With every order of essential oils from Young Living each month, I get a training CD to listen to containing various bits on how to use oils and other topics on healthy living. Yesterday, while listening to one of them as I worked out, I learned that you can use peppermint to help an infant’s fever.

I wish I had listened to this CD weeks ago because Ella just got over a fever . . . but until I have the opportunity again to try this, I thought I would pass along the tip anyway. It certainly cannot hurt your baby and it probably will help.

Place 5 drops of peppermint oil on your hands. Rub together and then rub on one of baby’s feet. Repeat with the other foot and another 5 drops. 1 drop of peppermint oil has the same constituents and healing quality of 28 cups of peppermint tea. So you are delivering a powerful herbal remedy to your infant very safely.

Hope this might help some hot, fussy baby!

I LOVE this book. As “Blair” says, many, many, many books will tell us the theology and theory behind how to raise and discipline our children, which is great. But I feel crammed with theory and small on pracitcal help. Isn’t that what mom’s chat about over coffee and scones? It isn’t questioning whether or not we ought to represent God’s authority and love to our children, its how. Give me some ideas please! Because when all 3 are crying and flailing at once, my brain is fried and I need some creative suggestions of what to do with my own body and what words ought to come out of my mouth. Something besides “You are not obeying without complaining and arguing right now!!!” This book does that. Thanks Lisa Whelchel.

While News Target Mike Adams can contain a bit of hype, he has a jam packed, helpful grocery guide available at his site. Here are a few things I learned perusing it:

“So how do food companies manage to hide excitotoxins and taste additives to their foods? It’s easy: They just keep changing the words to confuse consumers. Once customers learned to avoid MSG / monosodium glutamate, the food companies started using yeast extract.

And now, two years after I started sounding the alarm on yeast extract, many companies have switched to “torula yeast,” which accomplishes the same thing. Other hidden sources of MSG include:

• Autolyzed vegetable protein
• Hydrolyzed vegetable protein
• Calcium caseinate
• Sodium caseinate
• Textured protein [often sold as a vegetarian “health food”]

The ingredients “stacking” trick

Food companies also use the ingredients stacking trick to intentionally leave you with the wrong impression about what’s really in their food products.

For example, one company makes a nutrition bar that’s absolutely loaded with sugar, but they way they’ve arranged the ingredients prevents sugar from appearing as the #1 ingredient. Instead, the first ingredient is rice. But looking down the label, you’ll find all the following forms of sugar, all in the same nutrition bar:

• Sugar
• Sucrose
• High-fructose corn syrup
• Corn syrup solids
• Dextrose

Add all these up, and the #1 component in the bar is, indeed, sugar (or sugary substances). But the manufacturer has used ingredients stacking to make you think the top ingredient is actually rice.

It’s a clever, dishonest technique used by food companies to lie with food labels.

Remember, the longer the ingredients label, the less healthy the food. Read those ingredients lists before buying foods, and if you discover chemical names that you can’t pronounce, don’t buy the food!”

I am so irregular, these are what I need, lots. I HATE spending $4 for one at the store. What a price! $1.00 each, free shipping on 6 or more and .60 cents each if ordered in bulk. Sweet!

Drawn from another George Herbert Poem called, “The Agony,” this is I think this may be the closest we get to a liturgical song. Adam wrote just an incredibly beautiful guitar line. Hopefully I can get the vocals up later this week. Here is a verse and the chorus to listen to. Liquor Sweet Instrumental

Verse 1:
Men have measured mountains
Fathomed depths of roaring seas
Walked into the starry heavens
Traced the fountains, counted trees
But two things few choose to know
Sin and love, O who has seen,
The measure of these vast and spacious things

Chorus:
Love is that liquor sweet
Sweet and most divine
Which my God feels as blood but
I must taste as wine

Verse 2:
Immortal Love, who made this world
Sprung from beauty that never fades
How man has parcel’d out
Love, thy glorious name
And thrown it on
The dust which thou has made
Immortal Heat, O greatest flame
Attract to you these lesser fading fires

Chorus:

Bridge:
Who would know sin
Let him go to Olivet
And there see a man wrung
With blood and agony
Sin is that press and vice
Which forceth pain through every vein
Who knows not love let him
Taste that juice which,
From the cross does flow

Chorus:

Verse 3:
Who knows not love let
Him taste that juice which
From the cross does flow and see
If ever he did taste the like

Music be Adam Blumenshein
Lyrics by Annie Crawford

Copyright 2006
All Rights Reserved

So I think I figured out how to put snippets of our songs on here . . . Thank you Beloved! Here is a few seconds of our song “Cover”. You can find the lyrics here.

Cover - Vocals.mp3

I am definitely an unschooler so far. We invent school as we go along, but for those who like to plan I thought I would share this spontaneous activity that turned out really well. Trying to avoid doughnuts and m&m’s at the grocery, I had started talking with the girls about “junk”. I figured I should also teach them about what TO eat as well.

This activity requires sheets of construction paper, each a different color, scissors, glue stick, a black pen, a stack of food magazines (my 3 year collection of Cooking Light works great - as an alternative, you could try to find pictures on the web and then print them out.) and tape.

Label each sheet of paper for a different food group listed below. Cut out tons of pictures of all these foods. Try to look for versions of them that are healthy, for example, a whole wheat slice of bread not a white one, etc. . . Gather your pictures (you may do this as prep for your kids, it can be a bit scattered with lots of little ones, scissors and scraps everywhere) and set out all your papers and start gluing them in the right category. Talk about how yummy this stuff is, all the different colors God made food to be, how He is so good to provide us with all our body needs, what’s your favorite vegetable, how veggies and fruit are different (fruits are something a plant makes where the flower falls off that holds the plant’s seeds while veggies can be roots, stalks, stems or leaves - so watch out, pictures of peppers and tomatoes go on the fruit page!), etc. . . .

That’s enough for one day. Save all your papers. Then each day after that pull out one paper to talk about in more detail. Write the lists detailed below on each food group paper. Hang the paper on the fridge. At each meal that day point out the food from that group and talk about what it does for their sweet little growing bodies. After a week you kiddo may know more about nutrition than the average adult.

I may be the only mom who would put pictures of apple juice and Nature Valley granola bars on her “junk” page!

Grains, Legumes and Nuts

• Complex Carbs - Energy to play!
• Healthy fats - Pretty hair and skin
• B Vitamins - Keeps you energetic
• Fiber - Healthy, easy poops

Meat, Fish and Eggs

• Protein - Body’s building blocks for every part of your body
• Iron - Gives you strength and endurance
• B Vitamins - Keeps you energetic
• Vitamin A - Helps you see well and not get sick

Dairy

• Calcium - Makes your bones strong
• Vitamin D - Keeps your bones strong
• Protein - Gives you strong muscles
• Probiotics - Helps keep your tummy feeling good

Vegetables

• Lots of vitamins - Keep you feeling good and happy
• Minerals - Help to build a strong body
• Enzymes - Keep you feeling energetic
• Phytochemicals - Keep you from getting sick

Fruits

• Vitamin C - Keeps your from getting sick
• Antioxidants - Keep your skin and hair pretty
• Enzymes - Keep you feeling energetic

Junk

• Too much sugar - Makes you sick and tired
• Bad fats - Make you fat and sick
• Chemicals - Make you sick