“It Could Help Her.”

If only…

These were words of great relief for me, hearing them from the therapist (whose doctoral dissertation was on ADHD) who had just spent the better part of an hour talking to us about my older daughter’s lack of concentration and focus. I wrote about our experiences here, and about how I’ve been dealing with behavior strategies for the better part of ten years:

When we started high school last August, I looked at the daily lessons from Seton and didn’t see too much work for each day. I surmised that we might even be able to get done early with some subjects. We stumbled a bit, trying to find good study strategies that worked for her as a hands-on, kinetic learner, and eventually figured out a few tricks. But we never have been able to quite keep up with everything the way I thought we could.

I was really thrown for a loop here. I felt like I was hitting my head against the wall with her, like I had to drag her through every subject, no matter how easy it was supposed to be. Subjects that were “easy A” material still required me to be standing over her like a slave driver, constantly berating her to keep going. Focus! Pay attention! Why can’t you just do the test in a reasonable amount of time!!?? It was making us both miserable, and making me feel like I suddenly wasn’t able to teach my child any more. What was happening to me? Was I making a mistake in continuing to homeschool her? Could I even do it?

Talking to the doctor was a great relief, to be honest. As someone who is very hesitant to medicate my kids for anything minor, it was already a difficult decision to take this step. To be talking to someone who fully supported the decision Nathan and I made for our child – someone who, incidentally, had also seen his fair share of children who were wrongly medicated for simple antsiness – was just … well, relieving. I keep using that word, but it’s just what I felt.

My daughter talked about how she will decide to really focus this time, and start off well, and then get distracted by one little thing. The next thing she knows, 30 minutes have gone by and she didn’t know it. She confirmed that school is genuinely challenging for the first time in her life, and that the challenges make it harder to compensate the way she always has in the past. (It also made me feel good to hear the doctor say it was obvious that she’s a smart girl, sharp and intelligent, and that he understood my frustrations that everything school-related seemed harder than it ought to be right now.)

The doctor said that often, ADD and ADHD are caused by a lack of connection between two areas of the frontal lobe, which can sometimes be bridged by exciting stimuli, like, say, riding your bike down a large hill and having near-misses with various backyard structures, trees, and the garage. And that people with ADD can sometimes “hyper-focus” on a task they enjoy, like reading a book and falling so deep into it that your parents can’t extract you immediately. (I did say that it was possible that was genetic, since we’re all a bit like that with books.) What I found really fascinating was the idea that someone with ADD or ADHD could make a fantastic ER doctor because of this hyper-focusing tendency  Short bursts of super-focus on an interesting task.

And then he said he’d be willing to write a referral for her to try out ADD medication without the full battery of tests (which was going to cost several hundred dollars and might not be reimbursed by my insurance later on).

Did I mention that he’s also Catholic, so that common world-view helped us click well? We discovered that when my phone, which was on silent, nevertheless rang out bell chimes for the Divine Mercy Hour.

So, with warnings in hand about possible side effects, information on ADD written by the doctor himself, and reassurances that there’s a chance the medication could make a difference, we left his office to head home. We’re waiting now to hear back from the family practitioner about whether or not she’s received the letter, and then we’ll see if this course of action works for her.

We’ll see how things go after this. I’m praying we’ve found something that can help us – and help her, most of all.

Note: I’ve asked my daughter to consider writing about this from her perspective, and asked her to read and approve what I’ve written. She will be contributing to this topic soon.

Project Yummy Veggies Part 2: Good-bye Pool, Hello Gardens!

I wrote a while back about the beginning of Project Yummy Veggies, which was a name that was more fun than “Mom and Dad Tore Out the Pool and Planted Stuff You Probably Don’t Want to Eat” and was voted in favor of rather than “Obama Garden.”

The only picture I posted was of the pool shortly before my husband and a friend tore it down. It was early March, and even though vegetables were about the furthest thing from our minds at the time, we knew we had to get the pool down and start clearing space for the raised beds we were planning on building.

The morning of the Great Pool Take-Down, I actually had a meeting with my Dominican Laity group, so I missed all the “fun” of actually draining the last foot or so of water from the pool and dismantling most of it. But thanks to my daughters and good friend, I have a few pictures.

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Once we had those two beds in, we added a steel feed trough (with lots of holes drilled through the bottom) to use as a small bed for cucumbers. Then my amazing husband built a compost bin for me.

We did something really cool, which had been recommended by a friend: we took the remains of the pool to a scrap yard and they paid us for it! We made about $80 selling the scrap metal from the pool. Awesome! (Plus, cool scrap yard equipment!)

Pool Sides

Supports

More remains of the pool

Looks nice and neat there, though!

Barely fit, but we got it all into the minivan!

Weighed the car with all of our stuff first.

We’re a heavy lot!

Now to dump our stuff!

Big pile of steel!

AWESOME AND COOL CRANES!! (Yeah, big giant magnets! What’s not to love!?)

Oh, we’re lighter now!

Our aluminum is pulled out.

Weighing the aluminum.

Here’s our printout of what we sold. Made some nice cashola!

Then came the dirt. Four and a half tons of dirt. Turns out, it was about what we needed, with very little left over (which we used to fill a few holes in the yard that had been bugging us).

 

That dump truck of dirt took us five days to move, three of which was just the girls and I moving the last half ton.

Big Ol’ Truck o’ Dirt

When we were finally finished moving it, I was the sorest I’d been in years. My body hated me. But my garden beds were ready!

Next time, I’ll give you a look at what we planted.

Seven Quick Takes: Holiness and Homeschool

~one~

I’ve entered my Novitiate year with the Lay Dominicans, which is now called “Received” because I’ve been accepted as someone to discern if this is, indeed, a vocation for me. There are times I’ve felt overwhelmed by the amount of work involved, and wonder how I’ll get it done, but I also know that I have plenty of time in my day which I currently fill with too-much-Twitter and goofing off. So if I apply myself and concentrate on What’s Important (or Who’s Important), I will easily be able to get my work done.

~two~

I’ve thought a lot about my vocation as a homeschooling mother, and I feel quite strongly that I am called to it as a method of sanctification. I struggle with sloth a lot, and if there was a way for me to live my life in bed with a supply of food and some fun time-wasting games to play, I probably would do that if left to my own devices. But God is not leaving me to my own devices, and I’ve become certain that my call to homeschool my children is a way to sanctify me and help me resist the temptation to waste time. When my high school daughter needs help with reviewing biology, I can’t be playing Bejeweled Blitz (now removed from my phone and Facebook). When my sixth grader needs to read history out loud, I need to help her with that instead of seeing what’s happening on Twitter.

And now  this journey with the Dominican Laity requires me to do certain things: daily Mass whenever possible, daily Rosary, daily study, meetings at least monthly. Instead of wasting time on unimportant things, I now need to become more aware of whether or not I’m doing what I ought to do. It occurred to me that between this and homeschooling, God is working to help me on a path to holiness; He, in His infinite mercy, is providing me with tools that will help me focus on my spiritual life rather than become more selfish as I get older and my children grow up and leave home. I realized today that, God willing, I will make First Promises next year and Final Promises three years after that. At that point, my younger daughter will be in tenth grade and my older daughter’s education will no longer be my responsibility. I will have found myself will fewer demands on my time which I’ve learned can be a dangerous proposition for me, spiritually speaking. So in addition to homeschooling helping me grow in holiness, I see the Lay Fraternity of Saint Dominic (LFSD) picking up where homeschooling is going to leave off in a few short years. My study with my children is going to give way to studying with the Dominicans.

~three~

Our family is going to take a trip to Boston near the end of April. I haven’t been there in more than 25 years, and I’ve never stayed there for an extended time. We’ve decided to walk the Freedom Trail, go see Old Ironsides, and (thanks to the generosity of my mother-in-law) take in a Red Sox game. I am resisting the urge to wear ALL of my Yankees gear to the game. Besides, everyone should go to Fenway if they can. Plus, and this is a great thing, we’ll get to see family we haven’t seen in ages! I’m looking forward to it, that is when I remember that I’m going somewhere. (I really need to get that Packing Pro app out and prepare a bit.)

~four~

We’re ahead, but let’s not let them get close to catching up.

Related to the Red Sox, I actually have a relative who had been the executor for the will of the Red Sox’s owners. So even though our family is filled with die-hard Yankees fans (and with a family history in The Bronx, can you blame us?), there was also a little bit of support for the Sox. Personally, I liked them better when they were under The Curse. Now that they’re constantly a threat to adding another ring, not so much.

~five~

Our family dealt with lots of sickness this winter. It seemed we’d never all be well, and things ranged from constant sniffles to low-grade fevers to flat-out scary temperatures that (for my 14 year old) topped 104º. Now that we all seem to be well (with the exception of allergies that are magnified by EVERYTHING blooming at once in our much-delayed Spring), I’m taking stock on where we are, school-wise, for the year. We’ve strived to keep up with some subjects that are tied to the co-op we’re involved with, but others will have to be finished in June or even (gulp) July. One thing I’ve finally figured out is that there are some optional parent activities with Seton Homeschool that I don’t need to do if I’m pressed for time. High school is definitely challenging, but I think I’m finally figuring it out. That I’ve done this before my older daughter is finished with her first year makes me happy. I hate when she bears the brunt of my ill-preparedness. However, we’ve figured out some strategies for her to maximize her retention, which can be a challenge for a tactile learner in a book-centered education.

One thing that will be really excellent is that at the end of it all, she’ll have an official transcript. This is going to be very helpful if and when she goes to college. And it’s also nice that someone else can take a look at her work and give tips on how to get up to snuff.

~six~

I started a series on Project Yummy Veggies this past week, and I hope to get back to it again this coming week. One key is that I need to renew my Flickr Pro account so I can link to the pictures in that set instead of uploading everything here. But I’m definitely going to blog more about it and keep up with how it’s going.

~seven~

Even though it’s Spring (not Fall), I can’t stop hearing this song in my head.

***Jennifer isn’t hosting Seven Takes this week, and I suppose this counts as an eighth, but her family could sure use some prayers. Her comments are closed right now, but please lift her and her family up in prayer right now. Head over to Grace’s blog for the rest of Seven Quick Takes this week.

Project Yummy Veggies: Part 1

Last year, our grocery bill easily went up 15%, and that was with me being more frugal, buying less that is pre-packaged and processed, and using more coupons. I finally realized that I not only didn’t have a cushion in the grocery budget any more, but I was consistently going over it. We made the decision over last Summer that, should President Obama win re-election, we would tear down our pool and build raised garden beds in the place where it stood.

Kids: But you can’t swim in a garden!

Us: Uh, huh. And you can’t eat a pool.

Our reasoning, which we explained to our family and friends, was that instead of spending several hundred dollars on the pool chemicals every Summer, we would instead invest in the garden beds and grow food that we wanted to eat: tomatoes, peppers, onions, and more.

Our kids really wanted Mitt Romney to win the election.

Alas! While President Obama planned his inauguration parties, our family made plans for what kind of gardens we would have: how large, how many, what to grow in them, when to start? In addition, we decided we wanted to up the ante on our composting habits to help support the new adventure in sustenance farming.

We came up with some ideas from a couple of blogs and drew plans on graph paper and made lists of what supplies we’d need from Lowe’s. My husband and I had meetings over coffee while the girls were in Sunday school. And he put in for vacation time so we could concentrate on getting the garden put together as quickly as possible.

So here begins an ongoing series of posts on what I started to call Project Yummy Veggies (which I thought was nicer than Obama Garden). I’ll be adding to my series a little at a time, showing off pictures and videos of our project.

To start you off, though, here’s a picture of the light dusting of snow we got just a few days before the project began in earnest on March 11:

Good-bye, pool! It was nice knowing you!

A Quick & Easy Recipe for the Slow Cooker (that is not mine)

I cannot take credit for this recipe. It’s from A Year of Slow Cooking, which is a fantastic blog for people who need ideas for using their crock pot. But I put the recipe into Sous Chef (see link inside recipe) so I could print it off in a neat fashion & keep it in my binder of recipes.

So, this is for Krystin!

Crock Pot Brown Sugar Chicken

“Candy Chicken”

Ingredients

1. 12 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, or 6 boneless, skinless breast halves
2. 1 cup brown sugar
3. 1/4 cup lemon-lime soda
4. 2/3 cup vinegar (I used white wine, but think regular white would be fine)
5. 3 cloves smashed and chopped garlic
6. 2 T soy sauce
7. 1 tsp ground pepper

Directions

1. Plop the chicken into your crockpot. Cover with the brown sugar, pepper, chopped garlic, and soy sauce. Add the vinegar, and pour in the soda. It will bubble!
2. Cover and cook on low for 6-9 hours, or on high for 4-5. The chicken is done when it is cooked through and has reached desired consistency. The longer you cook it, the more tender it will be.
3. Serve over a bowl of white rice with a ladle full of the broth.

Search, share, and cook your recipes on Mac OS X with SousChef!

Back on the WWWagon

After my younger daughter was born, I gained some weight. Okay, that’s a bit of an understatement. I, who before I had my older daughter, had the metabolism of a hummingbird and couldn’t get my weight above 112 pounds (until my thyroid went bad after one baby), hit my highest weight of 181 pounds in 2003. I was very unhappy on a multitude of levels. Finally I decided to join Weight Watchers, and I had great success! Here is me before Weight Watchers:

At this point, I’d only lost a few pounds

And here I was after I hit my goal:

Just a bit thinner there…

But I have two problems with keeping my weight in the vicinity you see above. I love food, and I’m horribly lazy. I hate to exercise, unless I’m already in shape, which is kind of hard to be if you don’t exercise. Lately, I’ve put too much weight back on, so I took the plunge and re-upped with Weight Watchers. I hate spending more money, but I absolutely need something to be accountable to, and the online system worked for me in the past. So here I am, counting points again, working my way back down to roughly 120-125 from (gulp) 156.

Yes, you saw it. I just posted my weight. ON PURPOSE.

Here I am today … I’ll update the pictures as often as I can!

I’m also 42 years old, in case you were wondering. No? Oh, okay.

So I’m going to be doing my best to work back down to a better, healthier weight and get more active. And I’m actually going to blog about it. Call it double-accountability, if you will. I’m not doing it for swimsuit season or for my anniversary or any particular thing. I just know I feel better physically and mentally if I maintain a decent weight. And I also know I have lots of pretty clothes I can’t wear right now because I’ve been a lazy glutton.

Fortunately for me, though, Weight Watchers has lots of yummy recipes that I can draw from; and, frankly, I’ve been making them all along, but not sticking to the proper portion size. Funny how that works. I can cook low-fat meals, but if I eat two portions, it does me no good.  (Man, I love to eat. I love food. This is also why I need to exercise more.)

If you’re losing weight, too, chime in and let’s encourage each other along the way! We can do it!

Prayer Answered

When our 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee had A/C problems last summer, we weighed our options.  It was going to be a pricy job, but we figured we’d be able to get another couple of years out of the car after having the entire heating and air systems replaced.  What we didn’t count on was the sudden electrical problem that cropped up.  We spent a little more (relative, when speaking about this Jeep at this point), and decided to start saving for a new car, with plans to buy next Spring.

And then the transmission started being wonky, and next Spring became this Spring.  And this Spring turned into this WEEK!

But I prayed about it when we thought the fixit on our cooling fan would hold us for a year.  I asked God to help us be wise and help us find the right car for a decent price when the time was right.

Imagine Travel Man’s surprise when we went looking last night and saw a Kia minivan.

2007 … still has some miles to go on the powertrain warranty, and we took it home for the night and let our mechanic look it over for us.  He said if we took care of it, he wouldn’t be seeing much of us any more.

As much as I love our mechanic, I was happy to hear that.

So, meet the new member of our family: our Kia Sedona minivan.

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After all, what kind of soccer mom am I without a minivan?

Oh, and bonus!  We won’t have to rent a minivan when my parents and Nana come to visit this Summer, and when the girls want to bring friends over, I won’t have to tie them onto the roof rack to make them fit!

Special Lenten note: I still haven’t been actively on Facebook or Twitter.  If you’re reading this from a link on either of those feeds, it’s been auto-posted.  Come by the blog and leave a comment if you’ve got one.  Thanks!

Change of Plans

Well, we were all excited to have finished our full emergency fund and have money socked away for an iPad 2, an iPhone 4, and vacations this year.  And then my car decided it was old enough and wanted to retire.  Mind you, this was an event we were planning for … next year.

So, the iPad 2 was cancelled and the iPhone 4 turned into a $50 iPhone 3GS when our contracts were up – with a downgrade in minutes, as well as one personal line cancelled.  And we’ll be car shopping soon, too.  Not in an emergency shopping mode, but one that is definitely in the “actively looking” category.

My New Toy

However, when I went to the AT&T store today to pick up my phone (it had to be done before Friday so we could drop a line and downgrade the plan before the new billing cycle), I left our 12 year old at her soccer practice while I ran over to the store with our nine year old.  When we got back, we decided to play a trick on Big Girl.

“Hey, Mommy got a Droid,” said Little Girl casually.

“WHAT?!?”

“Yeah, she got one.”

When asked, I said, “Well, I need to save money.”

While filling our Jeep with gas, though, Little Girl let the cat out of the bag.  ”Hey, look!  This is an iPod Touch and this,” she giggled, “is an iPhone!”

The 12 year old could NOT let go of the fact that we “lied to her.” She said she would NEVER let it go.  On the way home, I said, “Hey, look how neat those clouds look over by the sunset!”

“Know what I’m looking at?” she taunted. “I’m looking at you NOT LYING TO ME!”

It went on like that the entire way home.  It was absolutely hysterical.  And because I laughed so hard, she just kept right at it, yelling more and more about what a horrible example I am as a mother for telling my daughter to lie to her sister.  On and ON and ON!

Totally worth it.

By the way, I’m not sure, but I might be getting the iPhone case I posted about here.  Trying to decide if I can wait for it.

Homeschooling and Organization

I used to be an organized homeschooler. I need the organization, but when I worked part-time from home while we worked on our debt snowball, I became a kind of molecular opposite of organized. Our school work started to suffer, and when it came to a breaking point, my husband and I made the decision that I’d quit. That was last year, and October 1 will be the anniversary of Mommy’s Freedom Day; however, I never did get reorganized. I seemed to be in so many different places in the girls’ school subjects that I made a hodge-podge of the end of the school year. There are subjects we just plain didn’t finish. Others subjects became a “read-it-yourself” study.

So I’m a little trepidatious about the new school year. Little Girl will be in fourth grade, which is still not too bad as far as scheduling and work load, but Big Girl is starting seventh grade. Middle school is firmly underway. And I have to help her be ready for high school and beyond.

So I’ve spent the last few days working on her first quarter lesson plans, and I’m ever so glad I did it this early! She’s got some heavy-looking research, a lot of writing, and a need of some science materials I wasn’t expecting just yet. (A bunsen burner? A plate balance? Seriously??)

All day today, I’ve been touching up the girls’ lesson plans and making copies of materials they’ll need to use all year. I am determined to be better organized and to be a better teacher. My laziness as their teacher has helped make them lazy as students. And I’m not doing them any favors this way!!

Next for me will be looking for movies and books that will help them along. I’ve got a terrific book by Maureen Wittmann, For the Love of Literature, that will help me locate wonderful books to make the girls’ learning more fun. If you’re working on a literature-based education, this is a fantastic resource to have.

I made a few unexpected changes to our homeschool:

First, I changed Little Girl to Catholic Heritage Curricula. I’d read about it and thought it looked more appropriate for Big Girl, who is a very kinetic learner and needs to be able to make choices within some structure to feel good about school. I’ve often said that she is probably a prime candidate for a Montessori education, if only I weren’t so completely not wired to provide it. (Seriously, I have a degree in education and was taught about the method and how to teach with it. I am not able to wrap my brain around it in any meaningful way.)

I was surprised at the accessibility of the books, and decided to use the same program with Little Girl starting now. We went over her school books today and talked a bit about how things will work, and we’re both excited. Whereas Seton focuses very strongly on basic skills to achieve academic success, CHC works a little more organically. Seton is very workbook-intense, while CHC is more project-based. CHC probably leans a little more towards a Whole Language approach, but still has enough basic drills and memorization to make me feel confident that the girls are going to learn things in an organized manner.

Second, I have made a big change in religious education curricula. One of the subjects I’ve always loved from Seton has been their religious education. I still used it, even when I wasn’t using anything else from Seton, for both girls – until this year. I knew I needed to get Big Girl out of the workbooks and into something different. So I decided I wanted to start her in the Faith and Life series this year. My plan was to leave Little Girl in the Seton books until seventh grade, as well. Until I got a good look at the books, that is.

Faith and Life, while still very careful to cover the faith in depth, has a wonderful layout and a flexible structure. It’s designed for a classroom in a parochial school, but is easily adapted to home or even Sunday school classes. I am totally sold on it. I’ve made plans for all kinds of art projects for both girls that tie into the lessons. It’s going to be great!

I’m adding something big for Big Girl this year.

We’ll be reading Humanae Vitae together. Seriously. I’ll let you know how it goes, but it makes me nervous.

The only thing that hasn’t gone to the CHC curriculum choices remains math. We’re sticking with Math-U-See for as long as I can see right now. The hands-on has been good for both girls. My biggest regret is that we are really badly behind in Math. I have to make a commitment (and stick to it) to cover a lesson every week or so. I think we’ll be on a better track with it, and I’ve got plans for giving them some activities to work on their math. There are a couple of apps on the iPod that I’ve downloaded for them, and they actually enjoy them! I’m sure I’ll discover more as time goes on, but these were not too spendy and they’ve helped the girls shore up their basic facts knowledge.

So there we are, ready for school to start. Well, ready except for about 100 pages of copies I still need to make. Thank God Sam’s Club has boxes of copier paper and I own an all-in-one printer!

IHM, Washington, DC, June 2010

Travel Man and I are blessed to have some very good (and very kind) friends in the DC area who host us annually and then watch our girls while we go to the IHM Conference in Chantilly, VA, each year. I’ve got copious notes which I MUST transcribe ASAP.

Because I forgot my IHM notebook and they’re all written on the back of coupons I printed from MyPoints just before our vacation. So they’re very valuable notes in more ways than one. I’ll pass on the spiritual value to you, but if you want the monetary value, leave me your email and I’ll invite you to MyPoints so you can print off coupons (and earn points towards free gift cards for exciting places like Wal Mart and Home Depot and the iTunes store).