bekahcubed

Categories Health

We Got Shot

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The Garcia family got our flu shots today.

We do every year, because we know that the flu is nothing to sneeze at. While influenza often just means a terrible couple of weeks of cold-type symptoms combined with awful muscle aches, not everyone who gets influenza experiences a mild case. In fact, over the past 10 years, influenza has killed about 35,500 Americans yearly (annual deaths range from 12K in 2011/12, by far the mildest season in the past decade, to 61K in 2017/18).

Post-shot selfie of the whole family
Post-shot selfie. Silly faces are from trying to get Shiloh to look at the camera. She wasn’t amused, obviously.

My own terrible experience with a “mild” case of the flu in college was enough to convince me that I NEVER wanted it again – but even if I was willing to get flu myself, I am aware that me getting the flu doesn’t just affect me. If I get the flu, I can also give others the flu – and others might not be as “lucky” as I was.

This year, it’s even more important that we not get and give the flu. An estimated 442,000 Americans end up in the hospital with the flu each year – and, this year of all years, if we can keep people out of the hospital and off of ventilators we should.

One common objection is that the flu shot is not 100% effective – this is true. Likewise, seatbelts don’t keep everyone from dying of car accidents and not smoking doesn’t keep everyone from dying of lung cancer – that doesn’t make them worthless. Flu shots remain a low-risk way to reduce risk of getting influenza. And, even when the influenza vaccine has relatively low effectiveness at preventing influenza infection, it still results in milder cases of influenza (which means fewer hospitalizations and fewer deaths – still a win.)

So get your flu shots, people! Do it for yourself, do it for your neighbor.

The Garcia family did.

The data I shared regarding disease burden is from the CDC website. For science-based answers to common questions regarding the flu vaccine, check out the linked blog post from science journalist Tara Haelle at her blog Red Wine and Applesauce.

Categories B3RD

PSA: There’s nothing wrong with serving your baby purees

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Half of you are shaking your heads and thinking “No duh”. You raised your children on little jars of Gerber and the kids turned out just fine.

But in the years since I was a tot, “Baby-Led Weaning” has taken off, and with it, a whole new set of food rules for babies. One that many crunchy types have latched onto is that purees are not just unnecessary (that one is true, folks – babies can learn to eat without purees) but are harmful. This, friends, is simply not true.

While my older three barely ate any purees as their first foods, Shiloh has eaten purees almost every day since she started eating solids two or three weeks ago. She’s had cream of peanut and butternut squash soup, homemade applesauce, and pureed pumpkin whenever the family has those food items – which, for right now, is almost every day. That’s what we eat in the fall when squash and apples are in season.

Shiloh with pumpkin on her face.

And she’ll be just fine.

What you do want to watch for is that your baby doesn’t ONLY get purees for months on end. The evidence suggests that there is an ideal window for the introduction of texture – babies who don’t get introduced to textured foods by about 9 months are much more likely to become pickier eaters and to develop texture aversions. (References: Delayed introduction of lumpy foods to children during the complementary feeding period affects child’s food acceptance and feeding at 7 years of age; The effect of age of introduction to lumpy solids on foods eaten and reported feeding difficulties at 6 and 15 months).

So don’t only serve your baby purees, but don’t stress if you find yourself picking up a little container of puree at the grocery store or blending some for your baby: There’s nothing wrong with serving your baby purees.

Categories Everyday Life

In Age Order

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Tirzah Mae and Louis are playing that they are Ella and Rally ‘Round Campbell. They are two of many siblings, all of whom have elaborate back stories.

Ella is carefully skirting the edges of rooms to make sure she’s socially distancing from those Garcia-folk, who are NOT in her household.

Louis (er, Rally ‘Round) is currently listing the order each child came out of the uterus.

Categories Everyday Life

Normal and not

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Daniel has a lamp on his nightstand. He turns it on each night as we make our way to bed. We dress and read and, all too often, poke at our phones in the light of that little lamp.

I have two lamps on my nightstand. One is on a timer. It turns on at 0545 and off at 0730, its bright full-spectrum light intended to tell my body that it needn’t hibernate for winter. My other lamp is for finishing a chapter after Daniel goes to sleep, or putting the final touches on my plan for the next day. I use it rarely.

On nights like tonight, when Daniel is traveling for work, I turn on Daniel’s lamp when I come in to get ready for bed. I sit in bed and read or poke at my phone or finish up my plan for the next day. And then I reach over the empty space where my husband ought to lie and turn off his lamp. My lamps remain unused.

Life is so very normal and so very abnormal when he is gone.

Categories What I Spent/What We Ate

What We Ate/What I Spent (2020.09.05)

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I’ve been super inconsistent posting these, but we started a new fiscal year in July and last year’s food budget was…not stellar. So I need to start paying attention to my spending a bit more closely – and there’s nothing like online accountability. :-)

What We Ate:

Sunday, August 30

Tuna Noodle skillet, peas, and carrots

Tuna Noodle Casserole, peas, and carrots

Monday, August 31

Lasagna, lettuce, and fruit

Lasagna, Lettuce Salad, Tropical Fruit, and Green Olives

Tuesday, September 1

Waffles and Scrambled Eggs

Sourdough Waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, Scrambled Eggs, and Orange Juice

Wednesday, September 2

Ground beef tacos with burrito beans and lettuce salad

I forgot to take a photo of this one so you’ll just have to imagine :-)

Thursday, September 3

West Virginia Soup with Cheese and Bread

West Virginia Soup, Whole Wheat bread, cheese slices

Friday, September 4

I made Beef Pot Roast with potatoes and carrots and pan gravy – but I didn’t eat it. Instead, Daniel and the children ate it while I had me-time in my room. Friday was just a little too much for me to handle. (Why? who knows.)

Saturday, September 5

Chicken and Dumplings, Mandarin Orange

Chicken and Dumplings with Mandarin Oranges

At this point, the question is…how much did this cost us? Well, let’s take a look:

What I Spent:

Saturday, August 29

ALDI $23.69

ALDI (2020.08.29)

Sam’s Club $52.00

Sam's Club (2020. 08.29)

Thursday, September 3

Walmart Pickup $52.52

Walmart Pickup (2020.09.03)

That’s a total of $128.21, which is $1.79 less than my weekly budget of $130. Whew!

Categories Everyday Life

Labor Day Fun for Mama and Papa

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What’s the most popular starting letter for American state names?

One could ask the internet.

Our list of states

Or one could grab an atlas or similar list of state names.

Or one could write down the names of all 50 states from memory, recording each first letter on a different piece of scratch paper before counting them up and organizing them most popular to least.

I’m sure you couldn’t guess which one we did.

Categories Reading My Library

Reading My Library (14 years)

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How is it possible that it’s been 14 years since I began my crazy goal of reading every book in my local library?

In that time, I moved from Lincoln to Columbus Nebraska (and kept on using my Lincoln library) and then from Columbus to Wichita (and switched from my Lincoln library to Wichita’s Central Library). We moved from downtown-ish Wichita to just outside of Wichita (and kept on using the Central Library) – and then the Central Library moved to the new “Advanced Learning Library”. Now that coronavirus means just picking up books we’ve requested (rather than browsing the stacks), I’m picking up my books at a closer location (but I’m keeping on using the Advanced Learning Library as my library of record, in hopes that someday we’ll be able to return!)

TOTALS as of September 5, 2020 (14 years or 5114 days)

Category Items in 2019-2020 Total Items since 2006 Notes
Juvenile Picture 528 2508 We were racing through these at the beginning of the year, but pandemic really slowed us down – and then we started really liking chapter books…
Juvenile, Board Books 15 558 We closed these in 2018, so this is just “fun reading” that the kids picked up during visits to the library (back when we could still visit the library.)
Juvenile, First Readers 3 80 I’m going to vote on this one for greatest growth over the next year.
Juvenile Fiction 2 410 The “two finished” is quite deceptive, since re-reads don’t count – and I’ve been reading quite a few of my favorites out loud to the kids. Also, these numbers won’t jibe with previous reports since I reorganized the “chapter books” from my old library into their place here as juvenile fiction.
Juvenile Nonfiction 55 468
Teen Fiction 0 52 Just not doing a lot of this sort of reading these days.
Teen Nonfiction 0 5
Adult Fiction 13 503 My statistics tell me my average for adult fiction is 37 books a year – obviously VERY skewed from my pre-kids days.
Adult Nonfiction 29 3 I knew my reading was down, but this is shocking. My overall average is 76 per year.
Audio CD 357 1778 Music, which takes an hour (for shorter CDs) to ten hours (for the big multidisc sets) and can be listened to while carrying out ordinary tasks, is a lot easier to get through these days.
Juvenile DVD 7 68 Harry Potter and kids yoga videos. The children watched the latter with me; Daniel and I did not let them see the former – because, witchcraft ;-)
Adult Fiction DVD 7 119 We’re currently watching the Marvel movies in chronological order (per this list. It’s fun.
Adult Nonfiction DVD 7 74 Do I like documentaries? Yes. Did my children and I watch a college course on child development? Yes, that too.
Periodicals 4 131
Total 1018 items 7786 items
2.78 items/day 1.21 items/day While I have vastly decreased my “me” reading over the past 14 years, picture books and audio CDs inflate my item count these days.

What with not being able to access our library’s physical collection AT ALL for almost 2 months, it’s been a weird year of reading – but I’m soldiering on with my goal. I’m going to keep trying until I die (no doubt.)

Categories Homeschool

A Very Simple Exploration of Magnetism

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Experiments in early childhood needn’t be complicated.

We read about magnetism during reading time yesterday, so our activity time was a very simple exploration of magnetism.

I gathered up a magnet for each child (the magnetic “keys” for our magnetic child locks are great because they have “handles”) and a selection of everyday items I have from around the house (Q-tips, pens, bobby pins, paper clips, barrettes, earrings, steel wool, etc.)

Each child got a piece of paper that had been divided in two and labeled “Y” for yes and “N” for no (with different colors for all the pre-readers). Their challenge was to guess which items the magnet would pick up and to put those on the “Y”. If they guessed that the magnet wouldn’t pick something up, they could put it on the “N”.

Exploring Magnetism

I explained that their guess was a hypothesis and that now they could test their hypothesis using the magnets.

While testing their hypotheses, they moved their objects from the paper to different cups.

Once they’d divided all their objects and tested all their hypotheses, they could get down and explore the house, making hypotheses about the objects they found around the house and testing their hypotheses.

That’s it. A very simple exploration of magnetism – and one that helped the children also understand a bit about the process of science.

You can help your child become a scientific thinker this same way.

Ask, “What do you think will happen if…”

Explain that what your child just guessed is their hypothesis.

Now ask the child if they’d like to test their hypothesis. Is their hypothesis true or false? Test it several times just to make sure.

Familiarizing your early learners with the scientific process is that easy.

You can do this!