I have so many little matters to tell you of, that I cannot wait any longer before I begin to put them down.
Nov 28th, 2020 by ECM
Grandma and Grandpa came down to spend Thanksgiving with us and helped us find the perfect tree! With covid restrictions closing down tractor rides, Daddy and Grandpa had to drag the tree all the way through the fields and back to the check-out area, but we managed it, even in masks.
Nov 19th, 2020 by ECM
When I saw that we were getting one more day in the upper 60s last week, I texted Jill and had Abe and Amy join us for one more warm weather hike! Pushing a toddler in a stroller up and down semi-cleared hiking trails is actually not too bad when you have two teenage boys to lift her over the fallen logs.
Oct 31st, 2020 by ECM
The girls have finally joined Tommy in obsessive love for the Oz books, so we squeezed in one more year of literature themed family costumes. (Honestly, I think Tommy just said yes because he realized being the Tin Woodman would give him another large plastic weapon…)
No trick or treating for these covid-aware kiddos, so instead we had an outdoor party with our homeschool buddies. The moms let them break social distancing to get together for the picture.
Oct 11th, 2020 by ECM
Our California girls have the old master bedroom, with pink walls picked by Janie and our old beachy striped curtains for a little nod to their birth state. I had pictures hung until I decided to move all the furniture around again, and I haven’t gotten them back up yet, but this was as clean as the room was gonna get, so I snapped some pictures while I could.
The door that is partially covered by Janie’s bed goes into Tommy’s room, the old nursery. Tommy does complain that he hears everything they chatter to each other at night, but sticking the book shelf in front of it, as I had first tried when we moved in, made the rest of the furniture harder to fit in.
We moved Annie to a big girl bed once we got here. She’s loved her little toddler bed and is doing as well as could be expected with staying in bed. Sometimes we come up to wake her up from her nap and find her curled up in Janie’s bed, and she does tend to trash the room when she doesn’t nap, but all in all, the room is working out pretty well!
Sep 19th, 2020 by ECM
We’re just four and a half hours away from South Bend now, which means that when Derek found out this week he could get tickets to the ND game this weekend, we made a spur of the moment decision to drive over for Saturday!
The boys dropped us girls off at the Romines’ new house, and they enjoyed their first row, 20 yard line seats, while Elizabeth, Hannah, and Susie baked, Janie, Lizzy R, and Naomi played, and Kristin and I talked and kept Annie happy. I don’t think there was a moment of silence from the moment our girls ran, shrieking, into each other’s arms until we literally pulled them apart six and a half hours later to head back home. The kids slept part of the way home, and we were all in bed by midnight, exhausted, but happy.
Sep 8th, 2020 by ECM
I guess this is the absolute latest start date we’ve ever had for school, but I had to give myself until after Labor Day to try to get the house in order. It’s not there yet, but we had a lot of help this weekend, and it’s getting there. Meanwhile, the Iowa City public schools started today, so we had to, too!
We started the year singing our hymn of the year, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” and reading a chapter of Mark, then working on our poetry memorization together. The big kids have several core classes that they’ll be starting at the Mid Prairie Homeschool Assistance Program (a sweet little school district down in Amish country, about half an hour away) next week, so they did what they could, I worked through math, Latin, and language arts with the little girls, and then after starting history (Minoan culture), we ended around lunchtime. We spent the afternoon baking with our bounty from this weekend’s apple picking adventures with Grandma and Grandpa Muller!
Aug 22nd, 2020 by ECM
I haven’t been blogging this summer due to packing, moving, unpacking, living through the derecho that crashed our skylight and took out our power for 6 days and our internet for 12 days, and getting Susie through surgery yesterday, but I have been pulling together homeschooling advice from here, Everything to Someone, and lots of emails, message boards, facebook groups, and texts onto a new blog where I can direct anyone who has questions about how we homeschool. I’ll probably be working on that over the next couple weeks, as everyone starts their homeschool year, but I don’t plan to abandon this family blog!
Until then, I’ll be busy at Homeschooling for Normal People.
Jul 1st, 2020 by ECM
All the kids got in to see Dr. Vallance one last time in June, and besides Susie’s ear and Annie’s eyes (both might require surgery), we had pretty good check-ups. We’ve loved Conejo Children’s Medical Group for the last 9 years, and we’re sad to say goodbye.
Tommy’s 13 year stats (just going to put the heights now that they’re older):
Height: 63.25 inches (63%)
Elizabeth’s 11 year stats:
Height: 56.75 inches (57%–Tommy was 57.5 inches at about this age)
Susanna’s 9 year stats:
Weight: 50 lbs (6%–Tommy was 67 lbs, Elizabeth was 68 lbs)
Height: 49.5 inches (11%–Tommy was 53.25 in, Elizabeth was 52.75 inches)
Janie’s 7 year stats:
Weight: 44 lbs (15%–Tommy was 57 lbs, Elizabeth was 56 lbs, Susanna was 41 lbs)
Height: 47.25 inches (32%–Tommy was 49 1/8 in, Elizabeth was 48.5 in, and Susanna was 45.75)
Annie’s 3.5 year stats:
Weight: 27 lbs .5 oz (4%)
Height: 35.75 inches (4%)
Jun 15th, 2020 by ECM
Today Annie and I had our farewell visit with Dr. Salinas, her wonderful pulmonologist who has cared for her since she was in the NICU. And we got great news! Annie’s lungs sound wonderfully healthy and clear. Now that’s she’s growing and developing and in a nutritionally solid place, we got cleared to take her off her Pulmacort, the last of the seven daily meds she was on when she first came to us. We’ll still keep the nebulizer and her meds as back-up if and when she catches a cold, but we no longer need to administer them regularly. The other good news was that Dr. Salinas has had no patients in all of CHLA exhibiting respiratory distress requiring hospitalization from Covid thus far, so she says that Annie’s pulmonary risk if/when she contracts it will not be that different than our other kiddos. We still need to be cautious and mask in appropriate situations since she won’t wear one, but her bigger concern would be asymptomatic transmission to others, not getting sick enough to be hospitalized herself. This doesn’t negate the fact that Annie has a weaker immune system than others or that her multiple medical needs make any illness, including Covid-19, more complicated, but it does provide huge reassurance that she is not in dire danger during this pandemic.
I really needed some good news this week! And in other news, the pandemic sure makes traffic easier. I got to CHLA in under an hour, with a stop for coffee along the way–a record, even counting the time I drove in at 8 pm for her overnight sleep study. With two more trips there in the next eight days (and a trip to the House Clinic on Thursday), I’m grateful for the one little upside of many people working from home here in LA!
Jun 11th, 2020 by ECM
I’ve officially reached the chest pains, shaking, having trouble breathing level of panic right now. After Dr. Vallance was concerned about the appearance of Susie’s ear yesterday, we got in today to see Dr. Tseng, her ENT. Despite finishing a course of antibiotics two days ago and Dr. Vallance seeing no pus yesterday, her ear was filled with pus for him today. He cleaned out the wax from her good ear and then spent several minutes suctioning out the pus from her bad ear. He wants us to see Dr. Luxford, pronto. It seems that the eardrum (which is already unusual because it was a skin graft–Dr. Luxford had to remove the original ear drum as well as the two bones the tumor had eaten through three years ago) is acting constantly infected. We need to be using the $150 ear drops constantly. Complex hearing test, CT scans, and/or surgery may be necessary, especially as Dr. Tseng says it’s likely the cholesteatoma is back and causing this constant irritation. I literally froze in panic for a few seconds. I called the House Clinic the moment we got back into the van. Dr. Luxford is well over 65 and not coming back in to work until after 4th of July due to covid, but we were able to slide in to a cancellation with one of his associates next Thursday. Hopefully if that doctor feels surgery is necessary, we’ll be able to schedule surgery with Dr. Luxford again before we leave mid to late July. But if we don’t, Dr. Tseng says that Iowa is actually one of the top ear hospitals in the country, so we will be in good hands there.
Susie likes Dr. Tseng and is not feeling scared. We listened to all of Ephesians and Philippians in the car on the way to and from the doctor’s office, so we’re trying to keep ourselves grounded. But I am a basket case.
Praying that Janie’s follow up with the urgent care doctor on her stitches will go better this afternoon!