A morning with my mom.

I spent a wonderful morning with my mom this morning and, true to our natures, food was involved. This is the result:

The best sweet potato muffins I have ever had!






There was just enough sweet potato to give them a beautiful color, great texture and hint of "something different".









Then it was time to try a new recipe for buns. Super combination of flavor, moisture (and yet not too moist), texture and crust.










Yeah, I know, we look just...GREAT in our Saturday-morning-no-make-up-or-hair-do-or-anything-clamotten, but we had a wonderful morning :-).

Proloquo2go on the iPad

Our son has autism and is deaf. He had basically no language, especially expressive language. We have worked with him since he was three months old, trying to teach him sign language. His receptive vocabulary slowly expanded but it had no real meaning for him, let alone a avenue to express himself.

After a long road of ups and down he has for the last two years had the most fantastic teacher and has made incredible progress. No, I won't tell you her name, not just for privacy reasons but I don't want anybody to take her away from David :-)

Anyway, she managed to not only introduce an iPad into David's communication schedule but also found a donor so he can have his very own.

On the iPad she/we loaded Proloquo2go and it gave our son a voice.

It is extremely user friendly with a very easy interface based on pictures with or without words. There is then also an option to let the iPad "voice" what David wrote, e.g. "I want fish movie" (see the video example at the end of the post).



On the main screen is a little icon with Proloquo2go. From there you go into any menu you set up.







This "screen shot" is just one of the menus he can choose from, but it gives you an idea what it looks like. You load whichever icons you want and how many, depending on your/your child's needs. It takes them through a simple and systematic menu to get to their choices.

Clean up - blues and yay's

(I wrote in my "About me" that this blog would at times take you through rabbit holes. This is one of them. Because this blog is for my pleasure and not focused on how many people might read it and bla bla bla, I will at times post things that are personal and not that interesting to others. And slightly confusing.....But it is my rabbit trail. :-) )

Yesterday was a fantastic day! We spent the whole day cleaning up the basement. Although I was a little apprehensive to throw out so many of my things, I was excited about the progress: storing hopes and dreams did not made them happen, it just cluttered my life.

But, this morning some of the elation has been replaced with sadness. I expected a little "clean up remorse" but I feel more than just remorse. I cannot help but to look at my life and have to admit that I am not the person I used to be or wanted to be.

Ok, so here we go: whine, whine, whine! I have just returned from India where I have witnessed people living under sub human conditions and here I am whining about my little life that hasn't panned out the way I had hoped for.

But the feelings are there and the familiar words are not helping. No, I am not experiencing a mid-life crisis. I am just looking at reality. Throwing out so much of my "stuff" is an indication how I have not been able to implement so many of my interests and I find myself at a stage in my professional career I would expect a 20-year old to be. Granted, some of that is because I am unwilling to use, misuse and step on other people in order to advance myself. I have seen and experienced that too many times, people who often have no real skills of their own but are very good at weaseling and politicking their way upward, even setting others up to look dumb. They have learned to compensate for their inadequacies by mastering manipulation. Yuck!!!!

Some other reasons are just life. It is filled with unexpected turns and events you have to adjust to. Having a multiple disabled child has turned our lives upside down and changed everything! Who plans for that? Our oldest is about to graduate from high school and move to a college dorm and the next oldest is only a year away. We would have been at a point in our lives we had talked about years ago, but David's severe disabilities have altered all our plans. And hopes.

And some of the reasons are also my own choices. And I don't like some the choices I have made. Even the ones I didn't make is a way of making choices.

I am not actually at the stage of a 20-year old. I have experiences that are definite not to be ignored, but I have no papers confirming that and I have now chosen to start a new career at a later stage in life.

My goal has as long as I can remember been to get myself in a position where I can help others. Not hand outs which just further indignant dependency, but pulling people up to a level where they can start building their own lives. What I lament is that I am not in a position to do so. Yet.

Cleaning up my basement, and my life, is a good thing. The hardest reality is still better than the sweetest lie because I can work with reality, not with lies. But it still hurts a little. What scares me is the uncertainty. If I have not succeeded by now, what will it take to succeed in the future? Something will need to change or I will just fill up my basement with new hopes and dreams.

Christmas 2010

Christmas Eve.























Christmas morning.

Sleepers that accomodates special needs

Our son has special needs.. One of them is Autism.

We used to have a real struggle keeping his pj's on him at night; he would strip down to nothing and get so cold. Because he is also incontinent, his bed would get wet, icky and cold. Off the shelves sleepers were obviously not a solution because he could just unzip them. Additionally, we needed extra modifications because he also has a feeding tube and cyphosys and we needed easy access so we could change him at night.

I decided to design my own. I made a pattern for a regular body type and then altered the back to allow extra room for the cyphosys, put a long, flexible, nylon zipper in the back and added a small (!!!) and heavily reinforced opening in the front for the feeding tube. That worked!

As the weather got colder, we would first dress him in thermal underwear and then the sleeper over it. However, we live in South Dakota (don't let the "South" part fool you) and in the winter our little house gets much too cold for even this solution so I made some of heavy sweatshirt material. Let's hope that will keep him warm.

Here is how:

I cut the 2 front pieces, the 2 back pieces and 2 sleeves. This picture shows the front, back and the sleeve that has already been stitched together.

Kid's clothing has to always be comfortable, but kids with Autism are a little more sensitive so comfort is key, aesthetics will have to give.



Because the fabric is so thick, I decided to make lapped seams with raw edges. I first serged all the edges, then overlayed the fabric pieces, face to back, and then stitched them down with two rows of narrow zig zag stitches.

This picture shows you the seam on the right and on the wrong side. They are identical.

Make a reinforced opening on the right front panel. The easiest method by far is to create a large button hole. Start with marking a 2 inch opening on the right side of the right front planel about a large handwith from the stoma.








Interface the button hole area on the back side of the front panel and the face side of an additional small piece of fabric.








This is the back side with an additional piece of fabric for reinforcement.











Make a 2" button hole, zig zag 1/4 inch around it and zig zag down the edges. It will look like this. The opening needs to be as unintrusive as possible. Apart from the need to be comfortable, this will prevent them from focusing on it and eventually ripping it. Remember, kids with Autism can get fixated on something and they have nothing else to do all night.....they don't sleep anyway!

This picture shows the backside with the piece of fabric stitched down around the edges.

Stitch the two front panels together.

Now add the zipper. Measure and mark where the zipper will be.












Stitch the back panels together from crotch to mark. You cannot use a lapped seam here.







Fold the fabric back and place the zipper far away enough so the slide cannot catch the fabric. Stitch the zipper. There is no need for a zig zag stitch here because the zipper is not stretchable anyway.

Now your front and back pieces are ready to be assembled and remember to use flat seams.

Close the sleeves and place them in the arm opening. It can be a little challenging to create a lapped seam on the sleeve, so I stitched as far as I could from the arm opening and then the rest starting from the hand opening. Set the sleeve into the arm opening and finish off as flat and comfortable as possible.

Attach a separate piece of fabric on the neckline, fold it around the zipper edge and then fold it double inward, attaching it to the inside.








Finish the sleeve opening and pant leg opening by serging the edge and folding it over. I stitched down the pantleg. Remember, simplicity and comfort is what matters, not aesthetics.

There, the sleeper is done and should only take a day to make. During the winter, I still plan on using the thermal underwear under it but hopefully our little guy will now stay warm.

There is enough room for his cyphosis and not too close to his neck.












The seams are on purpose not lined up to avoid bulk. The neckline is far away enough to give him comfort.








Hi loves his new sleepers and they are keeping him warm. Finally!

In the meanwhile I have to go work on some other projects to get my aesthetic fix: two evening gowns!

Candied cranberries

I love cranberries! And as it turns out, they are really healthy for you too.

Unfortunately, fresh cranberries are only available here for a few months. Last year, I must have panicked as the season came to an end because I bought....well, let's just say a lot of them in the hope to somehow preserve that little bundle of delight. When my husband gave me the "look", the one that required some kind of intelligent answer about what I was planning on doing with all these cranberries, I had to get creative and learned how to preserve them as candied cranberries. I also froze a bunch but learned that for long term freezing they need a little more preparation (like putting them in a freezer container) than just sticking them in the freezer. They lost much of their flavor and got mushy.

The candied cranberries were such a hit that I this year purposely bought some just for that purpose. They taste great in salads and baked items.

I have read so, so, so many ways how different people candy cranberries and I am sure they are all great, but here is how I have had really good luck in keeping a hint of the unique tartness and preserving much of their shape.

Rinse 2 cups of cranberries while you make a simple syrup of 1.5 cups of sugar and 1.5 cup of water. Add the cranberries and turn the heat down until it barely simmers. You want to cook the cranberries but not turn them into a mushy relish. I let them simmer for 40 minutes and then let them cool in the syrup.

The next day, drain the cranberries from the syrup and boil the syrup down to nearly half the amount. Place the cranberries on a pan (I lined the pan with tin foil for easy clean up) and pour the condensed syrup over the cranberries. Place them then in an oven at 300F for 30-40 minutes.

Take them out but leave them in the pan and sit overnight on the counter. Next morning, you can take them out of the syrup and let them dry on a cookie sheet for the day.

If you want to store them, place them in a container and store them in the fridge for up to a month. Might be able to keep longer, but I am not sure and it would never make it than long in my house anyway.

As I said, you can add them as is to your meals or...make your favorite cookies!!

In the name of loyalty

Have you ever met a person who often claims others are being disloyal? I am not a psychiatrist, counselor or have any back ground training in these matters, but it just seems to me that people who are continually hounding others to be “loyal” (meaning do as they deem best) are not concerned about loyalty but are instead controlling people using emotional manipulation.

Just like genuine respect, true loyalty can only be one way. In other words, loyalty is support you give because you have a certain affiliation or connection to a person or organization. Because of this affiliation you make decisions in line with their philosophy or cause. It is putting another need above your own and is independent of other people’s wishes. True loyalty is not a response to a demand; that is fear.

Loyalty is not a code of conduct people can use to force you to make decisions beneficial to their cause. That is emotional manipulation that uses some form of repercussion for not complying with their demands, in this case toxic shaming. When someone tries to make you react based on otherwise being publicly labeled “disloyal”, you are more likely dealing with a controlling person who is using emotional manipulation to achieve their goals. And these goals are often unmet emotional needs you have no responsibility of or control over anyway.

Often, the manipulator has created an image of themselves and their lives (in their own minds and to other people) and this image is scripted based on the dysfunction connected to the unmet emotional needs. This image can also change without you knowing it, all based on which emotional need is ranked highest at a certain moment. Your purpose is similar to a character in a movie whose only reason for existence is to support that image, or story if you like.

As a character in a movie, you are given lines and responses and your response to this role is then measured in “loyalty”. But the loyalty is loyalty to this scripted image, not a cause you chose, and if you do not fully comply, you are shamed as disloyal and without a genuine opportunity to defend yourself.

I find loyalty one of the most admirable traits in a person because loyalty is a voluntary response based on your connection with a person or organization. This connection then leads to a dedication that results in loyalty. That is why loyalty cannot be demanded; if a person is not loyal to a cause, maybe the cause is not in line with the person’s convictions and philosophy and demanding a person shows loyalty is a sham and unrealistic. People doing this are incidentally often themselves not very loyal because the script is more important than the characters forced into it and the rules of engagement change according to the needs.

Toxic shaming is not treating someone with respect but shows I still do not matter as a person. I will no longer play a character in your movie but you are always welcome to join me in life. I cannot demand respect of you, but I can require you to treat me with respect.