This past weekend was a crochet fest at our house. I don’t know what came over me. I just suddenly got this urge to find my crochet needles and yarns and make amigurumi, tiny crocheted toys.
I had a skein of Stitch Nation wool to use up. This yarn is so buttery. I love it!
I made a swampbogger, one of those American mythological creatures my husband grew up hearing stories about and now as an adult making toys of.
Pretty soon my 9-year-old daughter was crocheting a white rabbit from a pattern in the book, Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts Amigurumi by Tomoko Takamori. I had to stop every so often to help her. She learned to do the chain stitch at 6 years old, and once in a while pick it up again, learning more along the way. Working with patterns was a really great way to practice her multiplication table.
I love making amigirumi because of how small these projects are. They’re little one-sitting projects that bring so much joy so instantly. Perfect for kids and busy parents.
There are no real solutions being presented to us by government or medical establishment. They are either dragging their feet to protect their industries’ profit margin, or are stumped as to what to do.
The problem is threefold: people’s overuse of antibiotics, livestock overuse of antibiotics, and now in environment and wildlife.
Big Pharma is putting millions of dollars into research for stronger and better antibiotics, but sooner or later we will be faced with the same question: How long before bacteria develops resistance to those?
It’s really troubling if you have no plan of action on how to protect yourself and your family from this “Superbug.” Let me share my plans of action with you. I hope my ideas can be of use to you and your family.
1. By any means, avoid going to a hospital. Hospitals are teeming with infections, and you increase your likelihood of encountering antibiotic-resistant bacteria there. (See PBS Eight Ways to Protect Yourself from Superbugs.)
2. Wash your hands. With water. Wash with water as long as you can sing the “Happy birthday” song twice to make sure you are thoroughly washed. Scrub fingers and under the fingernails. Dump the hand sanitizers, especially the ones that are antibacterial. They contribute to the creation of superbugs. Keep vodka in a spray bottle for those times when you have no access to running water.
3. Zap. According to the books written by Dr. Hulda Clark, the Zapper is a device that emits a positive offset square wave frequency that shatters parasites, bacteria and viruses. Frequency medicine was pioneered by Nikola Tesla in the 1900s and followed up by Georges Lakhovsky, Royal Rife and most recently, Hulda Clark. Hulda Clark developed a zapper for direct use, and another one she called a zappicator for zapping foods and beverages. She published the schematics public domain in her books so anyone can build them. There are many for sale on the internet, and some that are not up to specs, so choose wisely. *The Hulda Clark Zapper is in the public domain and therefore has not been evaluated by the FDA. Not surprisingly it has been discredited by Big Pharma and their minions.
4. Eat organic. Find small local farms that raise their livestock with no antibiotics, no hormones, no pesticides in feed. If they have organic certification, great. If not, visit their farm and see how they raise their animals. Eat certified organic fruits and vegetables. Use the Hulda Clark Food Zappicator on your food before eating.
5. Colloidal silver can be purchased at your local health food store. It was used widely by physicians in the early 20th century but was discontinued in the 1940s when antibiotics became more popular. Now is a good time to get back to this effective solution to simple infections. NASA astronauts use it to keep their water source free of bacteria while in space. (For more info, see Colloidal Silver Wikipedia page.)
As we enter the end of the Antibiotic Era, it is time to think outside the box. Pharmaceuticals have not provided us with sustainable answers. They worked, for some time, but increased side-effects and vested financial interests have rendered them a dead end for us. Worse comes to worst, doctors employ surgery to remove infection. But that’s another nightmare altogether.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
(Disclosure: I am owner/manager of NaturalHealthSupply.com and we sell zappers. My husband and I have been zapping since 1997, and in 1999 we began selling zappers because we believe it has dramatically improved our family’s health. I feel really lucky to have found the zapper as a solution to many of my family’s health problems. I’ve spoken openly about zapping long before we started selling them. Recommendations above are my own personal opinion and are not intended as medical advice.)
We’ve had a really fun weekend with friends, carving pumpkins and roasting marshmallows on a fire outdoors. Then suddenly last night my daughter woke up crying and clutching her ear.
My first response is to set her up with a Hulda Clark Zapper. She zapped, holding it close to her ear and under her jaw. I also gave her some echinacea and brought her a warm washcloth to comfort the ear that hurts. Pretty soon my husband was up too and set her up with a hot water bottle to replace the washcloth. Within half an hour she was asleep again.
I tried to imagine the same situation if I didn’t have a Hulda Clark Zapper.
I grew up in the tropics. I never had an earache as a child. I once had a mosquito enter my ear, but that’s a whole different story. My husband grew up here in Maine, and told me he constantly had earaches. He remembers staying up all night, 6 to 7 hours of crying in pain, with only a hot water bottle for comfort.
A while back in conversation with a dad at a playground, he told me how glad he was he had health insurance because of how often he had to take his children to the emergency room for fevers and ear infections. Getting a crying child bundled up and in the car to go to the emergency room, where she has to wait to get treated with antibiotics is pretty extreme for something as common as an ear infection. Antibiotics also do not provide immediate relief. According to most medical websites I consulted, doctors prescribe ear drops and recommend an over-the-counter pain reliever for kids.
Personally I would hate to do this to my kid. First off I think hospitals are a good source of secondary infection. You come in with one problem and leave with more. Next, I don’t like drugs. Even the ones doctors prescribe have a level of toxicity. That’s why doctors have to control them with a prescription. Then of course, there is the threat of antibiotic-resistant pathogens we cannot anymore ignore. And finally, going to the ER is so stressful at a time when a child most needs to rest.
The Hulda Clark Zapper has allowed me to take care of my family in the comfort of our home, quickly, painlessly and effectively. I am so grateful to have it in my life.
(Disclosure: I am owner/manager of NaturalHealthSupply.com and we sell zappers. My husband and I have been zapping since 1997, and in 1999 we began selling zappers because we believe in its benefits. I feel really lucky to have found the zapper as a solution to many of my family’s health problems. I’ve spoken openly about zapping long before we started selling them. My testimonial above is my own personal experience with the zapper, and is not intended as a medical claim.)
We made a movie! My husband, daughter and I have been making a short movie series since summer last year. My daughter calls it Time Brats. It’s a sci-fi fantasy musical, and she invites her cousins, classmates, and in this latest one, the 4th episode, her 2nd grade teacher, to be part of it. It’s a lot of fun, and keeps me and my husband busy making props and costumes before the shoot, and editing and soundtracking after it. Here’s the video. We had so much fun making it. I hope you like it.
But that’s not really what this blog post is about. I want to show you how to sew the Chipmunks’ Ears out of scrap fabric we had at home. It’s easy!
Materials:
paper for making a pattern
brown fabric (we used fleece)
bright colored furry fabric (we had violet at home)
plastic headband close to the wearer’s hair color
sewing machine, thread, scissors, pins, thimble, whatever it takes for you to work on a sewing project
Start by cutting out a pattern. It’s really simple, just a straight line at the bottom and a half circle above. It can be as big or small as you want the ears to be. I imagine making it small would be a lot more difficult, unless you have really tiny fingers, so make it a decent size, maybe half an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper.
When it’s time to cut out the fabric, make sure your fur goes in the direction away from the straight line. I’m not sure I’m describing it accurately so just take a look at the picture above to see what I mean. Cut out 2 sets for 2 ears.
Put the fabrics together, right sides facing each other, wrong sides on the outside. Tuck the fur in so we don’t sew it and we get more fuzz for fun. Then sew the half-circle around. Don’t worry if you have to make little pleats just to make the two pieces of fabric fit. Just make sure you keep the ends of the straight line bottom together.
Turn it inside out. See the pleats I did when I sewed the half circle? It looks pretty cool.
Fold the straight sides in, and sew together.
Now here’s the tricky part. To get those ears on the headband, you’ll need to hand-sew it on. Fold the ears in half, fur on the inside and set it up straight side in line with the headband, curved side sticking outward like, oh yeah, ears! Hand-sew the ears together to hold on to the headband. You could knock yourself out and sew the whole straight side together, but I just sewed the part close to the fold, and then the ends.
To really secure the ears to the headband, get into the furry part and sew it together close to the headband. I just did the middle of the ear and it stayed put well enough for two 8-year-olds to wear all day and shake their heads around in.
I don’t remember when my daughter started helping me in the kitchen. Was it at age 3 or was it even younger? I remember her taking initiative making us snacks not even a mother could love.
Now that she’s 8 she’s become quite a cook. She can cook her own breakfast eggs. She’s been my assistant for the past two Thanksgivings, peeling and slicing potatoes like a big girl. She’s also got those really strong arms from gymnastics. The girl can whisk like a pro!
Today she made another one of her no-bake snacks, but this time she wrote her recipe out.
I asked her what the letters stood for. Here’s what she told me:
C.C. – cupcake liner
G.M. – granola Mom’s
M.S. – marshmallows
Sh.W. – sugar white (in our house that’s organic evaporated cane sugar)
H.W. – honey raw
R.O. – raisins organic
And what does M.W.H.B. with a circle and backslash stand for?
Any parent traveling with children on a plane stocks up on activities to do while in transit. We certainly had a backpack’s worth of toys, drawing books and art supplies. Most important for parents, however is a creative mind to keep kids entertained during the many hours in limbo.
On our flight from San Francisco to Manila aboard Philippine Airlines, we received a plastic bag each containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, sleeping mask and a pair of socks. When boredom set in, it was sock puppet time!
Fold the toe in to make a mouth for the sock puppet. Have your child draw the face using a sharpie marker.
This Christmas was a challenge for my family. We had to move out of our home in November because of a mold issue in the house that was making us ill. My mother offered us my childhood home in the Philippines.
It excites us to think of spending a little time in the place where I grew up. A few years ago we spent a year in Maine where my husband grew up. My daughter, then only two years old, still has strong memories of kayaking in the lake in the summer and playing in the snow in the winter. The Philippines is as far away from Maine as can be, and I can’t wait to make new memories there.
First we had to move out of our home. We were all battling health issues from the mold, but we had to face the task head-on. For 15 days my husband and I packed up our belongings into boxes and drove them into a storage space. We donated a lot of things to Parca, and packed up necessities for keeping with us while we were in transition.
My daughter had been rehearsing for the annual children’s theater holiday production of Wizard of Oz since September. It was a blessing that she was kept occupied with the show. It allowed my husband and I more time to do all the packing while she was out of the house, and it also gave her a distraction from the impending goodbyes to school, her friends, her home.
My family has an empty home in the country two hours away that we are staying in for the holidays, before we leave for the Philippines. We made ourselves comfortable and hosted Thanksgiving Dinner. After Thanksgiving, we warmed the home with Christmas fare.
We were barely home. We spent a lot of time in a hotel back in the San Francisco Bay Area, during dress-tech rehearsals and the shows following. It was the culmination of all my daughter’s preparations for the holiday show. At this point she was homeschooling, and the theatre provided her with a social outlet and a feeling of accomplishment. We had to let her finish what she started, no matter the cost to us.
We traveled with a little Christmas tree and nativity scene, so we could set up Christmas with us wherever we went. My daughter performed in evening shows on Fridays and Saturdays, matinees on Saturdays and Sundays all December. We drove back to my family’s home in the country on the weekdays. When school let out for Christmas break, my daughter performed matinees on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and evening shows on Wednesday, Thursday and closing night on Friday.
We finally came home on December 24, thoroughly exhausted, under the weather, but fully rewarded by an unforgettable experience. There’s no place like home… and home is where the heart is.
My daughter loves hearing about how she was born. I tell her about her beginning as a tiny baby the size of a pea growing inside my belly. I tell her about how happy I was when she grew big in my belly and I felt her kicking against me. I tell her about the dream I had of her being held by a larger-than-life statue of the Madonna whose face looked like Freddie Mercury. I tell her that dream meant she had the gift of music.
I tell her that a few hours before she was born, her Daddy and I took a walk around the neighborhood and rescued a lost dog. I tell her that when it was time for her to come out, three midwives came to our home to help me. She likes thinking of them as three fairy godmothers. I tell her that at some point I hugged her Daddy and he could feel her kicking against us, pushing just as hard as I was. I tell her that when she finally came out, she blew all the fluid out of her nose and let out a strong cry, her first song. I tell her that when she was all wrapped up warm in a blanket, her Daddy sang her the “Macaroni” song.
I tell her that three days after she was born, she started turning orange. I said, I don’t want a pumpkin. I want a baby! So we went to Children’s Hospital and put her under bright lights. In a few days she was back to being a baby and we took her home.
At five years old, she began adding to the story. She says that once she was an angel who wanted to be human. She looked over all the mothers and fathers in whole world and picked us. Then she came into my belly and started growing there. I tell her how lucky we were that she chose us.
I suppose it is natural for humans to be curious about our origins. Where proof ends, we speculate. Cultures create and appropriate their own versions of creation myths. Even Science has its own unproven theory of our beginnings. We need these stories to give us a sense of identity. These stories, like stars, guide us as we navigate the future.
What do you do with two 6-year-olds on a misty Sunday afternoon?
Make pretzels! It’s so easy making pretzel dough on the breadmaker. And after seeing me make spider-shaped pretzels, the girls, still wearing their fairy wings, took over with their own creations: bacteria… uhrm… dots of some sort.
