Celebrate October!

Autumn is easily my favorite season of the year.  Apparently it is also a favorite for the guys behind the National Month titles for October alone is honored with 112 of them.  I knew it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and continually purchase pink ribbon-ed items when I get the chance.  But there's 111 more to celebrate or recognize, including Down Syndrome Awareness Month.

Fittingly, just after having celebrated National Coffee Day on September 29th, October is Caffeine Addiction Recovery Month.  I imagine the person behind that sequence decided if you overdid yourself on National Coffee Day (or thoroughly caffeinated your children) it might take a month to recover. 

There are also some interesting National Days in October: 

National Fire Pup Day, October 1:  Does your preschooler need a craft?  Click here for a darling fire pup craft using a Styrofoam cup.  And when they're finished and hungry for a snack, make some great cookies together because today is also National Homemade Cookies Day.

Do Something Nice Day, October 5:  Challenge your children to find something nice to do for someone--their teacher, or maybe a sibling. 

National Frappe Day, October 7:  Yeah, I know.  This is Caffeine Addiction Recovery Month.  Apparently today saves those people from going cold turkey--and gives the rest of us who aren't addicted an excellent excuse for a good ol' caramel frappe.  Yes, caramel.  October is National Caramel Month.

Low on lunch ideas?  Here's one: National Fluffernutter Day, October 8:  Whoever came up with this didn't necessarily have a real bent for health food, or else had overdosed his children on greens and whole grains and was trying to counterbalance that with a fluffernutter.  A fluffernutter is a sandwich made on white bread and spread with peanut butter and marshmallow creme.   It is a lunch idea.  I didn't say it was a good one.

National Sausage Pizza Day, October 11:  At least one meal this month is planned in advance! or if you want your meals planned two days in a row, celebrate National Gumbo Day on October 12.

National Take Your Parents to Lunch Day, October 16:  Aw, that's my mom's birthday and she lives two whole states away. If it were possible, though, I'd jump at the chance!

Make a Difference Day, October 25:  For better or for worse, we almost always are making a difference to someone.  But what fun to have a day to purposefully look for ways to make a positive difference to somebody!  Wouldn't it be fun to do it for a stranger?  Do something like putting $10 on the grocery bill for the person behind you in line.  Find a way, and make a difference!  

National Mother-in-law Day, October 26:  What better excuse than this to thank your mother-in-law for raising a wonderful son and then giving him away? 

So there you go.  Have fun Celebrating October!

The Incentive Chart

This week Tyler got a sticker each time he said, "Okay, Mommy" or "Yes, Mommy" to any kind of instruction given to him.  He was looking forward to the Grand Prize (a cheap matchbox car) and did an amazing job of remembering to respond immediately with a sugary, "Okay, Mommy" to basically anything I told him.

In fact, the little chap is brilliant enough to create opportunities that required extra "Okay, Mommy"s throughout the day.  For example, he did some hovering in my kitchen until his eyes lit on something he knew probably would be a "no".  

"Mommy, can I put that away?"  (I was baking and he was pointing to one of the ingredients that lives well above his head.)  

"No, I'll do it."  

I was barely done speaking before this dramatically slow and sweet "Okay, Mommy" was spoken. Then, in a normal voice but with extra-shiny eyes, he said, "Do you think I need a sticker?"

Hey, it wasn't quite what I had in mind, but I decided that if he is going to increase the times he says "Yes, Mommy" and thus form the habit sooner, I'm not going to begrudge the guy a sticker.  They say it takes three weeks to form habits, so I plan to stock up on charts, stickers, and prizes and am already looking forward to the end results.  Having a four-year-old who immediately and cheerfully says "Okay Mommy" to any instruction given?  I'll take it! 

Laura, if this idea works, I'll owe you big.  

Confessions of a Gardener

This was 3 years ago, but my thoughts exactly.

First things first. If gardeners are people who make food grow, I'm really not a gardener even though I have a garden plot.
Every year I fight my soil to produce anything. When I am successful at all, I  have to sneak my produce out of the jaws of my crop-eating garden before it randomly kills off something else.  Last year it killed my tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and every flower in the flower bed.  This year it was my corn.  

I think gardens are beautiful.
Especially gardens that are well-kept and look like a dream, all mulched and lovely like my friend Gail's. I've already seen my own garden looking beautiful, but that was in winter when it was buried under three feet of snow.

"If our livelihood depended upon our garden," my husband began, and I took the liberty to help him finish his thought, "we'd be destitute street urchins living in a cardboard box on a street corner."
We wouldn't be if we could grow things.  But that conversation occurred this morning while we were picking our second planting of corn. (The first planting died in perfect growing conditions when it was knee-high.  Our produce-farming neighbors hadn't seen anything like it.)  So we replanted. These five rows of corn should have easily produced enough corn for a family of our size for at least one year, possibly two.  We got a grand total of nine bags of corn for the freezer.  Nine.  If it weren't for my husband's day job, I'd be up in the attic picking out my box.

I love knowing exactly what wholesome things are in all my home-canned products, from chili soup to fruit danish.
But I work hard to get there, thanks to my pressure canner.  My history with pressure canners has been fraught with frustrations. The first one I had was in cahoots with our garden in destroying our produce and would build pressure up just high enough to cook my food but not high enough to safely can the stuff.  So I'd have to re-can with all fingers crossed.

Sensibly, after years of overcooked food, I got a new canner, in spite of the guys at the recycling plant who tried to talk us out of recycling the old one.  The new one wasn't supposed to jingle unless it reached 15 lbs of pressure or more.  The first time I used it, the gauge never winked, blinked, or moved a muscle but stayed entirely expressionless while all indicators told me I had a time bomb in my kitchen. My no-jingle canner was jingling hard and the safety valve stood tall at attention.  This is the same canner that, with a new gauge on a later date, was screaming like a fire alarm for no good reason while I had my wide-eyed children sheltered behind a wide-eyed-me on the other side of the kitchen for safety purposes.  How do I even find canners like this anyway?

Currently, I'm all for supporting local economy.
This morning in the corn patch while we picked a stunted cob off of every fourth stalk (the other 3 stalks had no corn at all) and harvested enough bugs to give our son a head start in entomology, we decided that maybe we should take a break from gardening for a few years and be the ones to support local farmers. 

Lord willing, we'll garden again.  Someday when the children are grown up enough to not be wailing at the end of my bean rows while I pick and actually need the responsibility and experience of a garden.  Or someday when our family is big enough that $4 of tomatoes no longer lasts a whole winter. 

Or maybe today is simply a bad day to talk about it.  Nine bags of corn?  At least it fits into my freezer nicely; I was worried about that. 

"Teddy Bear Party"

Today, September 9, is National Teddy Bear Day.  Since Teddy Bears are a big part of my children's life, I dreamed up a Teddy Bear party and invited some friends over to help us celebrate.

When everyone had arrived, all the children old enough for a craft decorated a plain gift bag with a bear face and their names.  I had the younger children's done in advance.

Using the bags to collect the treasures, we went on a Treasure Hunt where I had hidden simple treasures at each hiding place.  

Following the treasure hunt, they took a break and ate the Teddy Grahams they received as one of the Treasure Hunt surprises.  The break was just long enough for me to get my Teddy Bear face ready for them to play "Pin the Face on the Teddy Bear".  You know how those kinds of things look in the end, right?  So we played a variation of it the second time  around where every child got to help be Teddy's Doctor and put the facial features where they belonged.  (And, yes, I know this is no masterpiece of a bear face, but I needed 14 pieces so each child could have two turns and I was running out of options.  Thus the eye brows.  Children generally have a healthy imagination, so they were perfectly happy with this sorry bear.  To them, he probably looked exactly like something they saw in a zoo when they were little or something.)  

We played Hide the Teddy Bear next and each child got a chance to hide their own teddy bear for everyone to find.  While they all had their bears with them, we tried to take World's Nicest Group Photo with ten preschoolers and ten bears.  Yeah, the one in tears is mine.  

The only time things felt a bit chaotic was when lunch was on its way.  That's when our "Day Care" had petty squabbles and enough noise to deafen a jack hammer.  But lunch set things right:

Chicken Nuggets (Bears eat chickens, right??)
Over-sized, Bear-shaped dinner rolls with Honey Butter
Carrots with Ranch
Apples with a yogurt dip

Jello cut into Bear Paw and Puppy shapes

I think they all liked the party-- including the little guy who said,  "It wasn't as fun as I thought it was going to be.  I thought it was just going to be children with no parents!" 

Right. Me and ten preschoolers, ages 2 and up. I don't think so. However, if you want to do a Teddy Bear Party for the children in your life and want to really make it fun, keep that suggestion in mind.  

the Bears and Bags Table

P.S.  By the way, September 11 is National Make Your Own Bed Day.  Wouldn't it be fun to reward the children in your home who do that without being told?

How to Age Your Mother

I treasure my mornings when I can begin the day alone with my Bible and God before the children wake up.  Sometimes with a cup of coffee, always in my favorite recliner, my days seem to start on the right foot when I have that half hour alone.

I was ready for the day, then, on that beautiful morning when my young son came downstairs.  He padded sleepily towards me for his morning snuggle, looking tousle-headed and cute.  When he was about three feet away, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and stared into the shadowy corner behind my recliner with a look of utter surprise on his face.  His eyes blinked to focus better, widened a little, and then he asked, "Who is that behind your chair?"

I managed to thwart my initial reaction of raising my eyebrows into my hairline as the prickles raced down my spine and my mind processed the info on high speed.  Someone behind my chair?  Had they been crouching there all morning?  Nah, couldn't be. I kept my voice normal and said, "No one is."

My son stayed stock still and stared behind my chair.  In complete innocence and with a seriousness and "the look" that told me he was telling the truth, he said emphatically, "Yes, there is!"

At that point I hoped he was seeing my guardian angel which would seem to be the most positive "someone" to have behind my chair.  But how likely was that?  My heart rate picked up pace and my voice assumed an unnatural tone as I told him, "Tell me who it is."

"It is Brown Bear!" he shouted triumphantly and dashed behind my chair to retrieve his stuffed friend.

As he climbed onto my lap, he had no idea the state my heart was in.  He adjusted himself and his bear and snuggled in for some mommy time.  I kissed the top of his head and asked, like any good mother would, "Did you sleep well last night?"  I was glad to hear that my voice sounded not quite as thin; apparently my vitals were returning to normal.

My morning had begun.