Finally - perfect homemade liquid hand soap

Thank you to everyone that has been praying for my aunt Pam ("Shisshy") who is in the hospital with double pneumonia.  She is still on the ventilator but her lungs are better so she should be weaned off soon.  Unfortunately, her throat became very swollen because of the tube in it that it had to be surgically removed today and a tracheotomy placed temporarily.  :(  Goodness - pneumonia is so vicious!  But I'm grateful for modern medicine.

yay! daffodils are giving the yard pops of color

Tabby had her first track meet of the season yesterday, and she had trouble running the 1 mile.  First lap was great but then I saw her face and knew her lungs were hurting.  Not just the regular runner's hurt, but it was pneumonia hurt.  She had to go to the medical tent after she finished running.  (She refused to quit the race.)    After that race, her coach told her she would not be running any more that day.  But after awhile she felt so well she begged him to let her run the other two events she was scheduled for, since they were shorter.  He talked to me about it and then let her after she promised to run slower.  She did and she ran just fine.  Lord willing, she'll be completely back to normal soon.

I love bringing daffodils inside

Last summer, I wrote a post about the liquid hand soap that I had made.  (Click here for that post.)  I tried tweaking that recipe a number of ways, but the soap just wasn't thick enough and I couldn't figure out why.  Finally I read that if you start with a bar soap that is heavy in oils, then your liquid soap will not be thick.  Oh!  That was it.  I was starting with our homemade goat milk soap, which is a wonderful bar soap, but is full of different oils. Great for your skin but not great for making a thick liquid soap.

So I bought a few bars of some good soap.  But those turned out rather gooey.  Still I didn't want to give up and go back to spending a lot of money buying liquid soap, so I kept trying tweaks.  (We wash our hands around here a lot and liquid soap works better for handwashing than bar soap for us.)

Then earlier this year, I came across several recipes for FOAMING hand soap.  It looked even easier that the liquid soap I was making!  All I needed was the foaming dispenser.  I like using pint sized mason jars for my liquid soap, so I bought the foaming dispensers for them off Ebay.

Here is the recipe I used:

* 2/3 cup unscented liquid castile soap (I use Dr. Bronner's brand)
* 20-22 drops of essential oil (I used Young Living's Thieves Essential Oil for powerful germ killing)
* distilled water

I put the soap and essential oil into my pint sized jar, then filled it up the rest of the way with distilled water.  Mixed it and it was ready to use!

Right now, in Tabby's Etsy shop, The Goat Chick, we currently have three of our four soaps in stock:  original (spearmint/eucalyptus), peppermint, and lavender/tea tree.  Peppermint has been selling like crazy lately!  We need to make Thieves asap.

zzzzzz ...

Prayer request AND bedwetting update

Please pray for my aunt Pam (aka Shisshy).  She is in the hospital with double pneumonia.  She has it much worse than poor Tabby did, which was bad enough.  She also has been diagnosed with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.  Her breathing was so bad she had to be intubated, and will have to remain sedated and on the ventilator for awhile.

Shisshy is my favorite aunt and is the one that found the hospital that was willing to operate on Lilly's heart.  (Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida.)  She won't like me posting her picture, but I will anyway.  I took this picture July 4, 2010 - the day Lilly was born.

Lilly meets her great-aunt Shisshy

I posted last summer about Hunter's nighttime bedwetting.  Several people were very interested in the post, all who had kids with the same issue, and some of the kids were also 7 years old like Hunter..  They were hoping I'd give an update if I noticed any changes, so here it is!

As I mentioned in this post, Hunter endured a treatment plan of pediatric enemas to try and overcome nighttime bedwetting.  I had read about this in the book It's No Accident: Breakthrough Solutions to Your Child's Wetting, Constipation, UTIs and Other Potty Problems by Steve J. Hodges.  Much to his sorrow, it did not work for him, though it did clear up a few other issues he was having, which was great.

However, Hunter is thrilled that he has now been dry at night for over a month now.  (These posts may embarrass him one day, but he is currently happy I am writing them to try and help other kids.)

What happened?  The thing I am linking it to is his pneumonia that he had in January!  Well not the pneumonia itself - but the treatment for it.  He was on two antibiotics.  When the doctor wrote me the prescription for amoxicillin she warned me that it would probably really mess his stomach up, so to step up with the probiotics. 

Well it did, by day two of the dosing.  For both boys.  They had terrible diarrhea the whole next 9 days they were on the amoxicillin.  I did my best to keep them extra hydrated and eating yogurt and taking probiotic supplements.  But there was an awful lot of sudden running to the bathroom.

At the end of the dosage, Hunter suddenly began staying dry at night!  I can not tell you how relieved and happy that made him.  He fully believes that the antibiotic cleaned him out way better than the enemas did.  (He didn't hold the enemas in long enough probably.  Sorry if that's too much information - but if you are a parent reading this and trying to help your child - you will appreciate knowing that.)

Possibly another benefit to the antibiotic was suggested by a dear friend of mine.  She had read about a link between candida (yeast overgrowth) and bedwetting.  Hunter has had issues with yeast overgrowth in the past - whenever I don't monitor his carb intake.  (He'd love to just live off bread and crackers.)  Since the antibiotics kill off all bacteria (good and bad) perhaps it wiped out any yeast overgrowth in his gut/system. 

Whatever it was, Hunter is so thankful and that makes me thankful too.

playing possum

The Eye of Tabby - Photography for the week of leap year 2016

Tabby took her brothers and the dogs on a short walk on this beautiful afternoon.  She took along her old Kodak camera and got some great photos.  She is working on some techniques she is learning about in the photography elective she is taking at school.  I need her to teach me!

Can you tell Solomon enjoys getting his picture taken?  :)

Chores by the days of the week

In Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder remembered that her Ma had certain work assigned to each day, which she would begin after the regular morning chores were done:

"Wash on Monday,
Iron on Tuesday,
Mend on Wednesday,
Churn on Thursday,
Clean on Friday,
Bake on Saturday,
Rest on Sunday."     

This was very typical of how previous generations tackled their chores.  We can actually get more done when we stay focused on particular types of work each day. 

Several years ago, I got a set of "days of the week" towels which I love.  Especially the Friday towel that shoes the bunny getting into the cookie jar!  (I'm assuming that's "baking day.")

I thought about this concept again last year when I re-read Large Family Logistics by Kim Brenneman.  I even came up with a written plan for my days.  But I never bothered to follow through.  I do way too much living flying by the seat of my pants and with seemingly almost constant interruptions from my little ones, I find it hard to stay focused on things.

In January, life got crazy around here with all the sickness.  Coughs/colds, followed by flu, then by pneumonia, and a hospital stay for Tabby.  Those weeks crawled by painfully slow.  I wasn't feeling well for much of it and just focused on taking care of my sicker kids and making meals.

Then when everyone was well enough to start school again, I knew it was time to get back to normal.  But what was normal?  The house was like an explosion and I felt overwhelmed every where I looked.  I had no idea where to start because I wanted to do everything at once.

Then I thought about my "days of the week" list for chores that I made last year and decided it was time to really give it a try.

I'm now about a month into it, and it is working really well.  I don't have any chore time until the afternoon, because we have school in the morning and then eat a late lunch.  But I do have a couple hours after lunch, before it's time for afternoon animal care and then making supper.  I have found it is much easier for me to stay focused on certain types of work, rather than flitting from one thing to another.  I seem to really be getting more done overall.

I know I always like seeing how other people order their days, because it might give me ideas on how to better attack mine.  So, I will share my "days of the week" below.  But just keep in mind that not all of these chores happen every week!  And some days - NONE of those chores happen.

Monday - Organizing / Tidying Day -
    - rooms, closets, cabinets, shelves (decluttering)
    - tidy/straighten each room

Tuesday - Kitchen Day -
    - baking, food prep
    - menu planning
    - cleaning appliances, counters, and cabinets

Wednesday - Cleaning Day -
    - floors
    - bathroom
    - dusting

Thursday - Office Day -
    - online orders, research, planning
    - back up photos/files
    - filing

Friday - Town / Laundry / Business Day -
    - grocery shopping
    - wash clothes, ironing
    - make things to sell or post things on Ebay
    - writing

Saturday - Homeschool Prep / Deep Cleaning Day -
    - Hunter’s school work for next week
    - Solomon’s Montessori work
    - deep cleaning (by zone)


"For God is not a God of disorder but of peace ...." - 1 Corinthians 14:33

Tabby's late night visit to the emergency room

There is a 24-hour stomach bug making it's rounds in our area.  Solomon had it Sunday and then I had it Monday night.  Yesterday Tabby was going about her morning routine when she said her stomach suddenly didn't feel right.  Then Solomon threw up again. Then she did.  Thankfully I did not anymore.  So Tabby stayed home from school.

By mid-afternoon, she began complaining that her whole body was in immense pain.  As it grew worse, she began having breathing issues.  (She described it as her lungs feeling "crumpled" and "burning" which makes it hard to get a deep breath.  This continued until she feel asleep.  Then in the evening, she woke up and the pain was still there.  Now she said it was all over her body and that it felt like someone snapping her back into pieces.  She cried off and on.  I was looking up symptoms online and we just couldn't figure out what was up.

At about 9:30 she was crying and afraid for me to leave her because she thought she was going to die, it was so bad.  So ... I packed a little bag for the hospital and off we went.

The emergency room was hopping so we had a longer wait than I had hoped.  But finally Tabby was in a bed.  She had blood drawn for lab work, was hooked up to an IV, and had a chest x-ray done. 

Over the next couple hours, two different pain medications were give to her but neither really helped much.  The doctors were puzzled.  Lab results were good.  The x-ray showed that only a small spot of the pneumonia remained her left lung.  She had no congestion of any kind.  So they finally gave her morphine.  Oh yeah - that did it! 

Tabby was discharged about 5:30 this morning.  I was instructed to follow up with her pediatrician today.  And she was given a new toy.  A spirometer.  She is to practice breathing into it five times a day to strengthen her lungs.

Here she is, showing her "excitement" over the new device.  (As you can imagine, Hunter is fascinated by it and wanted to know all about it as soon as he saw it.)

Tabby's pediatrician wasn't totally sure what was going on either, when we saw her today.  She is going to do some research.  However, she did have one theory right off the bat.  Typically, when Tabby's body is fighting something, she gets a fever, then headache.  However, her body is still really depleted from the pneumonia.  And this time it reacted differently to fighting the stomach bug.  There are people, who's bone marrow reacts to these "fights."  And the way it reacts is for the body to feel intense pain all over.

Hmmmm.  The bone marrow and immune system work together so that does make sense.

But I just pray that this is it for hospitals for a long time for us.  We are SOOOO ready to get back to a more steady normal around here.

The Eye of Tabby - photography for the week of February 15

We've gotten a lot of sleet today.  No snow - just boring sleet.  ("Boring" if you aren't driving on it.)  Tabby enjoyed taking some nice "sleety" pictures early this afternoon. 

I think I find the picture Tabby took of herself in the car sideview mirror is so interesting.  And the tree too ...