The Family Picture

On Friday we decided to beat the heat by going over to the coast where it was about 20-30 degrees cooler.

While there, we attempted to take a picture of our family with the self-timer…

Hands down Grace, look at the camera Owen and Daisy…

Hands down Grace! Owen, look at the camera! Good job, Daisy…

Smile Grace, Darcy open your eyes! Owen stand up and smile! Good job Daisy! Oops, where’s Danny?

Good smile Grace, get your hand out of your face! Good job everyone else!

Good job everyone! Nice smile Owen, but look at the camera!

Daisy!!!

I guess this is as good as it gets, after only 40 tries…

Sweet Pup Update

Daisy is doing so much better after her run-in with slug poison!

Tuesday night Danny and I were up with her until about 3:00 when she was finally able to stand up and we could see that she wasn’t going into seizures again.

Wednesday morning she was so excited to see us and the kids when we got up. You could tell she was pretty scared by this experience.

The bloodwork from the vet has come back ok. Some kidney function number was a little elevated but the doctor wasn’t too worried.

Daisy does need to be reminded of her manners and some of the rules of the house. We aren’t sure if there might have been any brain damage due to the poison.

For the most part she is the same old sweet pup that she was before this happened.

Please be careful about any poisonous substance that you put out in your yard. I can’t imagine if one of the kiddos had gotten into this stuff, it’s pretty nasty.

Sweet Pup

Danny found Daisy on the front porch having a seizure this afternoon. We think that she ingested slug poison.

He got her to the vet right away and they pumped her full of anti-seizure medication and charcoal to absorb the poison.

Daisy is home now and resting. The meds are wearing off. She still can’t stand up or even lift up her head. We are hoping that as the meds wear off that she doesn’t start to have seizures again and we are also hoping that there hasn’t been too much damage to her liver and kidneys.

She has just started vomiting up the charcoal and what appears to be some of the poison, hopefully she will be better soon. She’s a good dog.

More Fishing…

No Fish…

Just cute kids…

Well, I guess there was the fish in the sandwich…

Meet Stripey

some photos courtesy of Grace
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This is Stripey

She is a kitty…meow

Where is Stripey going?

I bet she is getting into trouble…

Oh, there she is by Daddy’s side of the bed. She likes to open the drawers and put all of Daddy’s earplugs in her mouth…Yuck!

And here is Stripey with Owen’s favorite book “Click, Clack, Moo”, aka “kickamoo”

Oh, but Stripey just likes to sit on it…

“Oh sweet Stripey!”

“Come on Stripey, get down”

“I’ll help you Stripey!”

“Grrrrr”

“Silly Stripey!”

Just Peeping

My parent’s neighbor was using some sort of motorized tool (power-washer, lawnmower…?) and Owen could not resist taking a peek.

First he was trying to peep through the slats.

Then he found the knot holes.

Fishergirl

Grace and Danny went fishing the other evening and Grace finally caught a fish. She has gone with Danny several times and neither of them caught anything.  She even asked me why the fish were all gone and if the would ever catch. She thought maybe she was too loud for the fish.

She came home absolutely giddy and said “well I guess they were just biting on the orange bait tonight!”

She reeled it in by herself and was pretty pleased.

Happily Ever After?

My good friend Jamie gave me this sign when Danny and I got married.

Today, the kids were playing and Owen was getting into something and Grace took it from him and tried to put it up on a windowsill and bumped my sign and it fell to the ground and broke.

I was a little upset as the sign is special to me, but it also seems like well, a bit of a sign.

A few minutes later I walked back to the living room and Grace was standing there crying because she had broken something so special, the poor sweetie!

But a bit of super glue and a little time and…

voila!

No more scratches and mendings than any family might expect in life.

My Sweetie Girl

Some Grace pictures and stories to brighten your Friday…

Both my Mom and I do the same thing with our lips when we are working on something…

Grace: “Mommy, you are in a place with all the monsters! You are choosing to get eaten!”
Me: “Is that a good choice or a bad choice?”
Grace: “It is a very bad choice because it will hurt very bad! AND, you will need lots of band-aids!”
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Grace: “What was that Mommy?”
Me: “It’s shampoo Sweetie.”
Grace: “Is it the kind that gets deep into my hair?”
Me: “What?”
Grace: “Is it the kind that gets deep into my hair? I heard someone say that on the TV.”
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Grace as she is watching Arthur: “Mommy, come over here. It says there’s a short cut and I’m afraid of shortcuts!”
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Grace: “Mommy, I’m just so tired, I’ve been pushing Owen down to the ground all day, it’s just been lots of excitement.”
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Grace: “Mommy, you need to wear a gray sweatshirt with gray sweatpants or a black shirt with black sweatpants when we go to the park. You have to match or the people at the park will just tell you to leave.”

Mothers of Children with Disabilities Worthy of Praise

I saw this poem/article today on another CDH babe’s page. It is powerful, beautiful and so true! Thought I would pass it on.

Mothers of Children with Disabilities Worthy of Praise

Expectant mothers waiting for a newborn’s arrival say they don’t care what sex the baby is. They just want it to have 10 fingers and 10 toes.

Mothers lie.

Every mother wants so much more. She wants a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips, button nose, beautiful eyes and satin skin.

She wants a baby so gorgeous that people will pity the Gerber baby for being flat-out ugly.

She wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take those first steps right on schedule (according to the baby development chart on page 57, column two).

Every mother wants a baby that can see, hear, run, jump and fire neurons by the billions. She wants a kid that can smack the ball out of the park and do toe points that are the envy of the entire ballet class.

Call it greed if you want, but a mother wants what a mother wants.

Some mothers get babies with something more.

Maybe you’re one who got a baby with a condition you couldn’t pronounce, a spine that didn’t fuse, a missing chromosome or a palate that didn’t close.

The doctor’s words took your breath away. It was just like the time at recess in the fourth grade when you didn’t see the kick ball coming and it knocked the wind right out of you.

Some of you left the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months, even years later, took him in for a routine visit, or scheduled her for a well check, and crashed headfirst into a brick wall as you bore the brunt of devastating news.

It didn’t seem possible. That didn’t run in your family. Could this really be happening in your lifetime?

I watch the Olympics for the sheer thrill of seeing finely sculpted bodies. It’s not a lust thing, it’s a wondrous thing. They appear as specimens without flaw — muscles, strength and coordination all working in perfect harmony. Then an athlete walks over to a tote bag, rustles through the contents and pulls out an inhaler.

There’s no such thing as a perfect body. Everybody will bear something at some time or another.

Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes, or maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, therapy or surgery.

Mothers of children with disabilities live the limitations with them.

Frankly, I don’t know how you do it. Sometimes you mothers scare me. How you lift that kid in and out of the wheelchair 20 times a day. How you monitor tests, track medications, and serve as the gatekeeper to a hundred specialists yammering in your ear.

I wonder how you endure the cliches and the platitudes, the well-intentioned souls explaining how God is at work when you’ve occasionally questioned if God is on strike. I even wonder how you endure schmaltzy columns like this one — saluting you, painting you as hero and saint, when you know you’re ordinary. You snap, you bark, you bite. You didn’t volunteer for this, you didn’t jump up and down in the motherhood line yelling, ”Choose me, God. Choose me! I’ve got what it takes.”

You’re a woman who doesn’t have time to step back and put things in perspective, so let me do it for you. From where I sit, you’re way ahead of the pack. You’ve developed the strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil. You have a heart that melts like chocolate in a glove box in July, counter-balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule.

You are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability. You’re a neighbor, a friend, a woman I pass at church and my sister-in-law. You’re a wonder.

~Lori Borgman