At least we're not worried about her self concept.

In passing, Boogaloo had her hearing test today.  Her hearing is within normal limits, and she shows no trouble picking up the middle and higher registers, which is where human speech processes.  Ergo, hearing problems are not the causes of her speech problems.  Whatever difficulties we encounter there are in her brain, not her ears. 

But in spite of all the difficulties encumbant in having a language processing disorder, at least we know she has a healthy self-concept. For instance, observe below. 

This is Boogaloo drawing a family portrait on the white board in the garage. 

Here she is drawing Max, our dog.  The picture standing beside Max is me.  I can tell because she always gives me a top-knot.  I guess it's supposed to be a ponytail.  This kind of picture is developmentally appropriate for a four-year-old. 

Observe that I am not just a head. I also have legs, eyes, a nose, a mouth, and hair. 

 This is my husband Seth and obviously the artist herself. 

Observe that my husband is drawn much like I am, except that he has more hair, which I supposed, is appropriate.  She hasn't put facial hair on him yet.  I guess she doesn't consider his beard part of his basic type. 

  

  However, when she comes to herself, observe what detail she puts into it.  Her haircut is accurate.  She has arms, and she doesn't just have legs.  She has a dress.  In fact, she has a very specific dress with a ruffly collar, a long skirt, and a laced-up bodice, the very dress she was wearing that day.  She really loves that dress.  This was the third day in a row that she wore it.   

I believe this demonstrates that even if she doesn't relate to other people comfortably, she knows herself very well.  Moreover, she knows she's cute.   

Heaps upon heaps to hold my head up.

It's funny how when I most want comfort, I can't accept it.  When I most want to consider something done, I can't let it go. It's so easy to cultivate an attitude of perpetual activity and moderate  hopelessness, thinking that unless everything is done right, everything will go wrong.   And what does God do?   He heaps more assurances on our heads until finally I pause from my fretting, look around me, and see all my blessings heaped around me on the floor. 

This past week has been something of a blue funk.  Seth is leaving for the Netherlands soon, and just like when he went on deployment, I began to feel that awful detachment settle over me, the feeling that drives me helter skelter away from any weight or warmth of affection.  Everything seems more stressful the week before he leaves.  Plus we had been waiting for about two months to continue the testing process for Boogaloo, which means lots of questions and no answers with only my own researches for direction.  That's a lonely, stressful feeling too.  Lonely + stressed = depressed in my case, and by last Saturday, I was having moments when I doubted everything from the quality of my parenting to the security of my soul. 

But between that moment and Monday night, God has opened so many blessings in front of me that my blues were just forced to dissapate. 

I've been reading Nancy Wiseman's Could it be Autism?  and feeling more and more certain that no, it isn't ( blessing #1). Boogaloo doesn't demonstrate half the traits that she talks about.  In fact, I think Seth would like me to stop reading her book because I'm imbibing her  sense of urgency with hardly any of her reasons.  He finally talked me into waiting until after our appointment with the Early Intervention office this past Monday before I went madly searching for doctors of this and doctors of that to do a multi-disciplinary appraisal.  It helped that I switched books to When the Labels Don't Fit: A New (anti-diagnostical) Approach to Raising a Challenging Child  by Barbara Probst, which focuses on how biased a lot of testing is in regard to normality and desirable traits.

At any rate, Sunday night, the night before Boogaloo's appointment with Early Intervention, Sharry, the teacher who manages our church's preschool (a good friend) called me up.  She just wanted to let me know that she was so glad that I had gotten Boogaloo evaluated (blessing #2).  She had been thinking about mentioning testing to me but wasn't sure how to approach the subject (how does one approach that subject with an oblivious parent?).  She let me know that she had the highest opinion of the people at Early Intervention, mentioning one Anne in particular.  Then she told me the story of a little boy who had had something similar to what Boogaloo has a couple of years ago.  He went through the preschool with help, and now he's in a normal first grade with no help at all (blessing #3). 

So that's what I was processing when the Boogaloo, Seth, and I went to the ESD development center on Monday.  Lo and behold, the very Anne that Sharry mentioned by name was one of our evaluators (blessing #4), and she had so much good to say about Sharry that my heart lifted with each sentence. She said that if we chose to keep the Boo in a normal preschool, she would be the one working with her.  Boo wasn't especially happy to be there, but she behaved well enough to get compliments from both ladies (blessing #5).  We signed a bunch of paperwork, understood that any Early Intervention services are free (blessing #6), were able to report a bunch of small advances (blessing #7), and were done. 

I was expecting something a lot more intense.  I was expecting a lot more work for me to do in the next few weeks (the weeks when Seth is gone, and the Boo and I are preparing for two cross-country weddings and joining Seth in the Netherlands).  Nope, all preparations are now postponed until we get back (blessing #8) when we can meet with Boogaloo's teachers and get her settled into a real preschool setting.  In the meantime, travel, especially international travel, is supposed to open up worlds of improvement (no pun intended) in the minds of delayed children.  Our ladies at the EI office heartily approve of our summer plans (blessing #9), which takes a weight off of my mind.  And Anne is going to send me materials to help deal with the little difficulties in the meantime (blessing #10).

And those are only the blessings in regard to the Boogaloo and her condition.  I haven't mentioned the high school friend who materialized out of nowhere just in time to watch my dog (#11) or the sudden rise in the number of tutoring hours I've been picking up (#12) or the opening that God made for me to join a church praise team (#13) but not as a leader (#14) and only one of several praise teams (#15).  I find, in the midst of my blessings, that  I have no room for doubt.  There's still plenty of stress, fatigue, and distraction, but no doubt, and let's face it, doubt is the thing that really kills you.  Everything else is just a temporary burden that has to be born. 

Cake (Non-)Baking Scientifically

Is anything done traditionally anymore?  I suppose we need to remember that all traditions come from somewhere and therefore are subject to change.  Anyway, I got a call from my best friend (and maid of honor at my wedding) asking me for an unusual favor.  "I have to move my wedding.  My baker has bailed on me.  Feel free to say no, but would you be willing to make my wedding cake?"

"Ummmm," I said.  "Let me think about that."  I love being artistic.  I love baking.  Neither of these qualities make me a professional.  The last time I had instruction in cake decorating, I was 11, and my idea of elegant was lopsided cursive writing and really BIG rose leaves. 

"I'm not actually asking you to bake a cake," she hurriedly assured me.  "I've been talking with my friends, and they gave me this great idea.  Make it out of rice krispie treats." 

Okay. Now that I can probably handle.  So I said yes and got to work.  Sure, her wedding is still a full month away.  When has that ever stopped me from preparing waaaayyyy in advance?  I figure that two days before a wedding is a really bad time to discover that I'm in over my head.  So I've done a little research, and now I'm proceeding scientifically.

The bride (love you, Des) has a loose idea of what she wants: two three-layer cakes, one peanut butter with white chocolate, one marshmallow drizzled with milk (or maybe dark) chocolate.  It's up to me to find the best recipes, combinations, and methods.  I figure, in addition to taste, moldability, cutability, servability, and presentation are the chief qualities to measure. 

Step 1: So I dug up a recipe.  (I started with peanut butter rice krispie treats because Seth had never had them!  After all those years of CRC potlucks, he had never had this recipe!  I was a floored.) Of this recipe I asked three questions: is it tasty, is it moldable, and does it cut easily?  To answer the question of tasty, I tasted it.  So far, so good.  Then to mold it, I used three different pans with three different kinds linings.  Conclusion:  Greased cling wrap is the best lining, and with it, the recipe molds very well.  Does it cut well?  On the day of making it, if I use a Miracle Blade.  The day after, it gets a little stiff.  Maybe I'll add marshmallows. 

Step Two:  Testing toppings.  The bride knows what flavor of toppings she wants, but she leaves the details completely in my hands.  As far as I can tell, the variables are candy coating and frosting.  The categories are again taste, moldability, cutability, and presentation.

Melted white chocolate chips provide by far the most delineated texture and harden the quickest (Those roses are an accidental result of the camera angle.  They don't look half that good in real life.), but the coating flakes when the cake is cut, and it's hard to manipulate.  That's not especially presentable. It's also very rich, like sugar-buzz rich.  That kind if kills it in my book.  White chocolate and peanut butter, by the way, are amazing together.  I wonder why I haven't stumbled on them before. 

The texture of milk chocolate candy coating isn't so clean and it takes longer to harden than traditional chips, but it also doesn't flake when I cut the cake.  We've all had chocolate peanut butter cups, so I knew what to expect in terms of flavor, but for some reason, this flavor combination doesn't thrill me. 

The third option is the frosting that normally goes on top of peanut butter rice krispie treats: a simple combination of butter, powdered sugar, melted chocolate, and water.  As you can see, this option doesn't hold its shape quite as well, but it has the advantage that it can be put through a frosting tube, while the others, I think, would clog the nozzle.  Plus frosting is maleable, cleanly cutable, and variable in texture and flavor, and it melts in my mouth without going to my head.   Seth says it doesn't work well with rice krispies.  He says we need more opinions. 

So we "baked" up a bunch of regular rice krispie treats, frosted them half with candy coating and half with frosting, and took them around to the relatives yesterday.  The concensus is that either is good, but the candy coating would probably be better in terms of thickness and richness.  I have been overruled, but it will probably be easier that way.  The white chocolate was by far the favorite (as well as being the most bridal), so we might do both cakes in white. 

You'd think we'd be sick of rice krispies by now, but we're still going strong.  The frosting is getting to be a little much though. 

More "pleasant things"

I meant to post these pictures a week ago, but somehow, it always takes longer to recover from a vacation than it does to go on one.  For now, I'll just let you look at the pictures, but it was a harrowing week. 

Perhaps harrowing week is a bit of a exagerration.  Still, it does not behoove one to camp in Oregon in June.  Oh sure, the flowers are blooming, the strawberries are ripe and the raspberries are ripening, the grass is still green, and the clouds are picturesque.  But all of that will be spoiled by the fact that it's still raining.  Summer doesn't come to Northwest Oregon (or anywhere north of it) until July.  That's convenient for the Independence Day travel, but it left us out in the cold. 

We had decided to grab one of Seth's five day weekends to have a little family getaway before the company sends him back to the Netherlands for three months, so we packed up all our rarely used camping equipment and headed up to Silver Falls State Parks, one of the most beautiful natural places on the planet (not that I'm biased or anything). 

Silver Creek, Silver Falls State Park

 In the 1800s, Silver Falls was a logging town in the foothills of the Cascades, logging being the principle industry in those parts at that time.  After logging died down, it turned to tourism.  A big portion was set aside as a state park in the early 1930s and done up in style by Roosevelt and the New Deal.  The park consists of a lodge, a conference center, a camp ground and horse camp, and ten beautiful waterfalls. 

The South Falls

The Willamette Valley, as seen from the Park Gate

We had a wonderful "weekend" planned.  We were going to hike the falls and relax by the campfire.  We even brought our swimsuits, though we weren't quite naive enough to expect that the mountain water would be warm enough for a swim.  We just wanted to be prepared.  We invited all the inlaws up for  a brat roast on Tuesday night, and we were looking forward to a lot of fun.  But Nature had other plans.  You see those clouds?  They are sitting directly over the park. (The sunshine is on the other side of the valley.) They sat over the park for all of Monday and Tuesday until after dinner when the stars were coming out.  And they dumped buckets, buildings, resevoirs of rain on us. 
We set up our tent and rigged up a tarp in the rain, but the trees were too far apart to support the tarp conveniently.  We didn't have anything to prop up the tarp in the middle, so Seth ran down to the local hardware store to find some wood, while the Boo and I tried to put the camp in order.  Notice what's holding our tarp up in the meantime. 

Our first tarp pole, est. height 4'
  

We got a brief break in the clouds, just long enough to remind us why we were out there, and Seth took us on a long walk to nowhere (Sorry, Love, but you did.).  He wanted to take us to see another entrance to the  park, and he kept saying, "It's just around the next curve."  It was not around the next curve or the curve after that or that or that.  You get the picture.  Still, it was beautiful and invigorating. 

The road to Nowhere, i.e. the park entrance.  This road does actually connect several towns with the Park, but it isn't very busy. 

Walking to Nowhere

Seth and the Boogaloo, halfway to nowhere

Getting tired of walking to Nowhere. 

Then the rain came back, so we spent a lot of the first evening cuddling in the tent.  Boo curled up in her sleeping bag with Curious George and ignored the outside for a while.  The more snuggling she gets the better.  She even woke us up the next morning with "I would like a snuggle please." 

Boogaloo buried in blankets and sleeping bags

The Boo, not being fully potty trained, soaked through her only two pairs of long pants in the first evening.  I rinsed them out in the hope that they would dry by the following day, but it rained all night.  We ended up drying them in the Jeep. 

Our impromptu dryer

Not to mention, it was cold.  When the rain was falling or threatening to fall, there were times when I could see my breath.  I hadn't brought a coat, just Seth's Navy sweatshirt.  For a whole day, the Boo had no dry long pants.  We shivered and chattered and snuggled and laughed at ourselves and made it until Tuesday night, but it's fair to say that we were pretty miserable under our gung-ho faces.  Boo spent a lot of time in the tent.  Seth and I spent a lot of time wondering whether we should pack it up.  But, doggonnit, we've only been on six camping trips since we were married, and only two of them had lasted longer than one night.  We decided to stick it out. 

A portrait of family togetherness

And then the sun came out again.  Pake and Beppe came up to have dinner with us (Mom and Dad A took a look at the clouds and decided that we had already headed for home.  There's no cell phone reception up there, so we couldn't call and tell them to come anyway.)  We went for a lovely walk above the South Falls.  We grilled brats over the fire and fed Pake and Beppe their first smores. 


Walking to South Falls in the blessed sunshine

Pake and Beppe in the Lodge



Salmon Berries, just coming ripe

Boogaloo teaches Max about the river

 Sometime during the night the stars came out, and the next morning the sun was shining like it had never seen a cloud.  We ate breakfast and packed up in the midst of glorious sunshine and singing birds.  If Seth hadn't been expected back at work on Thursday, we would have stayed. 

Above Winter Falls, Wednesday morning

Trying to find Mt. Hood from the car window

Still, is it any wonder we were tired? 

A worn out party in the backseat