Why We Love The Tuttle Twins

I know. Long time no post. I’ll talk about that later. For now, I want to share with you the BEST thing I’ve found in teaching children about finance, freedom, money management, and entrepreneurship – The Tuttle Twins books! They’re cute stories following the adventures of twins Ethan and Emily Tuttle as they navigate their world, learning about liberty and finance along the way.

We’ve been reading these for about four years now, and my children absolutely love them. We use them as launching points to discuss society, freedom, responsibility, kindness, self-reliance, and finance, and the conversations are rich and rewarding. You’ll love seeing your little ones faces get that ‘mind-blown’ look when they encounter one of the life truths Emily and Ethan discover!

Ethan and Emily are 9 years old at the start of the books, and while showing a bit of rivalry are certainly not mean or rude to each other. In fact, they often act as each others biggest cheerleaders. It’s so nice to see a pleasant sibling relationship in modern books!

Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle are kind and involved, as is their extended family and the many friends and teachers in the kids world.

But all is not always perfect as there are bad guys galore! In facing down these bad guys (which are sometimes situations, not people), the twins learn valuable skills of organization, bravery, public speaking, grassroots activism, kindness, family unity and strength, and community.

In short, I can’t praise these books enough! However, since I can’t resist saying more, please read on for more detail about everything the Tuttle Twins has to offer.

The Books

The Law

The series starts with the book “The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law”, and introduces the Tuttle Twin characters – and the ideas of Frederic Bastiat, who wrote “The Law”. Each Tuttle Twin book is based on an economic (or liberty-minded) book or principle, and thus introduces the parents to concepts and books even they might not have yet read! Be aware – after reading this book, my kids decided to start questioning the ‘law’ of our home! That insurrection didn’t last long, but I think it still festers in their little hearts.

The Pencil

The second book is “The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil” and is based on the classic essay “I, Pencil” by Leonard Read. The twins and their classmates learn everything involved in making a pencil, and how nobody really knows how to do it! My boys were blown away at the idea of everything that is involved in making a pencil. They had no idea creation was such an ordeal!

The Creature

Third is “The Tuttle Twins and the Creature from Jekyll Island”, and it is based on the classic “The Creature from Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin. (If you’ve ever wondered why our country is in such dire financial straights, there’s some excellent insights about that in this book!) BONUS! Right now, this book is on sale! Use the code CREATURE at checkout to buy this at just $2.99!

The Food Trucks

Fourth is “The Tuttle Twins and the Food Truck Fiasco”, using key concepts from the classic “Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt. See what the Twins learn about crony capitalism as they help food trucks battle the government!

The Road

Fifth in the series is “The Tuttle Twins and the Road to Surfdom”, based on the ideas in F.A. Hayek’s book “The Road to Serfdom”. The twins discover that sometimes help is a hindrance, and that unintended consequences can be brutal.

The Golden Rule

Sixth is “The Tuttle Twins and the Golden Rule”. The Golden Rule isn’t often considered strictly a freedom and financial principle, but as a guide for how to approach freedom and money it can’t be beat! The Golden Rule makes a lovely life in both relationships and money. This book really revved up bedtime! My kids got upset for the kids in the book, took sides, and became completely stumped by the ending…before acknowledging being kind is the right way to approach people. Talk about total engagement!

The Circus

The twins visit the circus and tackle the ideas of entitlement and consumerism in “The Tuttle Twins and the Search for Atlas”, the seventh book in the series. This incorporates the ideas espoused by Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged”. (I’m seeing a LOT of this playing out in our world right now!) We may need to re-read this book again; my children haven’t seemed to snap out of their feelings of entitlement in our family! Ha!

The Theater

After all this economic and freedom foundation, the twins decide they shouldn’t work for someone else and determine to become entrepreneurs in “The Tuttle Twins and their Spectacular Show Business”! This eighth book in the series is a great story of how the twins learn to become business owners, solving problems and succeeding with a little guidance (and investment) from their elders. After reading this book, my kids haven’t stopped talking about what business they want to start. Over a year later, the boys still brainstorm ‘brother businesses’ they can run. I’m thrilled!

The Future

Next up, the twins explore coercion versus persuasion, and how to work together peacefully, in “The Tuttle Twins and the Fate of the Future”. Murray Rothbard wrote “Anatomy of the State” teaching that the fate of the future relies upon creating a society that works together peacefully, rather than depending upon force.

The Vacation

Homeschooling – and recently forced (ha!) into homeschooling – families will appreciate the tenth book in the series: “The Tuttle Twins and the Education Vacation”. John Taylor Gatto wrote “The Underground History of American Education”, a truly excellent book, upon which this story rests. In their Education Vacation, the twins learn all about what a true, quality education entails as they embark on a new learning adventure with their family.

The Market

The latest book in the series, number 11, is “The Tuttle Twins and the Messed Up Market”. This book introduces the ideas of Ludwig von Mises and his book “Human Action” as the twins decide to find a way to use the profits from their business in a way that benefits their community. They quickly discover that different choices can really influence their entrepreneur market for kids!

The Tuttle Twins Workbooks

To hold you over after reading all these books (although there are 11, they’ll go quickly; these are not long, heavy books – they are for kids, after all!) The author, Connor Boyack, has created PDF workbooks to go along with each book containing word searches, bingo games, and other fun activities that reinforce the lessons of the books.

The Combo Pack

You can buy each book individually, and each PDF individually, if you like, OR you can get them all in a combo pack with free bonuses!

Buy the combo pack (currently at a 35% discount) and receive:

  • all 11 Tuttle Twin books
  • all 11 PDF activity guides
  • a recommended reading list
  • the first few chapters of “Passion-Driven Education”, an education book for parents

This is certainly the best deal you’ll find!

The Tuttle Twins Teen Books

For those who have older kids, never fear! While the other books are geared towards younger children, your teens won’t be bored listening to you read them aloud. However, you can always just jump straight to the TEEN books Connor Boyack has written. They are a set of three Choose Your Own Consequence books expressly written for teen readers!

The first is “The Tuttle Twins and the Hyperinflation Devastation”, which has Ethan and Emily travel to a fictional South American country, where they encounter natural disasters, greed, kindness, government incompetence, self-reliance, and high-pressure decision making. There are 5 potential endings to this book, but each ending has many paths. It took us over a month of bedtime reading to get through all the potential options! My kids couldn’t get enough of this adventure; every night they asked for more and more ‘choices’ as I read to them.

We haven’t yet read the next two teen books: “The Tuttle Twins and the Little Pink House”, touching on eminent domain, with 10 possible endings, and “The Tuttle Twins and the Case of the Broken Window”, where a game-winning home run causes tons of trouble and 9 possible endings. I’m sure they will be amazing books, though, based on the previous 12 books and workbooks we have read!

Free Market Curriculum

Oh! The fun doesn’t stop there! Many people expressed a desire to go beyond gentle introduction of these principles and delve in to determined study. Consequently, Connor created an additional curriculum for that purpose! Designed for both elementary and older children, the “Free Market Rules” Curriculum teaches economics in a fun and engaging way. I LOVE this curriculum for my kids, and it is very user friendly.

Tuttle Tales Game

Connor didn’t stop there. He recently created a card “game” that is actually more of a conversation starter for a fun family evening. Using cards with characters, settings, and situations, tell a Tuttle Twin story of your own with the Tuttle Tales Family Collaborative Story Game.

My Verdict

To sum up, the Tuttle Twins products are top notch, entertaining, and educational. With the often offered discounts, they’re don’t have to be expensive. Kids love the stories and discover their budding business skills. What’s not to love??

Therefore, I recommend you buy these books immediately. Buy them all! Don’t forget the activity books and the game, too! Additionally, don’t forget the curriculum – you won’t go wrong with that!

Do I sound overly excited? Well, I am! My family has loved these books for many years. I have recommended them to many, many people…long before I knew I could sign up to be an affiliate and make some money for my recommendations!

Since COVID stole my job in March, and I currently don’t have an income, I’m now recommending these books as an affiliate. I hope my recommendation made you excited about these awesome books! If it did, I hope you’ll buy them through the links on this page. It won’t cost you a dime but I get a little financial help that way.

Even if you’re a big ol’ meanie and won’t click on my links, I still hope you buy these books. They’re just that good.

(Because I was trying to make my SEO analysis happy, I wrote that last bit the way I did. I know I sound like a made for TV product salesperson! “But wait…there’s more!” HA! SEO guidelines are tricky, and I ran out of ways to edit the post to turn all the little buttons green. It’s so hokey I cringe. Whatever. My posts need to pop if I’m ever going to start making money here! Thanks for laughing with me and not at me over this.)

The Incredible Vanishing Woman

I wrote almost all of this post back on January 29, 2018. It needed some editing and and good conclusion, and somehow I never got around to doing that. So here is what I wrote in January; everything since then will be tacked on to the end. Oh, and…Hello again!!!

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Some of my more observant regular readers (wait…do I still have any of those?) will have noticed that I haven’t exactly been around much lately. “Lately” meaning “for the last two years”, of course.

There have been some amazingly good reasons why I’ve not written, but they’re almost all extremely serious and even traumatic. Therefore, the longer I went without writing about them, the more odd it felt to try and go back in time to say “oh, by the way, this wretched, awful thing happened a year ago”.

Sadly, our lives appear to have taken up residence in the valley the Bible speaks of, and with no clue as to when we might begin climbing towards the mountain tops (or even just out of the hole) I feel it necessary to just dive right back in to writing. There will never be a good time to ease back in to this blog of mine, and I am pretty sure writing is a form of sanity saving for me. I kind of need to do this.

So I’m sorry if this is a bit of a downer post, but, if I can live it I’m sure you can survive reading it!

Picking the story up it seems easier to just jump right in chronologically, rather than trying to rank each event in order of trauma. Here goes:

When we last left our heroine, she had been injured at work and was incapable of typing. Therapy hadn’t helped and had increased her pain. She had been ‘done in’ by papier mache, and was getting nothing done around her house. She was in the middle of a MCAD reaction that had lasted for months, stumping every doctor she visited. Little did she know, her troubles were only beginning…

Sorry. Couldn’t resist trying to inject some  humor into all of this.

Anyway, yes, my hand and wrist were killing me, and I was covered in a rash. I eventually completely stumped 5 doctors, 2 pathologists, and 7 nurses with that rash. No one could figure out what it was! I had 3 biopsies done and the pathologists couldn’t figure out what was causing the rash.

Duh. Mast Cell Activation Disorder was causing the rash, folks.

Meanwhile, I’d had my hand checked out. The doctors finally learned I had extreme carpal tunnel in my wrist, requiring surgery. Great.

Oh, and almost on my way out the door from the appointment where I scheduled that surgery my orthopedist nonchalantly threw out at me, “You know you have this other thing going on, right?”

No. No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t.

Turns out I had carpal tunnel that was a repetitive strain injury from work and also was showing incredibly early signs of a rare disease (OF COURSE) in my right wrist called Kienbock’s Disesase. That means a bone in my right wrist is dying and no one knows why.

Yeah. That’s fun.

Even more fun was my massive MCAD reaction in January 2017. See, I’d spoken to someone who had a clue about hormones and she had said it sounded like my hormones were a bit of a mess and I should get them tested.

So, I did.

And, they were.

I had crazy amounts of testosterone, estrogen, and cortisone, and almost zero progesterone.

Mama wasn’t a happy person, y’all.

I was so unhappy, in fact, that when talking with the hormone doctor I said “please, for the love of God, fix me!” and she suggested some OTC natural hormone fixers and I said “thank you” and bought them and opened the hatch and just swallowed the suckers…without even sparing a moments consideration to the sheer folly of someone with my medical history of food and chemical reactions not carefully investigating and trialing new ingredients.

Yep. Two days after I began taking the hormones I was in the ER with such excruciating GI pain I could hardly move or breathe. The ER doctors were so scared of messing with someone with MCAD that they basically gave me some acetaminophen, some fluids, some very expressively nice commiseration faces, and sent me home…still in pain, still reacting, still feeling like I was about to die.

I honestly don’t remember a lot from last January. The pain was constant and overwhelming. At one point I went to my GP for help. He actually sent a nurse in to tell me that I am too complicated a patient and he will no longer treat me. Isn’t that special?

I also decided to try some ibuprofen to perhaps help with the inflammation I was experiencing. Within hours of taking two ibuprofen I was back in the ER with worsened symptoms. Clearly, ibuprofen is a trigger for me, too.

That ER visit actually had me almost attack an ER doctor, by the way. It was three weeks after the pain had started, and the man actually had the audacity to accusingly say to me “Well, I think it’s clear what’s going on. Look at you! Your breathing is shallow and panicky. You’re incredibly anxious. What’s been going on in your life that has you this stressed?”

(Pardon me while I let my language lapse here) “What’s going on to make me so anxious and stressed? How about the fact that I’m **** reacting and in terrible **** pain and no one will **** help me and I’ve been feeling like I’m going to **** die for the last three weeks with all of you useless, incompetent, incredibly STUPID **** DOCTORS telling me to go away because you’re either to **** nutless and scared to help me, too **** stupid to help me, or too downright audaciously cruel and evil to look beyond your own ego to find answers, you disgusting son of a *****!!”

And that man gave me a lorazepam, which is a benzodiazepam (a highly addictive medication that helps with anxiety and extreme stress and is also often given to MCAD patients as a rescue medication) and that one single dose of lorazepam stopped my MCAD reaction in its tracks…and made me completely forget over a week of my life.

Darrel has receipts proving we took the car in for repairs that week and had a rental car for about 3.5 days. To this day I am convinced he is lying because I have zero memory of that. None. It didn’t happen. I remember NOTHING from that week.

It’s terrifying.

Oh, and while all this was going on between October and January, we sold my old house in Houston that we had been renting out at a nice little profit every month so we could build a barn for the goats and rabbits we had started raising. We made a sweet chunk of change off the sale…right before I was kicked out of work for 9 months.

Then, from October onward, we had $1,500 in a roof repair, $2,400 in a heating unit repair, $2,000 in car repair for my car and another $750 for Darrel’s car, and a couple other large bills that hit that I can’t remember right now. (Are you reading this and feeling your lip curl up, your eyebrows raise, and a desire to scream “Seriously? Are you kidding me?” right now? Good. Because that’s about how we felt about it all, too.)

In all we were left with $8,500 to build the barn. Not enough to hire someone to do it, but enough to get the bare bones of the structure up if we did the work ourselves.

And then I did our taxes. We owed the IRS – – – wait for it – – – I’m not even kidding here – – – $9,000.

Seriously. We wondered where the cameras were. Was this for real?? Yes. Yes, it was.

Oh! And back around the time my right hand became useless, Darrel’s old Army injury came roaring back with a vengeance. This time I insisted he skip the VA and go see a doctor that wasn’t a part of socialized medicine, and for the first time in 20 years, Darrel found an answer that wasn’t “Stop faking it, you slacker…this is all in your head because you’re lazy and don’t want to work!”

No kidding. That’s what the Army and VA doctors had told my husband for over 20 years.

Turns out he has major nerve damage in his right knee. Yay! We have an answer!

Boo, though, because there isn’t much that can be done. Darrel has been seeing a pain management specialist since then, taking extreme amounts of pain meds just to get through the day. She’s diligent, though, and keeps trying to find the best things to help him with pain while not hindering quality of life. It’s the best he’s had so far, it just sucks to live through.

Meanwhile, my parents had been nagging me about getting Jed’s eyes checked. They said he often complained about his right eye. Since he NEVER said one word to me about his right eye, I assumed he was “milking” Grandma and PopPop for sympathy. To shut them up, I finally took him to the eye doctor, where we learned he has amblyopia in his right eye.

Well, make me look foolish.

It’s “lazy eye”, but not the kind where the eye physically aims in any direction. It’s lazy eye where HIS EYE DOESN’T WORK. AT ALL.

So we spent a few months putting an eye patch on his left eye to force his right eye to work, and I’m pleased to report that his right eye now is correctable to 20/20 with glasses (which he will need for the rest of his life).

Even telling him he was like a pirate didn’t make him enjoy the patching; at least he didn’t give us too much trouble about it! (And why did he only ever tell my Mom and Dad about this? I felt like dirt when the doctor gave us the diagnosis! Ugh!)

So. We’ve now dealt with needing surgery for carpal tunnel for me, needing a surgery for this Kienbock’s, Darrel’s knee being almost useless and causing him extreme pain, using up ALL the profits from the sale of my house for random crap that happened while I was out of work for (as it turned out) 9 months, watching my house turn into a junkyard because I couldn’t DO anything in that time, finding out my hormones are literally crazy-making, reacting to the hormones I take to fix that, being tossed in the ER twice in January and forgetting half the month thanks to medication, and turning Jed into a pirate to force his eye to stop being so lazy! Oh, and no barn. I had rabbits on my back porch and goats in my backyard.

On the plus side, in February I found an allergist who gave me an immunosuppressant ointment and that ended the 9 month long MCAD rash from hell. Thank you, God! He also prescribed some Mast Cell stabilizing medicines for me to try, and, desperate to not have another reaction like January or rash like July-February, I started taking them all. Ah…

Then, at the end of February, I had my first surgery for carpal tunnel. Surgery as a MCAD person is not so easy, y’all. I was scared. Turned out, it was okay. Apparently propofol is an okay drug to use on me for surgery. Yay!

A few weeks after that, I had surgery for the Kienbock’s. They cut some bone out of my arm and sent me on my way.

Two months after that, I was back to work! In the end, I had worn a wrist immobilizer on my dominant hand for 9 months.

Why yes, my house is an absolute, one-step-away-from-Hoarders disastrous mess, thank you very much. Mama not being able to use her dominant hand at all for almost a year means my family and I now live like pigs. Joy.

On the plus side, since my house was such a disaster I had no choice but to ‘outsource’ the kiddos birthday party last summer. We had a rock climbing party at a local outdoorsy shop with a rock wall and it was a rather large success. All the kids liked it, and a couple of the moms actually asked for my cake recipe for the cake I’d made the boys!

It was expensive, but knowing I didn’t have to frantically rush about trying to clean the house was well worth it.

But guess what happened from February until July?

I GAINED BACK EVERY POUND OF THE WEIGHT I LOST ON THE ELIMINATION DIET FOR ZAC.

EVERY. HORRIBLE. POUND.

I begged the allergist, the one who said he had experience with Mast Cell patients, to help me understand. “If I lost all the weight because my mast cells were stabilized from nursing Zac and I stopped eating trigger foods, then if I’m taking medication that should stabilize my mast cells and I’m not eating trigger foods, shouldn’t my weight stay the same, or even drop? Why am I gaining weight like this when nothing has changed in my diet??”

His answer? “Oh, I don’t really know much about that. Sorry.”

Great.

So after years of finally feeling like I was living in the body that made me feel like ME, I turned 40 last summer the same obese woman I was my whole adult life.

And I hate it.

Then, in August, I learned that one of the mast cell stabilizing drugs he’d prescribed is NOTORIOUS for causing extreme weight gain in those who take it. Like 50-60 pounds in a few months weight gain.

Aside from the weight gain, I felt sluggish, low-energy, brain-foggy, had poor memory and just generally felt low grade icky the whole time I was on mast cell meds. Finding out my size 18 pants were the result of those meds? Yeah…

I stopped taking all my mast cell stabilizing meds. Clearly, none of my doctors has a clue. Sadly, that medicine cessation hasn’t resulted in a single pound being lost.

This July I fought for and received another diagnosis for Jed. He has dysgraphia. So we increased OT for him to help train his brain to write letters correctly. On the other hand, both boys tested out of some therapy, so we only have to go to town two days a week for their therapies now. Hallelujah!

All this summer I was getting fatter by the minute, fighting to help Jed, and trying to get my house in order while working as much as I could. I didn’t accomplish much on the house front, so it’s still a mess. However, I started to feel motivated towards writing in the blog again. I actually enrolled in the Amazon affiliate program; something I had tried to do years earlier but was prohibited from doing due to tax laws in Arkansas. Those laws had changed last year, so I was now able to enroll. I did, thinking I would get all those links added to my already posted posts, and then, when I started writing currently, the affiliate commissions would start to trickle in! I was very excited!

In August, school started again (we homeschool but are part of Classical Conversations, so our community day every week started in August) and we were also trialing chlorine on the boys via swim lessons!

I believe I mentioned my distress over not teaching my boys to swim prior to this, considering I had been on the swim team in high school. We just couldn’t risk another reaction to a chemical when we were so desperate to get food into Zac’s diet. Finally, though, at 5 years old, we could risk it. He had enough foods; now we needed to make sure he would not drown! The boys loved swimming and only had mild skin reactions to the chlorine, so we were thrilled they wouldn’t drown and we could actually take them swimming from now on.

Sadly, in September my mom totally  dropped the ball on homeschool work for the boys during the first week of the month while I was working. We ended up being a week behind barely two weeks into the school year, and I was ticked off! I had to work super hard and drive the boys nuts trying to get back on track, and in mid-September, in a fit of frustration at Mom, I bid to work nothing but weekends in October so she wouldn’t put us behind on schoolwork again.

I was all, “Fine. I guess I won’t ever spend a weekend at home with my husband and children ever again, just because Mom can’t keep up with my lesson plans. Whatever.”

In early October, I worked the first ten days of the month and then was going to be home for the rest of the month except for a day or two on each weekend. I arrived home early on the afternoon of the 11th, and that night, around 9:00pm, Mom called me.

She was in the hospital and just wanted me to know.

You know what? Forget it. I’m not going to talk about this part of my story in this post. This deserves its own BOOK, let alone its own post.

The short of it is that my wonderful Mother ended up being diagnosed with cancer. She passed away on November 3rd.

I can still barely function from the loss. In case I can’t bring myself to write more about this later, I want to state for the record that my heart is broken and I don’t know what to do with myself right now. I’m hanging on by a thread and just trying to breathe through each day.

And I feel incredibly guilty for being mad at Mom in September for falling behind on schoolwork. I didn’t know she had cancer, then, but still. I feel guilty for it.

I miss my Mom every single day and am still in shock that she is gone. I suspect I have some PTSD from watching her die. Her death was simultaneously beautifully moving and also traumatic.

But I can’t get into that any more than this right now or I’ll curl into a ball and cry. So to finish bringing the story up to current time (because, yes, more crap happened since November 3rd, can you believe?) we dealt with all the stuff that happens after someone you love enormously dies, and Darrel and the boys and I basically moved in with my Daddy through November.

Every year my Nana, Mom and I would make Thanksgiving dinner. This year, I had to make it all by myself.

God, I’m going to cry again.

So the last weekend of November I had two days worth of work to do. TWO. DAYS. And then I had 3 days of work in December and that was all I had to do until 2018 began.

Seriously. 5 days worth of work.

Now, keep in mind, we still don’t have a barn, our bills are still killing us, and I had hardly worked in October because of the hospital and hadn’t worked at all in November because of Mom dying.

I felt torn. I knew I wasn’t really ready to go back to work but our health insurance is through me; I needed to work enough to pay the premiums for that. And this was 2 little days of me working in the galley. It doesn’t get much easier than this for Flight Attendants.

So I went to work. I made it through the first day only because we were delayed 4 hours and I was able to cry about Mom to my crew members before we even boarded the plane. We finished day 1 and I went to the crew room for minimum layover sleep. I woke up the next morning, got my spit bath in the sink and got dressed for work, made myself some breakfast, did some quick shopping at the employee craft show they do every year before Christmas, and started heading for the plane.

I was carrying all the cards people had sent for Mom’s funeral with me in a Chipotle bag. My thinking was that I could transfer everyone’s name and address into the little book the funeral home gave us so that later on I could just carry that so I could write thank you cards to all who stepped up to offer condolences.

Darrel called me on the phone as I walked through the airport and informed me that Jed had woken up before Daddy that morning, gotten Mom’s phone and called Darrel. “Daddy,” he’d said, “When can we go home? I don’t want to live at PopPop’s house any more.”

And I crumbled.

See, I’d already failed my aunt in part of our family drama; I’d hardly seen my husband in a month, so I felt I was failing my husband; I was trying to take care of Daddy because Mom had made me promise to take care of him but I felt like I was failing in that. which means I was failing Daddy AND Mom; and here I am failing my children, too, which really means I’m failing Mom if I’m failing my husband and children; plus, I’ve hardly been working, so I’m failing work, too.

So the floodgates are about to open, and the Chipotle bag with all the sympathy cards for Mom ripped open and spilled all over the floor of the airport.

Some random, kind passenger stopped and helped me gather them all up, and no sooner had she walked off than two building/facilities maintenance guys standing nearby swooped in saying “We can fix that for ya!” and grabbed the Chipotle bag and started duct-taping the sides.

The one guy saw one of my Mom’s funeral memorial cards and patted me on the back. “I see what you’ve got going on here. I know what that’s like. It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

And that kindness being heaped on top of my feelings of abject misery and total failure turned me into a human crying machine. I started crying and didn’t stop for over three hours.

My airline had to come and remove me from the flight and replace me with another Flight Attendant. To their credit, the airline was incredibly kind and wonderful about it all. They flew me home that afternoon and said not to come back to work until January, and they bought my trip in December so I’d still get some pay. Unbelievably kind.

Plus, they let me cry on their shoulders for three hours until I could stop crying. That was pretty nice of them, too.

They also suggested I talk to the EAP (Employee Assistance Program). I did, and the lovely lady there sent me a list of counselors in my area that work within their benefit program. Turns out, mental health care isn’t very highly covered under most insurance programs, but if you melt down at work, THEIR program is very generous! I now see a counselor for extremely reasonable out of pocket expenses.

You’d think that would be enough, right? But wait…there’s more! A couple weeks after my epic meltdown at work, I took a step backwards in the hallway one night and my foot landed on a Nerf gun. In the fantastic fall that followed, my leg did things it isn’t supposed to do and I ended up face down on the ground.

That’s when I learned that I have cell phone signal in the hallway…but not when I’m on the floor.

Darrel wasn’t home. He was rescuing my Daddy from a flat tire out in the country.

It took me 5 minutes before I could bear simply rolling over and sitting up. Another 15 minutes before I could try standing. Then I hopped to the dining room and had Jed bring me an ice pack to wrap around my throbbing knee.

I called Darrel then to see if he would stop and bring some crutches home with him, and to please hurry while he was at it.

Long story short, after several visits to the doctor he finally said I could do an MRI or just wait to see if it got better. I said so much of my life is outside of my control and uncertain, let’s just do the MRI to give me an answer. So we performed the MRI and I flew to work that afternoon! I worked two days, came home, and two days later got the news: that Nerf gun fall had torn my meniscus AND torn my ACL.

You got it. Another surgery.

That happened a week and a half ago and I’m still recovering. Still wearing a leg brace and using crutches, though hopefully not for much longer.

Saturday the boys and Darrel and I went to a birthday party for Jed’s best friend at school. I didn’t do much; just hobbled around and sat with an ice bag on my knee for most of the time, but my leg has been killing me ever since.

And both boys turned up with double ear infections Sunday morning, so we missed church again and I, with my gimp knee, and Darrel with his “maybe the flu but maybe just feeling crappy” are having to deal with two little boys with fevers, pain, crying and screaming, and medicine for all of us on crazy hours.

Fun. Fun. Fun.

And now my story is caught up. I feel like I’m in a movie of the week, or a Jerry Springer episode, or some other “Are you kidding me?” kind of situation, but, no, this is really my life.

Oh, and sometime in the last few weeks I got notice from Amazon that my affiliate account was cancelled due to lack of making a single sale in the 6 months since I’d signed up. Oh, well. At least I can sign up again.

I really do want to keep writing, though. This has been an incredibly hard two years. Not writing was legitimate for a while. But I have so much I want to share! There are blog posts and books and pamphlets and such in me just dying to come out, and I have to get back to it.

Besides, I recently got a comment on the blog. No, I have NOT been approving blog comments for almost two years, and I have a gazillion waiting for my attention. Most of them I have not read yet. But for some reason, the one that popped up this week I opened and read, and it blew me away.

A lovely woman named Esther just spent the last few weeks of her time reading my entire blog from beginning to end, and she sent me a comment to tell me that no matter what I’m going through for why I stopped writing, this blog is still a blessing to others. It still helps other families going through these issues, and gives them hope, and helps them navigate the craziness of our weird medical stuff. She thanked me for writing, and said she can’t wait to read what I write next.

That comment was like a breath of the Holy Spirit blowing over me, telling me that I’m still viable.

I didn’t title this post “The Incredible Vanishing Woman” just because I haven’t written on the internet in forever. It’s also because, especially lately, I feel as though *I* am vanishing. Like my spirit and soul are shrinking into nothingness.

How many hits do I have to endure taking for how long? I’ve finally felt as though I’m not strong enough to keep going. Lately, I’ve been crumbling in to myself.

Esther’s comment felt like a warm breeze blowing over me saying “It’s okay. I know the plans I have for you, plans for you to prosper; and even though it doesn’t make sense and the blows seem to keep coming, it’s part of my plan. Hold on, daughter, hold on.”

_________________________

That was where I stopped in January. Pretty warm and fuzzy, right? I should have just posted it.

In any event, in February my physical therapy was going well until about 2 weeks into it. Then I developed Patella Femoral syndrome, which effectively derailed my PT for almost a month. So my knee is getting better, but I’m not as far along as I should be.

I’m back at work, either way.

Also in February, I was telling my therapist about the GP doctor situation and he did an amazing thing. He called some doctors he knows and found me an integrative medicine doctor that would see me!

I visited her and we did a bunch of tests on my hormones, blood sugar, thyroid, etc. The results came back last week and I learned I have Hashimoto’s Disease.

BECAUSE MY LIFE SURELY NEEDS MORE ILLNESS, RIGHT??

We also spent the last two months suffering the weirdest stomach bug I’ve ever heard of with the boys. They’d throw up like crazy for a day, then be fine for 2-3 days, then throw up again. Every time we thought they were better they’d vomit and prove us wrong.

The fact that we were trying to be brave and trial corn when all this started is not comforting. Clearly, the corn trial ceased.

Oh, and why were we crazy enough to trial corn? Because we had finally done an oats trial on Zac, and he had no reactions!

Oats, in case you’ve forgotten, were Zac’s last known FPIES trigger. At 5.5 years old, Zac finally outgrew his FPIES!!

Honestly, I had to force myself to add the exclamation points to the end of that sentence. It was a remarkably anti-climactic reaction in our house to the discovery that FPIES is gone.

See, when I compare FPIES to ALL the other things we’ve uncovered in the last few years that I deal with (that are genetic, so therefore the boys will likely deal with), FPIES just isn’t that hard or scary.

Fellow FPIES families, think for a moment about that statement.

FPIES is one of the most overwhelming, terrifying things I’ve ever dealt with in my life. And now, when my son outgrows it, I’m not jumping for joy and thrilled. I’m more “Meh. Good. One less thing for us to stress and worry over.”

That just seems like a cruel joke.

Truth is, I may just be depressed enough that I can’t jump for joy over the news. And that’s a pretty cruel joke, in and of itself.

I’ll write more about joy later. In the meantime, I’ve now caught this blog up to the current time and can confidently write whenever I darn well feel like it without feeling like there are big, gaping holes in my story.

Thanks for reading my little book, here. Thanks for being a part of our story.

Now let me see if I have enough energy to go moderate two years worth of comments!

Oh, and if you haven’t done so, please sign up for email updates when I post! After this, I hope to share some new recipes and medical stories and you won’t want to miss that!

Injured and Stressed

A week and a half ago I got hurt at work. Again. Only this time it’s my right hand. You know, my dominant one. The one that allows me to do everything I do.

I missed 5 days of work already this month and have to go to the doctor again Monday to see if I can go back this week. Spoiler alert: I can’t.

After over a week of wearing an immobilizing hand/wrist brace, icing my hand every two hours, taking prescription strength (compounded) ibuprofen, and doing almost nothing with my hand, I felt a lot better. No pain! Yay!

The kids Classical Conversations community dress-up day (in lieu of Halloween) is this Tuesday, and they’re supposed to go as their favorite literary or historical figure. Zac wants to be Leonardo da Vinci, and Jed wants to be Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. (We haven’t burst his bubble yet with the truth about Coronado, for the completely lame reason that it took him FOREVER to pick a costume he wanted and we ran out of time to make a different costume. We’ll fill him in on the unsavory truth of Coronado after  his dress-up day.)

An essential part of any costume for Coronado is a conquistador helmet, which, a mere 5 days away from showtime wasn’t something I could find and have delivered in time. Luckily, I found instructions online for how to make one out of papier mache.

My hand was feeling so awesome, I thought “Hey, the doctors said not to do anything strenuous, and not to lift more than 10 pounds, but this is tiny bits of newspaper and glue! I can handle that!” So I took off the wrist brace (glue, you know) and went to town. 45 minutes later I had a pretty decent helmet started, and my wrist hurt like hell. Actually, it hurt worse. A lot worse. But I’m trying to cut down on the cussing I do. Ahem.

Ever since then, the pain is back. Not as bad as it was the first day, but about as bad as it was on my second day of wearing the wrist brace.

From doing papier mache.

Does anyone with half a brain really think I can handle manhandling a bar cart or operating an emergency exit or performing CPR on a passenger right now? Anyone? No, I didn’t think so.

So I’m going to continue to be out of work. Hopefully this week the doctor will actually send me to a specialist to get me started on something akin to therapy or treatment instead of  just “go home, pop these pills and rest and you’ll be fine”, which hasn’t worked at all.

I say hopefully, when really I want to cry at the thought. Does my life really have time to do MORE? I already have to go in to town three days a week for hours of therapy for the boys. Each of those days is a frantic race to get our homeschooling done, get to therapy on time, race to complete errands before the boys are done, race home to try and get dinner on the table on time so bedtime isn’t shot (making the next day miserable for everyone because the boys are tired)…and I fail at all of that more often than not already. Do I seriously want to add MORE therapy – for myself  – to the mix?

No. Let me rephrase that. NO. NONONONONONONONO.

But I need it. I don’t think my hand is going to get better without it. And we can’t survive if I’m not functioning. This week has been miserable.

I can’t cook. I can’t clean. I can’t help the boys with small tasks. I can’t DO anything! And although the boys promised to help me, they didn’t. Not really. Not without reminding. And nagging. And begging. And pleading. And eventually crying. And worse.

And Darrel is coming home from a really rotten work situation every day, having to cook dinner, clean the kitchen, and watch the boys go to bed late every single night. He’s exhausted and stressed.

And with all the extra time it takes me to accomplish everything right now, and how much pain I’m in (remember, it’s not just the hand/wrist; it’s also the rash reaction I’ve had going on from MCAD for FOUR MONTHS) this week, when the boys argued with me about doing schoolwork (because what self-respecting contrary child doesn’t argue daily about doing schoolwork??) I just didn’t have the energy to hold my ground and we are behind. Way behind.

As in, Sunday I made them sit and do THREE DAYS worth of school in one sitting, and we still have TWO days worth of school to do today. You know, in between doctors appointments that are an hour drive apart.

I’m typing this mostly with my left hand. I say mostly because out of habit I reach up and type normally at times and immediately go “OW” and stop again…until the next time I forget and do it again.

So, who knows how long I’ll be gone, both from work and from here. I just can’t do it.

This sucks.

Allergic to Living: Mast Cell Activation Disorder

allergic-to-living-mast-cell-activation-disorder-cradlerockingmama.com

What is Mast Cell Activation Disorder, or MCAD? What does it look like? How do you find out if you have it? How do you treat it?

I’ve mentioned MCAD (Mast Cell Activation Disorder, aka MCAS – or Mast Cell Activation Syndrome) before, and many of my readers are, unfortunately, already all too familiar with this condition. Y’all can run along, now, if you want, because I’d hate to bore you; this post is for the many readers who have written to ask me “What is this MCAD thing you keep mentioning?”

Here’s my unique way of explaining Mast Cell to people. I hope you’ll appreciate that I will attempt to be technically accurate and also funny. Which is hard. Really.

Before I start, I have to say that I am not a doctor and I do not play one on TV. This is my own interpretation of my personal medical condition, and though I always strive for accuracy and truth, I may well have some parts wrong or just not very thorough. Consult your doctor, and don’t take my word for it!

Everyone has Mast Cells. In all my reading I remember seeing the theory that mast cells are necessary for life, as they had yet to discover anyone who didn’t have them. So, cool! Right?

Right. Except for two groups of people: those who have too many  mast cells, and those who have the right number of mast cells…only theirs misbehave.

Too many mast cells is called Mastocytosis, and misbehaving mast cells is called MCAD (or MCAS).

My mast cells are in dire need of a spanking or a time out, because those little…things…misbehave all the time for me!

Well, if mine misbehave, what are mast cells supposed to do?

Simply put, mast cells are a part of the immune system that serve as a warning system and “first responder”. When normal people get a bee sting or some other form of injury, it is their mast cells that turn on their body’s “wee-oo, wee-oo” siren telling all the other systems that there is a problem, and mast cells tend to be proactive in flooding the body with histamine and other chemical goodies to help stabilize things.

Mast cells kind of rock at keeping us, you know, alive.

But when your mast cells misbehave, they wreak havoc.

Imagine if you were just walking down the street and out of nowhere, an ambulance pulls up, the paramedics jump out and grab you, strap you onto a gurney, start an IV, inject you with glucose, secure your neck in a stabilizing collar and shove an oxygen mask on your face.

Would you be shocked? Surprised?

Yeah, I bet you would.

Especially when it is revealed that the paramedics just got confused; you looked like the person they’d been called out to treat. Only, you weren’t that person.

That’s kind of what happens to people with MCAD. Our mast cells just get confused and react to weird stuff at weird times; notably things that are actually not  a problem for our bodies.

So, see, my “triggers” are actually just fine for my body. But my mast cells are all confused and act like they are a problem, which makes  them a “trigger” that is dangerous for my body.

Got it?

So what does MCAD look like?

Not to steal from the autism world, but, if you’ve met one person with MCAD, you’ve met one person with MCAD. The list of symptoms is robustly long, and no two people are going to react exactly the same. My very good friend (the one who helped guide me to a specialist) and I often joke about how our individual diets would kill the other one, and we both have MCAD, and our children both have FPIES. Go figure.

Even better, as I’ve mentioned, some MCAD people are “shockers” and others are “leakers”. Shockers tend to react quickly and life-threateningly to triggers (think anaphylaxis), whereas leakers (like me, so far) just degranulate slowly. As my doctor put it, “MCAD doesn’t affect life expectancy, it just makes your life very, very miserable.”

What is degranulation?

Well, it is a fancy word for “explode”. Here’s a nifty video (and pretty excellent article) of mast cells degranulating. Yep. My mast cells actually explode in my body and release whatever chemical they think my body needs to regulate healing.

Unfortunately, my body wasn’t sick, didn’t need healing, so the “cure” becomes the sickness.

I’ll give you a couple of real life examples to make it clearer. Remember my spinach reaction? Right. Worst pain in my life second only to childbirth. I ate spinach, which is high in histamine and salicylates, and my mast cells went all “Red alert! Red alert! We have an invader! Call out the troops! We must go to war!” giving me a headache that shot straight from the top of my head all the way to my toes, along with body aches, muscle pain, and an overwhelming desire to die…or at least go into a coma until the PAIN WENT AWAY.

Let’s not forget the chronic sinus infections I’ve had my whole adult life. The year I was married to my ex-husband, my sinus infections were so relentless the ENT finally gave up and said the only thing left she could think of was exploratory surgery  to discover the cause of my unending sinus infections. (Sinus infections which almost cost me my job, seeing as how sinus infection for a Flight Attendant equals grounded.) The day my ex walked out, my sinus infections stopped.

For six months, at least.

Clearly, stress is a major trigger for me. Along with heat, cold, anxiety, hormones, many foods, perfumes, chemicals, and who knows what else. (Full body hives? Rashes that stump the pathologist? Being misdiagnosed as bipolar? Welcome to my world.)

Symptoms I’ve had so far include extremely debilitating headaches, body pains, hives, menstrual cycles from hell, depression, anxiety, IgE allergies, diarrhea, sinus infections, upper respiratory infections, fainting when I stand up (POTS), unshakeable weight gain, eye issues (floaters, itching, etc.), low blood pressure, unexplained irritation and anger, lethargy, exhaustion, insomnia, and probably a few other things I am forgetting. Oh, yeah. Brain fog.

In other words, if you’ve got a laundry list of weird stuff that happens to you, even minor things that happen so often you’ve come to think of them as normal and hardly notice them any more, you might have MCAD. 

If you suspect you do, I’d recommend reading Dr. Lawrence Afrin’s book, “Never Bet Against Occam“. When I read it, I lost count of the number of times I thought to myself “Wait, that’s not normal? I’ve had that my whole life!”

How can I find out if I have MCAD?

It’s tricky. Really tricky. My doctor is one of the worlds foremost experts on MCAD and even he said the tests often don’t show a postitive “your mast cells are whacked” response. He actually clarified that he would be willing to run the tests THREE TIMES before pursuing other testing methods, like bone marrow biopsy.

The tests they’ll run will look for things like N-methyl histamine, prostaglandin D2 or 11-beta- prostaglandin F2 alpha, leukotriene E4 and others, but if you’re like me, that’s all Greek.

What I can say is that I went down to the lab after my appointment, and the tech there needed a full half an hour to prep for my immediate testing. She drew about a thousand vials of blood (seriously, I think it was actually 12 vials) which she immediately wrapped in multiple ice packs secured with rubber bands and raced off to a fridge.

Then I had to go pee in a cup wrapped up in ice packs. That was easy. Right.

Then I had to go back to my friends house and prepare for the 24 hour urine test. That meant filling an ice chest with slushy ice, and submerging one specimen container into the ice completely to the rim. Then, for 24 hours, every time I peed I did so into a container that I immediately shoved as far down into the ice as it would go. Once it cooled, I dumped it into the totally submerged container and shoved it back into the ice to keep it cool for the next time I had to pee.

Then I had to haul the ice chest to the lab, put the specimen container with 24 hours worth of pee into a large ziploc bag filled with ice, race it inside, inform them what I was dropping off and hand it over to a tech who raced it immediately to the lab fridge.

Just think; I may get to fly back to Minnesota twice more to go through that. Fun, fun.

Even better? So far most of my test results have come back normal. Except for a couple that were WAY off the charts. As yet, I still don’t know if I have officially gotten my MCAD diagnosis via testing.

My doctor assured me, after meeting with me, that it doesn’t matter what the testing says. He says I’m “classic MCAD” simply based on my clinical evaluation. So he plans to push through as much testing as possible to verify what he already knows is true.

Why go through all that? What can be done for MCAD?

It sure seems like a lot of unpleasantness to go through for a diagnosis, and believe me, I wouldn’t bother if there wasn’t the chance for a solution!

Unlike FPIES, with MCAD there are some things that can help. And for something as complicated as this condition is, you’ll never believe the first drugs they want you to try.

Ready?

Claritin. Zyrtec. Tagamet.

I know, right?

Well, those aren’t THE answer. Those drugs don’t always work, and some patients need something with a little more kick. But the doctors start  with those simple, every day, OTC drugs.

Additionally, strict trigger avoidance is always prescribed.

Of course, I’d rather not be drug dependent my whole life, and my friend has proven that, in some cases, you can be healthy and non-reactive without drugs. She’s entered the world of GAPS, properly fermenting foods (so as not to raise the histamine levels), and strict trigger avoidance; a life I wish to emulate.

However, thanks to this summers reaction from hell that won’t go away, I’m so “reactive” that the current plan is to try and get my system calmed down via drugs, and then work towards weaning off the drugs and on to a more holistic method of regulation.

While keeping a fully stocked medical bag. Just in case.


I hope that helped explain what MCAD is to my uninitiated readers. If you’d like to read more about it, click on any of the many links I included in the post, or click on any of the links down below:

Of course, you can always just google “mast cell activation disorder”. That ought to keep you busy for a while!


Fellow mast cell people, did I do the subject justice? What would you share?

Global FPIES Day 2016

global-fpies-day-2016 cradlerockingmama.comRecently we have decided that, other than oats, it appears Zac may have – finally – outgrown FPIES.

Thank you, God!

We are all thrilled with this. Of course, we have discovered other issues that take the place of FPIES, but are eternally grateful that only oats appear to make Zac vomit uncontrollably and experience other unpleasant symptoms now.

Outgrowing FPIES is a blessing; it’s the “get out of jail free” card every FPIES family dreams of. Because, make no mistake: living with FPIES is very like being imprisoned. No aspect of your family life is unaffected. Knowing your child could become so very sick from even the tiniest trace of a food is terrifying, and to avoid that families change everything they do.

They change their diet.

They change their personal care products.

They change their cleaning products.

They change their homes.

They get rid of their pets.

They sometimes change their jobs.

They lose friends.

They lose family members.

They lose themselves.

They all hope and pray for the strength to keep their children safe, for their finances to survive outrageous monthly grocery bills, for their marriages to survive the stress and upheaval, for good medical care, but most of all, they hope and pray for the day when their child outgrows FPIES and can begin living an unrestricted childhood.

They pray for the day their child can eat a slice of cake at a friends Birthday Party.

They also pray that, while still waiting for their “get out of jail free” card, they have understanding “inmates” to share that time with. Friends, family, doctors and nurses who will get it and be helpful and kind. All too often that doesn’t happen, and for that reason FPIES Global Awareness Day was created.

We are basically out of the FPIES world, now (even as we enter several new special needs worlds), but I look back in amazement at what we went through the first three years of Zac’s life and clearly remember what current FPIES parents are going through. I know. I get it. I’m aware.

So I’m asking for help in spreading the story of FPIES, no longer for my own son, but for those families still surviving that life. Help them find understanding “inmates” in their journey by sharing what this disease is, and how it affects children and families.

First, go here to Find Your 14 Tools to Get Involved on Global FPIES Day and see what you can do to spread the word.

Then, read and share some links on social media.

Here are some links you are more than welcome to share today…and always!

Honoring Global FPIES Day (this one has a ton of links to share, too!)

Global FPIES Day

I Still Have FPIES Eyes

FPIES Awareness (Still) Matters

Blog: Bullfrogs and Butterflies

The FPIES Foundation: Inspiring Family Stories

What Every New FPIES Parent Needs to Know

Blog: F U FPIES

10 Things Other Parents Needs to Know About FPIES

Blog: FPIES & MudPies

Blog: Our Mack Attack

Blog: Our Lives and FPIES

Blog: Trials and Triumphs of Nicole

Blog: My Little Pie with FPIES

VIDEOS TO SHARE:

Our Superhero: Cohen’s Story (Super Cohen’s Crusade for FPIES)

Zac Walking in a Play Area

Jack’s Soy Reaction

Zac Having an FPIES Reaction

FPIES: Now I Know

Corn & Sugar-Free Homemade Ketchup

corn-sugar-free-homemade-ketchup-cradlerockingmama.comA while back I posted my homemade ketchup recipe. It’s delicious, it’s perfect, it’s wonderful…and we can no longer use it!

When I first started making it, I only made it for Jed. I knew that vinegar was made from corn, but that was okay. This wasn’t for Zac. Later I learned that dextrose is also made out of corn, but again, this wasn’t for Zac, and Jed didn’t have a problem with corn.

Ahem. 

We learned earlier this year that Jed does, in fact, have a problem with corn. Corn is no longer allowed in our home in any shape or form. Furthermore, I have decided sugar has no place in our home except on very rare, very special occasions, and in incredibly small doses.

Jed was devastated. No ketchup? Oh, the agony! The betrayal! Whatever shall a ketchup loving kiddo do??

Nag Mom, of course! Nag her until her ears want to bleed, and she finally gets around to tweaking the recipe to be safe.

I’ve made some interesting substitutions, but I assure you, this is still an excellent ketchup. It no longer tastes exactly like store-bought ketchup, but in many ways, that’s a plus.

Now it tastes like gourmet ketchup.

(We’re gettin’ fancy up in here, y’all.) 

yummy-ketchup-cradlerockingmama.com

Oh, one little thing. The substitution for dextrose I made requires another recipe of mine: homemade stevia extract. If you haven’t already, go make some. I’ll wait.

*

*

*

Just kidding! That recipe is no longer an option for many of you due to the fact that the growing season is coming to a close and stevia plants aren’t really around any more. (Although, if you have some stevia plants, not only can you still make this, but you can actually dig that plant up, transplant it to a container, and keep it alive through the winter in your house! We did that last year, and it was awesome!)

If you have some homemade stevia extract laying around, you’re golden. If you don’t, you can still make this; you’ll just need to choose a substitution that works for you. (And next spring? Plant some stevia to make your own extract! It’s divine!)

  • Option #1 – powdered stevia; choose which one you like and experiment to see how much you want to add.
  • Option #2 – sugar, but in INCREDIBLY reduced amounts!

The other change I made was to the vinegar. I switched that out for lemon juice. 

As far as lemon juice goes, fresh is best! Even at my health food co-op, where the goal is organic/real food, there is citric acid in the bottled lemon juice. Citric acid=CORN, so go buy a ton of lemons, squeeze those puppies, and freeze the extra in ice cube trays. Then you can have ketchup year round.

Unfortunately, this version is no longer the same price as store-bought ketchup. The lemons make it a bit pricier. Boo.

Fortunately, Zac can now have this recipe! (He won’t eat it, because he apparently doesn’t like ketchup, but he could if he wanted to! Sigh…)

I’ve recently gotten into lacto-fermenting, and I understand you can make ketchup that way, so I imagine that one day I’ll be presenting a third ketchup recipe. Well, I suppose one can never have too many methods of preparing something as awesome as ketchup, right?

You’ll notice the quantities of lemon juice and water are much higher than in the previous recipe. Without all that sugar adding volume, it needed a lot more liquid to make it work. Don’t worry; it isn’t a misprint!

For best results, let the flavors marry and meld in the fridge for a day before using. It’s good straightaway, but the lemon is a lot stronger at first. It mellows and becomes almost undetectable after a night hanging out on the door of your fridge.

So here it is: how to make a homemade ketchup that is completely corn free and sugar free!

Corn & Sugar-Free Homemade Ketchup
 
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
This delicious ketchup recipe is completely free of corn and sugar. It's easy, it's healthier than other ketchup, and it is yummy! Enjoy!
Author:
Recipe type: sauce, condiment, corn-free, sugar-free
Serves: 1.5 c
Ingredients
  • one 6 ounce can of tomato paste
  • ½ c. fresh squeezed lemon juice (3-4 lemons)
  • ½ c filtered or spring water
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • ⅛ tsp. ground celery
  • pinch of ground cloves
  • 2-3 tsp. homemade stevia extract OR 2-3 scoops of powdered stevia OR 2-3 T. sugar
Instructions
  1. Roll your lemons on the counter, cut in half, and squeeze ½ c. of juice.
  2. Put tomato paste, lemon juice, water, salt, ground celery, and cloves into a saucepan and whisk together until smooth. (If using sugar as a sweetener, add it now as well.)
  3. Heat on medium heat until just boiling; immediately reduce heat and simmer for 20 more minutes, stirring frequently.
  4. Remove from heat and let cool on the counter for 10 minutes.
  5. Add the stevia extract and whisk together until well blended.
  6. Let cool completely before adding to a bottle or jar.
  7. Store in a covered container in the fridge.
  8. For best results, let the flavors meld for a day in the fridge before eating.
  9. Enjoy your healthier, delicious ketchup!

 Happy Dipping!


What’s your favorite unusual ketchup flavor?

Make A “Jeopardy” Style Quiz Board

make-a-jeopary-style-quiz-board-cradlerockingmama.com

Somewhere around our third week of Classical Conversations, I started to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data my kiddos were learning.

We needed to review, but I couldn’t imagine how we could do so in a fun way that didn’t make the boys hate learning.

After a few days of mulling it over, I realized the “data bites” we were feeding the kids fit perfectly with the style of Jeopardy. To try it out, I grabbed an old piece of foam poster board I had laying around, wrote some questions on index cards, folded them in half, wrote numbers on the outside, taped them to the board, and tried it out on the kids.

original-idea-cradlerockingmama.com

Bingo!!

The boys were extremely excited to compete in a quiz game; not only was there a prize involved (I generously offered one red chip for every five questions answered correctly), but it was brotherly competition at its finest!

They loved it so much, I knew we had to keep doing this regularly. Only…the thought of writing out those questions every time we play  made my head want to explode. Surely there had to be an easier way!

So I came up with this:

jeopardy-style-quiz-board-cradlerockingmama.com

How to Make A “Jeopardy”-style Board Game

Supplies:

  • One 36×48 inch Tri-fold display board
  • 2 packages of Terrific Pockets
  • 3×5 Index cards
  • Scotch tape
  • Adhesive to affix pockets to display board
  • Memory Master Flashcards from Classical Conversations (omit if not using CC)

I bought everything at Office Depot, which offers a nice discount to Classical Conversations families.

I chose plain white pockets so that in the future I can write question values on the front, but they have colored and patterned pockets if you’d like.

pockets-for-board-cradlerockingmama.com

For affixing the pockets to the display board, I used some waxy poster hanging stuff I already had at my house. You can use anything you like that would work. 3M has lots of sticky adhesive things, of course, but regular old tape would work fine. (I didn’t choose that at first because I wanted to be able to adjust the number and location of envelopes until I was satisfied before permanently attaching them.)

When I started to put it all together, I realized the cards fell into the pockets so far I would have to dig them out every time. Eventually, I knew, that would rip the pocket. Plus, it would make it a pain in the tuchas to use.

So I held a card up next to a pocket and folded the bottom up enough that the card would fit while still sitting high enough to grab easily. I ended up folding about 1.25 inches or so up from the bottom.

Using that pocket as a guide, I folded all the other pockets likewise.

Then I used scotch tape to hold the fold down firmly. This may be an unnecessary step, but my perfectionism wouldn’t allow it to be all loose and floppy. Feel free to skip it if you don’t have my issues!

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Procedure

  1. Lay 3×5 inch cards across the top of the board (2 cards on each small side, 4 across the center) to mark your category headings; label them first if you already know which category headings you wish to use
  2. Arrange your pockets (folded or not) below the index cards. Folded, I was able to fit 7 pockets per column.laid-out-before-affixing-cradlerockingmama.com
  3. Secure the pockets to the board using whatever you choose (temporary if you’d like to adjust, or permanent if you’re happy with their placement)
  4. Secure the index card/category headings to the board
  5. Stuff the pockets with your Memory Master Flashcards
  6. Have a blast reviewing your schoolwork!

Now, here’s where I have to be a little like Lucy: I’ve got some “‘splainin'” to do!

My boys are only 4 and 6 years old. They’re still learning how to read larger numbers, and they’re pretty young to follow complicated game rules.

To simplify the game, I took index cards folded in half, wrote random double-digit numbers on them, and slid them in the top of the pockets in front of the Memory Master Flashcards.

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The reason for this is that I do NOT want to have to fold 56 pockets again in a few years, when they’re ready for me to put real numbers on the pockets a la “I’ll take Geography for 50, Mom”.

Right now, they also don’t know how to read, so they wouldn’t be able to say which category they want anyway!

Using this method for now means that I can eventually add index cards with categories to the top of the board and write real numbers on the pockets, but for now, the boys can just say which number pocket they want. It helps reinforce reading numbers and makes it much more doable for now.

Eventually I can change out some or all of the numbers for sight words, or some other little thing we are trying to teach.

How to Play with Younger Students

  1. One child calls out the number they want
  2. Take that card out and ask the question (take out the folded number, too, or they’ll keep asking for numbers they’ve already answered!)
  3. After the question is read, start a timer (we use a 1 minute hourglass)
  4. The child has one minute to answer correctly; if they cannot, the other child has a one minute chance to answer the question
  5. Whoever answered correctly gets that card added to their pile
  6. At the end of the game, whoever has the most correct answers wins

Very simple for their age. We can “complicate it up” to be more like real Jeopardy (shorter answer times, keeping score, double Jeopardy round, etc.) when they get older.

In the meantime, this “Jeopardy” style quiz board works beautifully and will be easily converted to be age appropriate in a few years.

It took about 30 minutes to make this board. The total cost was $19.47 plus tax at Office Depot, plus the cost of whatever you use to affix the pockets to the board, and the Memory Master Flashcards. I did use index cards, but had those laying around so did not factor their cost in the total. I did not list the Classical Conversations discounted prices at Office Depot here. Consequently, it might be less expensive for you to make.

Keep in mind that while this is not cheap, it is also not horribly expensive. Cared for properly, this board should last several years, which makes the cost more palatable.

For homeschooling families who do not use Classical Conversations, you can still use this board!

The only difference is that you’ll have to create your own question cards to put into the pockets. On the plus side, using an index card for your questions might mean you can avoid folding all those pockets! (Though you’ll fit fewer questions on your board.)

Hopefully this helps you make a “Jeopardy” style quiz board game for your own house! If your kids love games and competing, I think this is one of the best ways to review their CC material!

(Bonus: the questions that neither child answers correctly go into “mama’s pile”, letting me know exactly what we need to focus on this week!)

Happy quizzing!

Catching Up

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Since its been so long since I’ve written, a little “catch up” post seems in order.

Jed and Zac have both been in Occupational Therapy for their Sensory Processing Disorders for most of the year. The benefits have been amazing! My children are blooming, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.


We decided to begin using Classical Conversations for our homeschooling curriculum. It’s only been 6 weeks, but I’m already a total believer in this program and we plan to continue it through graduation. The boys are proving to be intellectual giants (ahem) and absolutely adore school!

Last week Jed finally began reading. He’s BEEN reading for ages, but it was almost as if he didn’t understand what he was doing when he was sounding out words. Last week, it finally clicked in his mind and he got  it. He proceeded to read two stories from a primer book and looked more excited than he does on Christmas morning.

It was better than Christmas morning for me, too.

Turns out, Jed also has quite the artistic bent. He’s amazing at creating artwork! I never saw this side of him before the summer, but now, he can happily sit at the table making beautiful art for hours. I’m running out of wall space for display!

Oh, he’s still young, so his technique is still immature, but his artwork tells stories, he experiments with different techniques and mediums, he catches on to things in our art class quickly and without explanation sometimes, and he gets better every day. It’s amazing!


True to form, it is September, and the boys have come down with stomach bugs. Again (last year it happened in October, but that was a fluke). So far Darrel and I haven’t caught the bug (yet), but we’re both already sick with other things, so, the whole family is still down for the count. I hate September.


Jed lost his first teeth this summer. Other than the blood, it was fairly nonchalant. He was very excited about the Tooth Fairy!


We had another great birthday party for the boys in June, this time with a few new friends they’ve made this year. It’s been wonderful watching them make friends and learn how to be kind and thoughtful over the long term with kids their own age!


Beyond stomach bugs, my health has not been doing well this year. Without the nursing hormones in my body, I’m reacting almost non-stop.

Reacting? Why, yes! Turns out I likely have (95% sure, awaiting further tests), as suspected, Mast Cell Activation Disorder. I’ll write a lot more about that in the future, but suffice it to say, my immune system is out of whack and I react to typical things in ways normal people don’t.

It turns out I’m a “leaker”; an MCAD word meaning someone who just slowly reacts all the time (as opposed to a “shocker”, which is someone whose reactions are instantaneous and often anaphylaxis). I’ve been “leaking” my whole life, apparently, except when I was pregnant and nursing.

It appears I’m one of the rare MCAD women whose health improves  with pregnancy. Far more common is women who suffer greatly during pregnancy.

Think I’m too old to be a surrogate? (Joke. Sort of.)

Without the pregnancy and nursing hormones I’ve been slowly reverting to the way I was before the TED for Zac, and it stinks.

No. It doesn’t stink. It’s miserable. Terrifying. Horrifying. Depressing. And stressful. Which is really bad, because it turns out that stress is one of my major reaction triggers. 

Stress isn’t good for anyone, of course, but stress literally makes me physically sick almost immediately.

Yay…because our lives of food and other issues is just so easy and carefree, donchaknow??

I’m dealing with that, and growing to accept the fact that the glorious health I enjoyed during the TED for Zac may have been the only 3.5 years of my life where I feel like the majority of people feel on a daily basis, and that feeling lethargic, sick, emotional, and being fat is simply the way my life will be. Forever. Til I die.

I kind of want to cry.

I guess I shouldn’t give up hope, yet. There are some medications that can help with this condition. While I’m happy for that knowledge, I’d really rather not be dependent on daily medication before I’m even 40. That thought is kind of a bummer.

Well, I’ll adjust. New realities are normal for us by this point.


Darrel and I decided our lives were too stressful and we needed a break earlier in the summer. We planned a “staycation” in June for just the two of us. The boys went to my parents house for a week while we stayed home alone.

It didn’t work.

The air conditioner went out. Some things came up that needed to be dealt with. We ended our staycation just as stressed as we started, if not more so.

So we decided to ease up on food vigilance for a while. Maybe not having to be so paranoid all the time would make things less stressful? As long as the food was corn-free, known-trigger-free, and organic, we pretty much let both boys eat whatever they wanted.

So did I. Forget the TED!

For the boys, it went beautifully! Zac is chowing down on rice now with no ill effects. That’s opened up lots of pre-packaged snacks for us (crackers, rice cakes), which is wonderful.

Both boys adore pumpkin seeds and pistachios, which, again, opens up snack options for us.

We aren’t brave enough to trial oats on Zac again, nor cow dairy on Jed, but otherwise their diets have expanded considerably this summer and they’ve shown no ill effects. It’s glorious!

One negative came this spring, when we figured out that Jed actually reacts to corn. I don’t know why it took so long to see; I suppose his reactions were being hidden by other things.

But we finally determined that maple syrup and cocoa are no good for him, and straight sugar is fine but any kind of processing on the sugar makes it bad, and once we got that straightened out his corn reactions became very, very clear.

That made feeding Jed more restrictive, but with the lessening of restrictions on Zac this year we have an overall net positive on food consumption in this house, and that makes life a lot easier. (Though, really, eating a diet that must strictly avoid corn, wheat, egg, cow milk, and is limited in fructose, salicylates and histamine isn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination.)

FPIES isn’t gone, but it does appear that Zac’s only trigger at this point is oats. I’m happy to hold off on those for another year before we retrial.

It’s an unbelievable relief to no longer worry if my son is going to end up in the hospital if he eats a new food!

I, on the other hand, was triggered mightily by something (or somethings) I ate this summer, during this “de-stress experiment”, and I’m still trying to get back to baseline. Of course, I could have been set off by the stress I’ve been under, but still. Food always fixes things in my family, so I went back on the 6 item TED (beef, potatoes, olive oil, sea salt, black pepper and stevia) on August 1 in an effort to get back to normal. 7 weeks later and my body is still as bad as it was this summer. I must admit to feeling somewhat betrayed that food hasn’t fixed me; eating properly has fixed almost everything in my family over the last 4 years, so this is quite a disappointment.

I’m tired of feeling awful all the time.


This year found us entering the world of farming. We now have rabbits and dairy goats. The rabbits are for an affordable meat source, and the dairy goats are because we spend SO much money on goat milk every year and so much time procuring milk half the year, it seemed like a good experiment to see if we could handle milking our own goats. We are still waiting on our doe to give birth, after which it will be a couple months before we can start taking any milk from her, but our fingers are crossed that this works!

Oh, and we have barn cats. LOTS of barn cats. (Anyone need a kitten? I have lots!) It’s kind of out of control. Bob Barker was right: spay or neuter your pet!! (Though the boys LOVE having so many kitties to play with.)


That pretty much hits the highlights of the year. What’s been going on in your world?

Why I Stopped Writing (For A While)

why-i-stopped-writing-for-a-while-cradlerockingmama.com

It’s been a long time since I’ve written here.

A LONG time.

Before I start posting more frequently again, I feel I owe an explanation to my regular readers (and those of you who are still around after this long hiatus, thank you!). This will also serve as a sort of mission statement about the change in tone this blog is about to make.

When I first started writing this blog, I kept my family anonymous. Jed was “Mr. Charm”, Zac was “Mr. Happy”, Darrel was “The Geek”, and I was simply “Mama”. After a while, I got frustrated with that. Sure, I was sharing about my family and our health issues, but it wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have told a complete stranger in person, so why all the subterfuge?

I announced our real identities and never looked back.

Then this January came, and with it, the shocking diagnosis of Asperger’s. (For my new readers, especially anyone in the Autism Community, read this for an explanation of why I use the now-medically-incorrect term ‘Aspergers’ before you send me any comments, please.)

I had a lot of research and soul-searching to do, which contributed to my writing hiatus.

However, I went through similar researching after Zac’s FPIES diagnosis, and instead of cocooning myself, I started this blog. So what was different this time?

For starters, when we first heard of FPIES, there was almost nothing on the internet about it. I felt compelled to write in order to help other families; even if I was new to this and learning as I went, sharing what I learned as I learned it would be extremely helpful due to the lack of online aids at the time. It felt right to write.

Secondly, over the last few years I’ve grown accustomed to the online Food Allergy World. It is an overwhelmingly kind and encouraging place! The families that live with food allergies and intolerances are supportive of any effort to keep oneself and ones children safe. The attitude is sort of “I’ll try anything once, I’ll share any research I’ve learned, I’ll encourage anyone in their efforts – even if I think they’re crazy!” In my first couple of months delving in to autism reading, I was unpleasantly surprised to realize it doesn’t always work that way in the Autism World.

It was shocking to read some of the incredibly harsh and cruel words in so many places. I couldn’t believe the attitudes! It was the OPPOSITE of the Food Allergy World in so many ways, and, frankly, as overwhelmed in my thinking as I was, I knew I would write things that would lead nastiness into my world.

I’ve been down that road before, and I learned how to handle it. When I truly believe in what I’m saying, I’m no longer afraid to speak out and face whatever backlash may come. In this case, however, I didn’t know what I was thinking, so anything I wrote might not actually be what I came to truly believe. I wasn’t willing to endure nastiness over something I wasn’t 100% sure of myself.

As time went on in silence, however, I started to realize something. Our anonymity on this blog at first eventually didn’t make sense, because I wasn’t sharing anything that was embarrassing or potentially harmful to myself or my children. Food allergies aren’t something to be hidden away, after all; safety requires you share that information with your friends and acquaintances.

Autism is different.

Oh, autism isn’t something to be ashamed of, certainly. It’s how we’re made, after all, and God doesn’t make junk. We are perfect in His plan.

But there is ignorance out there. There is cruelty out there.

I realized that by sharing openly about Jed’s struggles and behavior, I was potentially inviting judgement and cruelty to seek him out. (That’s almost certainly why, in the majority of blogs about raising autistic kiddos I have found, the parents use a pseudonym for their child instead of their real name.)

Right now it might not be a problem, but in fifteen years? IF this blog is still operating, a simple Google search by a potential love interest or employer would yield multitudes of potentially misunderstood and therefore character damaging stories about my amazing son.

There is absolutely no way I will do that to him. He deserves the respect of privacy and the right to share about himself only at HIS choosing. 

Unfortunately, without sharing openly about all things, I found myself facing a bit of writer’s block. Combine that with some complicated health issues of my own that I’ve dealt with this year, and I left Cradle Rocking Mama dormant.

But I still love writing. And I still want to help people.

So I’ll be changing it up a bit here from now on. Here is what I will not share any longer in this forum:

  • Specific issues my kids deal with related to Asperger’s, ADHD, or SPD
  • Photos of my kids
  • Any stories that even may have potential to reflect badly on the boys, no matter how cute or potentially helpful they might be to someone else

What I will continue to share:

  • Food issues
  • Recipes
  • Homeschooling in general, and…
  • Classical Conversations specifically
  • My journey into MCAD (Mast Cell Activation Disorder)
  • Animal husbandry
  • My personal thoughts on whatever topics seem relevant, helpful, or just relatable (such as being a working mom who homeschools and manages food allergies in her kids and health issues for herself)

Thanks for sticking around, and I hope you will continue to find encouragement and helpful suggestions here. Let me know if there is anything you’d specifically like to know, even about the kids. If I can share it while still protecting them, I absolutely will!

Oh, and…I missed you!

Seeing the Light

Seeing the Light CradleRockingMama.com

February was a dark time for me.

The diagnosis of Autism really rocked my world. Not Jed’s diagnosis, but my unofficial diagnosis. Maybe that sounds strange, but it’s undeniable that I accepted Jed 100% as-is and had no fear whatsoever about his future, while simultaneously struggling to accept the same diagnosis for myself.

And I’ve been very alone in going through it. My family is wonderful and incredibly supportive, but they just didn’t understand why I had any issues with this at all. To them, nothing changed. I’m still the same person. I still have the same great life. What does it matter that there is now a term to explain some of my differences? Does it change anything?

I recognize that they’re right. It really changes nothing.

Except…it changes everything.

Only I couldn’t figure out how to explain it to them. I wasn’t even sure I understood it, and with our lives of constant strain, stress, and “expend all energy just staying afloat”, finding time and space to process this news was impossible.

So February was hard. Really hard. I thought, at times, that I was on the verge of a total nervous breakdown.

Fortunately, I’m almost completely out of the dark now. Once again, I have the Ladies Prayer Retreat from my church to thank for my rejuvenation. Even though it only lasted 21 hours, it would be impossible to list all the amazing things that happened there. Suffice it to say, my spirit was boosted beyond my imaginings.

Beginning to see the light enabled me to finally start making some sense of my troubles about the diagnosis. I think I finally understand why it has shaken me so much, and I’ll do my best to explain it here…just in case anyone else is going through this sort of thing.

I have a few analogies to try and explain it. The first is to say, imagine if, at 38 years old, you suddenly learned that you had been adopted. Your life wouldn’t change; you’d still have the same family, job, personality, etc., but somehow, one of the basic foundations of your life is completely changed and everything feels off kilter for a bit as you adapt to the news.

That made me think of a house with foundation issues. I watch HGTV on layovers, and sometimes they’ll show a house with a foundation problem. The crew goes underneath the house, replaces rotted beams, props things back up, and it takes weeks to do properly. When they’re done, the visible part of the house often has cracks in the sheetrock and sometimes in the floor that need patching. After patching, though, everything is as good as new – or even better than new.

Realizing I have Autism was like discovering I had a foundation problem in my “house”. If it takes weeks just to fix a house, I think it is understandable that I needed some time to let things shift around and re-settle, and then patch up anything that needs patching.

One fantastic lady at the prayer retreat told me that she imagines my recent discovery probably feels a lot like the first time watching “The Sixth Sense”. (This might only really make an impact on those of us old enough to remember seeing the movie when it first came out, before everything in the world moved so fast that the ending wasn’t spoiled for us before we saw it.) You watch the whole movie, and then – BAM! – the ending comes and suddenly you have to sort of re-evaluate the entire movie based on the twist ending.

That particular analogy really hit home. That’s almost exactly  what I’ve been feeling like! Like there was a big twist in my life that didn’t really change anything about how my story unfolded, except that now I had to re-evaluate my story because it shed an entirely new light on the whole thing.

I needed time to process and adjust. My life doesn’t exactly allow for a lot of leisure and contemplation. Is it any wonder February felt like a big black whole of emotional confusion?

I’ll give an example of one of the convoluted thoughts that has been passing through my mind the last month or so. My whole life, I’ve struggled to understand people. I mentioned making getting along with people and understanding social situations a “special interest” of mine, and that is true.

What I didn’t say is this: despite all my efforts to do this, I am still often completely baffled by human beings. I still often feel like an alien, or a person from a different era, or in some other way fundamentally “weird”.

I also am exhausted by it. I always have been.

My family and friends will vouch for the fact that I am clearly invigorated by interacting with people. What they don’t know is that for every social interaction that invigorates me, at least twice as many social interactions leave me desperate for solitude and time to decompress.

People wear me freaking out. They’re SO illogical and just…bizarre. I don’t get it. Trying to understand it and navigate that world leaves me drained. The social interactions that charge me up in a positive way are always with people who are – above and beyond all other things – honest. Honest about their own lives. Honest about their thoughts and feelings, even when they realize it makes them “look bad”. Just, people who don’t lie about reality. They don’t have to be right, or even agree with me, but they have to be trying to find the truth. Those people invigorate me.

Those people are not as common as you might imagine, so I do have a hard time with most social interactions.

I do really well on a superficial level. I’m a Flight Attendant, after all! I bet money that the great majority of the people I take care of and/or work with on the plane would not think there was anything unusual about me in the slightest, social skills-wise.

But try to take it to a slightly deeper level, try to have more than a ten minute conversation with someone, and I’ll find myself either buoyed or drained by whomever I encounter.

This last month, I found myself wanting to just say “to hell with it”. There are a couple of people with Autism who write books and blogs that I’ve been reading lately, and one of them wrote that he discovered, after his diagnosis, that while he wants the world to help accommodate people with Autism, he also wants people with Autism to understand that they must also attempt to engage the world on “the worlds terms”. He’s right. It takes two to tango.

But y’all, I’ve been TRYING to engage the world on “the worlds terms” MY ENTIRE LIFE and I STILL feel exhausted by it!

Knowing now that I have Autism made me feel, for a while, at least, like saying “You know what? This is who I am. This is how I am. Screw the world. NO GUILT.”

That was during the dark days. Now that I’m seeing the light, and have had some time to process and ‘patch’ things, I have a slightly different perspective.

Before diagnosis, I always felt like there was something wrong with me. I felt guilty and ashamed that I couldn’t get along with people better than I did. During the dark days, I felt like I was justified in retreating from humanity and shooting it all a big ‘middle finger’.

Now, I know there isn’t something wrong with me. I know I’m just wired differently. Some people are the kind of people I can understand, and the great majority are the kind I cannot. Nothing wrong with that. It just is what it is. I’ll still try to talk to people and make friends, and where I can succeed, I will.

That’s how I’ve always operated, truthfully. The difference now is, when I cannot succeed, I won’t feel guilty or ashamed. I won’t feel badly in any way. I won’t make myself feel inferior. I’ll just shrug, and completely blow the other person off with no guilt.

I have a feeling this will be a very liberating approach for me.

And you see, y’all? That’s just ONE aspect of my life that had so much emotional baggage attached to it that I’ve had to sort through the last month-plus. That’s a lot of baggage to sort through!

I felt compelled to do it, though, for Jed. He’ll never accept himself if his mother, who has the same diagnosis, can’t accept herself. 

I tried to explain that to my friends and family, and I did it poorly. I always made it sound like I was trying to find ways to help Jed by evaluating what helped me over the years. At first, that’s what I truly believed I needed to do. They naturally had the rebuttal of “even though you have the same diagnosis, you’re not the same people. The things that helped you might not help Jed. He’s his own person and you have to help him on his level.”

They were absolutely right, but I still found myself arguing with them. Now I know why. We were both right. I just wasn’t being clear about what I meant.

I didn’t need to sort all this out to discover what helped me in order to help Jed. 

I needed to sort all this out to discover how to accept myself AS Autistic, so that Jed could see me live that example for him. And THAT is exactly how I can most help my son. 

I’m not done sorting. I have a feeling it will take a while. But the devastating initial reaction part is over, and I am finally seeing the light in life again. So from here on out, I think it will be easier.

Or at least, I can hope.


By the way, I catch myself cringing when I write that I have Autism. Technically, Jed and I are, in fact, Autistic. That’s what the new DSM-V says. Even though we got our diagnosis after the official terminology change, I find myself wanting to use the word “Asperger’s” to describe us. I feel it is a much more accurate description of what we deal with.

I always try to be accurate in my writing. I try to use the correct terminology whenever I know to do so. So I’ve been using “Autism” every time I want to write “Asperger’s”.

My problem is that I feel the correct terminology is inherently incorrect. I feel “Asperger’s” is the correct descriptor for us. So, from now on, I will describe us as Aspergergian instead of Autistic. Please understand that I know the official, correct terminology. It’s just not my fault that the official, correct terminology is improperly descriptive!


Has anyone else been blindsided by an Asperger’s/Autism diagnosis and had to process that news? How long did it take?