Book Review: “Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches”
I was fortunate to receive a copy of “Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches“
It’s not exactly a devotional, but solidly the audience for this book is Christian moms – and I do believe a Christian mom far more conservative than my liberal self! Some of the references about raising girls, homeschooling, and teaching faith were a bit uncomfortable for me, even though there were some gems in there. Take the chapter, “Me Time”, which exhorts women to value their body as it is, post-pregnancy, stretch marks and all. Great stuff, right? And it’s true, that sort of self-value is a Christian tenet I embrace. But on the last page of that chapter, she writes, “As married Christian women, our identity is in our husbands.” I ONE HUNDRED PERCENT disagree with this, I find my own identity in God, and that allows me to be a good partner to my husband.
I did, however, love the chapter ,”Know Your Sheep”, even though it is about having a large brood of children, which I do not. The point of understanding and valuing the different personalities of your children struck home with me.
My opinion of the book has an awful lot of back and forth…cherished moments of motherhood that made me laugh, and highly conservative values that rang false in my image of faith.
That said, the writing is not bad either, but could use some more work. Pacing is very difficult for a new writer (I struggle with it a lot), and there is some unevenness that I believe Mrs. Jankovic will master as she becomes a more experienced writer. I hope she does continue to write as I see a lot of promise there. While her voice is not my cup of tea, I do love to see new writers blossom and grow, and having the courage to publish a first book is a great start.
To sum, this is a good first book, and a nice read for conservative Christian mothers, but I wish Mrs. Jankovic had written to a broader audience.
School, Kids, Progress, and Self-Discovery
Tuesday we had a meeting at school. It was not an IEP – and I drove up in shock to realize we still haven’t actually had one for Zoe. It was a technology assessment, in which we met with an expert from the school district to discuss assisstive technology for Zoe to better communicate.
It was a really good session! We discussed both her strengths and weaknesses, and her learning style, and what would cause a negative reaction from her. It was good to get down to brass tacks, and the woman from the district was organized, clear, and knew her sh-, I mean stuff 
She also clearly emphasized that home was very different than school, and what was done or not done there didn’t have as great an effect as they might think. That said, we came up with ideas and systems that would also help me begin discussions after school with Zoe about her day and lay the groundwork for homework. (She has some now, just reading, but it’s hard to get her to attend to a book.)
What really heartened me, though, was that at the end. We all came to the agreement that we had only been discussing strategies to help Zoe cope, and that we were not really addressing her academics at this point at all. However, everyone at the table who knew her agreed that she was smart – I mean, there was NO doubt in their mind – and the hope was there that if we could just get her on a path to more compliance and better management of expectations and frustrations, that we could move on to academics.
It gives me so much hope to hear that. “Smart” is a word I don’t like anymore, not because my kids have disabilities, but because I’ve realized that like the word “normal”, there is no clear definition of what it means and it’s very leading. I also dislike that “smart” seems to mean “born with it”, and I believe that you can learn (or not learn) anything within the reasonable limits of your intellectual abilities. (For example, I can’t seem to grasp object oriented programming, but oh, how I love calculus. Go figure.)
Not only that, but I believe that learning, can come through reading, which you would think means that I’m keen on getting my kids to read. I am, but I’ve really failed on this one. I am trying so hard, but part of the issue is getting them to sit still through a book – so a 15 minute reading session becomes 40 minutes of me hunting and holding them. Doing what I can, but honestly, part of the dilemma is that I’m so wiped out by days end that a hunt and peck game of book reading sounds like torture to me. Moms, we NEED to take care of ourselves before we had over the reigns of every free moment in our life to the kids.
Ok, I’m done. Wish I had new, great photos of Zoe to share for this post, but I don’t 
A New Baby Guide for Toronto Moms
I remember when I first had Amelia. It reminds me of that comedy routine by, I think, Chris Rock, where he jokes about how you get a 300 page manual with your VCR, but they hand you a baby and wish you on your merry way! I had so many questions for my pediatrician that I could here the sigh in the nurses voice whenever I called – and call I did, every week or more. Not to mention that I was new to the area and had no idea where or how to get what. (One of the blessings from the burden of Amelia’s heart murmur was that staff were happy to refer me to all the resources I needed!)
Toronto real estate agent Heather Hadden, who runs ilovetoronto.com, decided to help. With the help of a new mother, they prepared “Having a Baby in Toronto“, a guide for all expecting mothers and fathers. The chapters cover pregnancy, by trimester, labor & delivery (or, labour & delivery as they write in Canada!), after delivery, child care, and more resources. Information includes helpful things like a prenatal checklist, and a review of daycare services and options. If you are starting a family in Toronto, this is the guide for you! There’s even a link to articles by one of the “Real Mommas” of Toronto.
This post sponsored by ILoveToronto. Opinions are own.
Overwhelmed, Tired, and Drained from Being a Special Needs Mom? Help is Here!
This week’s post is from my friend and client, Stephani McGirr, who not only support special needs parents doing restrictive dieting, but is the mom to a special child herself! Stephani is promoting her new program, “Nourishing the Special Needs Mom, A 5 Week Transformation for Body, Mind & Spirit”, designed to help moms like you feel better about life and recapture the energy they need to help their children thrive!
Does this sound like you? You wake up, not looking forward to the day, stressed about your child’s struggles, and wishing you could go back to bed again? Do you dread school work, IEP meetings, and mealtimes with your child? Do find yourself locking yourself in the bathroom, just to get 5 minutes of peace?
Do you wish you enjoyed your life again?
Imagine if you could wake each day with renewed excitement for life, energized and rejuvenated, thinking clearly, and being grateful and confident that you truly are doing your best – because you’ve decided to take care of yourself first! As a special needs mom, you may be thinking it can’t happen, but I’m here to tell you that it can!
It’s a cycle that can be broken. You can overcome the hamster wheel of exhaustion and overwhelm, and I can show you how. I’m Stephani McGirr from Nourishing Journey, and I know exactly what you are going through. As a mom to 4 kids, 3 girls ages 4, 6, and 9, and a son, 11, who has been diagnosed with Aspergers and ADHD, life was always a struggle with him and we went in circles trying to find the right help. Using dietary intervention, (read my story), we saw amazing results in my son, but I have experienced difficult struggles: exhaustion, overwhelm, despair. Yo-yoing in and out of dietary changes for my kids brought on more pain and stress, and I was ready to give up. We went back to our old habits and routines, but my family paid the price. I had to find a way to integrate these new dietary restrictions without losing my sanity.
“Nourishing the Special Needs Mom – 5 Weeks to Transformation for the Body, Mind & Spirit” is the result of that journey. I’ve created a new support program where we are going to take a step back and focus on YOUR needs, and I will share with you what I did to get through and recover my own mind, body and spirit. It’s all about taking small, do-able steps to build yourself up and create a momentum until you are excited and full of life again! And an energized mom is just what your kids need. I will share with you what and how I changed to support my family, energize myself, and keep on track with interventions for my child.
The moms I work with struggle on two levels: first, with the symptoms and behaviors of their children have and second, the difficulty and stress of changing their family’s diet and lifestyle. Too many of us are tired, worn out, and living in a cloud of fatigue and depression. We love our kids but we don’t love our lives – the stress is taking over, and making difficult choices to help our families is too hard. It doesn’t have to be that way!
If your spirit is broken, if you suffer from fatigue, if you are struggling just to make it through the day, my program can help you! Join me today for the “Nourishing the Special Needs Mom – 5 Weeks to Transformation for the Body, Mind & Spirit” group support program. It’s going to change your world, and we’ll have a whole lot of fun together, too!
Hi folks, Gina here! Stephani has set up this special page for Mom-Blog readers to get the program at the discount price of $67, rather than the full price of $97! In addition, she is offering my readers a bonus 30 minute private consultation – a $40 value!
Once you have registered, please contact Stephani personally to let her know that you came from Mom-Blog so she can send you the link to schedule your personal 30 minunte consultation!
Giveaway: IncredibleScience.com Toys Gift Certificate
Welcome to the return of Giveaway Mondays! This week, we have a special giveaway for all of you science geeks – or who have kids who love to experiment! IncredibleScience.com is giving one of my readers a $20 gift certificate. With science fair and invention festivals just around the corner, this is the perfect time of year to get your child fired up about science.
IncredibleScience.com has been around for 10 years, and brings you exciting experiments for kids to learn and have with. They test run all their products in the classroom first – they only carry the products the kids like! Toys sold here include:
Windmill Generator your child can build!
That’s just a handful of items. I especially loved that this toy store sells “go green science” items, like the windmill generator. Pretty cool!
Giveaway
For your chance to win a $20 gift certficate to IncredibleScience.com, just leave a comment with what sort of experiments your child loves. This is a mandatory entry!
Additional Entries:
For extra entries, please comment with what you have done on the following, and be sure to include the link and your Twitter or Facebook name or email so we can verify.
- Retweet this giveaway: RT @ginabad IncredibleScience.com Gift Certificate for Fun Science Toys!
- Blog about this giveaway
Deadline
This contest will run through 3:00 PM, EST, on Tuesday, January 31, 2012.
Rules
This contest is only open to U.S. residents. All contestants must be over 18 years of age.
Winner
On or within a few days of 1/31/12, I will select a winner at random. Entries will be entered in order and one number will be selected at Randomizer.org. I will then contact the winner and the contest coordinator, who will then require your contact information to coordinate your prize. No information will be stored or used for any other purpose.
Review: “Special Diets for Special Kids, Vol. 1 & 2″
A few weeks ago, I was in my local library and found a copy of Jenny McCarthy’s “Louder Than Words”
If your child is on a special diet, this book is for you. The recipes are not only gluten-free and casein-free, it also has tips for other allergies and diets, for example, if your child is allergic to eggs or you need recipes for the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD).
Not only that, but these recipes are kid-friendly, and they cover everything – from drinks to holiday specials! I’ve barely scratched the surface of the goodies in this book, but I’ve made my first roast chicken, finally cooked arroz con pollo, and everybody loves the meat muffins. A small sampling of the recipes on these almost 400 pages include:
- World’s Easiest Chicken Curry
- Potato Pancakes (Latkes)
- Coconut Quick Bread
- Tropical Muffins
- Chocolate Pudding (really?? awesome!)
My favorite part is that this book also provides information on brands. So when Dr. Lewis writes “small ginger knob” in her recipe list, she also lets you know where you can get this rare item – and the brand. That’s how I discovered Dorot, and a minutes of Googling later, found that Wegman’s carries it. Yahoo!
If all that weren’t enough, the book starts off with scientific evidence for dietary interventions, includes how to get started giving your child a special diet, and ends with an extensive list of resources, from books to online retailers of these foods. There is also a CD included with all the recipes in case you’d prefer to print them out, rather than use the book, so you can keep it clean.
This book is worth every penny, but remember that Future Horizons is giving Mom-Blog readers a special 15% discount if you use the coupon code “MOMBLOG” when purchasing any of their products. Go ahead and give it a try – it is my tool of choice when cooking!
Note: I received a review copy of this book for free, but all opinions are my own. I am an affiliate of Future Horizons and receive a small amount of compensation for any sales made using the promotional code provided. You can use the code MOMBLOG when ordering books or other materials – or even conference registrations – to receive 15% off plus free shipping in the continental US.
Little Girls, BIG Deal!
by admin on January 19, 2012
in special needs
I have some news to share about Zoe’s progress…well, really about both my girls. This is the kind of news that parents of special needs kids really relate to, that is, though it doesn’t sound like a whole lot of beans, I cried over it.
Amelia and Zoe both had their best days ever at school. Amelia actually did work and did it well, and Zoe weathered changes and the standard routine beautifully. She attended to do “work” tasks for 15 and 20 minutes respectively, which is a lot for any kindergartener!
Later, she came downstairs in her nightgown…second night in a row. I can count on one hand how many times she’s put upper body clothes on herself since she stopped wearing shirts indoors 3 or so years ago, so this is awesome.
But NONE of that is the big news. This is the big news:
What you don’t know about this picture is that the girls have on nightgowns from the same Disney princess series, which would be insignificant, except that when Zoe and Amelia came downstairs in their jammies, Zoe was wearing the blue gown and carrying the pink one. She then gave it to Amelia. I turned my head. “I think she wants you to wear it, honey. Is that right, Zoe?”
In response, Zoe went to Amelia and started to pull up her jammie top – so they could wear matching nightgowns.
My mind WAS SPINNING and I started crying. Do you know the sheer magnitude of what she’d need to cogitate to get to this? First, the gowns are matching – but not quite. They have different straps, bows, characters, and colors, but the same fabric. Then she had to have the idea that she’d like that girl she lives with and sometimes fights with but also plays with – her sister – to share something symbolic together. Then she’d need to realize that she could actually give Amelia the gown and nudge her to wear it.
I’ve lost count of how many individual mental transactions of subtly that is, but it’s a goodly number, and hence, my tears. Honestly, I’ve never seen Zoe do something that complex that involved someone else in a valuable way.
I will tell you that as far as the biomedical stuff, we’ve made some changes (goodbye Rice Dream, with your phantom glutens), we’ve been more consistent with base daily vitamins (90% of the time for both girls), and we’ve been doing a parasite cleanse since January 5th. Are these things helping, or are the kids progressing on their own? This is the trick when you’re doing biomedical and you don’t see Earth-shattering changes. I’m sure things could be explained away with maturity or consistency, or other changes. I didn’t mention that part of what Amelia did today was some excellent reading, because I’ve really put it to her to do sight words and read sentences and read a “just right” 4-6 page book from school…at least one of those things or more, almost every night since the year started. So reading improvement could just be that.
Or maybe it’s taken this long to see results, or maybe we are doing more after countless December infractions on the diet. I don’t know, and I hope it’s the diet so we can go further, but tonight, I don’t care.
I’m on top of the world.
Down for SOPA Strike Tomorrow…
On Jan 24th, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill – PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House – to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity. We need internet companies to follow Reddit’s lead and stand up for the web, as we internet users are doing every day.
On Jan 18th, a number of places will strike in protest – including Mom-Blog.com. You’ll be redirected towards the strike site for that one day. Peace out, my friends, keep the Internet safe from government intervention!
Sign Petition to Fight Hospital Denying Transplant to Developmentally Disabled Child
by admin on January 13, 2012
in disability
They are denying it BECAUSE she is disabled…even though her parents want, and understand the risks and the post-treatment, CHOP will allow this little girl to die because she does not meet some boards image of a quality of life. Read the article here:
http://www.wolfhirschhorn.org/2012/01/amelia/brick-walls/
Learn more about Amelia’s condition at:
http://www.wolfhirschhorn.org/
Sign the petition for CHOP here:
This is not an isolated incident, but a nationwide policy, so you can sign another to change that here:
And, yes, I did get chills when I read the child’s name was Amelia. Kudos to Amelia’s parent for fighting for their baby. Thanks and gratitude for the 2 disabled angels in my life that have brought me untold joy and change for the better beyond my wildest imaginings.
Before you go say something like how this is something we can choose for others, I ask you, where is the slippery slope? Where is the line of what’s an “acceptable” level of mental ability? Who gets to make that decisions, because I seriously doubt I’d take that decision by almost any of our current crop of elected (ahem) officials, given their complete lack of competence.
Good year, bad year?
Well, it’s ALREADY been a helluva of a year…but I’m going to move away from that frame of mind. I’m going to CHOOSE that 2012 will be as good as or better than 2011. The reason I’m convinced that 2011 was a great year is because the last few months of it were wonderful. We were blessed abundantly on all angles, and though I was kind of bored by the spectacle of Christmas, it was still a good one.
But WAIT! Before you get all pissy at me (yes, I know you will, because I know lots of people who would rather forget 2011 ever existed), let me state that as I sat down to think about it, 2011 had plenty of issues of it’s own. Remember, for example, the strife and suffering (and untold nights of crying to get Zoe settled into kindergarten? What about the whole angry-mama episodes of getting Zoe and Amelia into summer camp?
What about Zoe’s new thing, self-biting, a new behavior? Or the pure hell of figuring out how to do this stupid gluten-free, casein-free diet, and about a billion and one setbacks on it? Or Chris finally landing a full time, awesome job after 3 solid years of searching, only to discover fraud and criminality and untold amounts of politics there?
So, 2011 ended well, but is that a perspective issue? Is there some reason we compartmentalize the years? When I look back, I have to say that 2008 was a craptastic year, because 2 major bad things happened – which means you know where I stand on my opinion of 2001.
2012 will be a good year. Slow start, yes, but lots of exciting things on the horizon, and really, when you look back, it’s the GOOD you remember. Peace out, folks!
And yes it is Amelia’s birthday but we are SO not ready for that yet. Really dropped this year, baby, I’m sorry! Anyway, here she is opening up a christmas gift:
