that they are cashing in their coupons so quickly this year – last year everyone was hoarding them and there was a rush about a month ago when everyone realized the year was almost over and they better use them before they expired.  When I owe money, I like to pay it off immediately, and so this is kind of similar -I owe my kids these things, and I’m happy to ‘pay it off’ as soon as I can. 🙂

    This may sound like a simple or boring gift, but don’t underestimate it – the kids all look forward to this and excitedly go through their coupon books when they get them.  Next year I’m thinking that I will change the way I present the coupons, maybe in a certificate form instead of as a booklet.  But I have plenty of time to think about that!

    Avivah