Blah Blah Blah TRAILER!!

I spoke too soon.

I was standing in the kitchen, preparing dinner, when the front door flung open and in ran my son.

"EMMY blah blah blah BLAH!!!" He said excitedly as he hopped from one foot to another next to the dining room table.

"What?" I glanced up from the cutting board, knife poised to chop that onion, thinking to myself, why is that boy always mumbling so much? I really have so much to do...

"Blah blah blah blah TRAILER!!!" He said, a little louder this time. Trailer. Yes. That trailer is an eyesore, sitting there parallel to our driveway next to the shop. I really need to ask my hubby to move that thing soon. Where was I?

"Excuse me, son?!" Weird. Maybe I really am going deaf. I shouldn't have such a hard time understanding him. Concentrate, Lisa, concentrate!

"Moooom!!", he moaned as his shoulders slumped. "Blah blah blah THE BLAH!!!"

I put the knife down as I began to realize that something was definitely wrong here. Where is my brain?! Do I need to clean my ears out? EARTH TO LISA!!!

"Okay, one more time, Josh, slowly and clearly."

"Blah PEED blah blah BLAH!!!! he said, his little shoulders slumping down as he looked in my face for some sort of recognition.

Nothing. Blank. "DOES NOT COMPUTE. DOES NOT COMPUTE." My brain kept telling me.

I found myself sitting down, hands over my face...whoa, what am I doing? I just had a knife in my hands, where'd it go?!..., willing my brain to translate what my kid said and hoping that the vigorous shaking of the head would drive the fog away.

Reaching out, I drew him to me and asked, very slowly, very carefully, if this is what he said:

"Emmy. Peed. Off. Of. The. Trailer."

He solemnly nodded his head and ran back outside.

Goodlorda'mightywhatkindachildamIRAISING?!?!?!

I shot outside in time to see that he was indeed telling the truth. There she stood, nekkid from the waist down, in broad daylight, indeed quite proud of herself for having taken off her pull-up, and peed from the very top of the gooseneck onto the ground below her. I glanced around to see if any neighbors were craning their necks to see what the fuss was about before quickly grabbing her down off the trailer and sending her inside.

Apparently I need to add this clause to our little agreement: ...which activity must take place within the confines of the toilet bowl...

As in: You will receive a star on the calendar for every day you are able to complete without peeing or pooping in your unders, which activity must take place within the confines of toilet bowl within an appropriate facility (i.e. our bathroom, grandma's bathroom, a store/gas station bathroom) beginning at 5pm and ending at 4:59pm the following day, after which accumulation of 20 stars occurs to gain access to the Diego Rescue Pack obtained by me for such purpose.

Judging by how terribly proud she was of herself for her accomplishment, I don't really think my speech or the delineation of the clauses within will make a whole lot of difference to her. But at least I did eventually get my brain to work.

Momentarily.

Princess Emmy

I thought girls were supposed to be "easier" to potty train than boys. Whomever said that should have lived with US for the past year. *sigh*

Last week Emmy earned the princess dress and tiara that she picked out three weeks ago! She received a smiley face on each calendar day that she didn't have any potty training "issues". when she got to 20 Smileys, she got to be a princess!! I'm so proud of her for trying so hard and sticking to her goal day after day. It has been a long, difficult, messy road with her! And that is ALL I'm going to say about it. There have been so many days of trying anything and everything I can THINK of with her, and days when it really seemed like pulling my hair out was a perfectly reasonable reaction to the situation.

Once, on a particularly trying day in which it took an hour or so of searching around her room for where the stench was coming from and finding it in the second drawer of her dresser, I nearly lost my christianity. I fled from the room and down the stairs, to be faced with three wide-eyed children wondering what I was about to do and all I COULD do was sink to my knees and pray the most basic "Lord give me the strength not to scream at/spank excessively/sell my children right now" out loud with my eyes squeezed shut and my hands clasped tightly in front of me.

In unison my heathen little children LAUGHED. Apparently this was comical to them. Especially the offending one. *sigh* Well then. Glad I could add some humor to YOUR day! I couldn't help but feel the aggravation crack and crumble inside my heart until I finally gave in and laughed along with them. When I was calm again, I cleaned up the mess, and gave a nice long time out to miss Emmy.

And we all lived to see another day.

Now Emmy is working toward night time dryness for another new surprise! And then maybe I can finally start focusing on getting #3 potty trained.

*SIGH*

In the Days of Potatoes

*joshua and the Big Tater of '05


The first time I gleaned potatoes I was 8 months pregnant with our first child. There I was, following the digger, in the fading light of a crisp fall night, waddling down the row of furrowed dirt picking up every single cute, tiny potato I saw left behind. I have to laugh about the memory of that, thinking of how I pick up potatoes now; the little ones (otherwise known 'round here as 'soup potatoes') I don't look at twice. They're not worth the time to pick up or the time it takes to peel each tiny nook and cranny! Now I know that if I want to be able to keep them without spoiling, I'd better check to see if they've been sliced by the digger or otherwise damaged.

Back then, though, oh, the good memories! The pure joy in seeing all the wealth of free potatoes, laying there in the dirt, waiting for me to pick them up, take them home, and eat them! I thought of my grandma with her sturdy, hard working German blood flowing through her veins, and knew she'd be proud of me if she could see me in all of my bigger-than-a-house pregnant glory, carrying a 5 pound bucket and squatting down to pick up each and every golf-ball size potato! Now the kids go with us and get to pick up all the "soup potatoes" while the rest of us eye each one critically and sort through the kids' batch later.

I love the smell of the dirt, the silence of the fields, the sound of the potatoes being dumped in the big boxes and bins in the back of the truck. It is one of the things I look forward to most this time of year. We go through hundreds of pounds of potatoes each winter, never in want of food for abundance of potatoes. In the very hardest of times for us, there is always potatoes. What a blessing!!

Now they are simply a staple food for us and there is almost always a big pot of boiled potatoes in the fridge waiting to be chopped up and broiled, baked, or fried in a dozen different ways. We bake potatoes in the coals of our fire and make mashed potatoes on a regular basis. I have to say, we feel very blessed and thankful to have such a great resource available to us.

Munchkin in My Bed

I was jolted into consciousness just after 2 am, somehow aware of the light on in the living room. It was the first thing I was aware of, the noise of the fan having drowned out the noise that inevitably accompanied….

The little girl sitting crouched on the corner of the bed closest to my head!!! I’ve never sat bolt upright in bed so fast in my life. If my stomach muscles are sore today, I’ll know exactly why. Thankfully, I recognized her immediately and didn’t go into ninja defense mode as I’m sure Drea would have. Instead I scooped her up and carried her back up to her room, fixed her ailing princess night light, talked to her for a few minutes, and then retreated back to my own bed.

But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was disturbed. How could a child climb onto the head of my bed without my hearing it? What if she just wandered her way outside and out to the barn without my knowledge? I tossed and turned and tried to go back to sleep, but the eventual dozing was superficial at best.

When she came back downstairs at 3:30 I was more prepared. I wasn’t startled awake like I was before. She happily informed me that her brother had known where her rainbow light was and held it up for me to see.

Great!, I’m thinking, She’s trying to wake up the whole tribe now! Turns out she just randomly walked into his room and found her light without waking him up at all, so it was all good. I got her back into her bed again and snuggled her down under the blankets before checking on the other two kiddos, both thankfully sound asleep.

I crawled back in bed and tried to get comfortable. Why was the bed so lumpy? What’s wrong with these blankets? Why on earth is that fan rattling so much??? That last one I said out loud and woke up my husband.

Next thing I knew I had someone hovered over me, trying to kiss my cheek. I nearly jumped out of bed, he startled me so much. Apparently I had eventually tossed and turned enough to get comfortable and go back to sleep.

Just in time to get up.

Good Heavens.

Cookies With Emmy

Since Josh is in school and Elayna is taking a late morning nap, Emmy and I decided we needed to find a project for us "big girls" to tackle together! So we have determined to make it through our whole cookie recipe book! I love to bake, and Emmy enjoys helping me measure and stir. We are having lots of fun experimenting on all of these new cookie recipes, so I thought I'd share a little with you.

Our first recipe was called "Back Bay Cookies" and seemed a little daunting because we were supposed to find some chestnuts to use. Finally I gave up and we bought a little package of macadamia nuts to use instead.

They turned out wonderfully, and it will definitely be a recipe I use again, once I can find some chestnuts around here or buy some macadamia nuts in bulk so they're a bit cheaper!



Anyway, because this is going to be an ongoing project, I decided to start up a new blog for those interested in seeing the recipes and the cookies and hear the reviews:

http://emmyscookieadventures.blogspot.com/

That way we don't fill up this blog with myriads of cookie pictures and recipes! I'll have to add a link to the sidebar too so you can find it easier.

Happy Heart Day, Joshua!

~~photo taken the day after surgery

Yes, amazingly, another year has passed since Joshua's surgery. I am sitting here wishing I could find a special way to commemorate this passing of time. I like to look back and realize how far he has come, how well we have all survived. There doesn't seem to be words enough or actions enough to Praise the Lord like I want to!

Looking back, I can see that there was life before the surgery, and life after. It’s an epoch. Much the same as getting married, or having a baby is a moment that you reflect on in the same manner. Life before marriage, life after marriage. Life before babies, life after babies. Nothing looks the same. It’s a different world that you live in, marked by this one specific moment.

It was like going through a tunnel. I could look back on life before we found out he needed surgery, and see the bright light of blissful ignorance, but at times it was nearly impossible to look forward and be sure that there was light up ahead of us too. I’m pretty certain the tunnel was not only dark and VERY cramped, so that you had to crawl through with “fingertips and toes” as Jake would say, like the caves we used to explore, but it was also COLLAPSIBLE. I know this because I remember the feeling of being run over by a bus.

It doesn’t hurt quite so bad to look back on the pictures. I know how the story turns out. I am no longer plagued by the fear, the what-ifs of those days. I can look at my little boy, keeping up the pace with all of the other kids, oblivious to how he is different. Because, quite honestly, at this point he really isn't. He remembers the events of that time, but not in the same way we remember them. He knows it was painful, but he has no memory of any fear. The fear was all ours. Fear comes from knowledge of what could happen, what might happen.

What a time that was. It took me a YEAR before I could meet a new mom, or find a new kid on the playground that I didn’t feel this strange compunction to tell the story to. I needed to tell the story, to find a thread of commonality between me and the other moms who have been through this. I couldn’t control it at times, even when I tried! I’d be all sitting there chatting with some mom about how old her kids were after 15 minutes of watching our kids play together and the next thing I knew I was grabbing Josh on a run-by and lifting up his shirt. I think I scared some of those poor moms and they may never have returned to the same play ground again for fear of running into me.

But I was so thankful for the moms who saw the scar and then told me the story of their own child’s walk down the path of recovery. To look into each others' eyes and nod our heads solemnly as we gave recognition of the strength it takes a mother's heart to watch her child suffer and the anguish we feel when we are helpless to fix it.

I’m much better about it now. I haven’t even told a single other parent at his school. His teachers? Yes. Of course. But I haven’t had this compulsion to tell random strangers now for several months. It’s good. It means that I’M recovering, finally, and my emotional scars are fading, too.

He doesn't remember what his voice used to sound like, before the partial paralysis of his vocal chords. He doesn't remember what exactly the difference was in how he felt before as opposed to how he feels now - to him his life was "normal" before the surgery, and is "normal" now! It is such a joy to watch him grow and thrive and just simply be a little boy. I can't describe how proud I am of him and the kind of thoughtful person he is becoming! I look forward to being able to talk to him as he gets older about his perspective on all of this.

Praise God for His healing touch, for His bountiful mercies, for the wisdom, knowledge, and compassion He gave to the nurses and doctors who helped heal Joshua's heart and give him a second chance at life.

I thought about posting the more graphic pictures, but I still just can't quite do it. They still bring tears to my eyes and it doesn't quite seem appropriate to post them on the web.

~~don't take the bandaid off!

~~my sweet little boy, almost 4 years old.

~~now almost 6! My handsome little man, an awesome big brother, thoughtful and sweet. Happy 2nd HeartDay, Josh.