Life or Death
The frogs are newly noisy in the evenings so even though the calendar disagrees, I say spring has sprung! When I am able to meander outside during the day, I find myself looking for signs of life, whether they include bulbs pushing up through the soil or buds ripening on the fruit trees. I also find myself more aggressive in shooing the hens out of my kitchen garden because if my garlic gets dug up there is going to be major amounts of chicken pot pie on the stovetop, pronto!
I do have some areas in the gardens that cause me pause. I’m just not sure if particular trees and whatnot are going to pull through and live, much less thrive. When I gently bend back the twigs, some are, well, green and “bendy”……and some just sadly snap off. So I just keep them in the ground, tending to them, waiting. Waiting to see if life prevails.
This wee magnolia tree I rescued from an overgrown patch of woods last fall. Lichen is growing all over it (is that bad?) but several branches have buds. I think. I’m almost sorry I moved it when I recall the beautiful white flowers that originally came forth through the brambles. I’m waiting to see what happens.
Ruby’s Therapy
We had our second appointment with the neurodevelopmentalist for Ruby. I still find the whole process approaching flood water status, but certainly we are not facing medical tsunamis, so I am just tenderly moving onto the next step, trusting the Lord for His help in all things (even if the tsunami shows up!)
The biggest challenge I have with this Can-Do program is the amount of things listed to do along with their frequencies and durations. It is certainly a mercy of the Lord that I do not carry such a list for the other children during the rest of my day or I should surely be put into despair! I cannot imagine waking to a list of every bit of minutia that I must accomplish in my day, including most things formed from habit and some from practice…and then at the end of it all trying to remember how many times I (fill in the blank) and for how many minutes. What mom could keep such a checklist?
So keeping up with the checklists and reports is a great challenge to me. I am trying. Mostly I am successful in doing them, but I ended up ripping up the last one and showed up to her appointment empty handed. Grace abounded.
As for the tasks themselves, they are not difficult. And truthfully, most of them are not things to be learned, but things which intuitively as mothers most of us do already. That in itself is encouraging and empowering. Plus, the people involved with the program have been wonderful and I certainly appreciate having objective measures of Ruby’s progress on a regular basis.
Here are some examples of the activities for Ruby’s next four months:
Listening with Mozart with headphones: This ought to be interesting, because I normally do not allow my children to wear headphones for the very reason it would be good for Ruby: it shuts everything (and everyone) else out. But we do all enjoy listening to classical music, especially in the background of everyday living.
Body works: We got a fun massager from here to use all over her body. Also we can use tactile gloves and give her lots of loving squeezes. She needs to swing and of course do the normal toddler things such as dancing around with me, bouncing, creeping and crawling. Her legs are very strong (yay!) but her arms are pretty weak (wah!) so I’ll be needing to *make* her try to use them more. Which will make her mad. My goal is to have her up completely on her hands and knees instead of commando-crawling by our next appointment in May. And for her to forgive me for making her do hard things in order to get there.
Language activities: these are mostly the normal everyday things that mommies typically do with their toddlers, such as pointing and naming objects, looking at pictures, and so forth. I’m using flash cards with Ruby, which certainly wasn’t a “normal” activity for my other toddlers, but Ruby loves looking at them, and my other children love doing them with her.
I’m so glad Ruby is home with her family. We can do everything that a therapist outside the home can do, and we are all being trained and supported in all the hows and whys of doing so. There is great joy in our household when she blows her own horn or turns the pages of a book or stacks blocks. Right now, no one else in no other building for no amount of money can give Ruby what is really going to help her succeed: her family’s total presence, love and support. And that part of raising Ruby, indeed, isn’t really so hard at all.
Together is Better
Last Saturday my very wonderful husband took all six children out for the day so that I could have a day to just think and plan and prepare and rest. I needed to redo our schedule and reassign chores and, basically, just make the world stop for a little bit so that I could see the big picture again.
It was hard to step over the laundry on the floor to give priority to mental work. But I knew if I didn’t focus, the only quiet time I’d get to think on things would be close to 10 o’clock at night. Like now.
The first thing I did was retweek my schedule. Oh, I am so thankful for that! Those little sticky paper notes marking my day have saved me from frustration for many, many years. We have never, ever, hit our schedule perfectly and usually end up using it as “routine”ish. But over the week, over time, we generally get it all done, even the under-the-sink-cleaning and the math lessons and the pulling weeds. I use Teri Maxwell’s Managers of Their Homes (that big scary book that took me years to buy because it looked so intense!). But, truly, line by line, it all makes sense, and I love the message board she runs with it; it is SO helpful.
It was also a blessing to relisten to Susan Bradrick’s Twenty-Four Hours is All You Get. I love what she said about “using your time wisely” being either an inspiration OR a conviction, and that how you use your time would flow from that (or not, as the case may be). I (personally, although I dislike saying “personally” but…bother…there it is) feel the weighty-ness of having such a very short time with my children before they are all off and grown. There is so much for them to learn! Oh, to make my time COUNT!
So I reacquainted myself with mentors that helped me along the first time, and one of those was Elizabeth from Raising Godly Tomatoes. It was so refreshing to revisit her website, and I bought one of her books (now that I had a little money to do so!).
“Tomato staking” was exactly what we needed! I didn’t need to get more firm or spank more or pile on the consequences. What I needed to do was the same thing I did when I only had two small children…keep them WITH ME.
If I’m in the kitchen, I have little shadows. If I’m changing baby’s diaper, I have little shadows. If I’m walking on my treadmill, I have little shadows sitting quietly on the couch. They are never outside the same room I am in, and because of that, I can easily praise good behavior. And, I can immediately correct bad behavior, including sour attitudes.
Mothers (and I am pointing at me, here, too!) cannot afford to be selfish. If our babies haven’t earned the trust and right to be away from us (by their obedient behavior) then I have to wonder, What are we thinking?! when we send them off “to play” while we get sucked into the computer or chip bag or whatnot?
Mothering is a FULL TIME JOB. Not correcting things on the spot means stucco-dried-on behavior problems later. It is worth my full attention now to have pleasant children (and adults!) later. And that also means that they need more “socialization” with ME, not with other children, which means I need to just let people say mean and stupid things regarding the matter.
I was so glad to remind myself of these things and to set my course aright again.
I also spent time considering chores. I don’t like the word “chores”. It sounds, well, choooorish. As in, what drudgery must I do today before I can get to what I REALLY want to do? In any case, I figure I have several options:
- Do everything myself. Ship the children off to government school or pop in a looping video, don the yellow gloves and start scrubbin’! This, I admit, sounds like the best idea ever! My house would be CLEAN. At least until the bus came back.
- Make the kids do it all. Too bad, so sad, get busy. While I make phone calls. Hmmm…
- Do it together. This I like least of all. But it is best.
How else will my children learn to cook or clean or change sheets or do laundry? Feed the dog, take out every trash can in the house or (oh-yes) change a baby’s diaper? I left home not knowing how to do anything like that (see choice number 1), and God-bless-him my husband ate a whole lot of Hamburger Helper and bagged salad when we were first married.
But doing it together? I’m still learning how to do that. I’ve been using the “divide and conquer” method, as in: “You sweep the floor and I’ll wipe the counters.” Doing it together means, “I’ll spray and you wipe.” It’s slower. Slower means not as efficient. But doing chores together not only ties in nicely with the whole discipline thing, it gives room for (again) prompt praise and prompt correction. I expect I’m going to find a bit of, “you were doing that HOW?” once I am there overSEEing their work.
Another post, another day on how I organize our chores.
So back through the books I went, perusing websites and revisiting curriculum choices. I gave a critical eye to each of my children’s notebooks to assess how they were doing, and overall, I remain very, very pleased with their progress and with their work. There is always room for improvement (and believe me I’ll stay up more evenings trying to do that!), but overall I love learning alongside them and watching their little light bulbs pop above their sweet heads.
I wish I could say that one day of Retreat conquered every bit of mommy-inadequacy and mommy-guilt. It didn’t. But it did give me room to remember why we’re doing everything we’re doing, and to fine tune the means by which it happens, and how to make it all work with eight people living in the house all in each other’s *space* the whole day and night. In case you didn’t see it yet, in working to foster a happy home, I rediscovered and refueled to the idea that we must do things together.
And I do think families together, most truly, is best.
Having a Child with a Genetic Defect
“Heaven have mercy on us all–Presbyterians and pagans alike–for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”
Herman Melville
A friend of mine in her 40’s (whom I love dearly!) is trying to carry her first pregnancy. It’s not that she didn’t want children earlier, but circumstances and an anti-child husband (whom she ended up divorcing) left her where she is today: aging and childless.
So, a new man and two implanted embryos later, she is crossing her fingers and hoping at least one of them sticks. I, of course, am hoping that both of those babies live!
It did get a little awkward when she told me she bought donated eggs instead of using her own. The doctor told her that at her age, she’d have like a 90% chance of having a baby with a genetic abnormality.
“Oh,” was about all I could say.
I have one of those children. And part of having one of “those” children is that it becomes fodder for others to excuse away having babies to add to their families. After all, you might have a defective baby. Like mine.
And, can we be honest here? Just because you or I have a baby that is perfectly normal (according to whatever standards) does not mean that baby is going to grow up and never become ill, disappoint you or get into some sort of horrific accident and die. Are we really that arrogant?
Methinks we ALL have some sort of “genetic abnormality”, and that some are just more socially acceptable or better hidden. Don’t ask your friends what’s wrong with you; ask the ones that annoy you to all smithereens about what they think those faults of yours are.
- how you would still love your child
- how you would find fire in your belly to defend and protect that child
- and how thankful you would be every minute for that child.
Here is a gentleman who has to live with his “choice” to abort his son with Down Syndrome:
It’s almost like a Jacob Marley-esque thing that I will drag around with me forever. If I could find some means of redemption I’d like to know how I could go about doing that.
Redemption comes with repentance, and was legally bought by the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross as you believe and accept Him as your Lord and Savior. If you have to live with the decision of having aborted a challenging child, not going to Jesus is just living prematurely in hell on earth.
Accepting your challenging child, however….well, I can say that it is a taste of heaven.
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