Of Oak Leaves and Acorns...... A Yarn Along Post

Do you feel that slight nip on the breeze?  It's subtle....but it's there....that first hint in the air that fall is on it's way!  After this miserable, hot summer it makes my heart sing!  I always love that first glimpse that my favorite time of year is on it's way.  I start wanting to cook our family's favorite fall dishes, lots of pumpkin flavored things, cranberry, apple stuffed pork chops, soups, etc.  School starts soon and there's the anticipation of W going off to school a few mornings a week by himself for the first time and all the back to school preparations that need to be made.  His sweater and vest that he wanted for school this year are completed (and still both need to be photographed...but as I  write this he is napping and I'm afraid I will wake him if I try to get them out of his dresser drawer).  I'm working on a pair of socks for him for this year.....struggling to keep working on them.  I love the pattern, but I think the plain blue yarn is boring me to tears.  Hard to work on them when there are more exciting things to knit these days.

Our family's favorite sign that fall is around the corner though is that acorn season seems to be upon us!  W discovered acorns by a parking lot the other day and was beside himself with excitement (I might have been too actually) and we picked up quite a few to start off our yearly collection.  The following day we found more at a local park.  The child is in acorn heaven and this sign of fall is about to start taking over our nature table, and his room, and our cars.  It's just that time of year!

As luck would have it, I've been knitting more little hats for the baby, since our midwife wants us to have quite a few for it as soon as it is born.  I've made several of my favorite pilot caps, but decided a few other little caps might come in handy too.  They are quick and enjoyable to knit.  For the second one I made, I decided to use the cables from the Forever Autumn sock pattern, and repeat it five times around a little cap.  It's darling, but I think the colorway of the yarn might be a little too busy for the cables.  Still, I love that my autumn baby will have some oak leaves on one of it's first little caps, and it matches one of the little sweaters I made for the baby over the summer.

Then I decided that I really need an oak leaf cabled hat too, so I used some Andes Del Campo in Smolder Heather from knit picks that I had on hand and size 8 needles to make myself a cap from the same pattern.  Oh, it is love!  I adore oak trees, leaves and acorns, and I am especially fond of that orangey- golden brown that many oak leaves turn in the fall.  I didn't realize it at first, but this yarn is that color....just beautiful....and it goes with my brown winter coat too!  I couldn't stop with the hat though and also had to make myself a lovely  matching cowl to wear with it (sorry I haven't blocked the cowl yet in the picture.  It just came off my needles this morning.)  I am so excited!  It feels strange and luxurious to knit something for myself again, when I've been focusing so hard on knitting for W and for the baby.  Actually, I don't think I've knit anything for myself in over a year so this is a real special treat!  If I ever get W's socks off of my size 2 dpn's I'm going to finally cast on a pair of the Forever Autumn socks for me too.  I think they'd be a lovely thing to give myself for my birthday this fall!

Okay, so, on to the Yarn Along portion of the post.  I'm joining with Ginny of Small Things for her Yarn Along again.

I'm knitting yet another oak leaf newborn cap out of this lovely green wool tweed yarn (sorry I just cast it on this afternoon).  I'm guessing the leaf pattern should stand out better in the tweed than it did with the busy colorway of the last one I made.  I'm pretty excited about knitting yet another one of these.  I need to come up with something for W with this pattern on it too.  He says he doesn't want a hat or cowl...maybe I'll put it on a Milo vest for him (I may have already done one like this for the baby).  I've almost got the pattern memorized at this point.    Maybe that should be a birthday present for him.  I think he'd like that.

For reading, I've been working my way through The Breastfeeding Mother's Guide to Making More Milk. There are several possible reasons I had difficulties with my supply when W was a baby, and I'm trying to be prepared to get my nursing relationship with this little one off to as good of a start as I possibly can.  How I wish I had this book the last time around. You would never know it now, but it was such a struggle to feed W and to get him to actually gain weight as a baby and really I had very little support or knowledge, just a determination that I was going to feed my baby every drop of my breast milk that I could even if I still did have to supplement.  It was so emotionally and physically exhausting.  This time around I have so much more support, and knowledge and experience and I am going into nursing, knowing I've had issues in the past and with a much better idea of how to prevent/ minimize/work through them this time around.  This book is invaluable for any mom who is going through this.  Such a great resource!

Nursery Rhymes

When she found out I was pregnant with W, one of the first pieces of advice my mother gave me was to get a large book of nursery rhymes and learn them by heart so that I could recite them while the baby nursed.  She told me that she always credited reciting nursery rhymes while I nursed with helping me to develop a large vocabulary as a very young child.  I wish I could say I took this advice to heart at that point.  I didn't really.  I bought said book of nursery rhymes and looked at it a few times.  I even attempted to learn one or two by heart (not very successfully) and then set it aside.  Memorizing them seemed just too hard and I didn't really see the point then, though  I was shocked by how many of them I thought I knew from my own childhood, but then wasn't actually able to remember much past their first lines.

When W was a few months old, something prompted me to pull out the nursery rhymes again, but this time I used a CD that came with a book and every time W and I sat down to nurse I would play the CD and try to recite along with it.  At first I read along with most of them, and learned many of them very quickly.  W seemed to enjoy listening to them too.  Many of them were set to music and I think it helped that we learned tunes to go along with the words.

A few months down the road, I discovered Waldorf education and fell in love with it.  I remember clearly one of the first articles I read about Waldorf and early childhood stressed the importance of nursery rhymes, singing and having a child hear its' mother's voice.  It really helped to confirm for me that we were on the right path and that all of these nursery rhymes while nursing were further helping to nourish my son's mind, spirit and soul.

 Soon,  I realized that if he was fussy in the car or when we were out at the store, saying or singing one (or ten) of our favorite nursery rhymes would often help to sooth him.

Eventually we found we did not listen to our nursery rhyme cd very much anymore.  It had been very useful for learning the nursery rhymes, but, once we had learned them we did not need it any more.  The nursery rhymes became an almost unconscious part a part of our everyday lives. I still used them when we nursed, and we said them at other times frequently throughout our day.

  W also has several books of nursery rhymes that have been favorites for most of his toddler-hood.  I have always made sure we had at least one good nursery rhyme volume among the books we have out in our current rotation.

 W of course started to talk and once he started it was non-stop.  For a long time much of it was babble that I was not able to understand.  Then, not too long after he turned two, something happened.  One day he was babbling to himself quietly, and I stopped to really listen...he was saying nursery rhymes!  To be specific, he was saying Little Boy Blue and he knew every single word!  I was so surprised and excited that I was almost moved to tears.  I started listening to him more when he was babbling and it soon became apparent that during all that time singing and reciting nursery rhymes since he was an infant he had been soaking in the language and that he knew these nursery rhymes (sometimes even better than I do.)

Part of pre and early literacy education for children in Waldorf schools is immersing  them in rich beautiful language.  The meaning of the words is less important than the sounds and rhythm of the language.   In deed, many nursery rhymes include language that is largely nonsensical, but beautiful, and I might add, pretty fun.  W's favorite nursery rhyme from very early on was:

Higety-pigety pop
The dog has eaten the mop
The pig's in a hurry
The cat's in a flurry
Higety-pigety pop

These silly nonsense words have never failed to get a laugh out of him, and yet, they are also the best kind of language for him to hear and to repeat as he learns to speak.
                                     
Still, I would say that there are other pre-literacy skills being learned even at the tender age of  almost tow and a half.  W is not only building vocabulary, and a sense of the language and rhythm, but he is learning comprehension skills as well.  He can often look at pictures in a nursery rhyme book or elsewhere and tell me a nursery rhyme that would apply to what he sees.  Other times, he would connect rhymes with what we were doing.  When we go visit our favorite sheep (which include several darling black lambs) Will would walk away reciting Baa Baa Black Sheep.  Other times, he pretends to play a horn and recites Little Boy Blue.

I am also observing that the nursery rhymes color his play as well. Recently, a favorite nursery rhyme of his has been

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner
Eating his Christmas pie
He put in his thumb
And pulled out a plumb
And said "what a good boy am I".

The other day while eating the strawberries we had picked, I stuck his thumb through one of them and started reciting this verse.  He then started to pretend that his bowl of berries was a pie, and pretended that it was Christmas by turning over an ottoman for a fireplace and pretending to hang stockings by it.  Periodically he would sit down with his "pie" and stick his thumb through a berry and reenact the rhyme.

As W has started to really play and imagine independently recently, I am noticing that the stories that are read or told to him as well as situations from our lives are being reflected heavily in what and how he plays.  I love that nursery rhymes are among the places he draws from as he develops his imagination.  They are beautiful and rich in language and imagery.  Many involve scenes from rural life and animals or scenes of royalty (but W's obsession with all things royal might be a subject for another post).  They help to balance his interest in trucks and trains and make his play more well rounded.

In all, I would say that nursery rhymes have not only greatly contributed to W's development, but they have made our lives more beautiful.  My mother was right, all those long hours nursing and learning/reciting/singing them was one of the best things I have ever been able to do for the long-term development of my child.

Nursing Necklace

DS is a very distractable nurser these days which makes breast feeding a bit difficult. I have been looking at nursing necklaces for a while and this week decided that I would try to make one. I already wear a large piece of amber on an adjustable leather cord most days and DS loves to play with it but it is too short for him to play with while nursing.

I found this lovely ring and pretty wood beads at the craft store today and created this necklace with a two yard length of fairly heavy leather cord. I tied a knot in between each bead as is done with amber teething necklaces to minimize choking hazards and tied the cord together after the first three beads on each side to make a loop that DS can also hold on to. Like I did on the amber necklace, I also made an adjustable slip knot closure so that I can make the necklace longer or shorter as needed.

So far DS seems to really like it, however I have to convinc him that he should keep the nipple in his mouth and the necklace in his hands, not the other way around. Hopefully we will get that sorted out and it will help DS to be a bit less distracted as we try to nurse.

More Odds and Ends

So things have supposedly slowed down for the summer but with a baby who is now officially six months old, there is not any slowing down! This past week was pretty busy. We returned from visiting family in New Jersey on Tuesday. Wednesday DS nursed and clung to me literally all day. Thursday, we had La Leche League, Friday was our weekly Indian cooking lesson and Saturday, I tried to get some food made and do some things around the house.

La Leche League was wonderful on Thursday. I started attending meetings when I was pregnant with DS and they have seen me through so many of our nursing issues. Honestly, if it were not for the support that I have received there, I do not think DS would still be nursing at all. They helped with his early nursing issues and with his weight gain issues and these remarkable women are now helping to support us through our process of trying to wean DS from formula now that his weight is stable. I am so grateful to and for them. I really cherish all of the fellow attachment parenting friends I have made through them and through my natural and attachment parenting group. Sometimes it is difficult parenting when you believe what is best for your child is a challenge to the cultural norm.

Also, a big thing this week has been making some delicious whole foods. I cooked chickpeas and made the hummus I posted about before and have been giving DS a few little bites of mashed chickpeas with his lunch. So far he seems to like them.

Also, I made more of the yogurt that I posted about before. I can easily go through the whole half gallon I make of this a week. I have also found a new trick that helps quite a lot with the consistency of the yogurt. Previously I had been adding some gelatin to thicken it up a bit, but I have since found that adding some nonfat dry milk (about a cup to the 1/2 gallon of milk) when I add in the yogurt cultures does wonders for thickening it up.

I also learned to cook brown rice in the rice cooker by putting in 2 of the little cups of rice and filling the water up to the line for cooking three cups. The rice came out beautifully and tasted so good!

My last cooking adventure this week was making baked oatmeal. Someone on one of the message boards I belong to had posted the recipe and I have to say this stuff is incredible and I think it will probably be one of those things I make weekly. It is very custard like; almost like a moist bread pudding but with oats instead of the bread. It has lots of cinnamon in it and I put in some dried cherries. Baked oatmeal with homemade yogurt is possibly the best breakfast I can think of. Next time I have to make something for a brunch, this is quite possibly going to be what I make. It is yummy!

Food wise, my goals for this next week are to make some bread and to cook up some quinoa. Of course I will also have to make more yogurt and baked oats as well. I also may have to make more hummus because it is just so good. DS's latest food obsession is pita bread so I am thinking that I will have to either make that or some roti for him this week too.

Other goals for the week are to get the house cleaned up and to have dinner either ready to go on the grill or in the crock pot each day by the time DH gets home from work. It amazes me how difficult it is for me to get just some of the basics done each day. DS takes so much time and attention and always wants me to be holding him. Even with trying to wear him in the wrap or the sling it is a real challenge to get anything done. Still, we will keep trying!