Five things I’ve got going on

 In no particular order.

1. A wedding. 

I just ordered the groomsmen’s and groom’s suits; we have a fitting party planned for April for them to try them on and hopefully get any needed alternations done.

I’ve ordered my daughters’ bridesmaid dresses and decided on my own dress.

We’re still working on rehearsal dinner catering and Jason’s clothes and shoes for everybody. We’re also helping Jed figure out how to financially leave and cleave: talking about things like a car title transfer, health insurance, his PCP, car insurance…

2. Our church Easter program, which I find myself co-directing. A friend of mine came to the recruiting table this week to sign up and led with, “I’ve never helped with this before” and I said, “neither have I, yet here we are.” I’m figuring it out as I go; so far it’s heaps easier than VBS—and with far fewer volunteer needs; in fact, much of the recruiting is already done. We still need costume makers and set decorators and live animal actors, however.

3. VBS season has more or less kicked off, in that we had our initial leadership meeting to set training dates and deadlines and to prepare to move forward.

4. Sunday school. 

We’ve almost completely decided to not do elementary Sunday school as a large group this summer, as we’ve done for years immemorial. Doing it that way gives the teachers a break, as the children’s director, her assistant and I take on the burden of preparing and teaching the lessons and the other volunteers just show up and help the kids participate. But the combination of preparing for VBS and the seeming demon possession that is affecting the staff computers tipped us toward instead recruiting new teachers to take over the regular classrooms this summer.

In the meantime, I’m officially shirking my Sunday school duties this spring by sneaking out of the children’s wing starting this Sunday, to attend a combined youth-and-parent class on Holy Sexuality. I’m looking forward to a break from my regular Sunday morning responsibilities and to hanging out with grown-ups and teenagers for a change.

5. School, of course. It is my day job, after all. 

We’re trying to work ahead because we have a visit with my parents coming up, closely followed by a retreat I’m attending for three days—and we would like to finish this school year at some point.

I’m also starting to think about next year…when Lizzy will start high school and Caleb will be in eighth grade. How many online classes should I sign them up for? What level is the appropriate level of challenge for them? And do I want to just teach high school history myself? These are the questions rolling around in my head. 

Winter break

Behold Caleb’s science project: a homemade wind tunnel to test the aerodynamics of various aircraft. The fog machine feeds in on the left, flows over the aircraft in the observation chamber (covered by a camera), and is sucked out by the fan on the right.

Partially to help fend off the February blues, but mostly because our online academy does it, we took a week off from school last week. They kind of do two spring breaks, which don’t in any way line up with any real school around here, which is probably why they call Christmas “holiday break” and February “winter break,” and only the one in April (right before school is done for the year) “spring break.”

The interior view.

Buck and his best friend, the chenille pillow in the foreground. If we leave it on the ground, Buck grooms it incessantly.

Anyhow, we had winter break.

Liz taking advantage of Ada’s professional services for free. She (Ada) now works as a math tutor for college students at the community college.

My expectations of blissful leisure were modest since I knew we had a slew of appointments—one for each of the five of us in the first two days of break.

The good news for Lizzy was that the orthodontist finally declared her done with Invisalign; she’ll get the nubbies off and scan for her retainer in a couple weeks. Caleb’s just starting with Invisalign; he got a new rubber band that hooks to three different teeth, which he was pleased to discover makes a noise “like a musical instrument” when he pings it. 

His sisters love that.

After that I took Caleb to buy new soccer cleats since his feet are growing like an inch a day. He’s supposed to start that season in the next couple of weeks. 

And I had a second chiropractor appointment in as many weeks, in my epic quest to fix my complaining body. At the first appointment, he touched my shoulder and months of pain completely vanished. So that was definitely worthwhile. But after a second appointment, and all the other stuff I’m trying, my hip feels better enough. Better enough, I tell you! So when he had me make three (!) more appointments with the home assignment of doing the given stretches 70 (!!) times a day in the meantime, I went home and put my metaphorical foot down.

I cancelled it all: all the remaining counterstrain appointments, and all the remaining chiro appointments. 

And I did it online so I won’t lose face when I suddenly seize up in pain next week and reschedule.

#tbt - that time we had to fix Caleb’s head

 

Looking back through old February photos and found an appropriately cynical meme of Caleb for this dreary time of year.

rly?

At the tender age of three months, Caleb’s misshapen head, which I had hoped was only apparent to me, garnered the attention of the pediatrician such that he ordered a CT scan to check for a rare but serious condition wherein the baby’s skull plates don’t fuse together and their brain grows through the cracks, leading to asymmetrical bulging of the head.

If he had had that, it would require surgery on my baby to put his brain back inside [a technical explanation].

I hadn’t been so scared since Ada spent a day at the specialist hospital as a toddler getting tested for horrible things, following a series of struggling-to-breathe-induced hospitalizations.

earhole!

Caleb did not have that.

Instead, he had the much more common plagiocephaly, aka flat head syndrome. Babies get it from lying on their head in one position too long (because their skulls haven’t hardened yet). The flat spot is often smack in the back of the head, but Caleb’s was on one side, resulting in a really weird asymmetrical shape, even causing one eye to bulge more than the other. 

Come to find out, poor little guy had torticollis—not tortellini, which is delicious, but a stiff neck so that he could only turn his head one way, likely caused by being half strangled by an excessively tangled umbilical cord pre-birth. Therefore he could only lay his head on one side.

Treatment involved infant physical therapy: essentially a series of stretching exercises that made him cry pitifully and caused all three of his siblings to also cry and flee the room, wailing, “Stop hurting him, Mommy!”

So that was a real picnic.

It also required him to get electronically fitted for a corrective helmet, to be worn 23 hours a day.

We only removed it at bathtime, when Jason would wash the baby and I would scrub the sweaty inside of the helmet. Every time we removed it his short little baby arms flew to his head and he would scratch, scratch, scratch. And every time we went to put it back on, he would do ‘evasive maneuvers,’ wagging his little head side to side so we had to catch him and cram the thing back on. It didn’t hurt him—it wasn’t squeezing him; I think it was just hot and sweaty and itchy.

We also had to make the hour-plus drive to the orthotist every week to have the inside of the helmet gradually hollowed out more and more to allow his growing head to fill in evenly. And he also got measured, so we could see his stats improve each time. 

If you draw an imaginary X on the top of the head, from the sides of the forehead to each side of the back of the crown, and then measure each line of the X, he started with almost two centimeters of difference between the two lines. And now, he’s more symmetrical than you or I or any average-headed person on the street.

Besides making his head grow right, the helmet did have the one other benefit of protecting his little baby head from any bumps and bruises as he learned to crawl—although he had to relearn some habits once he got the helmet off around eleven months old, like you can’t just conk your head into things without consequence. But more importantly, it protected him from dear big sister Lizzy, who at the age of two and a half enjoyed playing with him by dragging him around the house by his ankles. The plastic coating on the helmet really made him glide along nicely. After a while she’d get bored and wander off, and leave him in a corner somewhere and I’d have to search to find my non-locomoting baby, because by then she’d forgotten where she dragged him.

So this February is way better than February 2013. Caleb and Lizzy are both putting their heads to better use, and my kids are only accusing me of child abuse when I make them do their Latin and grammar. And hardly anybody gets dragged around by their ankles anymore.

What’s saving my life

Today’s post is inspired by Modern Mrs. Darcy’s practice of posting every midpoint of winter a contemplation of not What’s killing me right now, but What’s saving my life right now?

What’s killing me is easy, right? Even if life circumstances are smooth sailing, it’s still the season. The cold is killing me. The dreary days, the early sundowns. Etc, etc.

Photo by Michael Niessl on Unsplash

So what is saving my life this Groundhog Day?

Is it hot, comforting cups of coffee I look forward to every midday to perk me up?

Photo by Fahmi Fakhrudin on Unsplash

Is it a weekend getaway with just me and Jason I’m looking forward to in a few weeks?

Is it the fact that we traveled to Costa Rica over New Year’s, thereby psychologically extending Christmastime by several weeks into January?

Is it that all of my children are walking with the Lord? This certainly gives me deep, deep measures of peace, relief, joy, and gratefulness.

Is it having friends that I enjoy going out for a meal with, or just texting all day about ridiculous things that make me laugh?

Yes, of course, all those things are kind of saving my life.

But the thing that springs to the top of my mind as saving my life is an absence of much reduced pain.

I haven’t been taking the prescription painkiller since we got back from Costa Rica, but I’m not in constant pain anymore.

Why, you ask?

Is it the fascial counterstrain sessions I’ve been having that have yet to produce a dramatic miracle moment? Is it the five pounds I’ve dropped this month? Is it cutting out sugar? Is it the collagen smoothies I’m drinking? The magnesium supplements? Yoga? Some enigmatic combination thereof? Or is it just that I haven’t gone running for a couple of months?

photo from Unsplash

It’d be nice to know, so I can keep reproducing the favorable conditions. But in the meantime, life is much better without pain…in fact, the relief feels like it’s just saving my life.

Lovely weather for a Ventrac ride together with you

This January has been satisfyingly snowy.

Grandpa was thrilled to fire up ye olde Ventrac and host a sledding party.

 

One wish

 

Q: What is your only comfort in life and death?

A: That I am not my own,

    but belong with body and soul,

    both in life and in death,

to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ…

He…preserves me in such a way

    that without the will of my heavenly Father

    not a hair can fall from my head.

Heidelberg Catechism, Question 1

It’s fun when you have something wrong with you, say, inexplicable pain in your hip and opposite shoulder, for example, and you finally decide you should do something about it besides text your friends and Google it, so you go to a doctor, and then another doctor, and then another doctor, and they all say different things—not only is their diagnosis different, but what they say you should do to fix it is different and, indeed, incompatible with what the last doctor said, and furthermore, all the other doctors are quacks.

Me: my body hurts

Obstetrician: It’s menopause. Take supplements.

Me: still hurts

Nurse practitioner: That’s ridiculous, it’s not menopause. It’s inflammation. You need blood tests.

Me: It hurts. Also new parts hurt.

GP: Those supplements are useless. You were out of shape and you overdid it. Stop overdoing it. But also get in shape. So do stuff, but not too much stuff. Just the exact right amount of stuff. And do these ten pages of special stretches.

Me: ….

Massage therapist: Don’t stretch it! It’s your fascia. Everything we’ve learned about pain is wrong. 

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

~John 18:38

I would remind you that I live in a world of good mattresses, ibuprofen, ergonomically correct car seats, washing machines, and imported oranges from Florida.

It’s not like I carry buckets of water on my head for miles barefoot, eating only rice with no vitamins or air conditioning. 

It doesn’t seem like my body has an excuse to hurt.

Refreshments laid out for Halfway Day

When we were in Costa Rica, we became quite familiar with the national slogan, Pura Vida. Its translation and usage can be roughly translated as follows:

A literal translation would be “pure life,” but we heard it used to mean anything from “this is great” to “you’re welcome” to “cheers.” The Costa Ricans we met were very proud of their laid-back, hospitable culture and fully committed to embodying Pura Vida.

Grandma and Grandpa oohing and aahing

On the way back to the hotel on slothie day, our guide was telling us about different swimming holes/hot springs that are open to the public, and how you can park for free on the side of the road there. But there are certain charlatans that come around and act official and take money from unsuspecting tourists, telling them that there’s a parking fee—so we should be advised that it’s free to park and we don’t really have to pay it. He shook his head at the shamefulness of this practice and said soberly, “That’s not Pura Vida.”

Apparently my body didn’t get the message that it has nothing to freak out about. Calm down, body. Pura Vida, man.

I’d prefer not wondering what’s wrong with me. But Proverbs 4:7 says,

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,

    and whatever you get, get insight.

In other words, if I could have one desperate wish, I should wish for wisdom—not a pain-free life. 

That’s the real Pura Vida.

What is our hope in life and death?

Christ alone, Christ alone.

What is our only confidence?

That our souls to Him belong.

Matt Boswell, Matt Papa, Keith Getty, Jordan Kauflin, & Matthew Sherman Merker, “Christ Our Hope in Life and Death”

Buck pretty well embodies Pura Vida