Excitement in the house today – first snow day of the year!

Shortly after I was married, my husband and I moved to Brazil for six months and shortly after that I got EXTREMELY sick, one of those random sicknesses that nobody quite knew what to do about. I got worse and worse over a few months, had to sleep most of the day, was irritable, tired, grumpy, my hair was all falling out in clumps – it was a mess.

I was finally recommended to Dr. Joao, a Brazilian/non-English-speaking/homeopathic/herbal/iridology/Bach flower remedy/naturopathic doctor, who literally took one look at me and said, “None of your health problems are going to go away until you learn to let go of control.” At which I burst into tears, nodding in consent.

Through my rudimentary Portuguese, drawings, hand gestures, and a variety of Bach flower and homeopathic prescriptions, I was 99% healed within two weeks. A leaf from an Aloe Vera plant was one of my remedies, which I was to open up and rub on my hair and then wash it out right away. After three days of that, my hair stopped falling out. All of my family talk about Dr. Joao with a special reverence for we have never since encountered such a healer.

I was reminded of Dr. Joao this fall and something told me to look up the Bach flower remedies, which are homeopathic remedies that specialize in emotions, for some of my own anger issues that I was having. A brief read through www.bachflower.com led me to pick up Cherry Plum for myself which they describe as: For those who fear losing control of their thoughts and actions and doing things they know are bad for them or which they consider wrong. Teaches trust in one’s spontaneous wisdom and the courage to follow one’s path.

It worked instantly and amazingly well.

Last week we came home from our vacation to a leaking hot water tank, no hot water for several days, phone calls, endless repair men, problems in our attic, requiring us to remove most of our storage items from there, room changing, and recovery from the vacation of too much travel, too much TV, and too much sugar. In other words, STRESS.

Children pick up on our stress and mirror it in various ways. If you want to know how you are feeling, just look at your child – they are your mirror.

My daughter’s frustration peaked from our stress and was so intense that I could not leave her in a room with any other child or she would hurt them somehow. I was quite on the edge of insanity myself, until I remembered again about the Bach Flower remedies and looked through the “Children” section on their website, which had a brilliant diagnosis for her with a remedy called Beech.

Beech: This Essence is for those who are constantly making criticism, intolerant of other people’s shortcoming and unable to make allowances. They are easily irritated by other people’s mannerisms and habits. They are convinced that they are always in the right and everyone else in the wrong. Beech helps you to be more tolerant and to get a sense of compassion for unity with others, such as co-workers, mother-in-law and your noisy neighbor. Beech helps you to see the good in others despite their imperfections.

I have watched the frustration in my daughter melt away like ice cream on hot day with this remedy. It feels like magic and I am intensely grateful.

A few treasures from a winter farmer’s market in Vancouver last week.

The last week, Isabela has started leaving me messages on the board, changing them up a few times a day and adding to the grocery list things like: donuts, candy canes, dried cranberries, and Ritz soccer ball crackers, along with various exclamations points and PLEASE!!!!! written everywhere.

The primary conversation, however, revolved around donuts.

“Donuts,” it read at first, seemingly passive and part of the shopping list. She then changed it to:

“Donuts!” on the bottom right corner, followed by:

“Donuts! Now!” and then:

“Donuts! Now! Or else!” followed by:

“Donuts. Please! Pretty, please!” and then this:

Which was followed by various written explanations and arrows later on, explaining that our house was on the top of the hill, and the person was sliding down the hill on a sled to get to the donut shop on the right hand side.

Just by chance the other day we were walking out of the dentist office, after Isabela had a particularly unpleasant cavity filling, and passed by a donut shop. Well, sugar is not going to prevent the cavities, but I bought them some donuts none the less after a week of donut messages on the white board.

I woke up to this this message yesterday and it made me smile:

That’s Isabela and I holding a cup of hot chocolate at the coffee shop. The stars and moon are out because it’s night time. It’s a little preview of what is to come tonight – a special mother-daughter outing for hot chocolate at night.

I’ve had a sense this last fall that my 8 year old daughter has not been thriving. Academically she is doing very well, she reads at least 3-8 hours a day, depending on how many new books we have from the library, she has figured out on her own how to do most addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in her head, she can bake a cake with her eyes closed; however, there has recently been a lot more foul language, more violence and she triggers into aggression very easily. These are the signs to me that something is amiss and I have been trying to sort it out.

I watched one of Gordon Neufeld’s latest DVD‘s recently called, Making Sense of Aggression, and he described how aggression always stems from thwarted proximity. They are trying to get close to someone or something and cannot, so they get frustrated and they lash out. I can see this so clearly and yet it’s been difficult to find one on one time for one child when there are two others demanding constant attention, but after some consultation last week with some very wise mothers that I know, I realized that it is time to start this ritual on a regular basis now for my children.

So off for hot chocolate we go tonight!