Family Photos

 I've wanted to get professional photos taken of our family forever, but I've never, ever done it.  Now that we finally have all of our kiddos home, I asked Kelly at Forever Iris to do a photo shoot with us.

Most of the pics turned out really, really cute, and not only was Kelly wonderful to work with, she had some great idea for poses.  Unfortunately, the weather in February wasn't so cooperative, and so some of the shots ended up with all of us looking miserably cold.  I think we may have a re-do once springtime comes!

Magazine Article

I was asked to write a few articles for the Matilda Ziegler Magazine.  Here is the first one, telling my story of bringing Abi home. 

Braille, Braille Everywhere

Sighted kids get bombarded with print in their day-to-day lives. They see letters and logos everywhere.  As they learn to read, they unconsciously pick out letters and words they know, and recognize familiar objects, signs and colors.

Blind kids, on the other hand, miss out on the reading practice unless someone (in this case, Mom) sprinkles Braille around everywhere that little fingers land.  The SpEd teacher at the school district also recommended that I do this, and though my style isn't "let's label everything in the house until the family feels like they are living in a Preschool classroom," I agreed with her that the importance of encountering braille in everyday life trumps my own personal style.

So, I've been pulling out my slate and stylus for a few minutes here and there and labeling.  I've also transcribed a few more books.  I like that I'm keeping my transcriber skills sharp, and providing my daughter with the pre-reading practice she needs so much.  Braille-nerd, for the win. :)

Braille Cards

My mom loves greeting cards. Let me amend that. My mom LOVES greeting cards. She searches out just the right card for each person for every occasion.

With Abi, we discussed singing cards and textured embossed cards. A very, very few cards are available in Braille, and most of those are along the lines of a generic sunflower you might give your grandmother.

Time to get creative.

I got some clear labels, and brailled personal messages onto them. This way, Mom can pick out a fun, cute card, and then add the Braille so Abi can read it.

With a birthday coming up, I got them done just in time!

Tactile Coloring Sheets

Coloring inside the lines can be tricky when you can't see the lines!  Luckily, the problem is easily solved with a little planning ahead and some puff fabric paint.

Snapshot: Optimism

As we were putting the trampoline together this morning, our next-door neighbor remarked wryly, "You guys are sure optimistic that the weather's going to stay nice. We could still have another snowstorm or two." 

Well, I guess if we do, the tramp will get wet.

Happy Birthday To Me!

Playing Outside On A Warm Spring Day

This is just me having fun taking pictures of my kids, practicing my photography skills and trying to get interesting candid shots.  It's great to have a new kiddo in the mix.  Also, I'm experimenting with some new crops, and using "hard light" in Photoshop. Click on any of the photos to view it larger in the photo viewer.

Difficult

This morning, we roused four sleepy, tousled children at 6 am.  Three of them would be staying with friends and family, while Hubby and I took Abi to Spokane to have an exam under anesthesia and possible surgery.  In spite of the snow flurries, our drive there was uneventful, and we got checked into the Pediatric Surgery and talked to our Ophthalmologist. (Aside: see how many big words I can now spell right? For a long time, I had to rely on the squiggly red line to help with "ophthalmologist.")

Things went smoothly, until the surgeon came to us with sagging shoulders after the procedure.  It had not been successful.

Let me try to explain in a nutshell what had happened.  Abi's eyes are large and swollen due to congenital glaucoma.  This means that the little valve in her eyes that drains fluid from her eyeball never formed when she was tiny.  As a result, the pressure inside each eyeball has risen to extremely high levels, permanently damaging her optic nerves.

The doctor intended to check her pressure today, and if it was high, he'd attempt to create an artificial drain in her eyeball.  It was high, and the procedure turned surgical.  He ran into trouble, however, by the fact that the "wall" of her eye, the sclera, is so thin and stretched that he was unable to separate the layers to create a channel for the fluid to drain without cutting all the way through and seriously damaging the eye.

So now we're left with a dilemma.  Do we attempt another surgery (or another? or another?) to lower the pressure and save the scrap of sight she has in her left eye? How useful is that fragment of limited sight to her anyway? What exactly can she even see? Do we forgo additional surgeries on her already delicate and damaged left eye?  Her sight may not be able to be saved much longer even if we do multiple surgeries.  How inevitable is total blindness?  Do we seek a second opinion? A third? Do we travel to points yonder seeking other specialists?

Conventional "sighted" wisdom says to fight to save her sight at all costs.  Blind friends tell me stories about multiple painful and ultimately unnecessary and invasive surgeries they have undergone that they wish they hadn't had to endure.  My own experience with low vision and interacting with eye doctors colors my opinion somewhat, and Hubby is wrestling with the same questions from the viewpoint of perfect sight, but knowing Abi was blind before we ever finalized her adoption.

It goes without saying that we'll pray for wisdom.  We'll talk and weigh every option. We'll make the best decision that we can make for the welfare of our daughter.

But, man oh man, is it a hard decision.

Perfection

If you don't get lunch until 2:45, it might as well be a perfect lunch.

Little Mister's Photography

I love giving my camera to one of my children and finding out later what pictures are on it. A glimpse into their world and what they care about comes back in pixels on my computer screen when I load the pictures off my memory card a day or so later.

Injera Success!!

Let's face it. Injera is really tricky to make properly. Even some Ethiopians don't make their own injera. I tried five (six?) times with very little success.

Anytime I told Ethiopians that I was trying to make injera, they tried to smother their smiles and hide looks of utter disbelief. And until today, they were right to think that this "Ferengi"(white foreigner) would have a hard time. Hubby opined that I was lacking some essential ingredient, such as Wing of Bat, or Eye of Eritrean Fire Newt.

No longer!!! Today, I followed the directions here and had overwhelming success. I did use a different book to make my sourdough starter, and I used a Teflon crepe pan on the stove for my "mitad" (injera pan), so the injeras are baby-sized. But the happy news is: it worked!

Now I can make my own injera for our family, and for our friends when we do cultural show-and-tell. I'm so happy. :)

Shiro Wat Recipe

Shiro Wat (Ethiopian Red Lentil Stew)

1 cup dry red lentils (buy them here, or locally, sold in bulk at the food co-op) 

1/2 medium-sized red onion

1/4 c. oil (I used canola, but vegetable, sunflower or similar would work)

1/4 tsp. berbere spice (buy it here)

pinch of salt

water

Preparing the lentils:

Soak the lentils in 3c. water overnight. The next day, rinse them and boil them gently in 3c. fresh water until they are soft and paste-like. It may take 3 hours or more. Cover them while they boil, and stir occasionally, and take care not to boil them over or let them get too dry. Makes 2 batches. Freezes well.

Making the wat:

Dice the onion very fine. Heat oil in a small saucepan until a drop of water sizzles when flicked into it. Add the onion, berbere and salt and cook until the onion is browned and soft. Add 1/2 c. water (carefully, it will pop!) and 1/2 the lentil paste from before, and let boil for a few minutes.  If it is too thick, add more water... too thin, and you can boil for a while to cook some water off.  

It should end up as a thick, soft stew.  Serve on injera.  (A good tutorial for making injera is here.)

**Note: please ignore the injera in the picture. My injera is still in the "trial and error" (read: error) stage. It tastes great, and Abi likes it, so we get a win there! But it doesn't have eyes like it should, and it sticks to the pan, and comes out in pieces, rather than peeling off and having that nice, spongy texture when it cools.  But I'll keep practicing, and maybe one day replace this picture with a better one. :)

Divide and Conquer

This morning I put up a long fence...

...in a successful attempt to separate this canine creature...

...from this adorable human creature, who is beginning to be less afraid of him...

...but why suffer more panic attacks unnecessarily?

It also served to keep this adorable human creature out of the kitchen cupboard for a while...

...and since I took a picture of everyone else, I figured the kid who actually did not need a fence in order to behave himself ought to get a picture on my blog too!

The End.