Product Hits and Misses: "Squeeze That Nickel" Edition

Squeeze that nickel till the buffalo hollers, dear readers! (OK, I guess that would have been the LAST depression when buffalo nickels were around. And they weren't even buffalo, they were bison. But still.)

Yes, today I've got several money-saving goodies to review. First up is a little trick I've been using for homemade diaper wipes. A friend of mine passed this tip along to me in a greeting card when Rose was born, and I've been using it ever since. (I trust that one of these years I'll be able to give it up. But that time does not appear to be close.)

So, how do you do homemade diaper wipes? Here's the recipe:

1/2 roll good-quality paper towels (I use Bounty)
2 c. water
1 T. mineral oil
1 T. baby shampoo

To get a half-roll of paper towels, you'll have to cut the roll with a serrated knife, as if you were sawing a log. I usually trim off any raggedy bits with scissors.

For a storage container, I use a one-gallon plastic lettuce tub:


I just bought a new one recently. The first two lasted me through seven and a half years... ohhhh I've been doing this for tooooo long....

Anyway. Mix up the water, oil and shampoo, and then plop the half-roll in, cut side up. Give it a few seconds to soak up a bunch of liquid, then take out the half-roll and flip it upside down so the smooth side is up.



Put on the lid (you may need to squish the roll down just a bit first, but that's OK). And there you have it. I was initially told to pull out the center core and pull the wipes from the middle, but for me it works best to take them from the outside. After the roll gets a little smaller, you can turn the roll on its side within the tub to make the wipes even easier to grab:



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OK, next item is in honor of the late, loud pitch-man Billy Mays:


How does this fit the "Squeeze That Nickel" theme? I'll tell you how. This stuff WORKS to take out stains. And if you can take stains out, you can put the clothes back in the drawer to wear again. And you don't have to buy new ones. And you save a TON.

Joy's clothes always seem to pick up more stains than anyone elses in this house, most often food-related. She eats enthusiastically and well, preferring to use her fingers. She does use fork or spoon when encouraged to do so, but does not always keep her mind on the task... She also tends to stuff her mouth a little too full, resulting in interesting driblets and droplets.

Yesterday I used OxiClean to get out mulberry stains from a white onesie, and dried-on red wine stains from the back of her dress. (Huh? Oh, yeah. No, there was no wine in her sippy. That wouldn't have spilled, right? Actually I was silly enough to go chasing across the yard after her with a glass of wine in my hand. Clumsy mommy!) Anyway, the stains totally vanished.

These last couple of days I've been seeing post-Billy-Mays OxiClean ads. And, as much as I was annoyed by his outsized voice and his impossibly-dyed-black hair and beard... the more moderated female voice that does these new ads does not make ANY kind of impression. I can't believe I actually kinda miss the guy.

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OK, one more product.



The lowly pinwheel may set you back all of a buck at the dollar store. But oh, the joy we get out of these things!

We can't leave pinwheels lying around for Joy to play with at random, because she doesn't take too long to crumple the wheel and bend the stick beyond all use. However, they're great when one of Joy's baristas needs to put a guaranteed distraction into her hand for just a minute while they jot something down or program something into the GoTalk. We've also had good success lately with turn-taking games -- Mama will blow on the pinwheel, Joy giggles hysterically, Joy reaches up a hand to spin the wheel herself, Joy giggles hysterically, Joy pushes the pinwheel back toward Mama, Mama blows on the pinwheel, Joy giggles hysterically... You get the picture. How many giggles can you usually buy for a buck, huh?

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OK, that's all for today... must go make more applesauce... squeeze those windfall apples till the worms holler, or something like that!

Birthday Blessings

Celebrating Joy's birthday is always a bit of a scheduling juggle. Often her birthday falls during our annual Memorial Day trip to the lake. This year, the following weekend already had a bar mitzvah celebration in it. So we ended up having her party yesterday.

Yes, even with JoyDad on crutches.

The past two years, we've been blessed with glorious weather for our Joy-birthday parties. One year we had the guests help pick our strawberry patch. Last year we spent almost the whole party playing in the yard, with Uncle Schnirelmann and Auntie K helping out with Joy. This year, we were going to have a backyard barbecue. Including the four of us, we were planning on about 20 people.

We got the people, a lovely turnout! Only, we didn't exactly get the weather. It spattered rain on and off all day, and the temperature never even hit sixty. So we went with a sandwich platter setup instead, and planned to shoe-horn everybody into our modest little house. Which meant I kinda had to clean. And call ALL our chairs into service, and figure out how to get the food served and everyone seated, etc. etc.

JoyDad did quite a bit of food preparation, for having to stay off his feet. I had to shuttle ingredients and supplies around, but he produced an excellent macaroni salad and put together the sandwich and veggie trays.

I know I've said this before, but we have such wonderful community going on here. We invited families, and it was a delight to have both moms and dads show up with their kids. Rose picked off the older kids and led them away to play independently, while the parents helped the younger kids play with Joy in the basement. We did several turn-taking games, where we had every child tap the push-button communication device, which was programmed to speak the words "my turn!" before taking their turn with the crash pillow or the ball or whatever. Joy had been playing crash-pillow with her therapy-barista just before the party, where she would crash and then lead him by the hand and "make" him crash too. So she was "making" me take my turn crashing at the party as well!

Then we went upstairs for presents. Joy was definitely more engaged with present-unwrapping than she was at last year's party. With some support, she was able to pull paper and presents out of gift bags, and enjoy textures of presents and ribbons. Some of the presents will figure into their own post later. But here's the ribbon...


Then dinner, with lots of scrambling by parents around the "buffet table" (actually laid out across our countertop & range!) to feed the children who were already seated around the dining table. Joy ate a good meal without much assistance. Then we brought out the Jello cake and vanilla ice cream. I decided not to do the candle-blowing-ceremony, just in case Joy should take it into her head to grab big handfuls out of the middle of the cake. We just sang while presenting Joy with the first serving from the cake. But then I looked at her face at the end of the song, and was surprised to find her with pursed lips. As if to blow out a candle... We seriously do not give her enough credit sometimes.

After the meal the party continued on our deck, which was just dry enough for bubble-blowing and hula hooping. Joy navigated the chaos remarkably well:


What a delight to see her enjoying the toys, among her peers. She even submitted to birthday hugs from her friends at the end of the evening.

And while I was out on the deck, and JoyDad was holding court in the living room with his foot propped up, our friends put all the food away and did all the dishes.

Many, many birthday blessings!

A House Blend Session

I think we've got enough layers in place for this to make some sense.

Besides, we had rather an amazing session with Joy's Tuesday-afternoon barista, that I'd like to share.

This was a 3pm-5pm afternoon session; the House Blend sessions are two hours long, minus 15 minutes at the end for record-keeping.

We have a consistent routine to begin and end the sessions, something that started all the way back with one of Joy's first Birth-to-Three therapists in 2006. At the beginning of the session comes a song to the tune of "Goodnight, Ladies" that goes:

Hello Joy,
Hello Joy,
Hello Joy,
It's time for us to play!

At the end of the session comes a song with three verses (I don't know a name for the tune): one verse for clapping hands, one for stomping feet, one for waving bye-bye. We have tiny reminder-notes taped to the outside and inside of the front door to help make sure that the songs happen.

The timing of the afternoon sessions is such that it generally starts with snack.


Joy has become a pro at yanking and handing over the photo cards. In fact, there was one snack over the weekend where we wanted to serve her something that wasn't on the photos, so we didn't bring the book out, and she was mildly cranky at not having her useful tool available! (She wasn't upset enough to refuse the tortilla chips... But I digress).

So after a suitable run of repeated photo requests for small servings of bunny-cracker and apple and milk, it was over to the living room for some jumps and pillow-squishes. I think that's all they had time for before our playdate guests arrived!

Since I have to be at home for these afternoon sessions, I'm no longer available to pick Rose up from school. Instead she comes home with neighborhood friends, a lovely family with a Rose-aged daughter and a 3-year-old son. Wonder of wonders, the mom is an early-childhood therapist (ST) herself and "gets" our situation without all the effort of edu-ma-cating on my part.

Joy's playdate was with the son. We'll call him J-Cat, short for Jellicle Cat because he is currently fascinated with the musical Cats. I could totally see him as Mr. Mistoffelees in the 2030 Broadway-revival...

As soon as boots and snowpants were shed, Rose and her pal disappeared into a back room, and J-Cat and his mom came to join Joy in the livingroom. J-Cat gravitated to a bag full of soft-blocks, so that became the first game. The barista held Joy between her legs, J-Cat sat between his mom's legs, and they took turns trying to toss a soft-block to the other. We used short verbal cues for things like "Joy's turn!" "Catch!" "Ready, set..." (wait for Joy to maybe chime in...) "GO!" And lots of encouragement & cheering & praise. Joy took a lot of support to play the game, but tolerated it -- like all things, up to a point.

When Joy started protesting, we cajoled her into "one more turn" and then it was her turn to pick the next game. The barista whipped a couple of toy photos onto the notebook, and Joy picked the Farm See-n-Say. So then the See-n-Say passed back and forth, with each kid getting a turn to pick an animal and pull the lever.


"Joy's turn!"
"Pull!"
"Duck... quack, quack."
"OK, J-Cat's turn!"
"Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O!" (everybody claps along, Joy with support)

Joy didn't say much, but she made definite selections when offered choices, and took good turns with pulling or pushing or whatever the toy was. We played ring-stack, and blanket-pulls, and a train-toy, and another See-n-Say (an older bigger one with a stiffer lever, featuring baby zoo animals), and mini-trampoline jumping, and tunnel crawling. Joy needed some jump-breaks from time to time, while J-Cat needed some breaks to sing and dance for us.


After about an hour, both kids had hit their limit of such structured turn-taking. J-Cat wanted to play an imaginative game with his mom involving play-food, not one of Joy's strengths. So while they did that, somehow the very basic 3-hole shape-sorter came out as something for Joy & the barista to do.


What happened next was magical.

Joy pulled the lid off the shape-sorter, dumped the shapes, and started working to get the lid back on (accomplishing it with just a smidge of help.) The barista handed her one of the shapes, and Joy went right to work trying to get it in (again with just minimal help). Once she succeeded in getting the edges lined up correctly in the proper hole, she paused... and looked at the barista... and twinkled with anticipation.

The barista built the anticipation with a rising tone of "ahhh... ahhh..." (Imagine winding your way up to a theatrical sneeze.)

After teasing through several sounds of anticipation, Joy let the piece fall into the bucket, and began giggling like crazy, getting rewarded with praise and a tickle.

They did this again... and again... and again. They went through the entire bucketful two times, and then it was time for record keeping and the barista had to go fill in the binder. But Joy wasn't done. She went through another whole iteration of the bucket with me! And then I got up to go check on Rose, and Joy still wasn't ready to be done. She took the lid off once more all by herself, got out four pieces, got the lid back on, and ran the show all alone for two pieces' worth, looking all the way across the room to where I stood at the doorway, to make sure that I was watching and reacting appropriately.

After that we had to say goodbye to our guests, sing the ByeBye song after the report had been written so the barista could get out the door, and get ready for dinner.

There ya go. How's that for a House Blend session?

Right now we've got the playdate thing happening once a week. The rest of the sessions at our house are generally one-on-one, though Rose inserts herself into the action from time to time. Then twice a week we have sessions at Joy's daycare, with a very different dynamic among a roomful of peers (I'm never around to witness these since I'm always at work, but she's been able to do some neat things with support like join in on dress-up play.) At this point we've got 12 sessions on the schedule per week.

It's not always this awesome, by a long shot, but it's fun to share a good one!

By the way. J-Cat's mom is very pleased with these playdates too (besides being a phenomenal partner as the action is taking place). All this structured turn-taking practice is GREAT stuff for J-Cat as well as for Joy.