hope's Site

So since it has been over a year and we have another baby now, I thought I would post again.

I wish that I had done things differently when I started.  I wish I had not read all those stupid Charlotte Mason books and just started with Seton because I would be a whole lot further along right now...:(

I wish that I had found some blogs that talked about the real world of homeschooling-the boredom, the crushing amount of work for mom, and the constant feeling that your kids were suffering because you homeschooled them; instead of finding blogs that seemed to prove that not only was homeschooling better than school each day is better than the day before....

I wish that I had read stories about mom's sitting at the table for 8 hours straight listening to two children read from different books at the same time, while nursing a baby and correcting someone's square roots, and praying that child number 5 is not coloring on the walls....or blogs about spending 3 hours every Sunday preparing for the week. 

Instead I filled my head with fanciful, romantic visions like too many other homeschooling mothers.  And when those visions crashed and burned then you have to cry on the shoulders of those overworked homeschooling moms that ususally feel the same way and pick up and start over. 

HomeSchool is better now.  It has actually steadily improved over the past 3 years because I have learned.  I have learned from CLAA what mastery actually means and teh younger children will benefit.  I have learned from Seton that some things are best learned by covering them over time and not attempting to master them immediately.  Phonics, handwriting, and math must be mastered before you move on but spelling, grammar, and writing skills can be learned over years.  Charlotte Mason lied to me on that little bit.  Charlotte Mason also lied that spelling and grammar could be picked up from reading goood literature.  Maybe for some kids but not all.  And of course, the irony of all ironies-the most favortie book for school in my home happens to be the standard, boring, traditional Abeka Science.  Who knew?  My kids learned nothing by studying nature or reading good books about science.  But give them a traditional science text and they think it is the best subject over....Charlotte lied about that too...Oh well.  I learned.  The kids are fine, but I will not ever again trust happy, perfect littel homeschooling blogs again...That was my public service announcement for the year

Holly

More than 200 days since I logged on.  So...

1)  We have chickens and 5 of them are going to be slaughtered soon because they turned out to be roosters.  Tara is pretty idignant that we are going to eat her pets and has threatened to leave the family.

2)  We got a free Barn Kitty from Ohio.  Rosy is lovely and seems to tolerate Nicole trying to strangle her on a daily basis.  She was not fixed so hopefully in the next few years we will have more kitties.

3)  My placenta previa seems to have resolved itself but I was laid out of the couch for most of July with pain and severe spotting.  Blah!

4)  Nicole is potty trained and it wasn't soo hard.

5)  Josh has new hearing aids and he is actually wearing them!

Holly

Nicole will be 2 tomorrow.  She acts about 4 most days but refuses to use the potty.  I told her when the snow is gone, we will spend 4 days outside potty training her and there will be no more diapers.  I recieved a very clear response, the hands were on her hips and the lip was stuck out, "No, I not use the potty."  Can't wait.  This time, I am putting everything else on hold and doing nothing but focusing on the potty. 

Nicole also has a problem, that none of my other children possess she likes to stick things in her nose.  I never had one do that before.  I know this one is going to end in the ER needed something fished out.  Everyday I am pulling things out of her nose-paper, crumbs of food.  I don't get it. 

I watched this hugely bloated male teen get dialyzed yesterday.  It did NOT go well.  There were complications and he nearly lost his entire blood supply....the complications were not due to the dialysis nurses....As I saw him being wheeled back to his room by his mom up to the floor, he had not one but 2 bottles of soda on his lap-mostly consumed....One could argue that one bottle was his mothers but the point being this kid had no business drinking 32 ounces of liquid by 10:30 in the morning when he had just spent 3 hours nearly dieing in dialysis due to fluid overload.  It was such a depressing sight.  He was pissed at his mom, pissed at the Diann (Joshua's dialysis nurse, who has been soo good to us), pissed at Jackie (the renal fellow who also has been wonderful) and he had the most horrid expression.  I couldn't fathom an expression more filled with anger, hate and despair.  And he got up out of the dialysis chair after surviving a very harrowing 2 hours (with the Department of Health watching every second) plopped himself in a wheelchair and with his mother watching proceeded to consume 32 ounces of soda.  (that would be essentially his entire fluid consumption for one day in 2 mintues flat).  I could have cried.  Then my next thought was, is this what we are fighting so hard for....we are fighting so hard to stop the government takeover of healthcare so that this teenage kid can commit suicide by fluid overconsumption (eventually, after probably a couple million in medical emergencies).  Really, is a deep thought type of question, is one going to be that much morally worse than the other....Now we have immoral, thoughtless people abusing the medical system constantly because of their poor behaviour and bankrupting the country.  Under government run healthcare we will have immoral people playing God and determining who lives and who dies in order to "make things efficient".  Taking out the abortion issue and putting aside those pesky thoughts of self interest (you know the thought that it might be myself or my child denied medical care in the future) morally is one system really superior to the other.  The more I sit in the dialysis clinic and see the walking dead that are treated and revived bodily but not spiritually 3 times a week; the more I am beginning to believe that maybe in a way-government run healthcare might actually be a good thing morally for the country....a very painfully, good thing....now in specifics it will of course be bad, because we will end up funding abortion and assisted suicide.  But aren't we funding assisted suicide now anyways, well attempted suicide over and over and over again....I guess you have to sit in the dialysis clinics and see what I see. 

Anyway, Lord have mercy on this kid because barring an immense amount of prayers he will be dead very soon and I have a very hard time believing that he was a believer in anything other than that he is getting screwed and it is everyone's fault but his own.  And I wanted to smack that mom hard.  She just sat and watched her kid need to be resuscitated and she let him put himself in fluid overload not more than 15 mintues later.  Lord, have mercy on her soul.

I am writing from Boston Children's at the moment.  Josh was hospitalized for his first periotinitis infection.  Unfortunately, it is a pseudomonas infection, which is not easily treatable.  So they have to remove his dialysis catheter, in order to be sure that they have gotten all of the infection out.  It looks like he will be scheduled for surgery tomorrow, in order to take out the PD catheter and to insert a temporary hemodialysis catheter in his shoulder.  So we are back to hemodialysis for the next month at least, which means I am traveling to Boston 3 times a week for the next month.  So there will be no more dance for the girls, no more vision therapy for Nadia, no more choir for the girls,and no going to visit anyone for a very, very long time.  Just when we were getting a nice rythym going with school and chores.

Josh is stable.  The infection is controlled at the moment, so he isn't in any discomfort.  We did school this morning and the hospital provided us with this laptop, so he can do "school". 

Must go the doctor is coming in....

So I went to check once a week on Facebook...Mostly I just look at the pictures that my cousins and Best Friend put up.  I don't put up any pictures because the Facebook contract says that they get to keep everything forever, even if you delete it....I didn't read the Multiply one....

I don't like Facebook becasue you can't say anything substantial anyway.  But I happened to look in the corner and it says do you know-Elizabeth L....well sure.  So I sent her an invitation.  Then Teresa Kramers' name came up and then a friend from Chicago.  Well I started to get kinda quesy and then people's names came up that I have never directly sent emails too, or gone to school with but I know.  That freaked me out.  I did not fill in much info at all but Facebook sure knows all about me already.  It linked me to other people whom I have never directly contacted but are on some of these Kidney kid links.  Very disturbing...

Tara finished her Saxon Math in hour today with a few mistakes.  I have hope.  I didn't have to yell, scream, or beg...

And Tegan learned how to write the letter Z.  I think that takes care of the alphabet for her....

Off to smash in a Botany lesson before we leave for OlderMom's house...

again.  6 more people came forward to be tested.  I am not really hopeful at the moment.  As it turns out Joshua's immunological response is so rare that Dr. Harmon has only seen 2 other children with 100% sensitization of every known human antigen/antibody in 35 years. 

All I can say is, "I believe Lord, help my unbelief."  Mark 6. 

Tara actually did a Lesson in Saxon Math today and nobody died.  I am feeling hopeful.  Tegan learned the letter v.  Now I suppose that I must tackle the Dynamic Duo...

I have spent the last 6 months hearing that phrase over and over again, so I thought I would share my Thoughts on it.

Back in May when I was living at Childrens' with Josh and baby, we had one of the good rooms overlooking the helicopter transport pad.  Josh and I watched the helicopters land over and over again.  It kept the TV off at least.  So one day, I set off in a quest to find that helicopter pad, so that Josh and I could look at it.  Now that is no easy matter, because Children's Hospital Boston is a massive complex of at least 6 different buildings  surrounded by Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Massive Hospital complex, Dana Faber Cancer Institute, and the Joslin Diabetes Center.  It is very confusing to determine where one building ends and another begins and where you are in relation to the outside streets.  So we made it our quest to figure out the entire hospital and surrounding areas. 

One day, as we were sitting in the hemodialysis clinic, Josh and I watched another helicopter land on the pad and it suddenly dawned on both of us that the pad wasn't part of Children's Hospital but part of Brigham and Women's.  So I asked the nurse, who had worked there for 10 years.  Do you think that helicopters land across the street?  She looked at the helicopter like she had never seen it before and said, "Maybe, I guess I never thought about it that way before."  We asked a few other nurses and got very similar responses.  Finally, I went out and looked and sure enough 4 hospitals run off one pad.  This should have been self evident to every Children's hospital employee because all the bridges to the other hospitals are run off the secured 4th floor, that only employees can get to. 

And as a side note, the show ER makes the whole emergency helicopter landing look so much sexier than it really is.  Everything came to a complete stop before the doors were opened and everyone came out.  There was no running.  Very boring actually. 

So I went out and took a walk, to see the underneath of the helicopter pad and actually watched one take off from 15 stories below.  I was suprised at how much air flow there is 15 floors below, Nicole lost her hat!  When I came back to tell Josh, a different nurse who had worked there for 15 years said, "It never occured to me to go and look for the helicopter pad...."

The following day as we were looking out our window, Josh and I realized that one of the gardens in the hospital was 10 floors below us.  That suprised us both because we didn't quite realize that we were facing that direction.  I said, the maze is so confusing.  The floor nurse looked out the window to see what we were talking about, and said, "I didn't even know that there was a second garden in the hospital.  I guess I just thought that this was the main one."

The following week, Josh and I went on a quest to find the big glass dome that was on top of the original Children's Hospital building.  We could see it from the parking lot.  Finally, we mazed our way through 4 buildings and found it.  The building is beautiful, full of gorgeous original woodwork and wrought Iron.  We went round and round each floor reading all of the placques on the wall.  Many of these placques were from the early 1900's or late 1890's.  We found them fascinating and the wrought iron glass dome was stunning.  On every floor an employee attempted to help us.  I said we were looking at the architecture and reading the history of the building.  Unfortunately, they all looked at me as if I was speaking in tongues, after they took the stupid things out of their ears!  We ran into our doctor who asked if we needed help.  I explained and he looked at the stuff on the wall, and said, "I guess I never thought about looking at the dome or the stuff..."

This summer when I addressed family members, who continually brought up this dumb idea, that Matt could donate later and maybe somebody who was old could donate this time, I had to explain over and over again that you shouldn't presume about God or the future (Gee wasn't I prophetic).  "Maybe, Matt will be in a wreck and lose the kidney.  If he has got it, he should donate it now and not presume that God will let him do it later...."  "I guess I never thought about it that way...." replied each and every one of them.  As I discussed my concerns with cadaveric organ donation with people, the response was-"I guess I never thought about it that way...."

Correction-No you never thought at all!  Please stop deluding yourselves that you are actually thinking!    Our society is so frightening.  Everyone is so locked up tight in their self absorbed little universe where there is zero time for self reflection or even taking the time to notice their common surroundings.  It would be different if they didn't notice things because they were too busy actually thinking about something....I guess that is what Facebook and Twitter are for, to actually remove the few minutes left in a day that normal people might actually spend time thinking about something. 

After everything was fine, Josh spiked a fever today.  Thankfully, Boston let us stay home after I pleaded.  The funny thing is that Josh was complaining of severe ankle pain, to the point that he could barely walk.  So Dr. Rosenthal, sent for a Lyme titer.  We find out on Monday or Tuesday. 

Joshua's Transplant Coordinator, Rachel, said, "I have never met a family who gets every possible problem, without bringing it on themselves like you all are?..."  I just smiled and said that the Catholic Church doesn't have a Saint Holly, yet, so now God is making one.  She laughed, not realizing how dead serious I was.  Of course, my children would have another opinion of my sanctity....

I fell over my kitty this morning and now she is scared of me:(  We can obviously tell that I am not used to having pets.  This is really bothering me. 

And to prove, that the 3 year old is not to be messed with....Keara took a swim in teh baby pool today.  Matt had Tara, Nadia, and Tegan at the beach and Josh was resting.  So Keara got to be all by herself in the pool until Ranger showed up.  He decided that was for him.  Ranger and I played chase around the pool until I gave up because he was too fast.  So I grabbed the leash and pulled him out to let her swim (with dog hair).  She was happy, I was relaxed and Ranger was content.  When I went in to check on the baby, Keara grabbed the leash and held Ranger down.  He weighs twice as much as her and is taller.  When he attempted to stand up and run away; Keara put her hands on her hips and slapped him hard on the nose and said, "Sit down and wait for Mama."  He sat down and waited for me for 10 minutes.  She is good.  She attempted that same fierceness at the pediatricians office tonight, I might have given in because I was about to change Joshua's dressing and didn't want to wash my hands and deglove again; but Dr. Rosenthal is better. "Sit down and listen to your mother."  He won, and she sat really quiet like Ranger did.  Thank God for an authoritative pediatrician.

It took a week to clear out my 10,000 unread messages in my inbox on Outlook and 40 pages of posts from Multiply.  Now all of my inboxes are empty...That at least makes me feel as if I have accomplished something. 

Tara baked lunch yesterday for the first time.  It was just processed chicken nuggets but she did it entirely on her own.  She was so proud. 

I have to get pictures of the kitty up before Keara kills it.  She was swinging the kitty around yesterday and I was shocked that the poor thing did not scratch out her eyes.  We had to sit and have 20 minutes of this is how you hold a kitty lessons.  All these things that I never knew about pets.  During the day, the kitty essentially is running around the house, I don't care.  But the food and water stays in the basement, along with the litter box.  I refuse to shuffle down to my kitchen and look at poop first thing....Kitty doesn't like the basement but I guess she will think it is the Taj Mahal once she gets kicked outside to do her job....Kill mice.

Ranger is no longer frightening the deer away because he just stares at them.  I don't know if that is a puppy thing or a Ranger thing.  But the deer can stand next to Ranger and eat our fruit trees and he just does nothing.  We give Ranger 5 stars for being the best tempered dog ever, though.  With the utter lack of training he has recieved, he just handles everything so well.  But I got to work on the leash thing because I don't think I can pick him up and carry him to the pen much longer without working out at the gym first:)

And officially, Josh had no bacteria infection.  We went in preventively but every culture came back negative.  Tell that to the insurance please, who keeps calling A) to ask if I need counseling and B) to set up more asceptic training.....The lady is like 80 years old and from Georgia.  I can't stand to listen to her voice and she takes so long to draw out each and every word.  Hello, 6 kids, I don't have time to waste on the phone with people who aren't my friends.