Rainy Day Progress

We have been blessed with some beautiful rains in the past few days.

That has been good for the fields . . . and our basement project.  We poured the concrete over the new plumbing this afternoon.  No more walking on plywood and Rachel sneaking in the laundry room to play in the dirt trenches.  It worked, but a new floor will be so much nicer.

We're getting there . . . slowly but surely.  I stay happy about it as long as I see progress! :)

 

Making new {happy} memories

Rachel turned 17 months old today.  It also marked 6 months since her surgery.

David and I were just commenting last night how amazing it all was.  The doctors took most of her skull apart and put it back together and it hardly bothered her at all.  Six months later, the only order we have from the doctor is to keep a hat on her to keep her incision from getting sunburned.  With her complexion, she would be well covered anyway, so not even that has changed our normal routine.  Amazing.

My brain seems to have some sort of muscle memory.  For example, in spring 2007, I was extremely nauseous expecting our first daughter.  The next spring, the smells of the season brought back that nauseous feeling from time to time.  Weird.

This past week, I had a few anxious mornings.  Remembering this was the day we got the phone call form Dr. Jundt.  This is the day I hid in my bed.  This is the day we went to Sioux Falls and I got the bejeebers scared out of me.  And then we waited and waited because there was nothing else we could do.

Whenever I go through something tough, I want to use it for good.  I tried to log on to craniokids.org, a website to support parents going through various types of craniosynostosis, but I just couldn't do it.  It was too overwhelming.  The other night, I came across a chance mention of craniosynostosis in a story in Catholic Digest and I just wanted to run into Rachel's crib and scoop her up. 

I did share a very brief synopsis of our story on the Mayo Clinic website.   It already got one "helpful." :) If I can help one mom or dad feel a little bit better . . . if they don't have to wait weeks . . . months . . . to hear or see that it's all going to be OK . . . I wanted to at least do that. 

And, please, if you know of anyone with a child with craniosynostosis who needs encouragement, send them my way.  I may not be ready for an online forum, but I certainly can and would love to help one-on-one. 

 

So, anyway, enough of my sappyness.

As I said the other day, it is time to make NEW HAPPY memories THIS summer and we have been doing just that. 

As you can see, our poor cat Nip Nip is being a good sport with his new-found best friend.  Teresa loves her bike and has been venturing to the stop sign and back.  There are times that I feel a shift in my children's development and I am noticing that now.  Landen is growing up and teaches me so much.  Nathan has been so helpful and has grown out of his constant fighting back.  That was a good 6 years, but I'm ready to leave it behind!  It's good.

All good.  

A Happy Mom's Day

I was a very Happy Mother's Day here at the Melius farm. 

If I could have made it better, the father of the family would have been able to spend more of it with us, but corn must be grown and I sure wasn't getting around to getting it in the ground!   

I do believe that Mother's Day and my birthday are my favorite days of the year.  Those are the days that my children approach me as though a glowing angelic halo surrounds me.  OK, so maybe I'm not quite THAT special, but I did have toast and coffee made for me and laundry going before we left for church this morning!  That doesn't just happen every day.

Since our usual Sunday morning hangout was closed, (even Donna needs a day off now and then), I was treated to pizza for brunch and it was fabulous.  Then it was back home to farm life during planting season.  There is no "lazy Sunday/Mother's Day afternoon" in planting season.

But, we made the best of it anyway. Since days can really start to run together at busy times of the year like this, I wanted to do something out of the ordinary today. So, the kids and I spent the entire afternoon outside enjoying the beautiful day.

 

I had picked up some of these gorgeous gerbera daisies last week.  I know that every year they will have just one or two beautiful blooms, but I just couldn't pass them up! 

Look at that!  Could you say, "Umm, no, thank you.  I'll take a snapdragon, please," to that orange beauty staring you in the face???? 

Not I.  That's why I bought three . . . or four . . . I don't remember.  They were just so pretty!!!!!

 

My wonderful husband had already dumped a pile of dried manure on the flower bed. 

(That's right.  We don' have to BUY our manure in bags out here on the farm.) 

It still needed dirt, so the big 3 helped me do that, and Rachel carried the cat upside down around the yard. 

Everyone was happy.

Then we brought out the garden hose and started adding some moisture to our manure/black dirt concoction. 

It was about this time--as I had just paid my willing workers in ice cream handed through the kitchen window--that our resident farmer showed up.  He said our ground would need to dry off and get smoothed off again before we could plant our flowers.  Since he KIND OF is the expert on soil conditions around here, we decided to believe him.

It was then time, Nathan decided, to turn out attention to a wienie roast, which we did for our supper. Flowers will wait for another day.

Rachel's expression pretty much sums it up here.  She was dirty and covered in cat hair, roasted hot dog, popcorn and chocolate cake from her hot pink sun hat to her muddy little toes.

Does it get any better?

I don't think so.

 

I know that sometimes these enormous blessings can test my patience, wear me down, share their germs, and break my heart, but they are the BEST blessings EVER and I am so VERY grateful to have had them in my life.

 

God bless your week.

 

 

Teresa is two wheelin'!

I told you she was determined!

By this evening, the training wheels were off!  She can't wait to get out and practice more tomorrow.

Smarty Pants

She can identify her hair, nose, eyes, ears, and teeth.

She has added "tractor" to her vocabulary.

Time to start with the neuroscience . . . and reading right side up is just not challenging enough!