Recovery

The children went trick-or-treating- E as a toilet, e as a bat- and of course came home with a lot of candy. Most of it they could not eat, so this is what they did:

We had all sorts of little sticky creations decorating our table! Best ever use of candy.

 

We also have flowers, balloons, stuffed animals, books, and a Wish Bone video that neighbors, friends, and family have sent or brought for little e's recovery. Thank you so much!

 

This piggy is still trucking along, despite the fact that our house is freakin cold! Our furnace died last week. We bought a small infrared heater for G's room, as piggies can't tolerate cold and we can't very well wrap her up in coats and mittens. The heater's been running constantly for 2 days now and can't get her room above 65. Brrr. Thankfully G is not as delicate as her breed would indicate. We had our chimney swept today, so by tonight we will have another source of heat.

The maple by the street is beginning to turn. It might finally be fall in Virginia!

We finally carved pumpkins yesterday. E carved the center pumpkin completely by himself!

I just realized one of E's drawings on the cast is a guinea pig pooping...

Today e had her split cast removed, x-rays taken, and a new cast put on. The pins were freaky to see, but luckily they are on the back of her elbow so she only got a quick glimpse of one rather than the full effect of all 3. Here's one x-ray:

Pretty new cast! Three weeks and she's done. Pretty amazing how fast children heal.

 

Surgeries

G had her surgery last Friday. She looked so frail and shivery when we got her back. So sad and scary to see her like that! When I held her, she seemed to settle a bit and warm up.

She made it past the riskiest 24 hours post-surgery, and we all breathed a little bit easier. Until Sunday morning. Her urine was thick with blood, and she cried. Even on the narcotic, she cried. I packed her up and spent all morning at the pet ER. They gave her fluids under the skin and sent us home with antibiotics.

 

No sooner had I settled her into her cage and grabbed a drink of water when I heard screams from outside. Horrible, awful screams that you never want to hear from a child. It was e.

 

E came running through the door, saying something about how he had told her not to do it. She copied him too much, he had told her not to do it. The clock read 12:20pm.

 

C carried e into the living room, telling me it was her elbow and did it look dislocated? I took one half-glance and scooped her up, yelling for E to bring my shoes to the car. We made it out the driveway so fast that our neighbor, who had seen/heard it all from her yard, didn't even have time to run over and offer to keep E.

 

The 8-minute drive to the nearest ER seemed to take forever. They wheeled her from room to room to room on a bed, thankfully not moving her, but nobody could seem to come up with pain medication. Even when she cried and I begged. She screamed through the x-rays. She asked me if she was going to die- otherwise why would Mommy be crying? Finally the dr splinted her arm and explained to us that she had indeed broken the long bone in her upper arm just above the elbow. The short piece left attached to her elbow then flipped out and dislocated. She would need surgery and a cast. e freaked at the idea of a cast, and someone finally showed up with Tylenol with codeine. We could see it swelling. While we waited for the ambulance that would transport her to the nearest military treatment facility (MTF), she was FINALLY given an IV port and a bit of morphine.

 

The ambulance medics were very kind. The driver found her favorite cartoon (Peep and the Big Wide World) on YouTube on his phone for her to watch while we waited for paperwork. Then finally, finally she was loaded into a pink ambulance. Pink. I kid you not. The medics asked E if he wanted to push any buttons or ride with us, but he declined. The poor kid was about 3 hours late for lunch by that point and pretty freaked at seeing his sis in pain.

 

The ambulance ride was bumpy and everything swayed- how do they manage to treat people in critical condition with all that motion? e was solidly strapped onto the stretcher, but I had only a lap belt and was trying to hold the phone steady above e for her to watch. A bit of a lost cause. The medic gave me a lot of advice on casts...what to request, how to care for, etc. Her brother broke a bone every summer as a child.

 

The MTF staff moved quickly. More x-rays, a parade of at least 5 drs and a handful of medics. Again transported through hallways in her bed. A big bed for such a small child. Finally they left us in a room with a tv and e watched Sid the Science Kid get a flu shot. Sort of. More drs and medics paraded through. C and E arrived with food, so C took over with e while E and I went across the hall so I could eat. I didn't want to eat in front of e; she was so hungry but labeled NPO.

 

Eventually it all came together and we walked with e in her bed up to prep for surgery. She was scared. C told her how he'd been scared for his surgery (appendectomy) but it turned out to be the best sleep ever! E promised her ice cream later. By now it was after 6:30pm. e chose her cast color (pink), mask flavor (watermelon), and the medic put a pair of grippy socks on her feet. They asked us a lot of questions, started e's IV, and wheeled her away.

 

C settled in to wait. E and I headed home to get food and supplies for overnight. We stopped at Target to get applesauce and some goodies. E took it upon himself to read labels, coming up with safe fruit cocktail and berry applesauce. Not foods he'd ever had, so he thought it would be something special. He also chose a balloon, glow sticks, and Halloween socks. We gave G her antibiotic, held her for a bit, told her to get better, then quickly gathered food/clothes and headed back. C had just texted that e was waking up at 9:30pm.

 

Remembering that the ambulance had gone though the tunnel (which had been closed many weekends for repairs), I didn't look up an alternative route. Mistake. I passed a sign saying 'tunnel closed 8pm Sunday- 9am Monday' and knew I was in trouble. The GPS, when I pushed the detour button, kept routing me to yet another on-ramp for the same tunnel. Over and over. Around and around. For over an hour and a half. I got so turned around that I had to call C to look it up on his iPad. By the time we got to the hospital, e was settled in a room and fully awake.

 

E and C went home around midnight, and then it was just e and I. She looked like she had been through the wringer. Her shirt was only still attached by one sleeve, so I cut it off and promised to make a doll blanket from the sequin heart. I explained the IV drip, and why her throat was sore. We watched the Enson set up a make-shift thing with ace bandages and Popsicle sticks to elevate her swollen arm, wondering how it would work. (It didn't.) Lying beside her, I managed to turn her arm and prop it upwards with pillows after she fell asleep. Enson took turns with a few doctors coming in every 45 minutes. Vitals, cast check, pain medicine, measuring urine... Are patients really allowed any sleep in a hospital? I did learn that many of the pediatric patients were ortho, so that Enson had been floated from the orthopedic ward to give more specialty care here. She told me she wished they had also sent some specialized equipment with her as well (as she took down the failed ace bandage contraption).

 

But the other pediatric ortho patients were not here just overnight like us. There was a boy who had broken his back and cracked his skull and will never walk again. A few kids and babies with bone infections. A baby born with half a brain and a too-small skull. Several children with skeletal deformities. As I cuddled with my sleeping e, I thanked The Lord that we were only here with a broken arm and prayed for those other children and their families whose road to recovery stretched much longer than ours.

 

Then at 5am e was wheeled down to x-ray in a gigantic wheelchair. She was terrified, remembering the pain of the first sets of pictures. The nurse took her back up to the fourth floor for Enson to give her 'roxy', a pain med that made her sleepy. After that, the x-rays were a cinch. A half hour later, the parade of drs resumed and ended at 9:30am with loading e and her cast into the car and heading home.

 

e's cast is sliced lengthwise on top and bottom, with spacers to keep it spread. When we brought her home, her arm was so swollen that it looked like muffin-top near her shoulder and sausages for fingers. We had to keep asking her to wiggle her fingers to check her circulation! Now, a week later, her cast is so loose that her sleeve slips down into it. Tomorrow she gets her 'real' cast. I'm a bit frightened... I don't want to see the pins when they remove this cast. I don't want her to see the pins. I like not having a visual for the full extent of her injury.

Guinea survived through all this as well as she could. She needed medicine and syringe feeding and holding as often as I could manage. She peed blood again yesterday... She had quit drinking! We've been syringing water into her mouth a lot and she is mostly back to normal now. The vet today says G looks great, keep forcing water. Silly piggy...drink your water!

 

A Little Bit of Everything

 

I finished the pink pig last week, and e immediately adopted it as her own. The blue pig from 3 years ago finally has a friend!

The Waldorf doll I made continues to get much love. So much so, in fact, that I need to re-sew her neck. I am thrilled to pieces that e gets so much joy from homemade treasures!

Last month we attended the Neptune Festival, an international sand sculpting competition. It was fun to see that a lot of the sculptors also do ice. What different mediums sand and ice are! The sand sculptures did not disappoint, and made us a bit 'homesick' for Ice Alaska.

At the mock meet, E scored in the top 3 (out of 5 level V boys) on All Around and every event but pommel horse... even coming in on top for high bar! He has made amazing improvement and is so proud of himself.

Guinea has learned to take a selfie. Not kidding. She took this pic herself.

And last but not least, this is my mantra lately!

 

Guinea's surgery is tomorrow morning- please pray she makes it through!

 

GuineaRabbit

Guinea has learned to use Facebook. She touches the screen with a paw to make a picture big. You know, pictures of veggies, apples, grass... I let her stare for a bit and then close it and move on until she reaches out again. Eventually she wears herself out and falls asleep. Then I can look at what I want.

But G's problems are back. Yesterday she started bleeding again, and this time I knew it wasn't red pee from beets. I grabbed my iPad and googled 'cavy ovarian cyst'. Symptoms- crusty nipples, aggressive rumblestrutting, swollen abdomen, bleeding. Which is what G had 2 months ago, right before her first vet visit. So...apparently this poor pig has had a ruptured ovarian cyst, a broken leg, a stepped-on foot, and now another ovarian cyst, all in 2 months. Wow. G is scheduled to have all her female organs removed on Friday. The only way to help her, yet it may kill her. Piggies don't do well with sedation. But G is a fighter... The ruptured cyst should have killed her, but she pulled through. Perhaps she will fight the odds on this also.

 

Today we watched E's mock meet. After the sadness and worry of yesterday, it was a happy event for sure. The boys looked so sharp.

 

Pumpkin Pig

e decided to carve her pumpkin a few days ago.

G eagerly helped. Since we allowed her only one seed, she opted for the stem.

Only the stem. Delicious. And in the process became the inspiration for the face: Guinea Pig Goblin.

e drew, I carved. Then we roasted the seeds. Yum. Much better than the stem. Even G agreed.

 

A Long Week

Remember back when I said I wasn't sure how long the school rhythm would last? It didn't last long. We've been a few weeks now without much schoolish stuff going on. Operation Toddler was great for getting priorities straight, but we were all feeling the lack of...something. E had started to complain about his beloved math, and e whined about how hard piano was. Two things they had chosen to do, and here they were, complaining about it. C and I figured it must be the lack of consistency making it tricky, so I put my foot down and required daily practice. Oh, the long, drawn out fits we had! By the third day, though, they were both smiling. Math and piano were fun again. AND even better, E has decided he wants to do piano again, also! Happy dance.

 

During all this, I got shingles, C got flu mist, G got her tiny toes stepped on, and now both kids have sore throats. What a week!

Lots of house drawing going on around here. This one is by E.

Jack and the Beanstalk, by e.

End of block for e: fawn, bear, U (ooooo, concern for the bear cub), and below is Rapunzel.

And on to e's next block: Roman Numerals! Number One is magical. Contained within the number one are all the other numbers! e loves this concept and has been noting the magic as it appears: one apple, 14 seeds and 8 slices. One leaf, 6 veins. One girl, 2 eyes, 10 fingers, and 25 hundred million hairs.

E built a tipi after reading Tomie de Paola's book about Indian paintbrush.

 

Interesting note- the People of the Plains had relatively small tipis until the Spaniards introduced horses to the Americas. Why? Trees were scarce on the prairie, located only in creek bottoms, and thus the tipi poles must be hauled across the prairie as the tribe followed the herds of bison. Without horses, it was of course the people themselves doing the work....so tipis were only as large as the poles they could haul. With horses, the poles could be twice as long.

 

We didn't think length would make that big of a difference, so we tried it with sticks, measuring diameter of the resulting tipi base, and the difference was striking.

Somewhere in there, e discovered she could read. E may have been the one to give the final push. She's been reading everything in sight.

We have made it to our favorite of all pages in Autumn. We've had storms of rain, foggy mornings, temperatures of mid-sixties, and leaves are beginning to turn! Squirrels are everywhere, digging and chattering and carrying nuts in their cheeks as they scurry past.

More felted soaps are in progress! I'd forgotten how I enjoy needle felting designs.

The children have begun to plan their costumes for Halloween. I'm still not sure how or what we are doing for this candy-we-can't-eat holiday....

 

In Alaska, the university opened its laboratories for kids in costume to explore. Weird sea creatures, dino bones, bats and eyeballs and a 2-headed sheep, giant insects, dissections, skinning and stuffing owls, and more. Costumed professors and grad students answered every question. Pretty much my children's dream come true! They'd ask questions for hours. One time 3-yr-old e stumped the paleontologist! The best questions often come from the teensiest people.

Picture by e.

 

Yesterday we went to Busch Gardens. That was before the sore throats! It was a beautiful drizzly, foggy day without many lines, and much fun was had until we tried for a ride e wasn't tall enough for. Oh the drama... e very much hates limits based on size or age! Plus it seemed the crowd had quadrupled. By the time we got home, I was ready to move back to Fairbanks. Too. Many. People!!

 

Operation Toddler

If there is one thing I have learned from Waldorf, it is that our expectations of children are warped.

 

 

We expect them to do so much by themselves, such as sleeping alone, cleaning their room alone, or sitting at a desk and doing schoolwork alone. Alone, as in no adult right by their side. Right? Because that would be babying them. Yet we hesitate to buy them real art supplies or let them use real tools. Instead we give them kid versions that never work quite as well (or we decline to allow them into the activity at all... Because, you know, they could shoot their eye out or chop off a finger, right?).

 

 

Unfortunately, children feel the irony. They want and need to feel competent, to do real work with real tools, to have purpose. Yet they get scared alone at night, feel impossibly overwhelmed standing in a messy room with orders to 'just clean it up!', and fail to understand the importance of schoolwork. They feel frustration when their art, tools, or instruments will not produce the results they see from adults. We expect so much from them, yet trust so little.

 

 

So where am I going with this? Well, my children have been unhappy lately. I've been falling into the trap of thinking that they need me less because they are 6 and 9. I can turn my back, focus on my own chores while sending them to do theirs, order them to be nice to each other and work it out, give them independent schoolwork and piano practice, let them watch Netflix and play iPad games, allow them to hear about the government shutdown and wars abroad, and do with less overall structure and sleep....or can I?

 

Nope. My children are only 6 and 9. They need me. They need structure, they need protection, and they need purpose. Thus the secret name I gave my new plan: Operation Toddler. Not because they are acting like babies, or are in danger of hurting themselves, but to remind me to ask myself what I would have done if they were still little. Because they are. 6 and 9 are still very young. With toddlers I would never have turned my back, let a bedtime slide, or burdened them with politics. I would have searched for ways to help them feel capable, rather than ordering them to be capable. I would have taught through imitation, sat down with and completed the same task I expected from them. None of this multi-tasking. Focus.

 

 

We banned screens, at least for the week. I did the majority of chores and cooking while they were asleep or in quiet time. I gave extra effort to being truly present. We did real art, real baking, and lots of games and stories. They still did their chores, but it was a family effort. Because I was right there, focused on the children, I was able to redirect and guide situations that before would have gotten out of hand. I found heaps of teachable moments that before would have passed un-noticed. The pace of our days slowed significantly.

 

Wet-felting soap is always a favorite!

We finished Charlotte's Web, so E and e decided to build a web.

 

Yesterday I let my focus fade. I spent a bit of time on Facebook, I googled tree-trimmers, and I did a whole lot of laundry without making space for them to help. I still played games, held the daily rhythm, and was there... mostly. But they felt the change. e asked over and over and over for screen time. They bickered and yelled and complained. They were mad at each other and at me. When I tucked E into bed, he told me that today had been nothing but yelling and boredom.

 

This parenting thing is hard. Homeschooling is hard. No way around it. They don't grow out of needing us as fast as we might think....and I'm okay with that. Maybe I have extra clingy children. I'm also okay with that. They will not need me in this way forever. The day will come when they grow up and move on, and I will have more than enough time for whatever I want to do.

 

So onward with Operation Toddler. Today we are picking out E's building project and locating tools. Sanding E's spinning wheel to ready it for watercolors. Designing a simple doll house for e to build. Making a rope out of raffia. Piano practice, multiplication table jump rope, weather-watching. Or some variation of the above. Maybe I'll teach E to cut up a chicken, and e wants to try her hand at brownies by herself. It's going to be a good day.