Several cheap, healthy veggies start with “C”, and 3 of the 4 are so easy to cut into sticks and dip in ranch dressing:

• carrots
• celery
• cucumbers
• cabbage

Other cheap healthy foods:

• raw spinach  (Buy it in a bag, and your salad is almost made!)
• oatmeal
• apples
• oranges
• bananas
• sometimes pears
• potatoes
• eggs
• zucchini
• dried beans (cooked of course!)
• easy homemade oil and vinegar dressing

Raw foods are super healthy!  (But not that I know anything :O).  Talk to your health care provider before you listen to me!

If you have trouble digesting raw veggies, try taking a couple of hydrochloric acid capsules beforehand.  That worked for me, maybe because I had yeast growing in my gut.  Yuck!  I need to lay off the dessert!  :O)

I have a child who is dyslexic and has ADHD. Two books that have really helped me are:

Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of Your Add Child by Jeffrey Freed and Laurie Parsons
and
Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz
(also for anybody with reading difficulties)

Dr. Shaywitz suggests going back over the more difficult phonics concepts such as prefixes, suffixes, dipthongs, blends... Hmm… I can’t remember.  Then she says to break down long words into syllables and practice reading them.  I did this with my son, making it a game and timing him to see if he could improve his speed with flashcards of (the same) long words.  He had fun with it and gained reading confidence.  I had skipped over some phonics concepts that my other kids just picked up on their own.  But her techniques turned Josh into a bookworm in about 2 weeks!  He still doesn’t have the comprehension skills or speed that his siblings have, but this really helped.

The “right brain” book is also so practical and wonderful, and it has specific techniques on how to teach almost every subject.  It has really helped me to see how Josh thinks!  It’s funny, though, that the author disagrees about phonics for these kids.  But after having seen how phonics worked great for Josh, I have to agree with Mr. Freed about almost everything except his condemnation of phonics.

He says to ask your child if he can picture a cube turning in his head and imagine each facet as it turns.  Josh can do this, but I can’t!  It’s one way to see if your child is right-brained.

Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World encourages parents to actually teach a few things to ADD kids early — can you believe it??  Because of him I introduced my 8-year-old son to negative numbers, squaring numbers, and a tiny bit of algebra.  This is really motivating to them and again, helps their self-confidence, which is usually pretty wounded in these kids.  Anyway Freed’s techniques are like Shaywitz’s.  They have amazing results.  The spelling one is introduced first because it is usually the most dramatic.

We had my son tested, and I believe it wasn’t an ideal testing situation because my son knew the rest of his siblings were playing, and as soon as he finished his test he could play, too.  This made him totally distracted.  Some of the questions that he got wrong, we asked him the next week.  He got them all right then…

Also the diagnostician (a wonderful Christian lady who did all this for free for us!!) doesn’t believe that my son is dyslexic or ADHD because she’s used to dealing with public school kiddos who had Butterfingers/Snickers for breakfast and are way more hyper than my son is and have much worse reading problems.  But I still believe he is.

Another thing that has helped is a book called Sequential Spelling. I try to do a test every school-day and it has really helped him to become better at spelling.  I read that studying spelling also helps with vocabulary and other areas.

Sequential Spelling is a very unusual spelling book because the writer starts with a root word and keeps adding to it until the child can spell very long words.  The student actually does not study for the tests!  It is like a dictation mentality, except they don’t have to write a whole sentence — just a word.

After he writes his word, I write my version in two colors, showing the parts of the word.  You don’t have to write it perfectly — there is no perfect way.  Just divide it how it seems right to you.

If he got it wrong, he erases and corrects his version.  Then he spells it outloud while writing it with his finger. It’s pretty fun, and it has really helped!

Josh also stopped having cereal, milk, or juice for breakfast.  (Is he still??   I need to double-check him on this.)  He does much better on:

• water
• fruit
• 100 percent whole wheat toast.  This idea came from the Homeschool Legal Defense Association webpage.

We do let Josh have a limited amount of dessert later in the day.  But I read that if the first thing in our mouths in the mornings is sugary, it spikes our blood sugar since it is taken on an empty stomach.

Another thing that helped Josh was to get glasses with prisms. He said his eyes get really tired when he reads without them.  Hannah says he is more hyper without them!  He doesn’t have a prescription for his glasses at all except for the prisms.  Thank you, Dr. Morrissey!

If you are just beginning potty training, see the list at the bottom of the email.  You can do it!! I have used “she” many times in this post because some of the info came from an old email I wrote to a friend who was potty training a girl.  Please switch out the pronouns as needed!  :O) I had trouble training many of my kids in this area, and I feel like it may have been because I was too worried about the house being clean and too stressed out about the whole thing.  I still love a clean house, but I keep experiences in the bathroom positive.  Many thanks to my friend Lynn in Florida who helped me learn how to potty train without so much stress!!

1. Listen what he/she asks for during the day.  I realized my little boy asked for popcorn all the time!  I had promised him everything in the world for pottying, but the popcorn was what worked.
2. One of our friends gives prunes as a treat for successful pottying.   Isn’t that cute?!  Then any kid nearby can have one to celebrate! — If a family had a problem with constipation, this would work great! :O)
3. You may have noticed that when a child refuses to go potty many times it is because they have to go poo poo. I take refusing as a sign that they definitely need to go!
4. Have a sibling  read to them or something while they are on the potty.
5. Also it has been helpful to leave the child on there, tell her she can’t get down, then go to the next room and say, “tell me when you’re done.”  That way they often quit playing and get to business :O).
6. In the beginning sometimes it was hard for Grace to go if …  (Well, I guess it still is) if we are looking at her, making any noise, etc.  If she starts going, I just smile really big instead of praising right away, because talking can make her stop and lose her concentration.
7. You can role-play with her.  Have her pretend she is playing, then realizing she has to go poo poo.  “Excuse me.  I gotta go!”  Then she leaves what she’s doing, puts her own stool up next to the potty, pulls down her own pants, etc.  Grace is my first to practice like that and my first to have initiative and go by herself (At first it was just once in a while, and now it is a little more frequent for her to suggest that she goes.)
8. You could put the potty chair in front of a video with a bathmat underneath …
9. One thing that works for us is to put on disposable diapers with her standing up.  (they’re cheaper than pull-ups, so I didn’t buy pull-ups with Grace.  They can usually slide like pull-ups, too, although sometimes you have to undo one side for them to slide)  Diapers are also more handy than pull-ups for the following step…
10. What to do if she needs a diaper for naps and underwear for wake times: If it’s time for nap and she’s wearing panties, I sit on the rocking chair ottoman in her room, have her hold up her dress or shirt, pull down the pants and panties, and put the diaper on.
11. If she doesn’t hold up her shirt, you can put the diaper on outside of the shirt.   Then un-tuck the shirt.  Then I pull everything back up.  So during naps she wears a diaper, panties ontop, pants or shorts on top of that.  That has just been easier for us so we don’t have to take off pants and panties before and after every nap.
12. If your child makes their underwear “dirty” give them plain white underwear, until they go in the potty.  Then they get to pick out a new design from the drawer.
13. If you are reasonably sure your child goes poo poo when you are not around, sometime in the morning but usually before he even gets up, then you could be the one to greet him each morning.  Try ‘snuggling’ first then announce, “Okay, it’s time to go…” and take him to the potty chair and encourage him to go.  Perhaps tell him you are going to leave to do… and you will be right back (2-3 minutes) to see the poo poo in the potty. It could be that he plays a little while in bed and the moving around, quietness and just the comfort of his bed gives him the needed freedom to release his poo poo there, instead of the potty chair.
14. Try having your child eat his meals in the same place, about the same time each day and rarely give snacks in between, until he/she is potty-trained.  You can reserve the snacks for a poo poo success.  If he drinks all day by access to a sippy cup or other’s drinks left in reach he may need to urinate every 15-30 minutes depending on how active he is.  If his intake of food and beverage is regulated then his output is usually regulated and predictable.
15. Grace is 3, and what we have done all along is that she goes to the bathroom as soon as she wakes up, after breakfast, before morning nap, after morning nap, after lunch, before afternoon nap, after afternoon nap, and before bed.  This ends up being about every 1-2 hours!  But hey, it works :O).
16. Make sure when you send them in there they really do go potty!
17. If it is warm weather (It’s November now, so …  if you live in the tropics, ha!  :O) you can dress them in a long t-shirt only or a dress for a girl.  Some children don’t like the feeling of the you-know-what running down their leg and will train more quickly that way.

For Those Who are Just Beginning the Potty Adventure:  :O)

1. Before you begin to train, it is best to not allow the child in the bathroom at all unless really necessary.  Babies tend to get in trouble in there, playing with the toilet, etc.  If they’re always in trouble in there, they won’t think of it as a positive place, and they won’t have as much emotional energy to work hard during training.  Remember it is quite a bit of work to figure this out for them!  :O)
2. If your baby has gotten in trouble a lot in the bathroom, you might want to carry him in there a few times before starting to train.  Say happy things about the future when they’re big and can go there in order to put a positive spin on the place.
3. Pick a day that you can have your husband, older siblings, or a friend over to help keep things positive and fun.  It would be great if they can cook for you, too!  :O)  Now your child is allowed in the bathroom!  They are big.  “Hey, look, it’s fun in here!”  :O)
4. If you use this method, you are going to, as funny as it sounds, spend the day in the bathroom, showing your child how positive and fun it can be in there.  You certainly don’t have to use my method.  I’m sure there are many great ones!  This is the one that worked for me.  Bring:  a pillow or chair for you to sit on, cleaning rags, a stack of training pants, Sprite (clear, sweet won’t cause diarrhea like tons of undiluted juice can in some children), books, treats and thanksgiving are the needed items for success.
5. Pray out loud with your child.  Thank the Lord for the opportunity. Thank Him for everything.  Ask for His blessing on the event.  Start out cheerfully (exaggerate) teaching her the steps.  Can she pull down her own panties?  Skip the plastics till you go out of the bathroom.  In the bathroom it is all training time so you don’t want to discourage her from too much to do.  Make it simple.
6. With Grace, for the first time I did not use a potty chair or attachment. This was such a blessing!!  Grace doesn’t know any different, so she just uses our regular seat.  She is more flexible when traveling, I don’t have to empty or clean that little pot, and the bathroom is less crowded!  On her first day of training, she learned how to push a stool up to the potty by herself.  Now she doesn’t need it, so I’m not sure if it is necessary to use a stool or not.
7. Reward her with sips of Sprite every time she does anything cooperative in the training.  Give the other treat only when she goes in the potty (even if you quickly lift her to the pot- mid stream).  She will associate treat with the flow in the pot.
8. Much praise, much praise. After you have taught her how to pull her pants down, climb on the pot, wipe, get down, pull on pants and wash hands then the Sprite should ‘kick in’ and you should have flow every 15 minutes or so.  Don’t give her too much salty unless she is refusing to drink.  Keep thanking the Lord, out loud.
9. If you get frustrated (which is lessened by being in the bathroom because of easy clean up and you are not trying to do anything else) pray through it.  Picture people who have greater suffering and use it as a prayer target to pray for them.
10. With Grace we had the birthday box ready in the bathroom to throw a potty party when she succeeded.  I could tell she was getting uncomfortable and needing to go, so I put her on the seat.  When she finally succeeded, we blew up balloons, hung streamers,  played a cd of happy kids’ songs, and pulled out all the stops!  The kids thought it was pretty funny, and Grace thought we were all lunatics, but it worked!
11. Stay there until you feel either your job is done for the day or until you can’t take it anymore.  (I did the second one).  I’m sure you’re way better at this than me!  :O)  It helped me that my kids kept checking on us.  Grace and I read lots of books that day together, and I was so glad we got so much done the first day.  If God gives us another child, you may need to come cook for me give me hugs, and encourage my little tike on the pot!  Thanks in advance!  :O)

Here are some more links on free and cheap stuff:
http://coupons.com

http://hip2save.com

http://frugallivingnw.com

I also found out that the register rewards you get from Walgreens expire in about 2 weeks after you get them.  So if you don’t want the free or cheap stuff advertised that week and you need to use your register rewards, just buy milk or epsom salts or something.  (Did you know epsom salts are pure magnesium, which we are almost all deficient in?  I’m no medical expert, but my understanding is that they are great for aches, pains, asthma, eczema, headaches, dizziness, and other ailments.  Try to work up to 2 cups per bath, and make sure they dissolve.)

If you live near Rite Aid stores, you can get free merchandise there, too.  Check the ads just like you do at Walgreens, and again go early in the week.  Just like at Walgreens, the free items are usually hard for me to find!  The employees can help you, but don’t expect them to know exactly where they are right away.

Again make sure you buy just the right item, and when you get home get on the computer right away to request your rebate.  If you have done it before, you have to log on with your password (which I can never remember!) in order to get the rebate screen.  My solution is often to have Hannah or Micah help me figure out what I am doing…

What if there are no free items at those stores this week?  If you become an avid coupon-er, you can be ready with coupons and get the items free anyway.  You cut every coupon in the newspaper (especially ones that are at least $1 off), store them in an album designed for baseball cards, and buy sale items with coupons.

The main way to figure all this out is to be friends with my friends Iarmila, Naomi, Simona, and Tania.  Let them tell you what to do, and you’re home free, literally!

I’d like my kids to eat more whole grains because they’re more healthy, right? But I’m not sure how to do it.

Whole grains are great!  They protect against cancer, colds, constipation, and have a great taste.  People who have trouble eating wheat sometimes tolerate it better if it’s whole.  If you don’t like the taste of some whole grain products, try some others. 

1. Buy whole grain cereal
2. Buy only 100% whole wheat (or whole grain) bread and hamburger buns.  If it doesn’t say 100%, it’s probably mostly white.
3. Kids usually like whole grain crackers like Triscuits.
4. Buy whole grain noodles if you can find them.
5. When you make pancakes, use whole wheat flour.  I like them without syrup sometimes, but if they have syrup your kids might not even notice the difference.
6. Use spelt flour.  It’s whole grain, great for you, and tastes like white flour.
7. Buy whole grain tortillas.  I would be embarrassed to admit how often we eat quesadillas — 2 tortillas on a cookie sheet with cheese in the middle, baked for a couple of minutes.  Top with sour cream and salsa if desired.

I have been blessed with friends who have shown me how to get free items at various stores (Thanks Iarmila and Naomi!!).  But Walgreen’s is by far the easiest and least complicated place to get free merchandise that is actually practical and usable.

All you do is go to Walgreen’s and look at the front page of their ad.  They outline several products you can get for free!  Ask for help finding the items if there is an employee available, and be sure you get the exact ones mentioned in the ad.  You can get only one each for free.

Grab a few extra items you might like if you need them for the transactions.

At the register, I started with the most expensive item:  a new lotion for $7!  Wow, don’t know how it could be worth that much!  I bought it and then received $7 in “register rewards” — basically a Walgreen’s gift certificate!

For my next transaction, I piled several other register rewards items up there and paid with the $7 certificate I had just received.

Then she handed me more register rewards for my next visit.  Easy!

Tips:

• Go early in the week.  That way they won’t be out of that week’s items yet.
• Don’t take your Walmart list there — you will pay much more for anything you buy at Walgreen’s!  That is what they want you to do!
• If you pay with a Register Rewards certificate, they can’t give you any change at all, not in any form.  So I had a $1 carton of epsom salts (a good idea for everybody — look up the health benefits of magnesium, which is what epsom salts are made of!) to throw in case I needed it.  I also grabbed a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup at the last minute — no health benefits at all, haha!
• Have a great time doing it, thank God for the free stuff, and don’t stress!

-typed by Hannah

Face Cream

Mix all ingredients well in a jar. (I use a salad dressing container). Pour apprx. 2 Tbsp on a slightly damp rag and and gently rub all over your face twice a day.

Sometimes I wipe it off later if I am going somewhere, because it makes your face really oily looking, but it really works well!

My kids always used to get sick from going to Sunday School, and our whole family passed the germs around, sometimes more than once! 

At the very first sign of sickness (or before!), try giving your child vitamin C, garlic, elderberry, or all of the above.  Also you might consider starting a “Family Sunday School” at your church.  Right now all of us go to the same room every Sunday for Bible Study except sometimes our 2-year-old who needs more training.  Although we don’t use it anymore, we used to have a “church bag” that had:     

• a bunch of mechanical pencils 
• a bunch of sketch pads 
• a pillow case for the 2-year-old to play on 
• a small bag of toys for him 
• the Bibles we use at church 

Ask your health care professional about health issues, but for immunities…

Our kids like: 

• Nature Made chewable vitamin C, 500 mg 
• Walmart brand odorless garlic gelcaps (to chew up!) 
• Planetary Formulas Well Child Echinacea-Elderberry Herbal Syrup (one of the few that tastes good — you can order it online.) 
• Zinc (Zicam is zinc. Be sure to take zinc WITH food.)
• Pickled garlic (This is so powerful that it can stop a cold even after it is in motion! But of course if someone has stomach trouble they may not be able to keep picked garlic down).
• GSE (grapefruit seed extract) — Put 13 drops (or less for a younger child) in a small amount of juice. You may need to plug your nose while you drink it!
• Barley Green — Sometimes if I can find the barley green it can make my sore throat better.
• Apple cider vinegar and honey — Clover honey is the least healthy honey. We buy local blackberry honey raw. The apple cider vinegar will kill the bacteria in a sore throat, and the honey will make it feel better and help with the taste.
• 3 drops of peppermint oil in a cup of hot water — DON’T drink it; breathing it can help with a cold. Be careful your kiddos don’t get burned!
• Vitamin C is not only good for immunities, but it can also be used as a decongestant! 

All of these can even help with allergies since they can help any underlying yeast problems that may be causing the allergies. 

 We also have recently added to the kids’ daily checklists (laminated spreadsheets which they check off with dry-erase markers) “Take something for immunities.” If everything goes right (It usually doesn’t, ha! :O) they take something for immunities before breakfast.

Another fun fact:  Did you know that if your kids have been exposed to a stomach virus, drinking 1/2 can of Coke Classic every day for 3 days can help them not to catch it?  I learned this from my friend Jeanette.  It really works!  I guess it eats up the virus in our stomachs or something.

Submitted by Hannah

We have tried many breakfasts and we have all agreed that this one is the best breakfast in the world!

The Easiest, Yummiest, Cheapest, Quickest Healthiest Breakfast!

1/2 a stick butter (1/4 cup), 6 cups of rolled oats, 2/3 cup brown or raw sugar

Melt butter in a large sauce-pan over medium heat. Add oats and sugar and mix well. Cook for about 5-7 minutes. Let sit for a few minutes to cool. Serve with milk, peanut butter, applesauce or whatever you would like.

Thank you to the Hampshires for the recipe!