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Mar 27, 2014

Udi’s Makes Gluten Free Living Tasty

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Disclosure: I participated in this program on behalf of Udi’s and The Motherhood. All opinions are my own.

It was about a year and a half ago that Aaron went gluten-free. At the time, I had first learned about Udi’s Gluten Free foods, and they suggested we try a two week gluten-free challenge. Aaron and I both tried it, completely eliminating gluten from our diets for two weeks. At the end of it, we felt pretty good, but the true test was to see how we felt eating gluten again. I had no trouble going back to gluten. Aaron, on the other hand, discovered just how badly his body handles gluten, and after a few days of extreme pain, realized that maybe gluten-free would have to be a necessary lifestyle change.

This isn’t an uncommon path for many with gluten intolerance, I’ve found. Udi’s reports that only 10% of those who go gluten free are medically diagnosed, while 37% are self-diagnosed and discover through elimination diets. Although in our case, Aaron went to his doctor after this and was told to remain gluten free due to gluten sensitivity. It’s possible he’s had this sensitivity all of his life, although it’s also possible to develop it later in life after a major change to the body or traumatic event.

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Filed Under: Aaron, healthy living, Sponsored-AF ·


Mar 26, 2014

An Unexpected Typical Development

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Cordy is a hugger. Well, she likes to hug those she knows and trusts, and has always been fairly affectionate with those in her family. When she was younger, we had to spend a lot of time teaching her about personal space, as she likes to get right up next to people when talking them.

While she’s a sensory avoider in many areas (like anyone messing with her hair, or loud noises), when it comes to hugs she’s a sensory seeker.  I’ve always considered us lucky that in the world of autism, where so many kids don’t like to be touched, Cordy is a child who likes hugs.

Snoopy at Castaway BaySnoopy always gets hugs from her, too.

Over the weekend, we attended a memorial service, with a lot of family and friends present. This was more of a party than a somber memorial service, and it was occasionally loud and crowded. I worried that Cordy would not do well with the noise and crowd. At first, she kept herself away from the crowd, choosing to spin in a chair instead, but then she started wandering around through the people.

At one point, she walked past Aaron and I as we were telling someone about our upcoming trip to Disney. I reached out to Cordy, wrapping one arm around her and pulling her closer to me. I gave her a big hug with a very quick kiss on her head. Usually, she’d wrap her arms around me and attempt to squeeze the life out of me, or hold tight while she lifted her feet and hung on me. But not this time.

This time, she squirmed and broke free of the hug. And then as she turned away and walked off, she uttered those words that most parents dread hearing, the words that signify a move to another phase of childhood: “Mom, you’re embarrassing me!”

What??

I was embarrassing her? How is that even possible?

The first “you’re embarrassing me” is, I’m told, usually a sad moment for many parents. It’s the moment when your child is fully realizing their individuality as they mature, seeing themselves as separate from their parents and demanding to be treated in a way that protects that new identity they’re trying to create in the world among their peers.

But this…this wasn’t a sad moment at all. I felt the momentary sting of having my oldest child push away from my affections, but then as I considered her actions and words, I wanted to celebrate. Why? Cordy’s social and emotional development has been far from typical for much of her life, but in that moment, she had a very typical and age-appropriate response.

In other words: it’s progress towards understanding and developing typical social behavior. We know she’s on the verge of puberty, and several experts have told us that the hormones of the teenage years make everyone act different, but for kids with autism it can sometimes be dramatically better or dramatically worse. So far, we’re leaning towards the “better” category, as she starts noticing the behaviors of others around her and makes her own attempts at social behavior.

It’s encouraging. So very, very encouraging. In the last year she’s worked harder than ever to understand what’s accepted and what isn’t when she’s out in public. She’s been attending a social skills class for girls with social/emotional disabilities, and that class has been nothing but positive for her. She’s one of the group members that looks forward to her weekly class, enjoys stumbling through social missteps with the other girls in her group, and will now point out the frowned on social behaviors of others.

I may still feel sad at later attempts to push away from me when I try to hug her. But for this instance, I could only smile and be proud of her.

Filed Under: Autism, Cordy ·


Mar 21, 2014

Slowly Saving for Disney World

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Last year, we took the kids to Walt Disney World for their first trip. It was not a cheap vacation, but one we had budgeted for over the span of half a year. At the time, we didn’t plan on visiting the home of the Mouse for another few years.

And then I had the opportunity to go to a one-day conference this year, held AT Walt Disney World. With the conference offering a discounted deal on room and park tickets for several days around the conference, we decided to make this another family trip. After all, Anna and Elsa from Frozen are now at Epcot, and Cordy and Mira would do just about anything to get to meet them.

The hardest part in preparing for the trip has been bracing ourselves for the expenses again. But I think we’ll be ready with most of our trip paid for before we’re even there, and the kids already have their spending money ready to go. How? Gift cards. It’s how we budgeted and saved for our last trip, and the method we’re using for this trip, too.

Saving for Disney with Gift Cards

I knew about the conference back in the fall, and we quickly decided to make it a family vacation. At that point, each time I went to the grocery, I bought a $25 or $50 Disney gift card if we could afford it. I usually go to the grocery about three or four times a month, so that resulted in $75-200 we’ve been saving each month towards the trip. (Plus a lot of savings on gas thanks to fuel point bonuses on buying gift cards from our grocery!) We had to be sneaky about it at first, since we didn’t tell the girls we were going back to Disney until Christmas morning.

We also asked family for Disney gift cards as gifts during the holiday season. My family already does a lot of gift card exchanging at Christmas, so they were happy to give us gift cards towards our trip. The kids received smaller gifts with Disney gift cards taped to the back of them.

But Cordy and Mira have also been working towards earning their own spending money, too. We use a token system in place of an allowance in our family. Daily chores, good effort in school, and going above and beyond at home earn the girls “doubloons” (we bought a bag of plastic gold coins from a costume store) which can be traded for treats, extra privileges, or can be used like cash to purchase things they want. I prefer this system over a cash allowance since they can trade them in for non-cash rewards like staying up late, or a trip to the park when Aaron and I may not feel like going.

Since we told the kids about going back to Disney, we’ve encouraged them to save their doubloons to trade for Disney gift cards. The doubloons are roughly equal to $0.50, so every 50 earns them a $25 gift card. They’ve worked hard over the last three months to earn as many as possible and have added two or three gift cards to their stash. The cards they’ve earned or received as gifts are their own to spend as they see fit: Aaron and I will cover all meals and some snacks, and if we choose to buy them a souvenir it comes from our money, but anything else they want at Disney World is their responsibility.

I really like the gift card method of saving for a trip. While we also have a vacation savings account that has a very small amount of money transferred to each month, the gift cards are a more tangible reminder of what we’re saving towards, and the girls are so proud to hold the gift cards that they’ve earned, knowing they have their own cards to use at Walt Disney World for whatever they want. Whenever we purchase a new one, we pull them all out so the kids can see the progress we’ve all made towards the trip.

If you used this method, you could set your own schedule for when you buy a gift card. Maybe it’s every paycheck, or once a month, or when you cash in a change jar. (You can buy “add any amount” gift cards with a minimum $10 starting balance, too.) The great thing about Disney gift cards is that they can be used in the parks, at the Disney Store (local or online), and can be used for Disney travel, too. So if you’re a family who likes Disney, they won’t go to waste if you happen to have too many.

For me, it’s less painful to save in $25 and $50 increments, and exciting to see how fast it all adds up. I also don’t feel like a failure if we’re short on money and can’t buy a gift card during one shopping visit, since I know it’s likely we’ll buy a gift card on the next grocery trip.

Best of all? It’ll be such a relief to not have a huge credit card bill after our trip.

Filed Under: money, travel ·


Mar 17, 2014

Streaming TV for Kids with Kidoodle.TV

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At least once a week, we find ourselves in a situation where one or both kids must sit somewhere boring and wait quietly. Sometimes it’s for an appointment, sometimes it’s while we take one to gymnastics or the other to her therapy session, and the other kid has to tag along because the other parent is occupied. Books work in many situations, but for longer waits or long car trips, we often like to pull out electronic media to provide additional reward for waiting patiently.

My phone and my iPad have a few apps on them specifically for the kids, although both get bored with games fairly quickly. I have different video viewers on my devices, but I also know I’m not always right there to make sure one of the girls doesn’t finish one video and then accidentally jump to another video that may not be appropriate for kids. So I either have to hover to make sure the video is appropriate, or block video apps from their allowed list.

To further complicate things, we’re planning to cut cable soon. The final straw was when the cable company announced they were raising our rates again (3rd time in a year), and were also removing some of our favorite channels from the now-higher-priced package we pay for. While I’ll be glad to save money, I know Cordy and Mira will still want to watch TV, especially when we’re making dinner or when they’re cashing in for some free time.

I recently had the chance to try out Kidoodle.TV for our family. Kidoodle.TV is a video-on-demand streaming service specifically targeted to kids 12 and under. It also has robust parental controls to give you the ability to customize what’s available for each child in your house and set viewing time limits.

kidoodle main pageThe main screen of Kidoodle.TV in a child’s profile.

Signing up was a breeze, and it allowed me to create a profile for each child. (You can create up to 5 profiles per account.) Each profile can then have different customizations applied. You can select appropriate age ranges for videos, so your four year old isn’t watching Transformers Beast Wars, or your older kid isn’t watching preschool programming.

Profile setupProfile setup

Beyond that, you can then look through the list of all shows available, and further customize, turning off shows you don’t want to make available, and turning on others that your child might like, even if it doesn’t fall in the recommended age range.

Selecting showsselecting shows manually

Once you’ve got the profiles set up, you can navigate to the website on your computer or launch the Kidoodle.TV app for iOS or Android, select the profile, and hand the control over to your child. Select a profile

When you’re in a profile, your child can choose from any available video and watch it immediately. You then set up a passcode so that changes can’t be made to a child’s profile without the parental passcode. I also like that you can lock a profile to prevent that child from switching to another kid’s profile. (Mira, who loves to see what her sister is up to, doesn’t need to be watching all of the video options available to Cordy, for example.)

Parent passcode

No changes made without permission.

The video controls are bright and easy to use, too. Mira had no trouble learning how to pause a video, start it again, and control the options available to her. There are a lot of different shows available on Kidoodle.TV, too. Some of the cartoons I grew up with are there–like GI Joe, Inspector Gadget and Jem–and there’s plenty of educational programming, including National Geographic, Zoo Babies, and In Space. I’m excited to introduce our kids to shows that we grew up watching, and we’re enjoying watching new ones together. But when I can’t watch with them, it’s nice to know they won’t wander into anything inappropriate.

This point is completely unrelated to the kids, but Kidoodle.TV is also useful for parent TV time. Give the kids your computer or mobile device for Kidoodle.TV while you watch the TV shows you want to watch!

So far we’re really happy with the Kidoodle.TV service. The selection of kid programming is good, and they plan to add even more great content in the future. We’ve found the iOS app is superbly stable for a video player without the frequent buffering slowdowns of other players. Kidoodle.TV provides a free trial, and then it’s $4.99 a month afterward. BUT…I’ve got a coupon code you can use for 25% off a 1 year subscription to Kidoodle.TV. Just enter this code on the payment page: BLOGHER25. This coupon code expires June 30, 2014.

Giveaway!

Not only can you use that coupon code for a big savings on Kidoodle.TV, but they’re also giving away $100 Visa gift card to one lucky reader!

To enter, leave a comment below to these questions: what devices do you kids use? Do they have their own or share with the whole family?  You can also visit here to enter for a chance to win 1 of 3 iPad Minis in March and in April!

You can find out more about Kidoodle.TV on their website, Facebook page, Twitter, and Pinterest! 

Sweepstakes Rules:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

  1. Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
  2. Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique terms in your tweet message: #KidoodleTVBH and #SweepstakesEntry; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
  3. Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
  4. For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US or Canada (excluding Quebec) Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. The notification email will come directly from BlogHer via the sweeps@blogher email address. You will have 72 hours to respond; otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 3/17-4/18.

Be sure to visit the Kidoodle.TV brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers posts!

 

Filed Under: giveaways, pop culture, reviews, sponsored ·


Mar 12, 2014

Not So Sick (But Possibly Sick of Math)

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Yesterday just after lunch, the phone rang and I recognized the elementary school’s phone number immediately. I answered and one of Cordy’s teachers was on the other end, telling me that Cordy was complaining of a headache, a stomachache and feeling like she could faint.

This hasn’t been the first time I’ve had a call like this. They’ve been somewhat frequent in the past two weeks. At first I thought the headaches and other complaints were due to Cordy’s new glasses. Since the correction for her left eye is so strong, the optometrist said she might feel a little dizzy or get headaches while adjusting to her glasses. In previous calls, I usually recommended that she take her glasses off for a little bit, maybe rest for 15-20 minutes, and then go back to class.

The most recent call before this one, Cordy said she wanted to go home. At that point, I was starting to put together the pieces and noticed a pattern. These complaints of headaches and feeling faint were all coming either just before or during her math class. Which means that feeling sick let her escape math class for a bit. Hmmm. So that time, I told her that if her head hurt that much, she could come home, but that if she did it would be best that she not watch any TV or play any video games that night, so we wouldn’t make the headache worse. Falling for the trick, she immediately told me that her headache wasn’t THAT bad, and she agreed to tough it out the rest of the day.

This time, though, she had added in the stomachache as well. The teacher put her on the phone so I could talk to her. “I feel really sick and think I need to come home, mommy,” she told me.

“Are you sure you’re really sick, and not just nervous about going to math?” I asked.

“Yes, I really am!” she insisted. “I want to go to math and earn all of my points for the day, but I don’t think I can do it because I feel so bad.”

We went through variations of this same questioning a few times, and I reminded her that if she was that sick that would mean she’d have to come home and go to bed – no video games, no TV. She thought it over. “What do you think I should do, mommy?”

“I can’t tell you, Cordy, since only you know how bad you’re feeling. It’s up to you.”

There was a pause. “I think I should come home,” she weakly murmured.

“OK, I’m on my way to get you.”

Cordy suddenly sounded less weak. “Great! I’ll go try my best in class until you get here.”

“Um, no,” I replied. “If you feel well enough to go back to class, I’m not coming to get you.”

“Oh,” she said, realizing her error. “You’re right, I should wait here.”

I told the teacher that I was on my way to pick her up, even though something still felt off to me. I didn’t think she was sick, but was instead trying to get out of her math class. But I also didn’t want to leave her there if she was feeling sick.

When I arrived at the school, the secretary told Cordy that I was there, and she popped up off of the nurse’s cot with a big smile and a hug for me. Again, she didn’t seem sick. When I told her that, she put on her best miserable look, and barely pushed out the words to tell me that she really didn’t feel well.

On the ride home, whenever I looked back she was all smiles, watching the scenery fly by on this sunny day. I reminded her that she had to go right to bed when we got home.

At home, she immediately hugged Cosmo and tried to play with him. I sent her up to bed, tucked her in, and told her to get some rest. I also took her Nintendo DS from her room so she wouldn’t be tempted to play it when I wasn’t watching. Then I went back to work downstairs.

A short while later, I hear her door open. Soon she’s peering down at me on the staircase, eyes bright with a wide smile. “I feel all better now!” she announced. “Can I play on the DS for a little bit?”

So much for being sick.

Clearly not sickClearly not sick.

I still wouldn’t let her have any screen time, but told her she could work on her homework or read a book. We discussed her symptoms from earlier, and she continued to insist that she wasn’t making it up, that she really did have a headache, stomachache and felt faint, but then felt all better at home. I asked if she thought she was just nervous about math, but she again insisted she wasn’t.

Maybe she was faking it all along. Or it’s possible she doesn’t realize her anxiety over her math class is causing her symptoms. I’m a little sad at the thought that math – a subject she’s gifted in, and does so well at when she’s not paralyzed with the fear that she’s doing something the wrong way – could be making her physically sick from worry.

We talking about her feelings and her worries, and I explained how a person can worry so much they make themselves feel sick, and that it’s not healthy to do that. We then discussed ways to help ease worrying, like picturing things that make her happy, or taking a few deep breaths.

I’m hoping that my talk with her yesterday will help her get past this. I don’t want her to see school as a place to run away from. She used to love being there, and couldn’t wait to go back each day. But this year she’s more resistant, and now trying to find ways to get out of school before the end of the day.

I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that there’s not another call home today.

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Filed Under: Cordy ·