Update: Elliot came through surgery better than expected today! Praise God! Thank you so much for all your prayers!
Elliot is a 22-month-old boy at our church with a complicated heart condition. I will never forget his parents–heavy with pregnancy and responsibility–coming before the church seeking prayer after Elliot was diagnosed in-utero with a seemingly-hopeless heart condition.
Doctors felt Elliot would not survive the birth process, and told his family that even if he did, he would most likely die during the first few days of life.
Elliot lived. Elliot fought. Elliot defied all the odds because, as we all know, there are no odds with God.
God has brought Elliot through three dicey surgeries in his short life.
I first met Elliot and his mother in the church nursery. For me, an 8:30 nursery gig is a tough deal. I struggle mightily with mornings in general and oftentimes find myself growing bitter about having to be at the nursery when others are either in church or bed.
Such was this morning. Elliot’s mother brought this smiling, glasses-bedecked toddler into the room; the unusually tiny boy was tethered to an oxygen tank; tubes and wire wound about him endlessly.
My first thought was panic. Did she expect me to take care of him and handle all these tubes and wires? How could I do that and take care of all the other babies?
So soon I felt an inward embarrassment and paradigm shift in my own view of the situation, the day, and even my own life. This sweet mother plopped down in the floor of the nursery and proceeded not only to take care of Elliot but also to help with the other babies.
Elliot cruised about, amazingly careful with all his wires and tubes; he was able to crawl and play, occasionally stopping to emit a troubling cough, but then moving on to another toy. And slowly, calmly Eliot’s mother began to weave her tale of his life story, God’s faithfulness and her own relentless love as a mother.
I left the nursery with a shift in my own understanding about tirelessly loving a child with special medical needs, graciously outpouring your life for someone else and cherishing each day regardless of tomorrow’s challenges or fears.
The miracles God has wrought through this child and his family have touched our church and our town. Eliot is now 22 months old and speaks fluently and eloquently in both English and Afrikaans.
Today as I submit this post, Elliot will undergo the Fontan procedure in Philadelphia to heal his tiny heart. His family’s prayer is that he will sail through surgery with no complications and emerge stronger than ever and able to leave the oxygen tank behind.
If you are so led, please join me in praying for Elliot.
“For as many as are the promises of God, they are all YES! in Christ Jesus.”
II Corinthians 1:20.
We began our day with Sue’s swimming lessons which have been, by far, the most unusually pleasant swimming lesson engagement I’ve ever experienced with a three-year-old child.
In the past, I found myself chasing smallish boys through mud and trees, seeing tiny boys create a tee tee fountain arc over concrete to the delight of tiny swimmers, and screaming at seemingly-innocent boys to not let a frog or turtle drop into the pool.
I’ve found myself 8 months pregnant donning an unholy maternity swimsuit in a last ditch effort to salvage swimming lessons for a fussy, unexcited brother-to-be.
Sue, however, is cool with the swimming. She saunters up to the pool, cover-up casually tossed over her shoulder, and sits down on the steps to await her turn.
Sue’s swimming lesson counterparts are two, 2.5-year-old boys. These boys sob, cry, flee, screel and bargain endlessly for extra Smarties.
Last night Sue was describing the lessons to her daddy: “I don’t know why I am in this class with these baby boys. All they do is cry and run and cry, Daddy. They are babies and I am not a baby. I am a swimming girl.”
Today began with an overcast sky and slight drizzle. I wasn’t sure the lessons could commence, but the rain held and Sue swam half the length of the pool to the delight of her “coach” and obvious chagrin of the sobbing, flailing two-year-old boys. As we pulled out of the driveway, the rain began in earnest, coating the pavement with giant frog-like hopping drops.
I breathed a sigh of relief, for I revel in a rainy Summer day indoors. Such a grand excuse to feed everyone lunch pancakes and allow them to play unusually noisy games like “hall ball” followed by mandatory solitary book reading. (That’s my personal favorite.)
And as you might have guessed, the championship game was indeed rained out. Yet that only gives the White Sox more time to recuperate, more time to contemplate and more time to prepare to DOMINATE!
Yes. I do love the rain…
It was unfathomable to me that in a town known for producing extraordinary youth baseball players, my bow-tie wearing, spreadsheet-obsessed husband would end up as a head coach. (I mean people move to this town so their children can play baseball; it’s a bit crazed.) This is a man who only played the game himself one season as a third-grader and had the nerve to tell his obsessively-competitive childhood coach, “It’s just baseball and we’re only children.”
(It didn’t fly then and it wouldn’t fly now…)
Yet his noble recruiting strategy has paid off seven-fold. He simply recruited boys with actively-involved fathers, therefore securing a bevy of kind and talented assistant coaches, pitching coaches, first base coaches and the like.
This has left him–a man blessed with the spiritual gift of administration–to organize, strategize, email, analyze and seriously memorize the Little League rule book which he can, when prompted, quote expertly without blinking an eye–surprising and astounding 20-year veteran Little League umpires and coaches alike.
Apparently he has become quite an enigma in the local Little League scene: one league administrator recently described him as “always hurrying about with a laptop, important-looking spreadsheets and some black binder with all these secret plans.”
No parent is without up-to-the-minute details about the next practice or game. Honestly, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. We’re used to last-minute calls that were supposed to be placed by the coach’s baby sitter but never got made so we don’t know there is a practice and only get a phone call asking where we are when we are actually at the dermatologist.
And now this grand communicator with his notebook of plays and plans will coach the last game of a “best-two-out-of three” season finale.
It’s a grand, rangy bunch of boys aged 9-11.
Bar-b-cue sunflower seeds are the favored dugout currency.
They are so grown-up yet still so young–so tough and quick to punch or slam a glove or bat, yet still cry over striking out or being told to bunt.
H says it’s like a crash course in the emotional life of the ten-year-old boy…a tumultuous life it is!
“Coach H, see, I had my blue Gatorade right there on the bench and he was throwing those sunflower seeds up into the air and not watching anything–not even our game--and he knocked over my special blue drink and now it’s all over Austin’s pants there and that notebook where you write all the rules and plays…”
“Hey Coach H, can I pitch? When am I gonna pitch? Why can’t I pitch right now? Why does he always get to pitch?”
“Coach H, if I run really, really fast, do I have time to go to the bathroom?”
“Don’t worry Mom, I was mad about getting hit with a pitch, but I wasn’t going to ‘walk the bird’ like Hayden did to that umpire,” the bright-eyed boy encouraged. “Walk the bird? What is that?” the confused mother queried. “You know, Mom, like when you use your middle finger like the two bird legs and hop it around. Walking the bird.” That mom breathed a quick sigh of relief; she could still claim her innocent nine-year-old. At least for one more day.
Also heartening is a continued zeal for the obligatory after-game Icee.
The White Sox are winners regardless of tomorrow’s tie-breaker. Let us revel in the joy tonight, however, and not forget the reason for the Game–total domination! (See last night’s scoreboard?)
If you could pray for us tomorrow at 6:30 Eastern time, we’d greatly appreciate it! I’ll let you know how it all turns out!
Promise!
1 Number of rats that Sophie, our 6-month-old Boston Terrier puppy, apparently caught or found already expired.
Yes, I was sitting in my back yard yesterday evening enjoying a solitary moment while my children watched an educational show about warthogs when Sophie bounded up to me, some brown hunk in her mouth.
At first, I assumed it was a stick since she is known to chew sticks, leaves and the like. I patted her head absentmindedly and continued my musing. She chewed with such abandon, however, that I finally looked closer at her prey, only to note that it had a foul odor.
I peered even closer and saw rheumy eyes staring back at me. Naturally, I jumped back in fear and horror, and then proceeded to chase her around the yard while the corpse bounced and bobbled in her tiny mouth.
Finally she dropped the ugsome mass at my feet. Gingerly, with my face aimed in a different direction, I scooped up the creature with a stick and began to carry it toward the fence.
Slowly, out of a twisted curiosity, I took a gander at the thing. It was stretched out thin and brown and, at first take, appeared to be part of a snake.
I was cool with that and slightly relieved because while I was in New York, Sue apparently ran in the house announcing the arrival of a snake and H had to chase the snake back into its hole and then jam a Number 2 pencil down in the hole to assure the snake made its home a grave.
I dashed across the yard with the snake-on-a-stick only to ponder the necessity of determining whether or not this snake was a poisonous variety. I squinted protectively and looked closer.
And that is when, to my own blood-curdling revulsion, I saw two tiny buck teeth protruding from a flattened mouth! Not a snake, but a stretched-out, leathery, jerky-like rat!
I had to run inside a pour myself a small glass of sherry I was shaking so hard. I quickly retired to my fainting couch for the evening.
I’ve no mumbers left…
It is well known that I lean slightly toward the dramatic, and yet I must share my own struggle with no longer running down three flights of stairs to the knish shop for my morning coffee. One week out of New York and I still wake up confused.
Also troubled are my children who, after seven days of coddling and inane liberty at the loving paws of their grandparents, have summarily transformed into Augustus Gloop and Veruca Salt clones.
When I first started leaving my children with my parents, I would prepare impeccably typed schedules and itineraries detailing all the interventions and activities that needed to transpire throughout the day. When I returned from my trip, I’d find the list still sealed in its careful envelope and candy wrappers, soda drips and Happy Meal toys littering the floor.
Gradually, however, I have learned that part of being a grandparent is simply that gracious abandon that allows children to lounge in pjs until noon, eat ice cream after breakfast, and order the kid’s meal every single time at the drive through even though it is not fiscally responsible and the toy is some plastic head that blathers on and on about being a “doctor not a physicist.”
(The only up side to that toy is that all three of my children can now define physicist. And lest you be encouraged that this “head toy” will be ruined by pool water and then happily discarded, think again. I saw one today become dunked, thrown, sunk and bashed repeatedly and yet still the head prattled steadily about physicists.)
Still the sharp spike of freedom that I seized during my week in New York beckons to me, making me feel like a bad mother. Perhaps it’s just summer’s advent…
At any rate, all four of us are in need of some serious deprogramming.
We’ve run through two cartons of ice cream in two days.
Two Thursday mornings ago I woke with a start–a three-year-old’s puffy nighttime pull-up snuggled against my knees, a pink sippy cup denting my cheek and the toenail of a tousled 7-year-old wedged in my shin.
Granted I’d stayed up until 1 am the night before cramming fashion news in an attempt to blend with New York. I cast aside all my light blue jeans and only packed the dark. Do people still wear heels with jeans? Is there any possibility I might pull off a black empire waist dress with tights and boots? I know scarves are in, but what the heck is a Spring scarf and how would one tie such a thing?
Hours later, I found myself settled in a crowded Atlanta airport, novel in hand, surrounded by hordes of people sucking down lattes and clacking away on laptops. Everyone appeared busily important. They all hurried and rushed. Some dragged carry-on luggage while others text-walked, amazingly negotiating the miasma of carts and swirling suitcases with little effort.
“I used to be one of you,” I thought.
I used to be a “director” of something with stacks of business cards, power point presentations and contracts. I criss-crossed the US from meeting to presentation to consultation, clad in perfectly pressed Anne Taylor suits and important pumps.
Yet now I lounge on this vinyl seat sipping bottled water and reading a mindless novel, not actually caring when my flight becomes delayed two hours. For the first time in so many years, I do not actually have to be on time. I text my friends in New York who are easily able to change our dinner reservations to a later time.
When the plane touches down at La Guardia, I smile a prayer-thanks and breathe deeply. I am so, so far away from South Georgia. Nobody knows that I homeschool, struggle with feelings of inadequacy, and have a child on the autism spectrum.
I leisurely stroll toward baggage claim, noting the footless tights and loosely-gathered buns that apparently denote the current “New York” look. As I look toward the baggage carousel my eye catches a name written on a largish scrap of poster board: “Elizabeth Channel.”
My sweet friends have called a car service.
Tears spring in my eyes.
I feel like a star.
Dmitri, my driver, assists graciously with my luggage, hefting the 49.5-lb suitcase into the trunk of the Lincoln Town Car with apparent finesse. I sink down into the leather while the streets and lights of New York whoosh by…
Surely this is someone else’s life.
I can’t take it any more…the endless questions, the whining, the homeschooling, the dieting, the woefully short hair, the laundry mountains, the french fry-encrusted van, the GF/CF diet, growth hormone shots, spilled pie, puppy pee, poison control…
Nahhhh. You know I love that stuff.
For the last three years I have spent one week each Spring at the National Stationery Show in New York helping my best friend with her invitation company, Prints Charming.
I’m leaving tomorrow at lunchtime and will miss you all terribly. I’ll think of you while I luxuriate in an East Village apartment, brunch at the Sunburnt Cow, browse purse-dealers in China town and check out all the new invitation designs at the Stationery Show.
I hope to return with a bevvy of fascinating stories, but since my children will be staying behind, I’m not sure I’ll have have the same quality to which many of you have become accustomed.
I’ll give it my best!
Tootles for a week! I hope to check in but don’t think I’ll have computer access!
Miss me!
She’s gone to the shore, she has. And in her absence I reckon I can do just about anything I want with her Mumbers gig.
Who’s game?
Join me in a new Mumbers thrill. Craft mumbersology specifically about Kia. Let’s make it positive and do posts on the things we love about Kia! When she returns from the beach all calm, tan and svelte, she can revel in the glory of our golden words.
Who’ll join me? I don’t know how to do that Mr. Linky thing, but I’ll do an old-fashioned link if you’ll give this a try and we’ll see how many Kia-Featuring-Mumbers we can get!
10 – Number of months I believe I have been following Kia’s blog.
14 – This number proves what a great weight loss Guru Kia is compared to me because it shows the difference between our weight loss. (Hint, it’s a word problem. First person to send me the answer wins a box of Atkins bars.)
1,777 – Number of real-life depictions of mothering angst Kia bares to her readers and therefore makes them feel they are not alone. It’s rare to find someone so authentic!
1 – Number of swear-words Kia has re-crafted innocently into something I can now use in my head on a daily basis. You know the word I’m talking about. I actually said it out loud to my children last week and they all looked at me, greatly confused and concerned.
57 – Number of times Kia has said things about her Mother-In-Law that certain of us wish we could say (or perhaps just think) but dare not to. (Not me of course! I love my Mother-In-Law. Seriously! I got lucky!)
256 – Number of times I personally have sat in awe at my computer, rendered speechless at the birthday party plans, cupcake preparations, goodie bag endeavors or towel tricks.
77 – Number of colds, flus, maladies, reactions and rashes that Kia has tirelessly nursed her family through in the past months. (Of course it may not compare to the number battled by Mrs. Bear, but remember, that woman has four children!)
27,893 – Hours of patience Kia has shown toward her sweet, brilliant boy.
357 – Number of times Kia has personally encouraged me with my own trying children…and truly meant it!
Have fun, sweet Kia! We miss you!
OK, do your own “Kia Post” and I’ll link you!
Please read Patty’s post-tribute to Kia!
We’re a house known for summoning the effective emetic, syrup of ipecac, from time to time. I’m sure that surprises none of my regular readers.
What’s fascinating is that of all the times I have had to call Poison Control, none of them has been for Edward. Sure there was the time when Joseph sucked the alcohol-gel out of a cold pack from his lunchbox. He simply clamped a vampirish bite down on the white, melting squisher, found the insides, in his words “like a plainish jello,” and went to town.
Poison Control does not have that happen too often, they said, but still they could read the code on the cold pack and tell me how much alcohol the child had ingested. A gallon of water later, he was copacetic.
(On a side-note, let me tell you how fun it is to get a three-year-old to drink a gallon of water!)
Then of course there was last year, (while I was at a Beth Moore conference two states away), and Sue decided to have a tea party with “the pink,” otherwise known as ibuprofen.
I was sitting at the hotel breakfast bar thrilling to a fruit plate and coffee with friends when the call came in: “How much ibuprofen was in the pink ibuprofen bottle? Not the one with no dyes or colors, but the pink one. ‘Cause Sue had her pink teacups arranged in the kitchen floor feeding it to herself and several unsuspecting babies.”
You can imagine the conversation, prayers and panic that ensued as what was once a relaxing care-free morning with friends turned into steely fear. (At least I was in good prayer warrior company!)
The fine motor skills on tiny girls still surprise me, as did her ability to open the child-proof bottle which may or may not have been screwed all the way on. Poor H rushed to the drug store, hastily purchased the standard brown bottle of ipecac, and Sue proceeded to throw up violently in the bathtub while the Poison Control fellows on the other line cheered; in a few hours’ time, she was fine.
I vowed to never leave town again, of course, which was a mistake because the next time Poison Control was summoned it was on my watch. Sweet Sue downed an entire bottle of Bright Spark, the homeopathic attention aide Edward has taken for three years. Poison Control was able to reassure me that one two-year-old ate two full bottles with no ill effect. Sue was focused but fine for the rest of that day.
So last night, H and I had planned a rare date night with friends. We scheduled the babysitter over two weeks ago, discussed possible restaurants and couldn’t believe our good fortune–a fortune that melted, however, with repeated deluges last week resulting in so many baseball game cancellations that a Friday night game was scheduled.
Drats!
Yet the good part was that I could actually watch the 7:15 game, unfettered, since it was too late to cancel the sitter. I planned to take a few pictures, actually try to meet some of the parents, and hoped for a late dinner with my two “older men.”
(Normally I stand at this one spot on the top of a hill where I can swirl back and forth pitching juice boxes and watching the playground and the game until I become dazed and dizzy.)
I was sitting on the bleachers enjoying the game warm-up, (something I’d never seen), when the call came in from my sitter: “Oh me, oh my, do you know how many melatonin pills there were in that bottle because I think Sue ate all of them. Oh my should I call 911 what do I do oh oh!”
Now this is an awesome sitter–a sitter who once heimliched a penny out of Edward’s throat, saving his life.
And that’s when it hit me: I was the one who left the melatonin on the admittedly very high but still accessible breakfast bar in the kitchen. I did not panic, though, because I knew melatonin was a relatively safe supplement.
I raced to the drug store and began pacing the aisles in search of that faithful brown ipecac bottle. I saw none.
I rushed to the pharmacy tech who began running up and down the aisles, muttering under his breath, “I knew we used to have it, I know we have it!”
The pharmacist finally returned from the back and said with certain authority. “We do not have ipecac!”
I jumped in the car and gunned it while simultaneously calling my neighbor and bloggy friend. She knows me well enough to sense my tone:
“Hi. Do you have ipecac?” I questioned. Without a beat she, a perfume stalker and mother of five, replied, “Yes, a whole bottle.”
“Then go to my house and give it to Sue right now.”
“Will do.” (And I knew she would have no troubles getting Sue to ingest the entire bottle of brownish gruel because that’s the kind of mother and friend she is.)
Then I dialed Poison Control and discussed the matter with them. I could hear the guy’s fingers flying over the computer in the background as he took down all the pertinent information: weight, age, what she took. He breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, you have no problems. She’ll probably get very tired and may throw up…just stay with her all night and periodically wake her up to make sure she is coherent.”
Yipee! I’ve done that so many times. I’m good at checking for coherent children in the middle of the night!
I breathed a sigh of relief, and that’s when I told him we had already given her the ipecac. I thought he would praise our proactive efforts but instead he kind of growled, “Oh no! That stuff is terrible! Throw that stuff away. Never ever give it to anyone again!”
Then he went on to list a litany of problems with ipecac causing fatal aspirations and rarely helping the poisoned victim. I could not believe it! Only a year or so ago, ipecac was King, included in every new mother’s take-home baby basket, and now it has fallen, like Pluto, off the radar.
Poor, poor ipecac.
Read more about ipecac’s dangers here.
Sue wretched and heaved into the night, peppering my bed with broccoli-cheese soup laden with tiny melatonin chunks. She’s fine today. Tired, but fine.
Some busy, busy guardian angels have been assigned to my children.
My, my, my how I am thankful for them!
On a concerned note, now I have to replace Ashley’s bottle of ipecac. Perhaps I’ll have to check the black market?
Another adventure awaits!
A gentle smear…
Seeing the good side!
It coulda been worse!
