my haitian Einstein

over the years I have shared a *bit* of some of the issues I have dealt with in my Hans. Love the boy dearly,of course,he is my child.but boy oh boy,God had more confidence in me than I in myself when He entrusted this soul to my care.He has brought me to my knees more than any of my other 11 children and he is only 6.

Never quite exactly sure of what his issues exactly are,I mean,besides abandonment issues for sure,and along with those emotional immaturity issues. Like, he started his terrible two's at 4. It is hard enough handling a 2 yr old who acts like a 2 yr old, but they are cute and small. It is harder when it is a BIG 4 yr old tantruming and emotional and making no sense of their emotions and draining every ounce of a mamas patience.

I also figured he had some sort of ADD symptoms going on.And the sin he has always struggled the most with is, *impulsiveness* . The inability to resist something he wanted. This has been a struggle for us over the yrs. Altho VASTLY improving with age and consistent discipline.

But he is and always has been sweet, sensitive and caring. He is touchy lovey and cuddly and tender.Along with his fine points he also has ALWAYS shown extreme, EXTREME~ artistry. I am POSITIVE that his father was a Haitian artist. And his handwriting, ,,my oh my,,you would be shocked. PERFECT PERFECT. Looks computer printed. Even at 5,,,it was perfect.

So I have him in first gr public school, mostly bcz I cant keep him busy and entertained at home to homeschool him as I do Seth (9) and Lia (10). He has ZERO imagination and is always bored. He needs to constantly be following the other children around as he cant imagine his own games.

My good friend is his teacher this year and next.She told me
"Jill, Hans is going to need some special classes."
I at first thought she meant like "special ed" (not surprising. totally prepared for that day to come)NO,she said that within the next year or so we will need to seek out some kind of accelerated gifted program for him because he is SO BEYOND ALL the 1st and 2nd graders in her class. She can NOT give him enough work and keep him busy. He understands everything immediately and is done with all work perfectly in 2 secs and then his boredom takes over and he cant sit still.

So,that is Hansies problem.
He is NOT delayed,rather,he is a genius.
How could I not see that?

God has such a HUGE plan for my little Haitian manchild,God gave him to me to help him get there.
My son WILL succeed and be a STRONG man in this world.I just know. the teachers words have affirmed that to my inner being.
tears,,,,,,, ,

my cozy orchard house

it is POURING rain outside my windows right now,,and so dark I have to have lights on in the house. The autumn leaves are still radiant and gorgeous out my windows tho. The rainwater on them seems to bring out the colors even more so. Just so so gorgeous from the windows of my confines, that I feel like exploding!
I have my apples bubblin up in pots on my stove to strain for a big batch of apple pancake syrup later today, and I can smell the aroma of cooking apples permeating the walls of this warm little farmhouse,
I also have boxes of raw apples all over the kitchen,,jars of home canned apple produce filling the counters waiting to move downstairs,,
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh,,,life is *so* good!! What an enjoyable day to be stuck inside warming the house with the old fashioned smell of apples......

flavored apple sauce

is everyone else in the country knee deep in apples and tomatoes right now? I try to do one batch a day of apples in my biggest stainless pot. I have larger pots that are aluminum but that wont work for apples as they burn on the bottom. So it turms out to be about 5 qts a day of cooked down apple. Yesterday I had the idea that I would add(frozen) strawberries to the with the apples and make different flavored sauces. Well if I had done it past yrs and forgotten I think I figured out why we generally dont add other fruit to the apple sauce. After putting it thru the mill I turned it back to the pot and cooked and cooked it but it wouldnt thicken totally. Seems the strawberries must do somthing to the pectin in the apples??? It, of course, has a great flavor tho, so I added a bit more sugar to the pot to sweeten it more and canned it thinking it will be wonderful pancake syrup ie still a bit watery for "sauce" to eat off a spoon but certainly much thicken than plain water so it should slide off the pancakes wonderfully. One jar didnt seal so I will probably make pancakes for lunch and try it out . If it is as luscious as I am anticipating I think I will try adding some blackberries or raspberries to my apples today for another flavored syrup.It is so hard to get *everything* put by at this time of year, so many ideas and so little time! It is so gorgeous and colorful autumn outside now too that a person hates to spend ALL day inside canning. Sometimes tricky to balance
.Oh,,,and I did a batch of 25 pints of hot salsa two days ago and ,WOW! I was SO Happy w/ the results. I can never seem to get my salsa hot enough with the peppers we grow up north here. But this year I grew "habenero" peppers and "WHEW DOGGY"
those lil babies are hot hot!!! The salsa I made was so good~ perfect thickness and super hot hot just how Michael always has wanted me to make it but I have never acheived it:)) Doesnt it make you soooooo satisfied when you make something to can and it EXCEEDS your expectations?? :)) Now next time I am going to add even a few less hot peppers and do a medium sauce for those of us who do not care to clean our sinus' out as the "hot mama" salsa does.A friend of my 18 yr old dd's is Latino and his parents make a home canned salsa that they sell commercially at all the stores in this area and plus I know they ship it somewhat around somewhere in the states. Now we dont purchase salsa, but a friends of Riahs has brought this salsa into our kitchen for Mike and I to try bcz he thinks it is the best salsa in the universe or whatever. So I think that the salsa I made two days ago is just as good :) (like I say~ satisfaction~ high fives~ not bragging, just so pleased:) They sell this authentic mexican salsa for $5 a pint at the local stores. Going by that the 25 pints I made are worth $125~ wow! and that is just one tiny batch of food on the canning shelves. Just think how much our canning shelves are worth!!!
ahhhhhh harvest time,life is good ........
UPDATE: 1:34 PM
made pancakes for lunch and tried the strawberry apple sauce for syrup. Guess what? It was not watery after cooling in the jar but rather a *nice* apple sauce texture and actually too thick for perfect syrup. So scratch all those thoughts above on flavored applesauce! It DOES work to put different fruit in and to still acheive a nice apple sauce texture.
Just now finished the next batch and put raspberries in this batch. Oh my, it is to die for! Absolute yum and perfect apple sauce texture.
So we will not be using these flavored sauces for pancake syrup but instead eat them ala carte as special tantalizingly tastey treats.
Tomorrow we will try some blackberry apple sauce,
now doesnt that sound exotic?
We are so blessed here on the farm.