The Inappropriate Post

Welcome to Diet Zehlahlum! The Saturday feature that from the Zehlahlum Family that you love because it's not your life! Diet Zehlahlum is "lite" on stress, seriousness, and thought. Please note that the title Diet Zehlahlum makes no guarantee that you will lose weight while reading. In fact, we recommend that if you want to lose weight you step away from the computer AFTER reading this post and try some jumping jacks or something.

Today's Diet Zehlahlum is all potty talk and inappropriateness that was just too funny not to post even though I probably shouldn't.

Enjoy.

 If you don't want to spit coffee at your computer I recommend you turn back now. 

There is one Boohoo story in here, but the rest of them are straight up Peanut. Pickle is always happy to laugh at potty-talk, but he's just starting to venture into the arena of initiating the randomly awkward conversation. There is one story from the week that involves him and Peanut, but I can't post it on the internet...which after you read the rest of this post should really tell you something. 

He was telling Andrew about his big scheme to create a medicine to make bones strong by juicing all of these different fruits and vegetables. The list was pretty typical (for a four year old who knows about juicing...) slices of peaches, a few "bunny carrots", apples, and spinach, etc. Then he starts in telling us about the super ingredient..."It's a big bowl full of peas! I don't mean the stuff that comes out of your pen!s I mean the little round green things that you eat." -----thanks for clearing that up buddy!

The other day Andrew, and all the kids were sitting at the table eating dinner. We don't usually have family-style dinner, but it's a goal and so today I had made a nice dinner and decided that I would sit down too. Of course, we don't have enough chairs and I didn't feel like sharing with one of the kids so I pulled up our green bilibo...If you flip it upside down it makes a little stool. It's not maybe the ideal way to eat dinner, but I was making an effort. I thought I'd get some kind of bonus points. I tell you all of that to set the stage, for an already incongruous dinner setup. 

Peanut looks over at me and starts right in talking about twins. "Mom, if you had twins..." He almost lost me there because a) is there anything I need less right now and b) both times I was pregnant I had actual nightmares about having twins.  "they'd both grow inside your body at the same time..." here I'm feeling pride that he doesn't say 'grow inside your tummy' because that's a pet peeve of mine and awww, look how smart he is. "...and then they'd both come out of your v@gina..." and this would be where I made shocked eye contact with Andrew because c'mon it's the DINNER TABLE, we're not ready for this conversation and here's my kid looking at me and talking about my business. And we're both laughing and trying not to laugh because clearly we're trying to pass on awareness and anti-shame in the miracle of bodies and birth, but does it have to be at dinner?! "...at the same time and then when one had a birthday the other would have one too and they'd always be same age and that is what makes them twins." And I confess that by this time I wasn't listening to him at all because I was laughing and still a bit freaked out. 

Boohoo until recently hasn't known much anatomy besides "bottom" or "booty" as she generally calls it. But not very long ago she wanted a word for the rest of her business so I told her "v@gina" because I figure that's enough detail for this age. So she went through some fascination with that word and we had some conversations about her parts because once kids know what it is they have to talk about it. After her bath one night we were in her room and I turned about and caught her as she was about to stick something up there. I stopped her and had the Never Thought I'd Be Saying This conversation with her. "Boohoo, your v@gina needs to be empty." And she nodded solemnly. "Is your v@gina empty? And she solemnly informed me, "v@gina empty." And then I realized that we should take this to a national level! It could be the next Abstinence Only education plan's slogan: "Is Your V@gina Empty?" or "Empty V@gina Since 2011" or whenever they sign their pledge. I can just see them all walking around high school with their slogan pins pinned to their backpack. Sign up today! 

One morning Peanut walked up to me and said, "Mom, I've been wondering. When you go potty is the pattern always 'pee...poop...pee'?" This is really when I realized that he had mastered the early-math pattern recognition skill. These kinds of things are not in any parenting book I've ever read that tell you when you need to brace yourself for the inappropriate continually or when it will go away. How am I supposed to know what I should answer, what I should discourage, what is the sign that my kid is well and truly messed up?! So I told him, "that sounds like a question you should ask your dad when he comes home!" 

Happy Saturday! 

Tired vs Hungry

Let me be honest, I get tired of fundraising. Seriously. Ugh. I just think there is so much of it, everywhere. One of the awesome things about the internet is that it shrinks our world and build awareness and connections between people. The downside to that is I am always running into someone who is adopting and selling fantastic fair trade crafts, raffle tickets for a brand new never been seen before iproduct 73, or is trying desperately to raise donations for a last minute flight to FarAway to bring home a sibling group, or a child who has developmental delays or a serious medical condition. It's always something. These are all good things, great things, but it's always some-thing. I don't think fundraising is wrong, not at all. I absolutely understand why people fundraise and we did it when we adopted so this is absolutely confessional and not judgmental! I support my friends' and my friends' friends' adoptions whenever I can.

I believe in adoption and I believe it's worth supporting. I'm going to continue to support adoption, but it's not enough. More than I believe in adoption, I believe in first families and I am going to support the rights of parents to raise their own children and children to be raised by their biological parents.

Right now families are being devastated by famine in the Horn of Africa. If you haven't seen the pictures then go ahead and google it. You'll get enough pictures and facts to keep you for sleeping for a week. People are dying for food, children are dying because they have nothing to eat. We're not talking about whining because they didn't get a snack in the four hours between breakfast and lunch. They're dying. Dying.

So, back to my statement at the beginning of this post when I said I was tired of fundraising. Well, I admit that when I first started to hear about the drought and the impact it was having on eastern Africa, and my daughter's Ethiopia I was sad and hurt, of course, but that was quickly followed by feelings of "compassion fatigue". I didn't want to read about it, I didn't want to see it, I didn't want to worry about it, I didn't want to be involved. Those feelings snowballed into guilt and then I marinated in the guilt for awhile. Blech, that's an ugly place to be. Luckily, it didn't take long for me to be convicted of my guilt. This isn't about me. I can take my belief about supporting the first families and communities and apply that here. I can't do it all, but I can do a little bit. It's cliche, but true.

I'm a parent and we can't imagine what this is like. Many of the "lucky" ones whose children don't die will think about surrendering their children for adoption just so their child can eat and live. I think that is a pretty craptastic choice: adoption or death.

Let's say no to that. NO! No. No. No. 


I'm done feeling bad that I can't stop an entire famine. I'm done feeling bad that I can't donate hundreds or thousands of dollars to good causes. I'm done wondering if the money that goes to big organizations gets to the people. I'm done doing nothing. Please be done with me. Let's support families who want nothing more than to feed their children, raise their children, keep their children. There's an organization called Friends of Orphans and Vulnerable Children and they are doing great work in southern Ethiopia to support families. They were there before the famine started doing great work, they're stepping up their aid during the famine and they're going to be there after the famine. They do a lot of different things, but right now I'm focused on feeding those kiddos.


Let's feed some babies. 


We can send money to the front line, to a grassroots organization in Ethiopia that can feed a child for a month for $13.00, less than we can spend on one trip through the drive-thru. 


My friend Captain Murdoch is in the process of bringing home the biological brother of their Ethiopian son. Her boys are from nearby this region (my daughter is from not far away) and some friends are hosting a baby shower for her! Turns out that her new son is five and not really in the market for baby things so this is the best baby shower ever. She's asking that you donate some money to FOVC and leave a message of support for her son, if you'd like. She gets nothing out of this. I get nothing out of this. But those families in Ethiopia will get everything from this.

Please. I know I've been beggy in this post, but it doesn't matter because this isn't about me. Guilt, begging, annoying...whatever it takes, it doesn't matter because this isn't about me. It's about feeding children who are dying of starvation. We can stop it. $13 at a time stops starvation for one child for a month. So far, enough money has been raised to feed 54 children for a month, which is excellent. It would be perfect if there were only 54 hungry children in Ethiopia, but there are more. They need you. The goal is 100. We want to feed 100 children for a month. Let's feed some babies!

**I'm editing to this add some information that came up in the comments**
I had someone indirectly ask why I'm featuring an agency in Ethiopia instead of one in Somalia. Here's the scoop:

"...a dysfunctional government in Somalia is incapable of responding. Direct access by the international aid community is difficult and dangerous. This is why our focus on assistance in Ethiopia and Kenya is essential." 
Borrowed from CNN
Okay, recap!


1. I'm selfish and annoying
2. Donate here
3. Leave a comment here (there's a giveaway too)
4. Spread the word: tweet, facebook, blog, accost strangers

Book Review: A Chair for My Mother

 

Backstory: This isn't a book that I selected for the kids myself. It came as part of our Sonlight P3/4  "curriculum". It's include in the 20th Century Children's Book Treasury. I had never heard of this story before, but apparently it's fairly well known and received a Caldecott Honor Medal. 

Overview: Three generations of (presumably, but never specified) Latina women live in apartment together: grandma, mom, and Rosa. Mom is a waitress and sometimes Rosa helps her after school and earns some money. All of Rosa's money, mom's tips and grandma's spare change goes into a big glass jar where they are saving up for a big comfy armchair. There was a fire in the apartment and they lost all their furniture. They talk about staying with family for awhile, and all their friends donate things to them, but they don't have a big soft chair and so they are saving up. Since this is a children's book I don't think it's a spoiler to tell you that they do get the money in the end and have a wonderful little celebration when they get to go buy their chair.

Intended Audience: The publisher says the book is geared toward grades K-1. I just saw it in our public library and it had a tag on it saying that it was on the "2nd Grade Reading List". We've read it several times now. The babies listened to the story and they were generally interested in it, but they weren't picking up on any lessons. The story is a little chatty and their brains drifted. Peanut remembered when asked the basic plot of the story and said he liked it although I wouldn't say that it was a favorite of his.

My thoughts: This is a book that has a lot of meat on its bones, which I do like, but it may not be one that I'd whip out right before bedtime. The last time that we read it, it was just Peanut and I, so I stopped more to talk about things than I would have with the babies around. We talked about what a waitress is, what tips are (we don't eat in a lot of restaurants unfortunately), why their feet would hurt at the end of the day and how we should treat them. We didn't really focus on the saving money part because he doesn't really understand money, and so we talked more about having to work very hard, be patient and work together, we talked about the value of people over things, and talked about what it means to donate things to people and helping other people, we talked about how tired our bodies would be if we only had kitchen chairs and not soft living room furniture. We talked about having good attitudes even when we don't have what we want, and being thankful for the things we do have, and then how good it feels to get something that you've worked so hard for. Really, there's a lot of stuff in a small book!

I additionally like that it is not about our specific demographic. It's about a houseful of minority women, they live in an apartment, the mom has a 'working' job, it showcases family and community relationships and hardwork, but none of it is shoved in your face.

Score: 4 out of 5. I think this story does teach a lot of good values, it's beautifully illustrated, is about a life different than ours, and Peanut enjoys it. It is definitely for 4+ crowd though.

Homeschooling: Daily Routines

I mentioned in the post about why we chose to homeschool that since this is just a preschool/pre-k year that it's going to be very relaxed for us. It doesn't do a lot of good to say that we want to pull our kids off the starting block for the rat race if we just start them racing in the home.

I believe that while the pressures and expectations of children has changed in recent history that the development of children hasn't changed. At this age I think that the benefits of an "old-fashioned" childhood are of greater benefit by far than any academic benefit that I could try to supply them with.

Don't get me wrong. I would LOOOOOVE for my kids to have an immersion Spanish preschool two days a week, Peanut to take swim lessons, soccer, and martial arts, Boohoo to be in a tumbling class and swimming, and okay, I just want Pickle to stay home and be my baby forever. I want them to do Awanas, go to "Moppets" while I'm in MOPS, Sunday School, and be part of the perfect playgroup.

It just turns out that neither my wallet, family beliefs, or parenting standards will allow for most of that. Instead, we'll hang out where I believe we belong: at home. I'm sure that we will do some of the above activities, but they will be a very small portion of what we do.

We've spent the month of August setting up and using Morning and Bedtime Routines. A big goal for the year is getting the kids to function easily within these routines, deepening the routines as we can, as well as adding a School Routine and adding some "situational routines" to our repertoire.

Morning Routine: I'd like to get this written down where the kids can see it and maybe even turn it into a pictorial schedule. Right now, it's written down for me and they know what it is:

 Breakfast, Brush Teeth, Be Ready for the Day (get dressed), Be Helpful (chores), and Bible. 


Right now this routine starts at about 7am when we eat breakfast. Then there is about an hour of time in there while they eat, watch some cartoons or play, I start my caffeine drip and make sure the internet hadn't disappeared without me there all night. We go upstairs around 8 because by then Boohoo has been asking to get dressed for 57 minutes and they're all getting a little restless and if we didn't go upstairs they'd start to fight. Upstairs we do teeth, dressing, chores, and they play in between the hard work of teeth brushing, dressing, etc. Peanut's jobs in the morning are to check all the bathroom trash cans to see if they need emptied and to bring the downstairs laundry basket (kitchen towels, randomly discarded clothing) upstairs, empty it, and take it back down. Boohoo puts the laundry pile of the day into the washing machine. Pickle does whatever he wants.

We are usually downstairs by 9am to do our Bible time (this is new as of August). We say the Bible verse we're memorizing (shout out to Seeds Family Worship), read a Bible story, and then we listen to the Bible verse song. This takes us about 15 minutes usually. And this is where we'll tack on our School Routine...as soon as I figure that out...for now they just run off and play.

One of the things that I like about not having a strict academic focus is that on good days sometimes this morning routine can take hours. If after breakfast the kids run off to the playroom and they are all playing nicely and interacting appropriately I'm not going to interrupt them to go upstairs and get dressed. If when we're upstairs they start building a massive train track, or playing with the doll house, or racing cars around then I'm going to interrupt them to go back downstairs. I just enjoy that they're getting along and learning so much more than I could hope to teach them by sticking to my schedule.

The Evening Routine: this one is written down upstairs and Peanut can read it (although he just has it memorized now), but it's helpful to have it up on the wall because the kids know it is there and they want to follow it and so it's built in accountability for the grown ups who may just want to chuck each kid toward the closest bed by that point....

We are usually done with dinner by 5:30 and it is utter chaos, madness, yelling, wrestling dad, running about, and making mom insane for the next 45 minutes. On Tuesday and Fridays we bathe the kids, Fridays are for hair washing and so we start that right after supper. The kids each get a nice warm bath with 1:1 attention from a parent and the other parent is downstairs with only two kids. Love bath nights!

By 6:15 or so we start corralling the kids and we clean up the playroom and any escaped toys. The kids are continuing to get better about helping, but we'll work on this a lot too. If it's been the bad kind of chaos then we don't have them clean up, we just shoo them upstairs and we do it ourselves later. Maybe not the best teaching tool, but in the grand scheme of things at this age I don't think it matters at all. Once we're all upstairs this is the routine

Pick up toys, Brush teeth, Put on jammies, read books, pray, SLEEP.

Andrew and I do all this stuff together, by the way. They're his kids too! So we pass the kids back and forth during the pickup, brushing, and jammies. We usually split up for books with one of us taking the boys, and the other taking Boohoo for some extended 1:1 time. They really really like it when we all read together in my bed so I'm trying to fit that in more often. Pickle and Boohoo each sleep in their cribs in their rooms with one of us sitting in the room with Boohoo either until she is all the way asleep or for a very long time.

Peanut sleeps in my bed and isn't always ready for bed at this point. It's about 7:00 now. He's at a weird age nap-wise so sometimes he's ready and sometimes he's not. Right now we're trying out a behavior modification/anti-whining/anti-arguing plan with him where he earns computer time and he uses his computer minutes before bed because he still needs help with that. If he's not ready for bed then we have him do quiet activities and whoever isn't on Boohoo-duty keeps him quietly busy for another hour.

Whew...that was a lot of information. Boring? I hope not. So, those are our daily routines and I have to say that in the last three weeks they've really been working for us. I tried to institute a mid-afternoon routine and it just wasn't working and so I dropped it and we'll just wait to add some schooling to our days. Next Monday I'll hopefully be ready to talk about the Academic Routines!

Sunday Songs

"Growing Young" by Rich Mullins from "The World As Best As I Remember It, Vol 2"


"I've gone so far from my home
I've seen the world and I have known
So many secrets
I wish now I did not know
'Cause they have crept into my heart
They have left it cold and dark
And bleeding
Bleeding and falling apart

And everybody used to tell me big boys don't cry
Well I've been around enough to know that that was the lie
That held back the tears in the eyes of a thousand prodigal sons
Well we are children no more we have sinned and grown old
And our Father still waits and He watches down the road
To see the crying boys come running back to His arms
And be growing young
Growing young

I've seen silver turn to dross
Seen the very best there ever was
And I'll tell you it ain't worth what it costs
And I remember my father's house
What I wouldn't give right now
Just to see him and hear him tell me that he loves me so much

And everybody used to tell me big boys don't cry
Well I've been around enough to know that that was the lie
That held back the tears in the eyes of a thousand prodigal sons
Well we are children no more we have sinned and grown old
And our Father still waits and He watches down the road
To see the crying boys come running back to His arms

And when I thought that I was all alone
It was your voice I heard calling me back home
And I wonder now Lord
What it was that made me wait so long
And what kept You waiting for me all that time
Was Your love stronger than my foolish pride
Will You take me back now take me back and let me be Your child

'Cause I've been broken now I've been saved
I've learned to cry and I've learned how to pray
And I'm learning I'm learning even I can be changed
And everybody used to tell me big boys don't cry
Well I've been around enough to know that that was the lie
That held back the tears in the eyes of a thousand prodigal sons
Well we are children no more we have sinned and grown old
And our Father still waits and He watches down the road
To see the crying boys come running back to His arms
And be growing young
Growing young Growing young"