Chesed

How is Zara?

By Michelle November 16, 2014 life, Zara 11 Comments

It’s the question of the week and one I really don’t know how to answer.

Physically:

She seems to be doing well. She just started crawling a week prior to her hospitalization and she is now happily exploring our house, digging her little toes out against the floor and pushing herself along. Aside from the fact that she is still helpless as a fish on her back, you’d never guess she has any issues. Unless you know. David and I still see infrequent (what we call) mini-spasms. They aren’t the clear arm raised jerks, but tiny one to two second jerks that sometimes only include her shoulder and head. Other times her hands come forward and she stares and just like that they’re gone. I would COMPLETELY think I was imagining things if it wasn’t for the fact that whenever we’re in the same room when they happen, our eyes meet and we know we saw the exact same thing. Is it seizure activity? We don’t know. David keeps saying we need to catch it on video but they are so fleeting and not clustered and it feels as though it would be impossible to capture.

Emotionally:

Zara is was traumatized. On our way home from Johns Hopkins Tuesday night we found out a good friend of mine lost her father in a farm accident. Zara was emotionally very upset from her hospitalization and had a tough time believing anything would ever be normal. Every time I laid her back to change her diaper she screamed in terror. She wanted to be held all the time and just seemed very insecure. On Saturday morning she finally started playing happily on the floor with the boys ….. an hour before she and I headed out the door to Alberta for the funeral. Again, we were gone for four days and this time without her beloved daddy. It is impossible to explain to an eight month old what is going on and I watched sadly as our sweet tempered baby girl who rarely cried and mostly did so quietly through closed lips morphed into a baby girl who threw little temper tantrums over anything.

Our return was even harder than the first. Her little world had been rocked so hard. We kept on loving her and holding her as much as possible. Surely the same things that helped her know she was loved and secure would help to restore her little routine of normalcy. On Friday David was home to work on the house and she settled back down into her sweet self. I’ve heard an occasional mad exclamation, but they are definitely lessening and I’m hoping her sweet self is back to stay.

Her future:

We are so very, very grateful to not have a diagnosis at this point. It’s one of those strange cases where the unknown is nicer than the known. I don’t know when I’ve experienced so many up and downs in such a short amount of time.

Friday night: “Have her in the ER by 5. This looks like infantile spasms.” Down. Around 9, “Her EEG is clear.” Up. At 11 from the neurology resident: “Just because her EEG is clear doesn’t mean she doesn’t have infantile spasms.” Down.

Saturday morning: “We are fairly certain this is not infantile spasms.” Up.

Monday morning: “Looks great, you can go home and watch her.” WAY UP. At 12, “We saw something and want to watch her longer.” Down.

Tuesday morning: “Looks great, you can go home, and we’ll follow up in a few months.” Up. Around 12, the social worker stops me to say, “So I see they’re sending her home on Keppra and it’s very expensive. Would you like me to print out some vouchers?” Me (as my heart plummets to my feet): “Um, sure.” Return to room and google keppra. Way down. An hour later, discharge papers and no keppra. Odd communication error. WAY UP.

Thursday afternoon I took her to see her local pediatrician for the prescribed follow up and he stopped me in the hallway. “Oh hey, I was just talking to the neurology resident and they want her to come back in for an MRI.” WAY DOWN. When will this ever end? He checked her over and thought her tone was low and wants her followed by Infant and Toddler Development. I’m quite sure she was just all chilled out because her tone feels quite like any other baby I’ve held so that shouldn’t take long.

Friday morning call the neurology clinic and they have no MRI orders in the computer. Friday afternoon get a call from the neurologist who is out of town for the weekend (did someone say dedication??) who assured me they don’t feel she needs an MRI and we can keep watching her and follow up in a few months. WAY UP.

Moral of the story: In the middle of a health care crisis, store your emotions in the suitcase and let them come out after it’s aaaaaaaaallll completely decided. Otherwise you may or may not be exhausted. How would I know?

So that’s where we’re at. Zara has a follow up appointment with neurology in January. Until then, we’ll watch. And hope. And pray. And wait.

She’s been so loved on all her life, she’d have a right to feel smothered. But now, every snuggle and every kiss is that much more precious. Every time she sees me, grins, and comes crawling toward me on high speed, I melt a little more as a teeny twinge of what could be pings in my abdomen.

I sniff her neck a million times and breathe deeply no matter if she’s just bathed and smelling like a heavenly angel as Liam describes it or if she stinks like the copious amounts of baby drool that are happening these toothless days.

For now, she’s here. So alive. So present. So real. So precious. So engaged. So mostly without cause for concern.

Best of all, we’re all at home together.

We really don’t know the next chapter to Zara’s story, but whether or not it gets written the way we hope, we know she will always be so very, very loved.

Zara is being discharged!

By Michelle November 4, 2014 life, Zara 26 Comments

Zara got hooked up to a continuous EEG with video monitoring Saturday night at bedtime. She absolutely hates the process of being hooked up. They scrub her scalp where the leads go, then put tons of goop on the electrode and puuuuuuuuush it against her head. Of course, THEY say it doesn’t hurt. It’s just cold and itchy. But babies don’t cry if it doesn’t hurt so I don’t believe them. It took forEVER to get hooked up, but they were very careful and wanted us to distract her as much as possible. I was showing Zara pictures and video clips of the boys and she was barely distracted. Then suddenly we got to a close up picture of her with Liam. She stared at him for a second before her arms started waving and waving and she gave a little cry of distress. She started scratching at the screen, trying to reach him. More cry of distress and her mouth went down to the screen as though surely she could feel him. Oh, how she missed her brothers! The next picture she was sitting in her crib, surrounded by the little elephant crib bumper …. another cry of distress. More arm waving. Poor baby girl. How we long to take you home.

It was another restless night of holding Zara on a hard couch only this time with the added benefit of knowing someone could watch all your awkward nighttime antics on video. It wasn’t until well into it that I figured out they had sound with it and could hear everything we said.

Zara’s leads came loose throughout the night. By seven she was missing a few and by noon they were completely gone so we tossed the EEG box on the bed. It didn’t have any seizures either. 🙂 My parents picked up the boys and brought them to the hospital and what a happy reunion it was! Around 3, Neurology came back to hook Zara back up. Motorcycle caps are the fashion of the day.

This time they didn’t scrub her since I’d just washed her hair so it wasn’t the loooooong drawn out process and she didn’t cry nearly as much. They also threw her a box of leads to play with since she is so enchanted with cords and kept wanting to grab the ones they were using.

We had one more horrible blood draw to get through to confirm that Zara’s white count was really okay. It felt so mean! Zara has been so normal with anything related to blood counts … no recent infections, nothing that should indicate any reason for her white count to be anything other than fine. I agreed to do it if we could get warm packs on her for awhile first. Saturday morning they got her labs with one stick because she was on IV fluids and they used warm packs. They totally agreed but phlebotomy breezed through the door before the nurse could even get in here. We’ve had great nurses the entire time but our nurse on Sunday was by FAR my favorite. They’ve all been fabulous about keeping things quiet and low key for her when she’s sleeping and they’ve all been kind and gentle. Ellen was also very obviously Zara’s advocate. She put the packs on quickly and told phlebotomy we needed to wait a little. I asked if they can’t get someone else who is especially good with babies since she is notoriously such a terrible stick. She said phlebotomy usually has to say they can’t get it. I KNEW he wasn’t going to get it when I started to lie her back on the bed and he said, “Oh, she can just stay sitting up.” He probed and dug this way and that. “I want to see the other side.” Ellen said, “Only if Mom says yes.” I wanted to HUG her. I told him he could stick her again but ONLY if he actually FELT something, not just thought he felt something. And we were going to lay her down flat on the bed so we could secure her arm better. He didn’t see anything on the other side but went back over and claimed he was ready for her other elbow. I watched in dismay as he dug this way, then that way, clearly NOT having a clue where her vein was. He got a teeny flash and then nothing just like all the others had. He kept pulling on the syringe way too hard and finally got a teeny bit of blood which looked very much as though he had blown the vein and was only collecting the blood that was gathering under her skin. When the needle backed out and he looked as though he was going to stick it back in I said, “That’s enough.” It wasn’t a very quiet command either.

It was all just too much and I was completely done with needless suffering over inept attempts at blood draws. I’m sure they’re fine most of the time but, PLEASE realize your limits and don’t keep digging on a BABY who is a hard stick. If there are nurses who can get IV’s in two pound infants then there are nurses who could EASILY get 1/2 cc of blood out of an 18 lb healthy child. I asked Ellen if there was no way to get one of them. She said they typically have to go through several more steps and phlebotomy has to say they can’t get it, but she was going to make some phone calls and see if she could override the process.

Next thing I knew there was a fabulous vascular nurse literally dancing in the door, turning on some fun Dora music on her phone, stamping her foot in time to the music, and finding a patent vein in her foot in less than two minutes. Oh, happiness.

I admitted half-guiltily to the nurse on night shift that I usually let Zara sleep on her tummy at home and I wanted to try it so we wouldn’t have to hold her through another night. She said, “Oh, I totally get it. I’m a mom and a nurse and my baby sleeps on his tummy, too.” Zara slept fabulously, waking only once at three.

The funniest part of the day was Monday morning when David was in the crib holding Zara (she had to stay in front of the video camera at all times) and the entire neurology team walked in on rounds. 🙂 Oh the love of a daddy!

Once again, neurology said there were no episodes! Not only that, instead of telling us we needed to be readmitted for four days of monitoring in the epilepsy unit, they said we should make a follow up appoint for one to three months out, watch her, and if nothing happened we could call and cancel. We were absolutely ecstatically awaiting discharge papers. It felt as though we’d been given something that felt like a near death sentence Friday night to a probably clean bill of health Monday morning! At twelve I was walking down the hall to get a spoon for Zara when the med student stopped me and said, “I was just looking for you. So it looks like neurology saw something concerning on her EEG this morning when you guys clicked.”

I stood there in shock and cried. It was one too many roller coasters on top of too little sleep. We had the choice to continue monitoring another night or come back for a four day stay. We easily chose the former. We were already here, Zara was already hooked up, it looked so much easier. David kept reminding me that this is what we wanted. If she’s going to do something odd, it’s so much better for it to happen here. And they reassured us again that this is not infantile spasms. Six weeks into the game we would definitely be seeing it on her baseline EEG.

That night he explained it better. They didn’t see definite seizure activity, but they did catch her jerk on video with correlating eye blink artifact. Because it was similar to what we had been seeing at home, they wanted more data. “Kind of like flipping a coin,” he said. “This time we got heads, but lets make sure we get heads every time.”

So we got busy clicking for every odd torso stiffening, every jerk, every potentially weird behavior. Have you ever stopped and just watched a baby play for hours? They make a lot of weird movements! Between one and two in the afternoon Zara did a lot of weird things. The weirdest was torso stiffening that coincided with a wide mouth grimace, head turned to the side, elbow and wrist flexion, and a tightly clenched fist. The EEG tech was down to tighten leads and said, “Yes, that lasted three seconds. We’d never seen the movement in her and have no idea if it’s normal teething behavior or something suspicious but they should certainly have it well documented because there were multiple episodes. Around 3:30 she did the same shoulder head spasm and partial arm jerk that was most similar to what we saw at home. We were both grateful she did because if it was captured with no EEG changes, we won’t worry when we go home and she starts doing it again. By 7:30 we were beginning to wonder if we had any semblance of what normal behavior looks like.

I am so ready to have my baby girl with the brown hair back!

We got the same words today. They’re evaluating the clicks from yesterday but assuming there were no EEG changes, we can go home with just a follow up appointment in a few months! David and I noticed that they didn’t bother to reattach the lead that came loose overnight and a few hours later they came and turned off the machine. We’re reading between the lines and believing neurology didn’t see anything. 🙂 They have no explanation for the odd spasms. I’ve asked every possible OCD parent question possible. Did I drink too much caffeine? Is this related to the remodel when she was exposed to all the dust, the mold behind the kitchen cabinets, the polyurethane stain, and the finish on the floor? Her pediatrician said she was on the fence about needing a lead screen because of the age of the house but decided not to do one so they did one here. All clear. There are no explanations.

I think God healed her.

She’s been our miracle baby all along. It felt like a miracle when she was conceived and another miracle when my molar-like symptoms switched overnight and we saw her itty bitty self on ultrasound a few days later.

Maybe God just did another miracle.

Whatever the reason, we are humbled, euphoric, grateful, awed, relieved, and did I mention thankful?

I feel like one who has been acquainted with the night, but allowed to walk in the sunshine. Friday morning when I was waiting on Johns Hopkins to return my call the phrase, “Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” kept branding itself into my brain. We were only asked to look at the shadow. But looking into it’s face, we saw again so clearly that the night is never entirely black for those who love Jesus. Just as the moon and the stars light the pitch blackness of night, so the grace of God and the prayers of the body of Christ carry you through the darkest times of your life.

We are profoundly grateful to all of you who have carried this burden with us and prayed for Zara’s healing! When you pray, the heavens open.

When seizures change your world

By Michelle November 1, 2014 life, Zara 36 Comments

Zara’s world has been turned upside down. About the time she turned six months old she started doing a very odd head nodding spasm while nursing to sleep. I googled it and finally found someone else who had it and was told it was a myoclonic something and was nothing to worry about. They said their baby stopped if they broke baby’s latch and the doctor said it was innocuous. I mentioned it to Zara’s pediatrician at her six month wellness check who frowned but decided it was probably benign. It never lasted more than ten seconds and happened very rarely.

Two weeks later she started doing a funny muscle spasm in her arm and neck. She had stopped rolling which we attributed to not liking the result of finding her self on her tummy. After all, Adam did the same thing. But now I was noticing that she didn’t even stretch as though she wanted to roll.

You can watch what the arm spasms looked like here, although you will probably want to fast forward to 1:57 which is just before it starts. Now looking back, it looks so clear. But back then it was easy to pass it off as innocuous. They were so quick. She never lost consciousness. She smiled and played as though they didn’t bother her. I never really counted to see how many she did at once and I never noticed how frequently they clustered. Plus most days they only happened here and there. Occasionally she’d have a bad day where she had lots of them, like this day. I thought she acted as though she had a muscle issue … like a pinched nerve or something. Especially since sometimes when I rubbed her back, she would clench up her shoulders as though it hurt. How could I have been so blind?

It went on for about six weeks, interestingly seeming to lessen when we got on top of her food intolerances and she started sleeping better again at night. Somehow I assumed that if she had digestive issues, she’d react to the same things Liam did. Not so, and once again I found myself doing detective work. At least this time I knew what to look for. So much for the organic, non GMO quinoa baby cereal.

Suddenly I knew it was time. I called the pediatrician and made an appointment for Thursday afternoon. Armed with video clips, I described what was happening. He instantly said she needs a complete evaluation by a pediatric neurologist. Her movements looked very much like infantile spasms, he said. She was showing no developmental delays except for being helpless as a fish on her back which he thought was unrelated (the neurologists here seem to disagree).

We toggled with hospital choices the next morning, knowing we’d have to drive three hours no matter which direction we went, and settled on Johns Hopkins. The pediatric neurology clinic said they couldn’t get us in for several months and she needed to be evaluated before then so they transferred me to the epilepsy clinic. They were equally helpful and asked just as many questions about what was going on. They thought their first available appointment would be December 6th, but they’d talk with the nurse practitioner and get back with me. Around 10:30 she returned the call and said she really needed to see the video clips. I had one problem. Satellite internet and the allotment was out for the month so I was dealing with dial up speed. I could send them to you tomorrow when I go to the library, I said, or if you really need them today, I’ll drive in to town. “You know,” she said quietly, “I’m not trying to make you panic but I need those clips now.”

Like a miracle, the video clips actually uploaded, eking their way along in the next thirty minutes. An hour later, around 1:15 pm, I got a call from the neurologist instead of the nurse practitioner. “This looks like Infantile Spams. We need to see Zara in the ER today. Preferably before 5:00.” I had only one question. “Should we plan to stay overnight?” “Definitely. I’ll let everyone know you’re coming.”

It was like a bombshell. I knew instantly that something was very, very wrong. I had four hours to arrange childcare for the boys, pack, throw Zara’s clothes through the washer and dryer since she was down to pretty much nothing clean, and we had three hours to drive. David had a graduation at camp, but he dropped everything and came straight home.

It was completely surreal. Our darling baby was sitting in her car seat babbling happily and we were flying to the ER because something was seriously wrong with her??

The admitting nurse took a look at the video clip and said, “Oh that’s Infantile Spams.” After all that hurrying, we’d rolled into the parking lot at 4:45 and by the time registration got us through, it was 5:00. Apparently we’d missed the neurology team because from then on, all we’ve done is hurry up and wait. In typical fashion, the weekend schedule is way off and super slow. All the nurses looked at her and said, “Oh, she’s so gorgeous. I’m just so sorry.” I made the very bad mistake of googling IS. Sometimes Google is your worst enemy.

Zara cried and cried as they hooked up the EEG leads and then blissfully fell asleep the entire thirty minutes they tested her. It was completely normal.

They dug viscously seven times and FINALLY manage to get one precious 24 gauge IV in her foot. They still couldn’t get enough blood for labs and ended up doing a heel prick and squeezing it out. Her white blood cell count came back so low they put her on neutropenic precautions, just in case. I chanted, she hasn’t bruised, this is not leukemia quietly to myself.

At 12:30 at night, it feels like the nightmare that just doesn’t end.

The resident came to talk with us and I said, “So if the EEG was clear, does that mean it’s not IS?”

“Oh no,” she said. It could still be. Her symptoms are very classic. They’ll need to do an MRI tomorrow to make sure.

And so Zara went NPO after midnight. I cuddled her on the couch all night long, waking every time she stirred and being bombarded with reality covered in supernatural grace.

Today. We waited. And waited.

Finally the clouds broke. They repeated labs, this time with ONE STICK, and her white count was much closer to normal!! Thank you, Jesus!

Around 12, one of the pediatric residents came in to say that not everyone on the neurology team had seen the video clips. They would be in “shortly” (do you have any idea what that word means in a hospital?) and after viewing it would decide whether she still needed the MRI today.

Excuse me? We have not fed her because why?

An hour later the neuro team showed up to evaluate her and look at her footage. They nodded their heads meaningfully at each other and said few words as they watched.

Plans changed. They wanted to do a longer EEG and attempt to catch some of the activity both on video and on the EEG. Based on those results they would decide whether or not she needs an MRI. “So you still feel certain that she has IS even though her EEG last night was clear?”

“No, we feel fairly certain that she does not have IS. Sometimes the characteristic hypsarrhythmia doesn’t show up in the first few weeks, but it would almost certainly be present after six weeks.” For the first time, I felt relief at having waited. Would she have been diagnosed incorrectly and treated wrongly if we would have brought her in immediately? Only God knows.

I was ecstatic at ruling out IS. The doctors looked at me soberly and without sharing any of our joy. I knew they suspected other things and it was too early to celebrate, but knowing it wasn’t IS took an enormous weight out of our day. So now we’re back to the waiting game. Watching our sweet baby girl babble and reach out for toys and wondering what lurks below her cranium that we aren’t seeing. There is nothing to google. No statistics to horrify.

Just a baby girl and her naive parents. And a pending EEG.

Thank you to the hundreds of people who are standing beside us in prayer. We feel those prayers surrounding us, giving us courage, helping our eyes to be brave as we hold down our baby girl who is desperately trying to get away from another tourniquet and needle. Helping us to rest and sleep in the in-between moments when our room is quiet. Helping us not to panic about the what ifs or the this is moments. We believe God is the Creator of Zara’s life and He is also her Healer. Our Sustainer.

Please help us praise God for such a wonderful, compassionate, knowledgeable team from the pediatrician who recognized a very rare disorder to the neurology doctors who (we think) hold the key to solving this mystery and who did not stop at a full appointment schedule.

We continue to pray for a correct diagnosis and complete healing for Zara.

My New Photography Website

By Michelle October 22, 2014 life 1 Comment

I am THRILLED, like heart-pumpingly thrilled, to announce my brand new photography website! This bit of lovely and the new logo you’ve seen floating around in the last few months are thanks to the fabulous Tiffany Reiff Designs! Tiffany has an amazing eye for creative design. Best of all, she is fabulous at listening to what you want and designing something that reflects your style and personality. If you need a logo, a website, or even business cards, I cannot recommend her enough! Thank you so much, Tiffany!

Kitchen Complete

By Michelle September 20, 2014 life 5 Comments

Annnnnnd, the kitchen is finished! Ok, almost. A few tiny things lurk in the shadows of David’s to do list like, adjust the doors to align them perfectly and fill nail holes in the crown and toe kick and maybe caulk along the ceiling because the walls and ceiling weren’t built level leaving strange looking crevices perfect for stink bug hibernation.

But, for the most part, she’s complete!

And, oh, how we love this room!

When we were in the middle of the terrible, awful, choking dust from the hardwood floors being sanded David asked me if it’s worth it. “Ask me in five months,” I said. We weren’t finished five days and I already wanted to yell, “It was SO WORTH IT.” It may have taken me more like five weeks to be able to hold my eyes open consistently though. 🙂

So remember that hardwood floor lot we got? David figured the square footage and was pretty sure it was enough. He put plywood underneath some of the cabinets to be safe and it’s a good thing he did. Check out that TEENY TINY pile of leftover flooring!!!!

Finishing the floor would be the worst part, David told me. Like usual he was right. Drywall dust paled in comparison. The sander was so loud! Late Thursday night we cleaned everything up and he water popped the floor to even out the wood grain. I’d been mixing and mixing stain samples, trying to get a warm tone that wasn’t too dark or too light or too red or too orange or too yellow. I can’t remember exactly what we used but I think it was something like 5 parts natural, 1 part gunstock, 6 parts cherry and 3 parts early american. The next morning David put the stain on with an old piece of carpet on the buffer. It is just shocking to watch color go down. I always feel goosebumpy, wondering if I actually made the right decision or if we’re going to hate it. 🙂 I was pretty sure I’d gone completely wrong on the floor. We hadn’t water popped the samples I was working with and even though I did a variety of wood pieces, they all looked significantly lighter than the actual flooring because of the way it took the stain. It seemed to mellow as it cured though and now that it’s finished, I absolutely love it! It’s so warm and inviting!

That was a rough night. Zara reacted to the stain and the finish even though we used a water based finish called Traffic (our favorite!). She could. not. sleep in the house. I was out on the hammock with her for awhile and around midnight I jokingly messaged a neighbor asking if I could come bum into her house for the night. She said sure! I told her I’d try one more time to lay Zara in her crib and if it didn’t work, I’d come. Well, Zara actually stayed asleep. We put towels by the bottom of her door hoping to keep the smell out. David put one more coat on the floor and just as he got to the back around 1, Zara woke up crying and crying. He held her til 5 and I took a turn for awhile. Poor sweet baby. Saturday morning David put one more coat on, backed himself back into our bedroom, took a shower and crawled out the window since we couldn’t walk on the floor. The boys were completely enamored!

We spent the day in town to let the floor cure and to give Zara a break from the fumes. That was my favorite part of the remodel. 🙂

From then on, things went so much better. David began installing cabinets and a huge work group came to help at camp. From Monday – Wednesday they sent two of the girls to our house to help with the herculean clean up job. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d have done without them. The girls on Monday should get medals for bravery. They walked into a living room that was so full of furniture and construction dirt you couldn’t even walk through it and just tackled it head on. Pretty much everything on the entire main floor had to be cleaned out. All the closets got emptied out, but not only that, everything had to be washed. All the coats, jackets, table linens, bedding … yep, covered in dust. They vacuumed off the books before putting them back on the bookshelf. It was slow going, but oh, so rewarding!

Six weeks later we finally found someone who could install the carpet in the living room and bedrooms. It is so amazing to see the difference it has made in the house! We extended the hardwood out to the front door and back the hall because that’s where carpet takes the biggest beating. Since there is no side or back entrance / mud room, all our dirt comes straight in the front door. And oh, how I love not having carpet under the dining room table anymore! We kept wondering if the kitchen would look smaller with so many more cabinets. Instead, it seemed to get bigger! It must be a visual illusion because of the height, but almost everyone who walked in was convinced we bumped out a wall and added a couple of feet! I cannot believe how much more efficient the kitchen is. I put the dishes in from the old cabinets, emptied the dishes and food from the closet in the dining room, brought a few items up from the basement and STILL have room in those cabinets to spare! It’s absolutely amazing! It’s also soooooo nice to have counter space on either side of the stove instead of always worrying that a child will reach up and touch a hot burner.

I still love the white on white. In a smaller space that so often seems filled to overflowing with noise and dirt and activity, I crave white space desperately. The warm tones in the floor and silver hardware keep it from looking cold or stark. I’m also loving the texture in the curtains because they make a fun color pop (I should have taken photos on a sunny day because they are actually more of a greenish gold than the mustard color they appear to be on the pictures) and especially because they create a focal point when you walk in the front door.

We are so, so grateful!

And just because everyone loves a good before and after:

Before:

After:

Dwell.

To dwell in peace. A heart that stays at rest no matter what happens.

Back to School

By Michelle September 15, 2014 Adam, homeschool, Liam, life 2 Comments

Where or WHERE has the summer gone? I blinked three times and it was the end of August and time to stare at school books again!

We loved our summer vacation so very much. I heard bits and pieces from Moms here and there who were getting ready for a school schedule again. Not us. We’d have happily continued sleeping in and soaking up the sun for another few months at least. Maybe, until next May when Spring rolls around again, you know.

But it was August and time to start school.

In the middle of our remodel mess we took a weekend trip to Ohio. I could not believe how perfectly the timing worked out! My cousin, Tiffany was due to have a baby and scheduled for a C-section on a Friday. Instead, she went into labor meaning a Monday birth. We were stalled waiting on countertops anyway so David got to go with me. It was the most delightful weekend, taking pictures of a darling baby girl and just resting in a clean space! My uncle Marvin and Aunt Jan spoiled us completely. Their house is so clean and restful and refreshing. After working so hard through dirt and inconvenience, you can only imagine how it felt to sit in a clean room on a comfy couch and be served marvelous food. Saturday night they took us out for pizza at a local diner that serves gluten free pizza. Liam pretty much thought he was in heaven! We never go out for pizza because he’d be stuck so it was incredibly special for our entire family.

We arrived home, finished up the kitchen Monday and started school on Wednesday. It was sadly minus the normal fanfare and special feelings. We just kind of did it.

In spite of the lukewarm feelings floating around, school has been going pretty well. It’s a bit of a crazy juggling act some mornings trying to teach fifth grade, first grade, and taking care of a baby. Zara is a charm though and since she loooooooooves to be held, I can usually keep school going as long as I can keep the flash cards and spiral bound books out of her reach. Thankfully she still naps in the morning so when she’s asleep things feel pretty calm.

We made a few curriculum changes for Adam this year that I’m hoping will be positive. He’s still doing Saxon Math (I am sold on Saxon!) and Abeka Language Arts and Spelling. We switched to Apologia Science which he and I are both loving! Because I was completely unconvinced that I could manage two grades and a baby and the life that is ours, we chose to do the Bob Jones video course for Adam. He loves it!

David looked at my load and thought it might be wise to enroll at least one of the boys completely in the Abeka video program, preferably Liam since first grade is the most intense. I was dubious for several reasons. While they get rave reviews, I know what too much video time does to our boys. During a psychology class in college, our instructor explained how much our brains are affected by screen time. Did you know your brain waves slow down even more when you’re watching a video than when you’re sleeping? So I’ve never hooked up the boys to EEG’s, of course, but I do know that a lot of screen time makes them really restless and much less focused. I kept wrestling with a few questions I don’t have answers for:

How does video learning affect long term retention?

What does it do to their eyesight?

How does it affect their social IQ?

If it’s true that increased screen time can be related to certain behavioral issues, how does doing school that way not fall into the same category?

I also did not like that Adam has been getting the lion’s share of attention ever since our homeschooling saga started and Zara’s normal baby needs mean she gets second slot. Putting Liam into the video program felt like I was putting Liam smack into neglected middle child syndrome. I wanted the chance to spend that one on one time with him. We talked about it some more and decided to give it a try the traditional way. And if it didn’t work, we could always switch next year.

At 9:30 when I am trying to teach new concepts to Liam and Adam has a question and I’m holding Zara while she squirms and fusses because she’s tired and I really want to push through a few more minutes so Liam has a tiny bit of independent work and the washer is beeping because it’s done and ready for the next load …. let’s just say I question my idealistic views a lot. But then an hour later Liam snuggles up against me on the couch and carefully sounds out, “All have joy,” while Zara snoozes upstairs in her crib and Adam announces his signature, “Fini, fini, finished,” as he sticks one textbook on the shelf in exchange for another and the towels flap outside in the sun …. let’s just say some moments I think life couldn’t possibly be more idyllic. But Tuesday and Thursday afternoon when it’s time for History class and I get to head upstairs to make lunch, I KNOW we made the right decision for this year.

I don’t feel that video schooling is automatically a bad thing. Not at all. In fact, some of the most intelligent homeschooled people I’ve met have used it. I suspect it’s much like other things. There is a risk / benefit ratio to everything. Different children respond differently and learn differently. And while the above may be valid concerns, there is NO WAY I can compete with the teaching style and amount of information and review that is presented by someone who has a degree in teaching and an interest in a particular subject. Adam makes fabulous grades in History and I KNOW it is because they present the information so well and review facts in fun ways. It’s amazing! I also think the screen issues lessen somewhat as children get older.

I would love to hear from you if you’re doing online or video programming for school and to hear how your children do with it. And if you’ve done both, I’m especially all ears to hear the pros and cons! Perhaps I could lay all my fears aside and enjoy an easier life! 🙂

My favorite curriculum change was Bible. The past two years Adam has done an extensive Bible Memory program, but no dedicated study. We found a Bible Study course called Sword Study at the curriculum fair that we really liked. It’s designed for families and you get age appropriate books, but each study the same book of the Bible. It beings with an overview (aerial) of the book, then goes into the “street” view before “digging under the rug.” I love that instead of just studying, it is also teaching them how to study! They also have a daily time of prayer using the ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication). It’s been a great thing to see the boy’s ability to talk to God broaden outside of the “thank you for today” and for us to spend time together praying.

David gets the boys up at 6:30 and in less than ten minutes they are upstairs, dressed, and their bed made. (How do dads do that??) They do Bible from then until 7. Three days a week, David is at camp by 7:15. On Wednesday and Thursday he eats breakfast here and goes over at 8. So either way, he gets to do Bible with them and we eat breakfast afterward. Sometimes with him. Sometimes without. It is amazing the difference this has made in our school days. It is so much easier to get started between 8 and 8:30 when everyone is wide awake and motivated instead of dragging around while their very non-morning person Mom tries to get things moving while inhaling coffee. It may be one of the biggest gifts he gives me this year! It’s an amazing feeling to finish up around 1, knowing we’ve done a full day’s work and the best part of the afternoon is here for them to play. They don’t take breaks and we wait to eat lunch until we’re finished so it’s usually 2 before I feel as though I can start the rest of my day, but it works for now and I’m loving it!

Sometimes I think wistfully of the days when Adam jumped into the big white van and headed off to school and I wasn’t always inundated with way, way, way more than I can possibly do or think in any given day. But then I remember the crazy mornings of hurry up to get ready for school and oh, goodness, what am I going to pack in his lunch, and the hyper transition and squabbling that happened when he got home from school and I feel far less wistful. There really are pros and cons to everything! For now, this is our life and I love it!

The looooooooong project

By Michelle September 11, 2014 Adam, Liam, life No Comments

I bet you thought you’d get to see kitchen pictures, right? Me too! I’ve been hoping to wait until it’s finished and now it’s dragging out long enough that maybe it’s time for a work in progress picture. 🙂 The kitchen is mostly finished and so functional it’s hard to remember it’s not done until Zara nearly bumps her head on a cord sticking out from under the cabinet.

Meanwhile, I’m clearing the computer to create white space for my brain and the hard drive in preparation for a wedding on Saturday (yippee!) and I’m finding soooo many fun pictures! It has been such a fun summer!

The boys started working on this project last summer the week or so before Adam broke his arm. It took a looooooooooooooooooooooong break while he was down and then winter was in full force so it just sat there, dormant. This Spring, they worked at skinning logs again.

One Saturday in July David took a few hours to help them start building. Zara and I walked out just as it started raining to get a few pictures and I could have melted. Adam drew up the floor plan on graph paper last summer and they are building it to his specs. David was hoping to convince Adam just to build a simple tent structure like they do at camp because it would be so much quicker, but he was convinced he wanted a log cabin. He really, really wants a fireplace in one end so he could cook in it, but both of us were like no way! I can hear the fire engines already. 😉

I absolutely love when the boys play like this. They are having so much fun and yet learning so much … all because their imagination took off.

Adam is learning the not so fun stick-to-it-even-when-it’s-not-done part. Or rather, maybe he’s discovering it. The cabin is sitting pretty dormant again. 🙂 He always has such big ideas but they’re too big for him to carry out physically and then he gets stuck til his daddy has free time. His current dream? Making a golf cart out of a trimmer (the trigger will be the gas pedal).

Dream big, buddy. After all,

Covered

By Michelle August 1, 2014 Boy Quotes, Boys Camp, Liam, life 5 Comments

…. in visuals of flooring pieces. I love helping David rack flooring. Today as I traded this piece for that one I said, “Don’t laugh, but I always had favorite boards at our house in Virginia.” He chuckled a little and said, “I’m not surprised. That’s why you like laying it out and it’s the beauty of natural wood.” I think I’m finally understanding his purist love even when composites are more durable and sometimes less messy.

…. in dust as the hours of sanding go on and on and on and on and the air is so thick we choke on it. In spite of plastic, everything feels covered with a fine layer of dust. Anywhere not covered is glazed over in white like donuts only far less appealing. Speaking of donuts, I’m ravenous. And thirsty for anything that doesn’t taste gritty.

…. in amazement that David turned me loose on the flooring for a little so he could work on other things. I like playing with power tools even if I’m slow as molasses and sometimes had to cut a board four times (shh!). Pretty sure no one would hire me except David (pretty sure I’m not even remotely tempted to put in an application for more than a few hours either).

…. in weariness after painting til midnight and working hard all day. These are the hours of endless days and blink of an eye nights. It’s a good kind of weariness though.

…. in stain samples. The cheapest flooring we could find was a lot of white ash someone wanted to get rid of. It’s very pretty, but tends toward cooler tones so I’m trying to mix stains for a warm but non-orange look.

…. in gratefulness for a baby who blips through like a champ and boys who help so very much with clean up and entertaining Zara and good attitudes in general. Construction sites are not ideal for babies. The noise of air compressors, floor sanders, and huge power nailers are relentless. The level of dust and the smell of stain isn’t exactly healthy either. Zara is blipping through like a mini construction queen.

…. in role confusion as I switched from hanging out laundry to painting to nursing Zara to pounding flooring. If the hat fits, wear it.

…. in grace. There are obviously people praying us right through these ~~awful~~ days. On Tuesday when I was on the verge of breaking down Liam looked at me and said, “I really appreciate you being such a joyful Mom.” (Sometimes his word choices kill me. Wherever did he hear the word joyful????) “Oh, really,” I said. “Does it help you put up with all this stuff?”

“Yeah, I’m getting kind of bored with this but it helps me feel happy when you’re joyful.” Little does he know it takes a circle of joy going around to keep everyone’s tank full. A few minutes later I had to run to camp for ice and I asked Miss Esther if she has any oozy gooey chocolate. She handed me a container of fabulous spoon-worthy under baked chocolate bars to pull from and wrapped me up in a big hug.

But seriously, it feels as though God is just enveloping each of us with a supernatural cloud covering of grace.

…. in hope that two weeks from now I’ll say it was totally worth it.

Kitchen Remodel

By Michelle July 28, 2014 Boys Camp, life 3 Comments

Let the mess begin.

When we first walked through this house with the owner he took a look at the kitchen and said he’s fine with replacing it before we move in. We needed to get in ~~months before~~ as soon as possible, so we opted to move in and do things as we could.

Here we are, nearly two years later and oh, so happily tearing out.

[I will not miss these cabinets one iota. Not the countertops that weren’t attached and had to be readjusted because they tended to slide off center. Not the cabinets that were never set on the level and so eggs and rolling pins rolled right off of them. Not the countertop edge that kept coming off and finally had to be screwed into place and still managed to snag my clothes. Not the inefficiency of the layout. Not the interior that crumbled or the raw plywood replacing a missing shelf or the rotted out cabinet under the sink. Goodbye cabinets. I’m not even shedding a tear.]

I could not wait to see the carpet go. The house still has a funny smell, particularly noticeable when we are gone for a day or two and I’ve been blaming the soiled carpet. Now, I’m not so sure it wasn’t the cabinets. The cabinets were all crumbling, but the sink cabinet was badly rotted out from a leaky plumbing system. When we pulled it away from the wall we discovered mold. 🙁 I took a plastic container and some cleaning supplies to the basement to store during the remodel and every time I walked down the steps I could smell that smell.

David came up with the absolutely brilliant idea to store the dishes in the existing cabinets. I’ve been getting rid of more and more boxes since the basement is finished and hadn’t bothered to keep the empty ones around. I have no idea how he dared to stand there holding up a cabinet while I stood on tiptoe behind him with a power drill to unscrew them, but he did. He balanced them and when they were unscrewed we carried them out to the deck where we recreated the kitchen.

This is perfect! Quick and easy. No need for boxes. No room full of boxes and dishes and chaos. We’re planning to not cook and to use disposables, but in the event I need something, I know exactly where to look. David covered everything with a tarp to protect it from rain, but I still opted to keep cookbooks inside.

The boys are nearly swaggering around in their sheer delight at wearing tool belts and being involved in demolition. Adam ripped up the metal divider between the old linoleum and the dining room carpet. You always expect to see a huge difference in flooring where it’s been protected, but it still never fails to shock me at just how nasty carpet gets!

We’re rearranging the kitchen layout a bit so that the stove has cabinetry on either side of it and so that there are outlets accessible anywhere on the countertop. Since he had to cut drywall and re-wire anyway, David is running wires for under cabinet lighting. He’s also getting rid of the very poor ceiling lights and installing can lights. I am so proud of that man. He is not afraid of hard work, but he is also not even daunted by a project he doesn’t know how to do. In the basement project when an electrician couldn’t come, he called his dad who used to do it years ago and the two of them figured it out together. He did plumbing the same way and taught himself how to drywall.

Zara is the one having a hard time with all of this. She hates noise and makes displeased noises if Adam tries to practice piano when she wants to go to sleep. The loudness of construction tools has pretty much put her over the edge. Thankfully, there was a lull this afternoon while David fished wires so she could take one long nap. If cutting drywall did her in, I’m thinking she and I might be walking the road in a stroller the day the hardwood gets installed.

People often ask, so how does this work when you remodel?

Camp didn’t have funds available to purchase the property at the time so an individual purchased it to rent to camp for now with the long term goal of having camp own it at cost. In the event that for some reason it would be sold instead of going to camp (unlikely since camp desperately needs more staff housing), the additional revenue would be donated to camp. If donations are not available for needed improvements, the owner pays for needed supplies. He is seriously one of the most unselfish, giving men I’ve ever met. David and I provide the sweat equity.

What makes you do it if you aren’t going to live here long term is usually the next question. I have no idea. 🙂 Maybe it’s just in our blood by now. The truth is, we have no idea how long we’re here. I sometimes think we might get all the repairs made in time for the next person to enjoy it. Maybe we’ll live in it for a few years after that, who knows. But in the end David keeps saying, someone will benefit from this. And the truth is, why not us? Someone is going to have to live through it. It may as well be us. David is a master craftsman with wood and he doesn’t do a shabby job with the other parts of it. I think he actually likes the chance to work with his hands again.

Is it different working on something that’s not your own house?

Yes and no. Yes, because of course it is. When you work on a house you own, you always feel as though you aren’t working only to improve your own life, but to improve your equity if you sell it so you make decisions accordingly. We have been given a great deal of leeway regarding style and design; but we always try to make decisions that would best benefit camp. We consider what we like, but we also try to always choose the cheapest of the acceptable quality options when making purchases. Because a $13 dollar light that works and still looks nice is going to benefit camp more than the $30 one I might have chosen to splurge on in my own house. We also try to be very conscious of the longevity and style of purchases in hopes that we will choose things that will hold up and be unobtrusive for the next person who may have completely different tastes. It’s different in that you don’t choose whether to sub out parts of the work versus doing it yourself. You just do all of it.

While we have been budget friendly in our purchases, we have been completely blown out of the water by some extremely generous donors who gave way above and beyond budget friendly to this little part of the overall camp project. A nursery in Virginia donated gorgeous shrubs for the landscaping here and at the other staff house. After searching for a cabinet donor and finding one for the unfinished boxes, David contacted the company he used to sell for. They volunteered to donate the entire project. I can’t even describe how thrilled David and I were. We both love their cabinets and think their quality is superior to almost anything on the market. A business in Pennsylvania is donating granite tops. Yeah, not the kind of stuff you look at when you’re shopping on a limited budget. I loved the granite tops in our house in Virginia. Not only are they gorgeous, I love that you can pull things straight out of the oven and plop them right on the countertop.

There are other benefits, too. We don’t carry the financial burden even if we are cost-conscious. If you’ve ever built or owned your own home, you know exactly what I’m talking about. We also asked if we could eat supper at chuck wagon while the kitchen is dismantled. We’d never have done that if we were working on our own house, but it took an eNORmous load off of me to only scrounge around for breakfast and lunch while the kitchen is raw.

It’s not different in that we still work long hours and the dirt and dust and chaos doesn’t change whether you’re working for yourself or someone else. One of the best things we did this time was to take a little staycation this weekend just before starting in on the project. Our summer has been super full, just like everyone else. It was such a gift to have this time with just our little family to rest and refresh before plowing into something big. Because even swaggering little boys in tool belts start to quickly show the effects of a life disrupted when Dad is still mudding and taping at 9:30.

Still, I don’t know that I’ve ever been so happy to enter a season of dirt and chaos. Hey, at least this time I’m not doing school and I’m not attempting to paint baseboard at 38 weeks gestation either!

Is living in the country peaceful?

By Michelle July 21, 2014 Boys Camp, life 6 Comments

So many times when people come to visit us they say, “Oh, my, it’s so peaceful here.”

Saturday night at ten my mom said, “I just have to get used to this quiet. I think I’ll go out on the porch and just sit there for a little bit.”

It is so quiet here. It took me awhile to describe it as peaceful though. For a long time I felt almost claustrophobic. As though I’d been cutoff from the entire rest of the world. People and crowds energize me. While other Mom’s talk about being completely overwhelmed at a homeschool convention, I walk in and get more and more excited. I love the feeling of a crowd. I love busy intersections. I loved being outside and looking up at any given time to see airplanes criss cross the sky. I love the hum of traffic. It makes me feel connected to the world. Not just in my corner, but everywhere there are people going, doing, moving, living, breathing.

{Baby tree swallow who had a little trouble learning to fly. His parents swooped down to feed him.}

This land is quiet. It’s reeeeeaally quiet. On an average day we might see six cars go past our house and I can pretty much guess who it is by what time they drive past. On a nice weekend when people are heading back toward the Middle Ford we stop and stare at all the traffic. TWENTY cars in one day! Airplane sightings are less common than seeing deer or wild turkey.

{wild turkey create traffic jam when they all decide to cross the road}

Living in the country where it’s quiet doesn’t necessarily mean nothing happens. In the last two weeks we’ve lost power for over 24 hours (which means no water either), hosted friends from out of town three times, and then had our well pump go out (another 24+ hours without water) while hosting one set of guests. Nothing like having ten people in the house and no running water. I told David we must have had every appliance in the house go bad since we live here and he said, oh, no, not yet. The furnace hasn’t quit yet. Anyone up for a visit, say mid-January?

But quiet {or peaceful, whichever you want to call it} can be delightful.

I love that we get to see so much wildlife. Besides the more common deer and turkey, it’s not unheard of to see a black bear. Coyotes yip in the neighborhood and nearly every evening we are serenaded by the song of the whippoorwill. The birds are the best. We’ve spotted hawks, woodpeckers and even an occasional bald eagle. The boys both put up nesting boxes they made. Bluebirds claimed Adam’s and tree swallows settled into the one Liam made. Last year there was a wren nest in one of my ferns on the front porch, a robin nest in the cedar tree in the front yard, and a mockingbird nest in a pine to the side of the house. We’ve always loved watching the hummingbirds, but this year we really got to see them up close and personal. In the early spring when they were just returning from the South, someone found a hummingbird just barely flying in a building at camp. It looked weak and exhausted and maybe sick. It tried to fly but after several feet would collapse. David had just hung a feeder outside his office window so he took the bird over to the feeder and tried to get it to drink. The poor bird was too exhausted to lift it’s head. He laid it on the ground and expected it to die. At lunchtime he checked on it and found it still alive. After finding a medicine dropper, he syphoned some of the nectar from the feeder and fed little drops into the hummingbirds mouth. Surprise, surprise, it was just enough energy to let the little bird take off! Last month Liam found a dead one in our flower bed near the bird feeder. It appeared to have been stabbed by one of it’s own. 🙁 Silly birds. They could just share. But then we’d only have half as much fun watching them.

I love that there is so little traffic the boys can bike on the road in front of our house. I can go walking on a paved road with a stroller and two little people on bikes way out ahead of me and the biggest threat is the black lab on the corner. You would think I’d get exercise regularly.

But the best part of quiet living is the moments stolen on the front porch. Our ridiculously full calendar hasn’t made for too many moments; but when they happen, they are perfect. Even if it’s just for a few minutes. With a cup of coffee to sip in the cool morning air. (Yes, I said cool and it is July. We also have yellow leaves on the tree and few to crunch through on the ground. Don’t you dare say that word that reminds us of pumpkins.) A few moments stolen to watch the rain roll in across the fields. Sitting with a friend and watching the hummingbirds at war. Or my favorite. Those twilight moments when the world outside is going to sleep. A few last drinks of nectar for the hummingbirds. The loud chirping of still hungry almost ready to fly tree swallow babies. The lazy walk of a dog headed for her favorite corner. The deepening pinks of the sky and then, there it is. The call of the whippoorwill.