My friend Tabitha quit all milk and milk products this week, and she’s had possibly the worst week ever. Tabitha darlin this one’s for you.
Lloyd Bridges as McCroskey, in Airplane!
Autistic brains process sound slower than nonautistic ones.
…researchers discovered what they believe are “signatures of autism” that show a delay in processing individual sounds.
That delay is only a fraction of a second, but when it’s for every sound, the lag time can cascade into a major obstacle in speaking and understanding people, the researchers said.
Imagine if it took a tiny bit longer than normal to understand each syllable. By the end of a whole sentence, you’d be pretty confused.
Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia had 64 autistic children ages 6 to 15 listen through headphones to a series of rapid beeps while under the helmet-like device, which recorded the brain’s response to the sounds. Those brain waves, shown as highlighted areas on an imaging screen, were compared with responses in a group of non-autistic children.
In autistic children, response to each sound was delayed by one-fiftieth of a second.
Yet another reminder to speak slowly and clearly, and to wait for a response. I tend to pile more and more words on, when I don’t think I’m being understood, and in this case it likely just makes it worse!
It’s this one: Vivian, by Ysolda Teague. Curvy cabled goodness.
If I knit it for the size I’d like to be, maybe I’ll be that size by the time I finish? Talk about motivation!
We have mice, or I should say, we have seen evidence of mouse activity. I am very very anti mouse, mostly because they can kill you. Oklahoma is rich with hantavirus loaded mice as we luck out and are the easternmost state for a few species of mouse and the westernmost state for a few other species. We’re a mouse wonderland.
So, as always, my first thought is to live and let live, only somewhere else. We’ve had success with live traps for rats before. We got a little plastic box thing that was supposed to be mouse proof and humane. I was initially skeptical that it would work at all and I was right – the mice were easily able to defeat the trap by turning it upside down. Mice 1 Humans 0.
Round two, the first of the kill traps. We used a good old fashioned snap trap, baited with peanut butter, and met with some signs of success, but no definite deaths. (We have a sprung, but bloodied, trap. Sorry mouse, I really don’t want you to suffer, but I do need you gone. I know you would kill me if I was threatening your babies.) We’ll keep trying that.
And now, round three, the glue trap. Ugh. I feel like that’s so inhumane but frankly I don’t know what else to do. I check it all the time, and as soon as I discover it has caught a mouse I’ll dispatch it posthaste.
Last resort is poison. I don’t want the kids to get into it, and I don’t want the lovely scent of dead mouse permeating my home. I tend to think the whole “go somewhere else to die” thing is wishful thinking.
If anyone has any really great ideas for me please shout out in the comments. We can’t get a cat, our lease prevents it. Although the landlord might wiggle on that, we’ve been here for years…
Today, these are the traits each child has that I am the most thankful for.
Faith: her compassion and her unbelievable energy.
Abby: her calm grace and her amazing artistic creativity.
Bede: his unique developmental timetable and his unvarnished WYSIWYG love.
Gilbert: his inquisitiveness and his goofy sense of humor.
Trixie: her desire to share her world and her ridiculous bullheadedness.
Gloria: her utter love for siblings and her wee smallness.
Ask me next year they may be different! I love you kids!
She looked so cute I had to slideshow it.
more about "G-Lo in ‘motion’", posted with vodpod
I confess, I don’t quite get Buy Nothing Day. It seems to me that the day to buy things would be the day when they are priced the least, rather than some other day when they are priced higher. I think I must be missing something.
The general notion of voluntary simplicity is one I can get behind though, and do.
The Pilgrims that sailed on the Mayflower did not wear the stereotypical black accented with buckles.
Pilgrim adults and children wore bright solid colors since their religion did not object to colorful clothing. They had many dyes so that red, green, beige, burgundy, blue, violet, as well as brown and black were worn.
from Pilgrim Clothing.
This blog post brought to you by someone who would be a right stickler if she ever got to make SCA garb again.
I think it’s time to watch Colonial House, haven’t seen it in several years.
An eternal criticism here. Sean and Gilbert went this week, a bit late. Sean and I have to tag-team Mass because we haven’t found anyplace that can work for Bede. I wonder if we will, or if it will just be how we do it until he’s a bit older.
It’s a difficult thing, autism and quiet pursuits. My Church compels me to go to Mass every Sunday and holy day, and I don’t get there very often anymore. I spent the last dozen times we went as a family in the church parking lot, walking laps with an autistic yelly boy and a (heavy) baby in the sling. There was nowhere for us to go. Bede is too big for the cry room* and lasted in the sanctuary for about 3 minutes.
When we went to Latin Mass at St. John Cantius in Chicago it was gloriously noisy. The whole place was packed, on a regular day in Ordinary Time. There were people waiting in line for confession during Mass, and at least two slightly unhappy babies making noise at all times. We fit right in there. Even with an autistic yelly boy, we’d have been just fine.
But here I just don’t know. I talked with my friend about it a while back, and she suggested a certain church in Midwest City, east of here. Apparently the priest there was open to a “special needs Mass.” I think that’s a really great idea, but we need Mass every week, and we’d much rather be welcomed and included, in a non-intrusive way, than given our own special Mass. Another priest at the church we used to attend told us that the earlier Mass was much noisier than the late morning one we had been attending. It would take some work to get everyone happily out the door in time for a 9AM Mass on the other side of town, but we should probably give it a shot.
It’s difficult. Bede has no social filter and not much language, so when he doesn’t like something he is very loud. And when he does like something he’s loud. He needs an adult giving him all the attention to be able to do something like that, to not bolt, or fling hymnals, take off all his clothes etc. That leaves Sean with five other children, one a ten-month-old. Not feasible, really.
I guess we’ll keep waiting.
*For my readers unfamilliar with the term, a cry room is a small room, usually pretty soundproofed, with a view of Mass and an audio speaker so you can hear the priest. It’s intended for parents and kids under about 3-4, I’d say. I haven’t ever been to a Protestant church but I’m told that usually kids too young to sit relatively quietly through the service are in the nursery. Some Catholic churches have nurserys but it’s far from universal, especially given how many kids Catholics have. It’s certainly not unusual at all to see many, many small children in the church during Mass.
My friend Kelley has an assortment of really beautiful hair accessories in her Etsy shop. She had her first daughter after three sons and I tell you she has been positively BURSTING with girly beribboned flowery goodness.
I plan on a few for Faith and Abby for Christmas. You must go look, I insist!
I’ve been so busy! I had several friends encounter trials last week and I was trying in my small way to be a help. Whew. I think today I have a chance to take a breath.
So!
I’m told some of you thought my brief protected post (now gone) was because I’m pregnant. I’M NOT! Besides, don’t you know I am unable to keep any secret like that for longer than it takes to get to the computer from the bathroom. Gee whiz.
I’m working on Christmas knitting. I may get Sean’s sweater done, but I doubt it. However I am finally, after I think 7 tries, delighted with the project as it stands and look forward to knitting it. I kept trying OPP (what are you implying? that means Other People’s Patterns!) but you know me. I am unable to knit anything as written. So once I committed to having to write the whole thing myself, and did it, I am in love.
Gloria says “Mama!” I know that’s not momentous or anything, but she is the first of my many children to say my ‘name’ as her first word. I am besotted. She’s also standing briefly without support, and eating anything she can get her little mitts on.
Trixie is copying anything that Gilbert does, even when it makes no sense. And tells us “No! I NOT BE QUIET! YOU BE QUIET! SHHH!” I think she is the most like me as a child…
Gilbert is between the world of Little and Big. Four is hard on a four year old. His imaginative play and plot development have exploded in the last month or so, but most days he is upset because he feels too big for the littles and too little for the bigs.
Bede is so delightfully flexible these days! Such a change from the boy he was a year ago or so. When things don’t happen like he wants, he either gets upset and gets over it or, and this is huge, thinks of a solution. It is wonderful. We can watch movies as a family on the television now, among other things.
I planned to tell you of the big girls too but Gloria fell down and wants to nurse. Faith and Abby are both well, and I’ll give details later. Ta!
We got some Rubbermaid shelves today. I got the four-shelf version but now I wish I’d gotten the five-shelf one because I didn’t realize how modular they are. I envision building play structures with another couple-few of these. So sturdy, no tools to put it together, no sharp edges…
Just like our next President, I want a dog.
We kept our neighbor’s Italian Greyhound for the day when we found him on our front porch, shivering, and they weren’t home. His name is Simon, and he’s so sweet and darling. (And fragile, so not the breed for us.) We’re not strangers to dogs – we used to have a Toy Fox Terrier named Gabe. Gabe was my dog when I met Sean, but he never adjusted to the kids. He got weirder and weirder with every added child and now he lives with my parents and their poodle, Monet. We see him at least once a week and he is a much happier little dude over there.
Anyway.
We need someone
Side benefits that would be nice
Of course, all of this is hypothetical since our lease prohibits pets, but we’ll be moving soon. I don’t want a little puppy but I don’t mind an older one, at least 6 months. I think I most want an adult dog though. My first thought is breed rescue then shelter dogs – the only reason those aren’t reversed is because rescue dogs have usually been in a foster home long enough to get a good idea of their temperament.
So what breeds should I look for, in your humble opinions?
I can’t be on the computer today it is too nervewracking.
I’ll offer suggestions instead of issuing demands.
I’ll take a deep breath, and then another.
I’ll only yell if harm is truly imminent.
I’ll remember that there is always time to wait.
I’ll live Now, not Then, or Later.
Jennifer Z and family stopped in on the way home from San Antonio!
Zane and Bede reading.
Hugs!
Bede does the trademark “Zane lean” to Jennifer as Zora wubs Gloria.
They were only here for a few hours and we miss them already. Jennifer has many more pictures at her blog too.
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