Words- Family Lexicon and Bonus Recipe!

One of my favorite classes in college was linguistics. I found studying the origins of words and the history of words fascinating. I also loved the change of pronunciations and the change of meaning interesting too.

For example, it really isn’t very kind to call someone “nice.” (Did you notice I chose the word kind instead of nice?) Most people use the word “nice” to refer to kind or good. That isn’t the root of the word though! Think about it, when someone is set up on a blind date and they ask about the person and with a slight hesitation and whine the other person says, “Well, he is nice…” What does that convey? I thought so! Historically, the word “nice” referred to delicate, over scrupulous, fastidious, week, foolish, easily injured, or “perceiving accurately the smallest faults, errors or irregularities.” (There are many more definitions in the Webster’s 1828 dictionary, but these are just a few.

All this talk brings me to the definition of two words in my home: Sawdust, and Trash soup.

First, Sawdust. Most people think of sawdust and think of the left over bits of wood that are created when cutting with a saw. In our home, it refers to a non-dairy parmesan cheese substitute we make. It is made with nutritional yeast, almonds, and sea salt. It tastes an awful lot like parmesan cheese and makes a great addition to pasta and Caesar dressing (non-dairy of course). The etymology of sawdust: A couple of years ago, I made some “sawdust” and placed it on the table. One of the children asked what it was and my husband answered, “sawdust,” since it resembles sawdust in color and appearance. It has stuck ever since.

Trash Soup refers to vegetable broth.  Etymology: Last Thanksgiving, before I went to bed the night before, I realized I had forgotten to buy veggie broth for the various dishes I was making. I remembered the peels and stems I had in the freezer so I ran downstairs and threw them in the crockpot with water. The next morning, Tiger came downstairs and asked what I was making. I told him I was making, “trash soup.” He was absolutely horrified and asked me to be serious. I then re-stated, “trash soup!” Once I showed him, he thought I had lost my marbles until I explained that really it was veggie broth. Then he had fun asking for some trash soup for the various recipes.

So, in honor of Make-It Monday, Here is the recipe for Sawdust!

Coarsely grind up 1/3 cup almonds. Blend with 2 tsp nutritional yeast flakes (I like to grind the yeast flakes at the same time I am grinding my almonds so it mixes well and the yeast flakes get powdered) and 1/4 tsp sea salt. Serve as you would parmesan cheese.

Freezing Bubbles

A few months ago someone posted a really cool picture of frozen bubbles. The story was that a mom grabbed her son and blew bubbles outside in below freezing weather. The bubbles froze and look what happened next. The pictures were beautiful. I wondered if it were possible to duplicate so the girls and I headed outside to try it out. It was 32 degrees with a wind chill making it feel like the teens. It was COLD and we only lasted about 2 minutes in the driveway before cold forced us inside again- that and our bubbles didn’t freeze…yet.

At first, the bubbles just behaved the same. We were so cold we ran back inside, but we decided to leave the solution on the porch to chill it, since it had been a balmy 68 degrees inside. A few hours later, I went out to try again. Unfortunately, it was already dark outside and my camera has gone AWOL, so I was only able to capture some iPod pictures. Sorry about the quality, but it sure was fun to do this! The bubbles did indeed begin to freeze. We watched crystals form inside the solution. Way cool. Then, we watched the bubbles shrink slightly as they cooled. We also watched them solidify and crack, even leaving a hard shell with a large hole on top. When we blew them, the frozen popped bubble pieces looked like floating clear pieces of rigid plastic wrap or maybe clear egg shells! I am going to keep looking for that camera and hopefully try this again in the morning with the girls. This bubble had frozen and popped. It truly was angular!

This picture is of the ice crystals forming. When I held the bubble up to the light, I could see ice patterns like snowflakes forming one by one in the bubble wall. It was neat to watch the bubbles freeze and then watch them unfreeze as I walked inside the house with them.

Butterfly tried to provide a background so the popped missing top of this bubble could be seen.

Making an Inspirations Folder

I recently was listening to a fabulous talk from Mary Ann Johnson on creating a learning closet. The learning closet it a place where you put resources for children to explore. These don’t need to be expensive or complicated, in fact simplicity is probably better. Even before listening to her lecture, I was pondering this very idea and working on creating a space with learning sparks. She mentioned a resource I had never heard of in all of my years of homeschooling. So, for this week’s Make-It Monday, I am sharing that resource as well as how to make that folder of inspirational helps.

Over the years, I have used Dover Publishing coloring books and resources. The illustrations are beautiful and the books are not expensive. The resource that she mentioned was Dover Publishing Samples! You can sign up on their website for their samples newsletter (as well as other newsletters if you desire).

Once a week, samples of approximately 12 of their many books are compiled. Then you can save each image. 

In the past, I have downloaded resources and then I promptly forgot about them or their location. I now have a dedicated location for these resources and I am breaking them down into folders. Here is my Inspirations Resources folder. If a sample comes that doesn’t fit into a category I already have, I create a new one. Each image I save, I assign a name describing the image so I can find it easily again.

Here is the inside of one folder- coloring pages:

Tomorrow, when I am reading to the children, I can easily come and print a picture for coloring easily. Or, when we study Rome, I can go to the appropriate folder and pull out a related activity.

Thermal Cooker Applesauce

I had about 10 pounds of last fall’s apples still in my garage, so I made some applesauce. Yum!

The first day I tried it in the thermal cooker, I did it as a topping for steal cut oats. Then I made a bit pot of applesauce the next day. Neither lasted longer than the day.

Roughly chop apples. I used Gala, Cameo, and Jonathan apples. Whatever you have works great. Add in some orange juice- for about 6 cups of apples, I used the juice of one large orange. I also used about 1/3 cup water.

Sprinkle with cinnamon if desired.

Place on the stove with a lid and bring to a boil. Stir several times to bring the apples from the bottom to the top and insure that all the apples are nice and hot. Ordinarily in thermal cooking you cover the food in water or liquid and boil, but with applesauce, I didn’t cover it. I just made sure that it all got to boiling temperature. This means it had to cook on the stove longer than normal, but I didn’t cook it as long as I do to make applesauce. Place in the thermal cooker and let continue to cook for several hours. The apples were nice and tender. I could easily squish them with the back of a spoon. Delicious!

Sleeping Like a Baby

There is so much debate about sleep and babies. There is one school of thought that all babies must be placed on a strict eat, play, sleep schedule. They should not be rocked or held to sleep and never ever allowed to nurse to sleep. They should always sleep in their own beds and they need to just learn to self-soothe and are often left to cry it out. Then on the other side there is the belief that all babies should be held for all sleep and nursed whenever and definitely nursed to sleep etc. They should never cry it out. They will learn to self-soothe in time and snuggling them and rocking them will not ruin them and create bad sleep habits.

So, here I go tackling this one! After 5 kids who had different needs, I find myself a bit more in the middle, but still closer to the parent the baby to sleep camp than I once was. Little One has not been sleeping very well lately. He got sick a month ago and was up every half hour for several days and indeed did get into a bad sleep habit. Also, he has learned to walk. With all of my kids, I noticed that around the time of walking sleep got very disrupted at night and took some work to reteach them to sleep at night. I also noticed that many of them transitioned from snuggling and nursing to sleep to nursing and still being ready to go at about walking time. I adapted with all of them, but adapting with such a little one has been harder for me- he isn’t even a year yet!

First, a bit of background. When Tiger was a baby, a mom I respected said, “Spoiled is left on a a shelf to rot!” I must say, I agree with her there. Babies cannot be spoiled through holding and cuddling and care. I simply don’t believe that doing the very thing that seems to come natural to baby care is wrong. Babies naturally fall asleep nursing. There are chemicals in the milk that make them drowsy. Furthermore, for ages and ages, babies have slept near mama. This phobia of babies being dependent is bizarre to me. Anyway, I digress. Over the years, I have nursed and rocked all of my babies to varying degrees to sleep. I don’t regret one moment of that time. Nor do I believe that any of them developed bad sleep habits from it. The one thing that I did a bit differently though, was I watched my babies and changed things as necessary without believing that I needed to train my child to sleep and without allowing them to cry it out as babies (toddlers might fuss a bit, but not babies). Miss Butterfly wouldn’t settle down nursing. For many months, she needed to be put in her bed with a binkie and allowed to fall asleep. Once I recognized that, she was fine and happy. I rocked her other times, but not to sleep. All of my older children know how to put themselves to sleep. They all know how to go to bed without rocking or without nursing or some other “prop” as so many like call it. They all have a little bit different needs, but they all have good sleep habits.

So, here I am with my fifth. This little guy is just not sleeping. I have looked at allergies and I don’t believe it is an allergy. I do believe it is stemming from all the great and fast physical development he has undergone coupled with not sleeping when sick. A dear friend suggested I read the Baby Whisperer book as she said I needed to sleep train Little One. (BTW I hate that phrase). I told her I was not about to have him cry it out, I don’t believe that is the best way. Besides, in desperation one day, I did allow him to cry and boy did that make my problems even worse! She assured me that this method includes being with the child and mentoring the child to sleep rather than just leaving him to figure it out himself. Ok. I could give that a try. I did something similar when I night-weaned all the others using Dr. Gordon’s methods.

So off to the library I went to pick up the book. I read through the section on teaching a 10 month old to sleep and jumped in with two feet. Our sleep issues had gotten rather silly- put baby in carrier. Cover head and rock standing up to get to sleep for naps! Upon putting down, hope and pray that baby will not wake and make you start over again. Nope- that isn’t going to work. I have to say that in some ways the book really angered me. I can’t stand the idea that a “prop” of nursing or rocking is a blanket bad thing. Furthermore, I can’t quite reconcile the part about introducing a lovey to baby to snuggle to sleep but a mama is not ok to have for comfort? How is that logical? (BTW, none of my kids have ever established a blankie or favorite comfort object- I was always it). I believe for Little One it has been great for him to snuggle and have me, but that at this time as he is growing his needs are changing.  I need to teach him to unwind and not be so distracted by the incredible world and go to sleep!

So, in an effort to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, I tried to ignore the parts I think are ridiculous and started in with the pick up put down, comfort, and quietly talk to sleep. Little One did it. He fell asleep after battling for 4 hours without too much fussing. Mostly whining, standing up with a grin, and then playing with his toes. Bedtime took an hour and a half but in the middle of night, he went right back to sleep several times. Hurray. Naps are still taking up to an hour to settle, but he is doing better and better without crying it out! I am so happy that he is settling down and sleeping better at night too.

I just wish someone would publish a book that said, “Love your babies and snuggle them all they want and need, but when their needs change, here are some ways to parent them to sleep.” Why must books make moms feel guilty or bad for doing what their instincts tell them to do? I really find that the Baby Whisperer saying that nursing to sleep or cuddling to sleep or rocking to sleep is “accidental parenting”".” Um, nope. I did it on purpose. I didn’t do it just to be lazy. Babies are only little once. Eventually they grow up. Take what works and leave the rest was also taught to me by the same mama who told me that spoiled was left on a shelf. Thank you to the Baby Whisperer for helping me get Little One to sleep, but I will leave the rest. I think it is junk. And if I happen to nurse him and he falls asleep- so be it. I will snuggle my sleeping baby and enjoy it. He is active enough as it is and rarely lets me snuggle him anymore since he is too busy exploring the world.

The Tree of Learning

Today, we used a lesson from Latter-day Learning. It is one of the foundational lessons. I have been browsing their curriculum for quite a while and I am very intrigued by it. It has so many great aspects. I just wish it were finished so we could start with a different year since only Year 1 is available so far.

Today’s lesson was on how all learning stems from a common point- Theology. Elder Parely P. Pratt said, “Theology is the science of all other sciences… the very foundation from which they [all other sciences] emanate…” (Key to the Science of Theology)

We made our own learning tree to illustrate this

After we added all our branches, we added the fruit- the results of all the sciences. These fruits (literature, art, music) can be found and related to all the other subjects. We named a few of them as we drew fruit off of different branches.

The final results!

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Make It Monday- Tired Mama Surprise

This edition of Make it Monday is a very special recipe that only babies and toddlers know how to cook up.

Ingredients-

No Naps

Wake Every Hour for 6 days straight all night

Smile when it is morning.

Mix it all together and refuse to sleep more than 10 minutes all day, wake all night to check the progress. As the sun peeks out of the clouds, smile broadly. Your Tired Mama Surprise is perfect! You are guaranteed a bleary-eyed mama who will just barely get by on basics and won’t remember anything extra. Congratulations!

Sweet Little One was sick a couple of weeks ago and got into a really bad rhythm of zero sleep. As a result, all extras were dumped in favor of catching 5 minutes of sleep if possible. Don’t worry, Make it Monday will return next week with Thermal Cooker Applesauce. It is delicious.