Vibrant Moms

When it rains it pours - I’ve had lots of fun computer related challenges recently!  The latest was this site being down for supposedly not paying - the web hosting company changed their billing system in the last quarter, and at that point I was simultaneously receiving emails saying payment was due with receipt of payment (the payment had been made)!  They told me to ignore the faulty message since my payment was already received, and they were working out the kinks.  Apparently one kink that wasn’t worked out was that my automated payment was cancelled, and I wasn’t sent any invoices requesting payment, so I didn’t know that my payment was due and wasn’t made.

BUT- it’s taken care of and they’re been pretty good to work with for the most part so I’m going to focus on that instead of this small blip. 

From this point forward, all of my posts will be on the new blog, Oceans of Joy.  (Click on the new blog title and it will direct you there.)

I am seriously backed up on questions and haven’t forgotten about them - someone else is coming to check out our home computer tonight.  When I have the luxury of my home computer functioning properly again, I’ll have more time to post some responses!

Avivah

Thank you all for the many amazing suggestions you came up with for my new blog name!  After spending loads of time going through all the suggestions for a new name, then mixing and matching taglines with blog titles, trying them out and getting my family’s thoughts on them, etc, I finally decided on one!  And then found out it was taken on both blogging platforms I was considering.

So it was back to the proverbial drawing board - you ladies didn’t make it easy since there were so many amazing suggestions that came in!  The new name is one that wasn’t suggested in the comments section, but I love it and think it sums up my philosophy towards life and is a broad enough canopy to encompass all the different things I write about, which was a big challenge.

The new name of my blog will be (drumroll :))…………………………………………….

Oceans of Joy

I’ll explain the meaning behind it as the first post of the new blog, but I’m really thrilled with the new name and am looking forward to sharing the significance with you.  It’s not yet being finished getting set up - I need to get all the old posts and comments over to the new site and everything is taking much longer because of my computer being out of commission - but hopefully that will happen soon!

I also will be emailing all of you who submitted suggestions - thank you all again!!!  For every suggestion you submitted, I’ll be sending you an mp3 file from the list of eight below.  Some of you submitted more than eight, and I wish I had more to send you!  The list to choose from is below; start thinking about it so you can let me know what you want!

“Chanoch l’naar al pi darko – What does it mean for us?” – Rabbi Menachem Goldberger, maara d’asra of Tiferes Yisroel synagogue

“Yes, You Can Be Your Child’s Rebbe – Teaching Limudei Kodesh”  – Rabbi Osher Werner , author of Pharoah and the Fabulous Frog Invasion

“Teaching the Multi-Age Family”  – Mrs. Avivah Werner

“Homeschooling and Marriage: Stressing or Strengthening?” – Mr. Mort Fertel, author of Marriage Fitness

“Strengthing Your Family Through Homeschooling” -Mrs. Rivka Malka Perlman

“The Myth of Socialization” – Dr. Nechama Cox

“Whole Brain learning” – Exercises for Whole Brain Integration - Mrs. Karen Zeitlin

“Maintaining Health and Spirit Under Stress” – Mrs. Rena Levin

Thank you all for your help, your suggestions, and for taking the time to visit here with me!

Avivah

(Nechamah, please contact me - your email is bouncing.)

My computer is still down so I’m sorry I can’t post more often - I miss being here daily!  We’re going to call another computer expert in since the first one can’t figure out what’s wrong. 

I got my most recent order of herbs, and I got something new this time (well, actually I always get something new :)) that we’re putting to use today - I ordered kosher capsules and a capsule ‘machine’ to make filling them easy.  These are already lending themselves to more uses than I expected!

I got the capsules to make using powdered herbs easy, basically the food herbs that are hard to take in large enough amounts when using as more than casual spicing.  But after getting it, I realized that we could use them for the powdered vitamin C (sodium ascorbate) that we use - until now we mixed it into juice but I use pretty massive doses when the kids are under the weather and they don’t  love taking it.  They don’t hate it, either, but finding a more pleasant way that works for everyone seemed to be a good idea.  And when dd14 started to fill them, she asked me if she should add some bioflavonoids to the mix.  (I bought the powdered bioflavonoids last year because it was the only form I found them kosher, but it is nasty tasting.  So none of us ever use it, even though you’re supposed to take the sodium ascorbate with it to maximize absorption.)  I thought that was a great idea, so now the kids have made over 300 capsules of this vitamin C mix - they used 4 parts sodium ascorbate to 1 part bioflavonoids.  Each capsule is about 500 mg and easy to take.

The next capsules they prepared today were: ginger, tumeric, and cinnamon.  Dd14 has an extra bone in her foot that is causing her pain when walking, and I’ve been taking her to the podiatrist every 3 weeks since she got back from camp this summer.  He has been trying low intervention ways to deal with the issue, but at the last visit he said the inflammation is interfering.  He prescribed a local anti-inflammatory patch, but my insurance wouldn’t cover it and I’m not so sure I want to use it anyway.  (It would be over $200 every couple of weeks, if I do choose to try it.)  Dh asked him why he doesn’t just tell dd to stay off her feet for a week, and the doc said that wasn’t realistic.  I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of anything so obvious!  Instead I started researching natural anti-inflammatories.  Some of those are tumeric and ginger, and she’ll start taking the capsules today.  I think that this will take longer than the medical patch, but I’m more comfortable with it and so is she.  And of course we’re encouraging her to stay off her foot as much as possible.  Hopefully this two pronged approach will be helpful.

Since I know someone is going to ask, I got the capsules from Mountain Rose Herbs - a bag of 1000 was $23 (I got size 00), and the capsule filling machine was $13.  You  can buy less, but this size bag was a good idea - my dd9 (her birthday is today :)) told me that if each of us has 2 vitamin c capsules a day, all that they prepared will last us just a month. 

Avivah

I mentioned a few days ago several areas that I want to focus on growing this year, one of them being to not feel that I need to control what happens.  That means to accept when things don’t go my way instead of feeling tense or negative, to let go of the results once I’ve done what I can do to achieve the desired result.  Today I was sent a beautiful opportunity to test my mettle! 

A few days ago someone had called to ask if I could drive her home from a medical procedure this morning.  I agreed, but when it was time for me to leave, dh wasn’t home with the van.  I decided to trust that he remembered I needed to be there and that he’d be home in time instead of feeling annoyed.  But after a half hour, it was time for me to be there and he still wasn’t home.  I called the medical center and asked them to tell her that I’d be late, and they told me she was already waiting since she’d finished early!  

I called my mother and asked her if she could drive me there to pick up this lovely woman, and she was happy to come over on the spur of the moment, putting her plans totally to the side.  Naturally, we got kind of lost on the way there, and when I finally got there, I was an hour late. 

Now you have to know that I’m a punctual person, particularly when other people are counting on me.  I take my commitments seriously and it bothers me very much not to meet those commitments.  So I had a lot of emotion involved in this scenario - I felt terrible to let down someone (who was coming out from under anesthesia), irritated with my dh, and my ego was definitely involved.  Who likes to look like they’re totally irresponsible?  My natural reaction would be to feel annoyed at my husband for causing me to be in this situation.

 No, I wouldn’t yell at him or even be nasty when he finally got home, but I would ask him if he remembered that I had needed the van because I had to be there.  Of course that would leave him feeling terrible to have forgotten, and I still would have felt annoyed.  I really didn’t want to open my mouth or do anything nonverbal that would indicate my frustration.  And especially since I felt my feelings were reasonable and justified, I needed to work hard to overcome them.

I spent a lot of time reminding myself what a wonderful husband I had, giving him the benefit of the doubt for being late.  I told myself he was probably so focused on getting all the yom tov errands done early in the day - to make me happy - that my plans slipped his mind. 

I’m happy to say by the time I got home, I felt totally calm and accepting of the situation, and loving and appreciative towards my husband.  When my dh answered the door, he immediately began to apologize for forgetting, but I was honestly able to tell him not to feel badly, that it all worked out fine, and thanked him for taking care of everything. 

It wasn’t easy for me to keep my mouth shut, and to focus on feeling love and acceptance of him instead of feeling justified in my annoyance for being inconvenienced.  But it made our erev yom tov so much more pleasant - I’m sure that’s a big part of why he so readily agreed when I said I wanted to go to the library to post here - on a busy erev yom tov, when we have so much left to do! 

Change isn’t always easy, but it’s always worth it!

Avivah

I hope your Sukkos preparations have been going smoothly!  The kids put up the main part of the sukka before Yom Kippur and then ds16 and ds10 built a couple of sections so we can extend it.  So now it’s four feet wider (for a total of 16′ long by 12′ wide) and it feels so expansive! 

Ds16 put the schach on yesterday and the kids also did most of the decorating yesterday.  That was nice since it means we are focusing today on the cooking and cleaning. 

Here’s our menu plan for the next two days - for simplicity, I’m listing all the foods at once instead of saying what we’ll have for which meal.

• challah
• roast
• turkey
• chicken
• potato kugel
• stuffing
• mashed potatoes
• sweet potato pie
• tabouli (cracked wheat salad)
• beet salad
• corn salad
• coleslaw
• roast vegetables
• fresh salad
• power bars
• snickerdoodles
• cake (don’t know which one the girls decided on)

We’re going out for lunch tomorrow and having guests for lunch the next day.  The night meals will be just the family, unless dh brings someone home from shul.  We’ll be enjoying having our newly expanded sukka on our new patio!  We wouldn’t have been able to make it larger this year if we hadn’t built the patio. 

Have a wonderful yom tov!

Avivah

I posted this the day before the hacking situation and didn’t initially realize this post was lost when the system went down.  Though I said that I wouldn’t repost anything, I’m reposting this because I think it’s a valuable thing to have on hand.

These are notes that I made for myself that I’m sharing.  I’m obviously not a health care practitioner and like all that I post about, this is what I would do if I found myself with a family member dehydrated to help them. 

Here are several versions, basically all the same idea:

Homemade Oral Rehydration Solution

1) 1/2 t. salt, 2 T. honey/ sugar, 1/4 t. potassium chloride; 1/2 t. trisodium citrate (can be replaced by baking soda), 1 quart clean water

2) 3 T. sugar/honey, 1 t. salt, 1 quart water

3) 8 t. sugar/honey, 1 t. salt,  1 quart water

Here are signs of dehydration: weakness, headache, fainting, dryness of mouth, decreased saliva, lack of/decreased urine that is dark and highly concentrated, sunken eyes, loss of skin elasticity, low blood pressure (especially upon sitting up or standing), fast pulse when laying down or sitting up.

If you suspect dehydration is developing, administer the rehydration solution by mouth.  If the patient is too ill to drink, give drop by drop, work up to a teaspoon if possible.  Don’t stop until patient can keep down one quart.

How much solution is needed?  Adults and large children should drink at least three quarts of oral rehydration solution a day until well.  Each feeding: for a child under 2 - between 1/4 - 1/2 large cup; for older children - between 1/2 - 1 large cup.

If the  child vomits, wait ten minutes and then begin again.  Feed slowly, small sips at a time by teaspoon.  The body will retain some fluids and salts needed even though there is vomiting.  Extra liquids should be given until diarrhea stops. 

Hopefully none of you will need this, but as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this was very helpful to me when my dd8 got dehydrated on Shabbos and started repeatedly throwing up. 

Avivah