Just a quick sock update

The sock hater pranced around my bedroom last night wearing these, which I purchased for MYSELF with my brand new clogs on Saturday. It’s a good thing sierra trading post has smartwool seconds on major clearance right now. He wanted me to order them, so please cross all digits for us. I know there are more important things in the world besides socks, but a life without sock fights is just that much more worth living.

Smartwool margarita socks!

Sleep train *this*.

I have always gotten a lot of jokes about my last name.  It’s more common here on the east coast where I currently live than it was on the west coast, but it’s still the object of a good yuck, yuck upon meeting someone.  It rhymes with Peeper and it does not describe my family at all.  I used to get the “hey, does your family sell mattresses?” joke (always a winner), but since I have had kids I usually get a “hey, your kids must sleep a lot!”  Well, that’s the irony, really.  They really don’t.

This post was inspired by the great comic blog entry that has made the rounds on facebook recently, What it is like to (not) sleep, with Crappy Pictures,  which really nails it, and by the viral smash hit, Go the F*** to Sleep.  And again, by re-reading perhaps the most honest and heartbreaking and (yes) empowering parenting essay I have ever encountered, which was originally published in Brain, Child: ” Love with Teeth” by Adrienne Jones, who now also has a blog.  I was thinking about it last night when I was lying with my 5.5 year old who still cannot sleep alone and has a lot of difficulty falling asleep, nightmares, separation anxiety, difficulty winding down.  I was thinking about how many hours I have spent lying in a bed, squashed against the wall, staring at the ceiling, feeling a boiling rage at the wiggling, toe-digging, knee jabbing, flopping, non-sleeping children, the  interminable years and years of doing this with two kids with sleep disorders.  Yes, that’s right, I said disorders.  More on that later.

Since I had a lot of time to kill, I started mentally calculating how many hours I have spent with a child pressed against me like a barnacle, trying not to scream and fling that child off and run away.  (NB: it hasn’t all been wanting to run away, because they are So Fricking Cute and I Love Them.) Almost 9 years, not every night, since there was some space in between kids where my husband and I took turns, and now some space again now when we have only one child who needs this kind of intensive nighttime parenting.  But there were plenty of nights where both kids needed help, and one or both kids woke up multiple times each night.  So I’m going to go with 3 hours per night for 8 years, roughly.  That’s 365 days x 8 years x 3 hours.  8,760 hours of lying there, body aching, looking at the ceiling.  Oy.

This is totally not what I signed up for.

I have written before about the boychild’s surgeries and a little about his birth in the “about me” section of the blog, but I haven’t spelled out the really brutal years of sleep deprivation–for us and for him.  I am writing this for all the sleep training experts out there.  Train this, mother-f-ers.

When the boychild came home from the hospital after the first surgery he was 2 weeks old.  He slept poorly in the hospital, but seriously.  Who would?  When we got him home he took one nap in the crib we had prepared for him.  I think he might have taken two, but that was it.  He slept a lot for a couple of days, mostly on my lap.  Pretty normal for a newborn, obviously, but even more so for a newborn recovering from heart surgery who still didn’t have very good heart function.  But from the time he came home until he was almost 7 years old he never once fell asleep without someone rocking, hugging, carrying, bouncing, squishing, or otherwise in physical contact with him.  Once asleep the slightest noise or movement would wake him up.  No matter how deeply asleep, I could never put him down.  He would wake up and scream instantly.  I developed elaborate methods involving baby carriers of various sorts (I think I had 10 at one time), bouncing on the exercise ball for an hour until he was asleep, then walking to our bed and lying down on it with the carrier still attached, and slowly untying it while draped at just the right angle to prevent any kind of movement whatsoever.  He always woke up when he lost contact with me.  It was like an electrical switch went off.  Mom’s gone!  Red alert!!  I wore him just about all the time, and when his dad was home, his dad carried him a lot too.  He slept on our chests in the recliner or on my arm in our bed every night.  Before the second surgery, he would turn blue whenever he cried, which was frequently.  Really, really frequently.  If I held him upright on my chest he seemed to get less blue and recovered more easily.  But each time I put him down, even to change a diaper, he would scream and turn bright blue.  Hated baths.  He always turned blue in the bath. I held him in the shower or got in the bathtub with him.  I was supposed to be watching for this, and to call 911 if he seemed to be having difficulty coming out of a spell, or call the cardiologist if they happened more often.  These were pretty vague instructions, and so as you might imagine I was pretty panicky all the time.

When he was really little  I thought his sleep was disrupted by the first hospital stay, and then again after the second surgery at 2.5 months (after which his sleep got even worse), and so although I was fried, I was pretty sure it would get better.  I had been told repeatedly that he would settle down once his body recovered.  Months passed.  He took 2-3 half hour naps a day, on me, after an hour of bouncing/walking/dancing/swaying in a pitch dark room.  At night he slept about 20-30 minutes at a time.  Usually he would go back to sleep with my nipple in his mouth, but if that nipple fell out, or if GOD FORBID I tried to remove it, slowly, in stages, that was it. (Pacifier?  Girlfriend, please.)  He did not settle easily.  Sometimes he would go back to sleep after a few minutes, and other times it was an hour or more.   Those times required getting back on the exercise ball, which we kept right next to the bed.  I think I may have slept sitting on that exercise ball more than a few times.  I developed some wicked quads from so many hours bouncing on that ball.

Being rudely awakened every 20-30 minutes for months and months and months does things to you, things that are not pretty.  Let’s just say these things may involve fantasies of driving into trees or freeway pylons at just enough velocity to cause just enough injury to lead to six weeks’ hospitalization with really good drugs that make you sleep all the time.  Or just driving off the freeway overpass.

I think it was at this point, when he was 10 or 11 months old, that I hit the first wall (unfortunately, there were several more…).  I begged the pediatrician to help us.  Drug him.  Anything.  I didn’t care.  She said “no, he’s too young, and why don’t you read these books?”  Oh yes, the books.   You know the books I’m talking about.  Not just Ferber–that’s too obvious.  It’s the ones that are more “moderate” in approach that are insidious.  You know, this one.  And this one.  Also  this one.  And oh, dear god, this one (which had actually been recommended to us by one of our NICU nurses.  NICU nurses really, really like schedules.  I think it’s a problem, actually, because a lot of babies, especially medically compromised babies, don’t).   (Just FYI for you more recent new parents:  The No Cry Sleep Solution was not yet in print at this time.  Don’t worry, I had pre-ordered it on Amazon.)  These books seemed to have been written for alien babies.  Everything in the books was completely unreal.  I could not even relate to these books.  Pat his back and move towards the door?  What planet do you people live on??  And what’s more, there seemed to be nothing in these books that had anything to say about babies with medical conditions (and, looking back on it, babies who later were diagnosed with developmental disorders, behavioral disorders, psychiatric disorders, etc.  Babies who sleep like this are often later diagnosed with something, I have noticed).  I had known of these books when he was tiny, and had been advised of the “cry it out” method, but since crying made him turn blue, this was pretty much out of the question even if I could stand to do it.  Although everyone told me that babies can’t have night terrors, I know he had them, because often, an hour after going to sleep, he would start shaking and shriek and I couldn’t wake him up.  I think babies who have something to have night terrors about DO have night terrors.

My husband and I moved our bed into his room (you know, the one he slept in for that very first nap; the crib had long since been garage-saled) and bought ourselves a new GIGANTIC custom EXTRA WIDE bed for our bedroom.  We started taking turns with him, one night on, one night off, so each parent could at least get some sleep every other night.   I think my nights were easier at first–at least I had the boobs.  He’s awesome and unlike the husband in the Crappy Pictures story, has pulled his weight and has always shared the misery with me.

It was around the time of his first birthday that the freeway fantasies had led me to a therapist, medications, and multiple mental health diagnoses including severe post partum depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.   As luck would have it, my new therapist just happened to have gone to school with a NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED SLEEP EXPERT!  Yes, an author of ONE OF THOSE BOOKS!  OMG!!  And so at one visit she placed a phone call and, voila, there I was on the phone with a Bona Fide Sleep Expert.  (To protect the innocent this Bona Fide Sleep Expert shall hereafter be referred to as the BFSE.  I have no wish to shed any ill-will on this BFSE, because the BFSE has helped many parents, I am certain.  But the BFSE did not help this parent, no siree.)  I described, in intricate detail, the history of the boychild’s sleep, our elaborate and ritualized routines, everything we had tried, etc. etc.  I described his medical history in detail.  The BFSE asked about the current state of his health, and I said he was stable for now.  The BFSE then proceeded to give me, verbatim, the expert advice found in the BFSE’s book.  Basically, it’s the solid bedtime routine/pat the back/move father and farther away as the child falls asleep/then leave method.  I kept saying things like, “well, I would have to lie down with him or he’ll scream for hours.  When I lie down with him he crawls all over me, all over the room (the bed is on the floor for safety), howls at me, rolls around, and basically will only stop moving if I carry him around in my arms and bounce him on this ball (preferably while also nursing).  I couldn’t lie down with him until he was actually asleep because he could not stop moving.  The longer I would try to lie with him, the more wound up he would get and then things would really get ugly.  This pat-the-back business was madness.  The BFSE kept repeating slight variations on this same advice.  I hung up the phone with the distinct impression that the BFSE thought our sleep hell was most definitely my fault.

Fast-forward four or five years.  By this time we were fairly certain he had a sensory processing disorder at the very least, and by age 4 were becoming more convinced about autism.  The wakings were down to every 2-3 hours by age 2 (whoopie!) but going to sleep hadn’t changed, calming him at night hadn’t changed.  By age 3 we tried melatonin, which actually made the night terrors worse.  He would go to sleep quickly but sleep even more horribly the rest of the night, so the melatonin was out.  His pediatrician still refused to prescribe anything and had no other advice for us.  No referral to a sleep clinic.  She did refer us to a neurologist after I pleaded, but after a 4 month wait he didn’t really have anything to say either.  Probably autism, whatever.  No referral for sleep studies, no EEGs, ECGs, full neuro evals, nothing.

I think that if you have a 3 or 4 year old that sleeps this poorly, there is something wrong.  Something is not right.  I think that pediatric sleep disorders are poorly understood, extremely underdiagnosed and sadly undertreated.  I think we have a culture of parental responsibility–you have to “teach” or “train” your child how to sleep and if you don’t do it right, you are a Bad Parent.  I think this message is extremely dangerous.  Think about it–this message says “not only are you ruining your health, your marriage, your daily functioning, and your sanity by refusing to “sleep train” your child, but you’re also ruining their WHOLE LIVES because they won’t know how to sleep properly.”  Most pediatricians look to the parents for poor sleep habits.  Do some parents really drop the ball?  Yes, definitely.  But if you have a 2, 3, or 4 year old who sleeps as poorly as my kids did?  Look around.  Kids who have extremely poor sleep often have something else going on.  Take the time to get a better history.  Refer for evaluations, early intervention.  For crying out loud, do SOMETHING other than blame the parents.

At 5.5 (incidentally the exact age his sister is right now) he was going in for another surgery, and the S*** hit the fan.  His behavior was out of control.  It took him 4 hours to get to sleep, and he was in a manic frenzy all the time. We had to literally lie down on him to get him to calm down enough to go to sleep,and continue to do that all night long.  We had moved out of state, had a new pediatrician, and since we wanted him to get through this surgery they finally decided to medicate him.  They gave him a pretty strong sedating anti-psychotic medication which he still takes.  It was a miracle.  He fell asleep, slept for several hours at a time.  He got through the surgery (with the help of additional anti-anxiety medications).  He came home, grew, and we increased the dose a little.  At age 6.5 he slept “through the night” for the first time.  Around age 7 he began to fall asleep by himself as well.  Now that he is reliably sleeping without interruption, we’ve tried to wean him off of it, but he just can’t sleep and he moans and thrashes around all night long.

I remember the first time he fell asleep by himself.  We were not even home–we were at a friend’s house for Thanksgiving, and I had left him with a book in the spare room on the spare bed.  I came back later to check on him and he had turned off the light and fallen asleep.  He turned off the light, went back to the bed, and fell asleep.  I never thought I would ever, ever live to see that.

And I haven’t even started on child #2, who does not even have the same medical history but who shares crucial elements of the same sleep issues, most likely caused by ADHD and anxiety.  She does take melatonin, and has every night since she was 3.5 or so.  Her issues are less extreme (she is generally less extreme in every way), but still significant.  I know she is not alone, and I know there are many parents who are worn out and certain that their kids’ sleep problems are their fault.  Let me tell you:  it doesn’t have much to do with your parenting.  I really think it doesn’t.  Anecdotally, it seems like some kids sleep and others don’t, no matter what kind of parenting style they have been subjected to.  I think we need to stop blaming parents for their children’s “bad sleep habits” and start trying to understand what makes some children’s brains unable to develop normal sleep patterns, from babyhood through grade school.  Healthy sleep habits DO match with healthy children–but sometimes disrupted physical and psychological health lead to the poor sleep, not the other way around.  If someone ever writes, How to encourage your baby or child who has spent a significant chunk of his/her life in an ICU to sleep peacefully, or How to help your child with sensory processing disorder Go the F*** to Sleep, I will be the first to pre-order on Amazon.  And since it’s my night off, I’m going to bed now.  Alone.  The real irony of my last name is that after many child-free years of sleeping for 8-10 hours straight, now that I have been awakened so often for so many years, I can’t sleep through the night either.

Adventures in canning #2: Blueberry lavender jam

I’m afraid I didn’t do any actual canning on Saturday (Can-It-Forward Day), as I was attending the baby shower to end all baby showers.  (The dress here with two matching hats was my gift).  It was cool last Thursday (fall is coming quickly to Vermont, as usual) so I did quite a lot.  Today’s recipe is Blueberry Lavender Jam, taken from the punkdomestics website.  I altered the recipe a little, as follows.

Ingredients and supplies for blueberry lavender jam

Your Ingredients:

• 6 cups of blueberries.  I picked these that very morning at Willow Hill Farm in Milton, Vermont, a cheese farm that has some truly exceptional organic pick your own blueberries.
• 4 c. sugar (I use organic natural sugar, not raw, but not white.  It has a lovely caramel flavor.  I find 10lb bags of this wholesome foods organic sugar at our costco, just FYI)
• 1 pkg of sure jell or other pectin (2 pkg if you like your jam set very firm)
• about 2-4 tbsp food grade lavender flowers (you can find these at whole foods or similar stores).  You can order them if you can’t find them locally.  I love having them around for all kinds of uses.  Mountain Rose Herbs is a great organic source for these flowers. I just put the lavender flowers straight into the jam, as they taste like tiny lavender candies in the middle of blueberry goodness.  But if you don’t like this much lavender, you can either use fewer flowers or put the flowers into a tea ball or cheese cloth pouch and boil them in the jam, then remove them before you put the jam in jars.
• jars:  I made 3 full pint jars with this recipe since we eat through a half-pint in about 3 days, but if you are making for gifting, 6 half pints would be better.  If you want to double this recipe for even more jammy goodness, double all ingredients, though you might not need 4 packets of pectin for a firm set.  Start with 3.
• 1/2 tsp salt (optional; I don’t use salt but many recipes call for it.  I guess it takes the edge off the sweetness?)
• 1/4 c. lemon juice
• canning pot & rack for processing
• Stock pot for cooking the jam
• Potato masher or food processor
• Ladle and (optional) canning funnel
• A ceramic or glass plate, placed in the freezer an hour ahead of time (really, wait to find out why!)

Smushing the berries

The method:

1. Sterilize your jars.  I usually run them through a very hot dishwasher cycle, with the “sanitize/extra heat” setting on.  Place your lids in a small bowl and pour boiling water over them.  Set aside.
2. Start your canning bath aboil.  Put in 4-5″ of water to start.
3. Measure 6 cups of berries into a stock pot (as above) and mash thoroughly with a potato masher.  You can also process them in a food processor until chunky but the potato masher is more fun.  If you picked your own, don’t worry if you have some pink or even green berries in there–they make more pectin!

Lavender flowers

Berries and sugar

4.  Now, most recipes will tell you to wait until the berries are boiling to add the sugar, but I like to mush it all together and let it sit while my jars are sterilizing and my bath is boiling.  So I added the sugar and lavender here to let it all meld together a little.

Bringing the berries to a boil

5. Now turn the heat up to high and bring the berry mixture to a boil.  Once it boils add in the pectin.  I find it dissolves better in the very hot liquid.  Stir the pectin in VERY well.  You do not want any clumps.  Add the lemon juice and salt and bring to a boil again.  Stir constantly with a large spoon, scraping around the bottom to make sure nothing sticks down there.

This is how it looks at full boil. You can see a lot of foam on top. This is normal. You'll be spooning this off before you fill the jars.

6.  Now here is the tricky part.  After about a minute of a full rolling boil–a boil so hard it doesn’t go away when you are stirring it–get out your frozen plate.  Take a small spoonful of the jam and dab it onto the plate.  Tip the plate sideways to see how fast it runs.  If the jam is set, it won’t drip off the plate when you tip it but will slow as it cools.  Put it back in the freezer for one minute until it’s cool enough to touch. Once it is as firm as you want it while it’s on the cold plate, it’s done.  Usually for me this is 2-3 minutes of the full rolling boil, but this really depends on your fruit, its water content, ripeness, etc.  tThis is really the hardest part of making jam because it’s hard to predict.  You can also do the back of the spoon test–i.e. how fast it runs off the back of a spoon–but I think the plate test is better and I owe this trick to my friend JoAnne!  I stupidly did not take any pictures of this stage, but if you want to know more details, look here.  If you are having a lot of trouble getting it to set as firmly as you want, add another half package of pectin, stir, boil again 1 minute, and test again.  Don’t boil it more than 5 minutes, tops, though, or else it will turn into candy.  You can use a candy thermometer as well, and bring the jam to the soft-ball candy stage for a medium-firm set (about 230 degrees).  I’ve ruined all the candy thermometers I’ve ever purchased, so I’ve sworn off of them.

7.  Turn off the heat and get your ladle ready.  If you have a canning funnel, awesome.  If not (I don’t), just be prepared for a little mess.  I use those old prefold diapers underneath to protect against boiling hot jam spills.  Ladle off some of the foam from the pot (no need to remove all of it, just excess). (Tip: put the foam in a bowl to eat with yogurt later.)  Use a hot pad to hold the jars and fill to 1/4″ of the rim of the jar.  Use a clean cloth or paper towel to wipe the rims clean. The rims must be clean for the seal to form.

Jars ready to fill. I had four here because I never know whether I will have a little extra.

Jars filled to 1/4" below rim

8.  Add lids and rings and tighten ‘fingertip’ tight (see my previous post on fingertip tightening).  Using the hot pad, place the jars in the rack.  The jars are hot!  Don’t grab them without the hot pad.  Lower the rack into the boiling water.  If you didn’t have enough water in there, add very hot water from the tap and bring to a boil again.  The water should cover the jars.

Jars in the water bath

9.  Process in canning bath (at full boil) for 10 minutes.  Don’t start the timer until the water in the bath with the jars is at a full boil.

10. Remove from bath.  If the vacuum seals on the jars have not “sucked in” yet, don’t worry.  They ought to seal themselves as they cool.  If any jar is not sealed after an hour, just put it in the fridge to enjoy immediately.  There was probably too much room between the jam and the lid, or there was something blocking the seal.  You can try turning the jar upside down for 10 minutes to see if that helps, but it’s not really a problem.  It’s just not a jam you can keep in the cupboard for 6 months.  Aw, poor you, you have to eat it right away

11.  Allow the jars 24 hours to cool on the countertop before you put them away, gift them, or pop them open.  With this batch I had exactly 3 pint jars, to the teaspoon, all 1/4″ from the top.  That has never happened to me before!  Usually I have a good 1/4 cup or more leftover that I must immediately eat on ice cream, or else.  With this batch I was forced to wait a day to taste it!  This batch had such a lovely dark purple color.  These berries were really just magnificent.  I feel so lucky to have them nearby!

Ready to cool.

Adventures in canning #1: spicy dilly beans

Spicy dilly beans

For the past two summers I’ve been experimenting with canning.  My extremely picky kid who loves strong tasting foods (especially tart, spicy, & salty) likes pickles of various sorts, and since pickles are crazy expensive at the rate he eats them, I thought it might be worthwhile to learn to make them myself!  Several years ago my friend JoAnne, canner extraordinare, introducted me to the art of jam, and I owe much of my know-how to her (thanks JoAnne!!).  I thought I would share some visuals of the steps of canning different kinds of produce.  This is the first of several canning adventures:  I’ll post some more in the next few days.  Saturday is “Can it Forward” day, sponsored by Canning Across America, as canning is making a resurgence lately.  You can find canning recipes all over the web right now.  Last summer I made a ton of pickles:  sweet, sweet and spicy, dill, and half-sours because my cucumber plants exploded.  This summer I had two cucumbers. Two.  However, I have picked 10lbs of green beans from the garden.  I planted a mix of purple, white, and green beans (alas, when cooked or pickled the purple ones turn dark green).  I have been wanting to try dilly beans for a while but never had enough green beans…until this year!  The boychild even eats them!!

To get started, this is what you need:

Ingredients and supplies for dilly beans

1.  Canning salt.  Don’t use anything else.  Canning salt has no preservatives so it doesn’t make your brine cloudy.  Kosher salt is OK, but you need to use more, and if you’re just starting canning it’s hard to know exactly how much more.  Get the canning salt and save some trouble.

2.  Beans!  I have about 3lbs here I think, and I filled 7 pint jars.

3. White vinegar.  I buy this in giant jugs at costco.  It’s very cheap and you can use it for home cleaning as well.

4. Jars & lids.  These are ball pint jars.  Any wide mouth will do.

5. Dried chili peppers or cayenne pepper.  I like the look of the dried red chilis in the jars, but they are hot.  If you only want a little spice, use a dash of cayenne in each jar instead.

6.  Dill seed.  NOT dill weed, which gets weird and slimy in there.  Dill seed from the spice aisle, or buy in bulk.  You’ll need a heaping teaspoon per jar.

7. Canning pot and rack and a small bowl to soak the lids in.  Can you can in a regular stock pot?  Yeah, probably.  But the rack is really important–it keeps the jars off the bottom of the pan.  You can find this basic cheap setup at target or lots of supermarkets for about $25, and if you want to can only a few times per summer, it’s still worth it.  Plus it makes a great giant cooler bucket for beer at a party.

Step 1: Wash and trim your beans.  You want them to stand up in the jars, so trim the ends off and cut them to about 4-5″ long.  If they are curvy they can be a bit longer.  You can cut them into halves if you don’t want them to stand up in the jar.  If you don’t like wasting the extra long ends, just eat them.  Or I guess you can make a salad or something.  Or just eat them while you’re working.

Step 2: Prepare your jars and canner.  I sterilize my jars in the dishwasher on the extra hot/sanitize setting, but you can boil them in your canning bath for 5 minutes to sterilize them.  Get your canning bath boiling.  Fill it about 4″ deep.  It takes a lot longer to boil than you think it will so start it now!  Place the lids in a small bowl and pour very hot water on them to soften the seal.  Set them aside for now. I put a mat (an old prefold diaper!  So many uses!) under the canning rack so that when I take it out of the canner it absorbs water and protects the counter.

Step 3: Pack your beans into your jars.  This is trickier than it looks because they are so bendy!  I tried to enlist the 5 year old’s help and she did four beans and announced she was done.  Can’t say I blame her. I was also trying to get a nifty color effect from the purple, green, and white beans, so I was perhaps spending more time on this than necessary.  Add a clove of garlic and 1-3 chilis per jar.  I like to whack the garlic a smidge to get it to really disperse the flavor.

Beans in jars ready for brine!

Step 4: Make your brine. Combine 3 cups water, 3 cups vinegar, 1/4 cup canning salt (and if you want sweet dilly beans, 1/2 cup sugar) into a saucepan and heat until it starts to boil and all the salt/sugar is dissolved.  Then pour into the jars until the liquid is 1/4″ from the rim of the jars.  Dump 1tsp dill seed on top of the brine.  Wipe the rims clean with a clean paper towel.  You don’t want anything to mess up the seal.

Beans with brine ready for lids

Step 5: Place the lids on the jars, and screw on the rings–not too tight!  The canning recipes say “fingertip tight” which means just tighten until there is no real resistance, not tighten like you’re sealing a tomb (NOT like my husband tightens everything, in other words).  Air needs to be able to escape from inside the jar so that it will seal properly.  You can tighten them to your heart’s content once they’re done and cool.  Put them in the rack and lower into the boiling water.  The water should cover the jars a little.  If you didn’t put enough water in the bath (as I did not here), add really hot water from the sink until you have enough.  In my experience, it’s way better to add hot water to a bath that is not full enough than to lower your jars into a full on boiling vat and have boiling water all over your kitchen. Let the water come to a boil again before you set your timer for 5 minutes.

And into the canner they go!

Step 6: After 5 minutes of boiling, remove the rack onto your cooling mat.  Don’t worry if the vacuum seals on the jars have not “sucked in” yet.  This will happen as the jars cool.  If a jar is not fully sealed after about an hour, there was probably too much space between the brine and the lid.  Not to worry–just put that jar in the fridge and enjoy immediately.  These pickles get better with time, so most people will say to wait a month or so before eating them.  But I’ve found two days to be a good minimum standard Enjoy!

A little warning: even when these are pickled they are HOT!

A sensitive kid’s guide to back-to-school shopping

1. Make your mom do it, then scream about it for hours at a time.  Run around naked, and refuse to get dressed.  Cry, and make your mom cry.  Voilà, finis!

But seriously.  It’s that time of year when I begin to shake uncontrollably when I think of clothing my sensory-challenged child for the colder weather.  But after eight years of this, and four winters in a very cold climate, I’ve got it down to an art.  I’d say I have it down to a science but it is clearly an art.  For those who may be seeking support or wisdom in clothing your wardrobe-resistant child for the new school year, here is my list of dos and don’ts, as well as a list of the best styles and brands for sensitive kids.  The boychild’s team (teachers, therapists) always ooh and aah over the clothing that I am able to find for him that combines fine-motor ease with smoothness and bunch-lessness, so I thought I would share my secrets.  Some of you know that I like to sew, and you might think that would be the ideal answer to his clothing woes.  Sadly, no.  He has hated nearly everything I’ve ever made for him. I think that what I make is not machine-perfect and uniform, which drives him crazy.

Unfortunately, clothing a sensory disregulated boy is more challenging than clothing a similarly sensitive girl because there are so many more girl options, and girls’ clothes are just softer, smoother, more lightweight, and of course, there is the standard loose flow-y cotton dress with either leggings or loose pants for colder weather, which is not an option for boys.  The ubiquitous boy wardrobe–jeans, cargo pants, polo shirts or thick t-shirts with graphic designs–are a total nightmare for the sensitive boy.  Forget it.

However, if your boy is under the age of 5, you might be better off with girls’ clothes.  The boychild wore a lot of target yoga pants for girls when he was 2-4 years old.  You can find them in more neutral colors, especially brown and black, but I also put him in fuchsia.  Boys won’t be able to wear fuchsia when they’re in elementary school without getting made fun of, so why not enjoy it now?  Also, girls’ t-shirts tend to have larger necks with thinner neckbands.  There are brands of clothing that are more unisex in nature, like hanna andersson, but if you can’t afford $25 t-shirts, you can often find sales on regular girls’ t-shirts at lands’ end.  When the boychild was little, old navy had better, simpler girls’ stuff.  Plain soft t-shirts, yoga pants, etc.  Now it’s all rhinestones and glitz even for toddler girls.  Gap kids still has plain girls’ t-shirts and soft cotton knit pants.  There are a lot of green cotton brands, like under the nile, that have flat waisted, soft cotton knit shirts and pants, through size 5T or so.  These can be expensive, but you can find deals.  Zulily.com is a “daily deals” kind of service for pricey brands for babies and younger kids.

There are several sites that cater especially to sensitive kids, including Soft Clothing, which has not had a very big selection, but it looks like they are developing some new product lines, even underwear!  If your child is unlucky enough to need a school uniform (I can’t imagine that level of suffering!!!), they do have khaki and navy “chinos” that would be suitable as uniform pants.

Now that he is aware of what he wears, this is what has worked for us:

• Pants: No cargo pockets, smooth, flat elastic waist, no bunchy front pockets.  Cotton fleece/french terry, chino cotton canvas, or lightweight corduroy are OK.  Pants that are lined in smooth knit are also OK and are good for winter.  I usually find these kinds of pants at oshkosh, gymboree, lands’ end, or hanna andersson.  Mini boden, which is a British company (British sizing runs small, take note) also has some great knit waistband pants like these, if you are feeling like spending $50 on a pair of pants.  They’ll last a long time though.  If you have a Once Upon a Child or other consignment nearby, they often have these expensive brands for a good deal, even in larger boy sizes.  I have found a lot of hanna and mini boden stuff at our OUAC.  Hanna’s carefree cords are on sale right now–go, go!  Their microfleece pants also look great for the really cold months.

• Shirts:  short and long sleeved t-shirts from lands’ end.  Period.  If you buy them overstock you can get them pretty cheap.  He goes through shirt chewing phases periodically so I tend to stock up.  Sign up for the emails and you will get a lot of coupons/free shipping.  I ought to buy stock in lands’ end.  Their silky rib knit is your friend.  Lands’ end shirts are all tagless and the fabric is really smooth, the neck is flat, and the shirts hold their shape and last.  Have I said enough?  I think they ought to give me stock, actually

• Underwear:  He doesn’t wear them. Period.
• Pajamas:  Ditto. He sleeps naked even when it’s -20 outside.  I will say that asking a kid like this to wear those tight cotton pajamas is ridiculous.  Let them sleep in a t-shirt or whatever else they can stand.

• Outerwear: Jackets must not have tight cuffs and must be lined in a silky material so as not to cause bunching.  (No fleece lining!) Buy one size too big.  Down jackets are best because they are lightweight and don’t bunch under the arms or give added thickness.  He doesn’t layer, so a very, very warm jacket is the only option for winter. We were thrilled with our lands’ end down jackets until they added extremely annoying fleece cuff thingies that kids stick their thumbs through–horrors!!  I like lands’ end jackets because the zippers are very large and smooth and easy to zip.  The down insulated hood made a great alternative to a hat because it wasn’t tight on his head.  Last year grandma shelled out for a fantastic North Face 3 in 1 jacket system that had a lightweight super warm “heatseeker” inner jacket, with no hood, and a waterproof hooded shell that went on the outside.  It zipped together so smoothly that there were no gaps or bunches.  It cost a small fortune, but a scream-free jacket is worth taking out a second mortgage for, in my opinion!  I only wish it had an insulated hood.  I knitted him a loose hat which he wore a few times but only when it was brutally cold.  (I wonder if I could snap the old lands’ end hood onto the north face jacket…)  For snowpants, if your child can stand the overall-style bibs, these are best.  Again, I like lands’ end better than ll bean, but most brands are loose enough if you buy one size too big.  Make sure they have a silky lining so the pants don’t stick. If your child cannot stand the shoulder straps, you have fewer options because most of them have snaps and zippers and the waist has to be adjusted tighter so they don’t fall off.  Hanna andersson makes an all elastic waist snowboard pant that is easy-on.  If you know of any others, please let me know!  I’m in the market.

• Socks:  Socks are a real problem.  We have spent a lot of OT hours working on socks.  If we lived in a milder climate, I wouldn’t bother.  But we live in frigid northern Vermont, and even with -40 proof snowboots, socks are really important.  Here are some we have tried:  Girls’ thin, stretchy lycra ankle socks, especially Hanes.  Many brands now have seamless toes and these are more widely available than the true “seam-free” socks you can find online.  Stride rite now makes a seam free sock for both boys and girls.  The Soft clothing website (see above) has seamless socks, but they run small.  Order up.  I personally find smartwool socks to be the most comfortable socks ever–not scratchy at all, and smooth and non-binding, but he hated them.  Other kids might like them. Last year our genuis OT brought in some women’s trouser socks, which we were able to get him to wear for most of the year.  It was hilarious to watch him pull them on all the way up past his knee, then scrunch them down, but they were thin enough and loose enough on his feet.  He doesn’t like bumps and he doesn’t like tight, so most of the seamless socks are too tight.  I’m not sure what is going to happen this year.  I am going back to work this fall and won’t have the morning stamina to fight about socks for 45 minutes every morning, so I’ll be looking for new boots that he doesn’t need socks with…

• …which brings me to the holy grail: shoes and boots.  Some general tips:  1)  Do Not Take Your Child With You when you go shopping at a brick-and-mortar.  This is madness.  Now that you can find absolutely everything online, unless you have a great shoe store that has a good selection and a special sale, don’t bother.  There are several online shoe sellers (zappos, endless.com, shoebuy.com) that have free shipping, and zappos also has free return shipping.  If you can afford it, buy 2-3 pair and have your child try them on at home when s/he is calm and in a safe environment.  You can then send back whichever ones don’t work (or all of them, sometimes).  And your child can wear them around the house on carpet to make sure they will be OK before you keep them.  Shoes for these kids aren’t cheap, so if you are going to spend $50 on a pair of shoes, you don’t want them to be rejected after they have been worn once out of the house.  (If that happens, I recommend Once Upon a Child or craigslist…)  2) Go wide, even if your child does not have “wide” feet.  There are a number of brands that offer W and WW shoes.  Stride rite, new balance, and jumping jacks all come in wide.  There are other brands, like keen, that run wide.  I often find a few pair on the internet and ask him to choose two that he might like to try on, so he can choose a color or other feature.  Sometimes a few flashy lights can make a little discomfort more bearable…but sometimes not.  Velcro is best, and shoes without a lot of padding are best.  For boots: we have had a number of pairs of Kamik boots for both kids, but I’m not thrilled with the wool felt liner, which gets bunchy and stinky.  I am going to get a pair of Bogs for the boychild this year, I think, and hope that he can wear them without socks and not have his toes freeze off.  Otherwise, we’re in trouble.  If your sensory kid has worn Bogs, let me know.  I have a pair and I find them OK but not super warm.  If I could keep them waterproofed I think I might go with Uggs for him this year.  I have a pair of sheepskin boots that I don’t wear socks with (it runs in the family) and my feet are generally warm enough even when it’s very cold out.  They are no good in mud season, however.

I think that’s enough wisdom for now.  Good luck!  Keep calm, and go shop!  If you have suggestions, ideas, bargains, or other tips, please share in the comments!

Cutest dress ever!

I really hope she doesn’t see this…but I just finished this for a friend’s baby due in October. It’s the Daisy Dress pattern from Minnowknits, knit in berocco weekend. It turned out so cute, I can’t wait to share it!! I also made a matching purple hat.

Another reason to avoid graduate school

Debt Deal Boosts Pell Grant Funding, Cuts Student Loans.

I am so angry about this I don’t even know what to say.  The new budget bill cuts funding for subsidized stafford loans for graduate students.  This is what people do with subsidized stafford loans for graduate school:

• Become better teachers
• Become social workers
• Become therapists
• Become public administrators
• Become DOCTORS
• Become economists
• Become successful businesspeople
• Become genetic researchers, chemists, engineers, environmental scientists, computer scientists

It costs a lot of money and a lot of time to enter these careers.  Many graduate students leave with 100K in debt.  With capitalized interest, that is a mortgage.  The heavy load of debt prevents professionals from buying houses, cars, or food, really.  These are the people who will get us out of this massive economic sinkhole and improve the quality of life for millions of people.

Cutting this relatively insignificant amount of money from the student loans budget will prevent thousands of people from entering these necessary careers.  American innovation?  Medical research? Educating the next generation?  Not so important after all, I guess.

Resurrection and rebirth!

Hello, long lost blog readers!

I’ve decided to migrate the blog from blogger to wordpress and give it a new title and mission. I think that my lack of blog upkeep was due to a blog identity crisis–is my blog about the two monsters? Is it only about the kids? Is it a craft blog? Is it a culture blog? Is it about my work, my research and writing? All of the above?

Well then, so be it. I’ve given it a new name that I think fits better with my lifestyle…which is ON THE BEANS! We often joke about how the kids are “on the beans” (the fabled Mexican jumping beans, AKA the Crazy Beans, of course), and I would roll over and die for a whole milk latte. Ergo, presto, on the beans! I’m working on a jazzy beany header, but simple should work for now.

So, there will be an awful lot about the kids, about parenting a kid with special needs, especially updates on Iain’s heart for those who keep up with us.

I am a half-assed knitter, crafter, sewist, cook, baker, gardener, and canner (cannist? That seems to be the new lingo) and so there will be many posts about my latest creations. This is not one of those very fancy craft blogs with amazing pictures of amazingly finished projects. I am just not that accomplished! And I have a crappy old camera. But feel free to ooh and aah over my little gems.

I am also an academic in 12-step recovery (currently off the wagon on a one-year VAP), so there will inevitably be vents about my students too, and of course, parenting essays-in-progress for print & online.

To my picky, picky, tactile hypersensitive children

Look, I know you are sensitive about how your clothes feel. I get it. I really do. I don’t like pants that are too tight or shirts that are too loose. I am not a huge fan of socks, but I wear them in the winter. I don’t like when my sleeves bunch in my sweater or jacket either. It makes me feel pretty crazy when my clothes don’t feel right. I really get it.

However, you have no idea how lucky you are. When I was a kid, we did not have amazingly soft pima cotton tagless t-shirts. We did not have stretchy soft yoga pants with flat ribbed waistbands. We did not have thin lycra cotton seamless socks. We did not have stretchy soft (and tagless) boy shorts underwear (or knit boxers). We did not have crocs or 5,000 other comfortable and wide shoe choices.

When I was a kid, we wore jeans that could stand up on their own when we bought them. We wore underwear with tight elastic that dug into our legs. Nothing had spandex or lycra or knit waistbands. Everything had scratchy seams. We wore polyester, and not the plushy microfleece your hoodies are made of, either. Everything had big scratchy tags. The socks were bulky and bumpy. We wore shoes that gave you blisters just to look at them.

So suck it up, offspring. Put on those loose knit pants and tagless t-shirts and microfleece hoodies and SUCK. IT. UP.

That is all.

Apparently it pays to hire an expert

I recently commented to a friend that we have our own “c” word in our house. The “c” word is “crumbs.”

The boychild’s particular side of the autism spectrum tends towards the OCD/anxiety, and about a year ago, just after we moved into this house, he developed this weird phobia/obsession/ritual about crumbs. He is really picky about food in the first place–there are certain types of food that he won’t touch, or even be near. He has never liked crackers or pretzels or popcorn or anything that needs to be eaten with a spoon–no yogurt, cereal, soup, ice cream, pudding, etc. He doesn’t like the texture and he won’t touch a spoon. But the main problem is crumbs of these foods he doesn’t like–cheerios, goldfish crackers, and especially the dreaded popcorn (incidentally, or maybe not, these are his sister’s favorite foods).

It has gotten progressively worse over the last year, to the point where he was being bullied at school by a kid who intentionally sprinkled crumbs near him. When he sees these crumbs he shrieks and runs away, or if he can’t run away, just screams at the top of his lungs. Sometimes, in his calmer moments, he orders me to move the crumb or goldfish fragment, pointing at it from across the room like it’s a dead animal. (Sometimes I cannot see this particle and, since he can’t walk over and show me, this results in some mutual screaming about the invisible crumb).

He is especially bothered by crumbs on people’s faces, especially his sister’s. She eats like a four-year old, so she gets crumbs everywhere. (Also, she enjoys goading her brother.) Mealtimes have been hellish this summer, as he watches us like a hawk as we eat, ready to scream at us to wipe our faces before we even take a bite. He won’t eat at a restaurant because he can’t control who ate at the table before him, and doesn’t know what they ate there. He won’t sit at a picnic table or a table at someone’s house. He will eat in the car, but that means his sister also gets to eat in the car, and you can imagine how that goes.

While this crumb paranoia is making our lives exceptionally difficult lately, it’s also quite funny. Honestly, I have to hide my face because I’m laughing at him. It’s just so ridiculous. I feel terrible for laughing because this is really affecting his life too. He spends so much time worrying about crumbs, and there are so many things he can’t enjoy because of the possibility of crumbs.

The crumb issue has totally stumped me. In addition to my humanities Ph.D., I’ve also gotten a Ph.D. in autism over the last eight years, and I can say with all modesty that I’m pretty good at managing and accommodating his needs. I’ve been extremely creative in finding ways to work around his issues. It’s painful, but I can “sell” him on most of the things he needs to do. But I can’t get around the crumbs. It’s so irrational–there’s no role playing or social stories or reasoning him out of it. Crumbs are just “wrong.” They offend the order of his universe and there is no getting around that. At meals, I resorted to pulling a paper towel screen across the table so he can’t see his sister. I’ve been vacuuming frequently and, frankly, doing a lot of yelling.

We have been on the waiting list for a behavioral therapy clinic for about five months, and I had about given up on them when I got a call in July that he was in! He has a fresh, energetic doctoral student whom I shall call Marty. At our first meeting Marty asked me what I was most concerned with, and what I would like to tackle first. I said, simply, “crumbs.”

Marty has risen to the challenge. He and his supervisor have come up with a genius plan. I mean seriously genius. Marty has introduced the boychild to Crumb Head, an evil villain who tries to defeat the boychild with crumbs. Crumb Head’s power increases when boychild hides from crumbs, or yells. Crumb Head gets bigger. However, all is not lost. Boychild has the power to defeat Crumb Head! He can shoot blue energy at Crumb Head to make him tiny and run away. And here’s the genius: in order to generate blue energy, boychild has to LOOK at the crumbs. He “charges up” his blue energy by looking at the crumbs, and then he can shoot the blue energy at Crumb Head. The more he can look at crumbs and the longer he can be near them, the less power the phobia will have over him.

Boychild and his sister are really into Word Girl (PBS kids show) this summer, and there are lots of silly supervillains on the show, e.g. “Chuck the Evil Sandwich Making Guy.” Crumb Head fits right into this universe. Boychild is really into Crumb Head. (He’s now “Captain Crumb Head”.) Yesterday we practiced Crumb Head at home for the first time (with Sun Chips) and he did so well, even though his sister was trying to “help” by blowing the crumbs around.

I can finally see a way through. Thanks, Marty! You rock. It’s going to be a while before he can handle watching his sister eat goldfish in the car, but hopefully he will be able to use Crumb Head to eat at the snack table at school, and be able to take control of this fear. Sometimes it really does pay to hire an expert.