It's May?

Well look at that - I missed April altogether.  It was a rather surreal month, what with the surgery (it went very well), giant cast (glad it's gone), miscellaneous tracking of nine different prescriptions (now down to the usual three, plus one lingering med), and the persistent muscle spasms following the surgery (massage has really helped).

Following Q's surgery, his sisters traveled to visit their dad.  G went later, on his scheduled spring break.  (He hasn't returned - that's a conundrum, which will hopefully resolve soon.)  The girls came back the week that the ginormous cast came off, and Q is now ensconced in a smaller brace.  After three weeks of the brace coming off only for therapies, changes, and baths, we're now working ever so slowly up to having it off all day.

Meanwhile, the lovely girls have been helpful with Q, done schoolwork, managed projects (indoors and out), laid plans for fundraising for Suzuki camp and new violins, studied for baptism, practiced and performed very well at their piano recital, and generally been a blessing and a boon to whomever they hang out with.  (I'm really not exaggerating, despite my mom-bias.  I'm terrifically proud of them.  Yes, I'm officially bragging.)  Next up: painting their bedrooms (I have a gift card to Home Depot...).

I got to meet the founder of this amazing place today.  If you happen to need an organization to donate to, think of them.  They do fantastic work.

The boy is asleep now - sleep has become a recurrent issue post-op and with related medication weans.  If you pray, I'd appreciate your prayers.  I do not want to do another protracted period of no sleep.  I guess I've adjusted to this (I have managed to leave the house with my shirt on frontwards), but I would be ecstatic to skip having to hang out in the "up all night" part of life.  (Side note: I don't know how mamas of newborns do it in their forties and beyond.  Heavens!)

Because Q's out, I'm crashing too.  I've used my evening well - pulling together part of the paperwork for the 2012-13 school year (yes, already - time is just flying!), and the rest can wait until tomorrow.  Such cool stuff.

Happy Mother's Day, you lovely mamas.  Whether or not Time magazine agrees (and who cares) - we're all "mom enough."  Kiss those babies!  (And their mamas!)

XO.

Zoom

Hello.  I'm posting quickly, en route to bed.  Morning brings the pre-op appointment for Master Q, so the schedule will be full.  We've been sick, so energy is in short supply, mostly for me.  I think the kids have either escaped this or had lighter versions.  So far, Q hasn't shown any signs of the nasty bug.  If he's going to have it, I hope he's already exposed.  I'm sure the surgery team won't proceed if he's ill.  He's scheduled for March 22.

We're moving furniture and rearranging the house so I can get the boy's bed moved downstairs.  After the surgery and casting, Q will require two people to transfer him from place to place.  The stairs are a good workout with the young man at 42 pounds, but the cast will be heavy and unwieldy, making the stairs non-negotiable for now.  Still to be worked out: feeding and transportation, since he won't be bendable for 6-8 weeks.

I'm off.  More to follow!  Hope your March is winding down, lamb-like.  Pax.

Hiya.  Life's been busy here, full of lessons and practice, therapies and running, rhythms of chores and sleep and cooking and laundry.  I suppose it could seem endless, but it doesn't.  It's home.  The kids are having the usual triumphs and hiccups of childhood, plus their own variations on the themes.  To say there's a lot to manage these days would be a bit of an understatement.

I've been mulling over things this week and I guess I have more questions than I have answers.  For argument's sake, if you were in a position to know something, to have science and experience on your side, and to also know that this something would be a real solution for someone you know or someone you love...  What do you do when that person won't listen?  Do you let it go?  The answer is different if you're considering the needs of a child or truly helpless person, of course, rather than those of a fully competent adult.  What if that person is antagonistic?  Paranoid?

I'm mulling because I keep running into situations where someone involved has a very workable answer but the person who needs it most refuses or is unable to take in the significance of the solution being presented.  This happens often enough that statistically I have to be that person who refuses or is unable, at least once in awhile.  There's a humbling thought.

So I guess I try to hang back a little, if I suspect that I'm making a fool of myself.  I think it's useful to walk around the problem or puzzle and see it through new eyes, asking for input, often from unlikely or even contrary sources.  I don't know.  Sometimes things are just a mess.  Sometimes knowing something doesn't do any good.  Smart people have been wrangling the problem of pain and suffering for as long it's been around.  I don't have anything to add.  Just thinking.

Pax.

Equipment

Good advice.

Models and manufacturers to consider:
Merritt
Recaro Monza

I've looked over the Britax Frontier 85 and a Graco model as well, on the advice of the awesome equipment wizard OT who sees Q sometimes for equipment and adaptive helps.  It doesn't appear that either of those will work for Q, as he needs greater support for sitting.

I continue to think about the Otto Bock option for combining a seat for the young man with biking and running sport bases.  If I had the extra cash, I would snap up one of those side-by-side tandem bikes that he loved so much last summer.  E and G peddled him around the parking lot to squeals of laughter, and protests when they stopped.  They all seemed to enjoy the experience and S and K wished they were big enough to peddle too.

Lots to think about.

Praying without ceasing

I've been thinking about that call lately - to pray without ceasing.  Many years ago, someone asked me how, with three kids and one on the way, I found time to pray.  I answered then without pausing to think, that I prayed throughout the day, sometimes over the dishes or in the midst of changing diapers, soothing little ones, holding hands with their daddy while on a walk with the family, or doing laundry.  Stoplights are good, too.  That conversation stuck in my head because I hadn't realized at the time what I'd been doing.  Something about the sudden awareness, combined with the sweetness of praying peace and blessing over my people, big and small, while tidying also their more immediate, physical world, managing the quotidian...  Well.  I'm not going to claim that there's a reward in scrubbing toilets that extends beyond the clean toilet itself, but the combination of prayer and acts of service, done in love, with a joyful sacrifice?  The parallels to the big picture life we're meant to lead are stunning to me.  I continue to turn that conversation over in my head and find new things to think about it.

So the phrase has been bouncing around in my head again lately, especially as folks near and far have had a tough time, and sometimes their suffering looks to be taking the day, stealing the bliss out of the ordinary.  I was thinking back over 2010, and how glad I am that it's over.  There was this time, a stretch of weeks, wherein high drama, legal issues, health scares, kid stuff, financial swerves, bad news, and sundry emergencies were popping up not more than 72 hours apart.  It was a lot to take in.  I think right in the middle of all that was when I started pondering those words again.

As to what it means?  How to apply?  Well, I'm not really comfortable throwing out some sort of mandate or absolute, but this is what I think about when I think about praying without ceasing: We're supposed to take care of each other.  Sometimes it's a grace-filled, rich and profoundly rewarding thing, sometimes it's a balancing act, performed with swords and running chainsaws.  But it's the huge, all caps, shout it from the peaks, why of this life.  Jesus modeled it, told stories about it, asked it of us:  Love one another.  Those little spaces of prayer hold up our arms while we're working away, trying to make sense of things.  Those little spaces of prayer blunt the swords and chain saws, and allow grace to fill up and overlay not just the high points of time with our people, but also the disappointments and emergencies, adding to our resilience, enabling us for more than we might have suspected we had inside us.  And during those minutes, hours, weeks, whatever, when it just. keeps. coming?  Wow does that resilience, that focus and connection, wow does that make the difference.

Here's someone I "met" through a friend, someone who has already in her life as a young mom had the full allotment of opportunity to practice resilience and praying without ceasing.  I think she'd appreciate your prayers.

Pax.

Mid January

Hello and Happy New Year!  We made it through the busy holiday season, with all the performances and scheduling disruptions.  The big kids went off for time with their dad.  Q saw him at the airport, which he loved, as always.  He no longer suspects the kids aren't returning, though he'd not in favor of them leaving.  Progress!

Early in the month we visited a new physician.  This visit was to talk about the possibility of eye surgery being combined with the hip surgery.  The doc was lovely, and the decision for now is to fix his lateral eye muscles and see how well that sticks.  The concerns are related to the quality of the tissue and whether or not Q would smack the area with his hands (in splints), thereby undoing the dissolving sutures.  If the sutures are disrupted or his muscles don't hold the correction well, the boomerang effect pushes his eyes farther along the continuum, in the wrong direction.  The nice lady would base the decision to go ahead with the medial adjustments on whether or not the lateral procedure holds.  She says the first would be less painful, less intrusive, and works better as a bit of a test run.  I don't know.  I feel like I usually walk out of medical appointments with a pretty clear idea of how we're proceeding and why, and I don't know why we'd do this.  I mean, the hope is that his eyes are physically steadier and appear to track together better.  But...  It doesn't seem likely that he's having double vision, since binocular vision is really a case of eyes alternating very quickly between them, not actually concurrent use of both.

I would so love to have a knowledgeable pocket elf at these visits, to weigh in and tip the scales decisively.  In lieu of that, I'll read some more, I guess.

In other news, the big boy is finding his way in high school.  The girls continue with school and are just about to begin the second half of the school year.  Q attends a developmental kindergarten three half days per week.  It's pretty awesome to see how each of the kids' early efforts is unfolding as they build upon acquired skills and knowledge.

We've welcomed a wee little new cousin and attended a memorial service for her grandpa, a very good man who is greatly missed.

The house is benefiting from a rework of chores assignments, and we're glad to have power back after a recent wild combination of snow, ice, and wind storms.  It was great for the kids to have prepped for the occasion with bread baking, cooking, and laundry.  We only had seven loads to do to catch up completely from two days without power.

We're all set for the next round, and have a greater appreciation for both our gas water heater and the need for good emergency preparedness.  Prescriptions and supplies work a little differently here than in many households.  Q's nutritional needs being what they are, we've got shelf-stable back up for him, in addition to the usual stuff you'd have on hand for everyone else.  We've got a shelf full of water in the garage, too.  And I'm thinking it's time to run through the list again, while there's no pressing need.

The house is quiet and we've a busy day tomorrow, getting ready to tackle the upcoming week, so I'm off.  Godspeed.

Merry Christmas

To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word. What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. 
~Garrison Keillor