This baby

 

This baby is my son

My first-born child

He came into my life

When I was so very new

To being a mother

His dad and I were full of joy

Then two weeks old

A routine check-up turned into

Too many doctors listening

With stethoscopes

For too long

Sent off immediately

Hospital, heart center

Cardiologist, echo-cardiogram

Congenital heart defect

Open heart surgery – today, soon

A blur of information

Explanations we can’t comprehend

Total anomalous pulmonary venous connection

Sign this, consent to that

Baptism before surgery

For our first baby

Tears.  Tears.  Tears.

Hours and hours of waiting

Anxiously with family

Updates from the nurse

A surgeon who operates

On such a tiny heart

A hero who fixes this baby’s

Fragile little heart

Sitting in a room

With a breast pump

Pumping and whirring

Saving my milk for him

Days and days of recovery

Of tubes and beeping and fear

From PICU to NICU

We must learn a different way

To be new parents

CPR lessons, tiny doses

Of heart medications

Caring for all those scars

 

And yet, so soon…this baby

Grew fast and big and strong

No complications – from baby

To toddler to preschooler to boy

Obsessed with fire trucks

And constructions vehicles

Busy and active and

Exasperating at times

He went to the hospital other times

There were stitches

Multiple times

Naughty and nice.  Silly and kind.

A big brother

A boyhood, a normal boyhood

For this baby

Now this baby is 16 years old

You can see the scar on his chest

Sometimes people ask

He is tall and lean and muscular 

He likes to play basketball, soccer,

Football, lift weights

Play video games

Study hard

He drives (when we let him)

He is still silly and kind

A normal young person,

He sometimes makes good choices,

Or sometimes gets in trouble

And he is a miracle to us

He continues to

Surprise and bless us

Everyday

 

I find this hard to write about.  Still.  I don’t know how to express it exactly.  I have written about it in narrative form, in a more linear way.  But when I sat down to write it recently, it came out like this.  I am eternally grateful to all the medical staff that guided and assisted us through our son’s surgery and recovery.    

Although this experience was very traumatic at the time, I have always been mindful of how temporary it was.  Our son’s heart defect was completely repaired, and he has no long term effects or limitations.  We do not know what it is like to parent a child with long-term health challenges.

Raspberry time

In Confessions of a Lazy Gardener, I mentioned the abundance of raspberry bushes gone wild in our yard.  All of the raspberries are ripening, and it's time to pick them.  It's hard to keep up with the picking. although not with the eating.  In honor of the lovely raspberry and in the interest of getting to bed early tonight, here are two quickly composed poems.  You will perhaps sense that I am a bit overwhelmed with the picking and a bit too tired to worry about the quality of my poems.

*****

Raspberry haiku
Lots of raspberries
Ripe, juicy and delicious
Picking and eating

Raspberry limerick
Many raspberries ready to pick
How to get them all?  That is the trick.
    Morning, night or noon
    Still more to pick soon
Yet to eat them is yummy, not ick.

  

Fostering feline friends

Our first group of foster cats

Two of the four kittens in our first foster group

A few years ago, a co-worker told me about how she fostered cats and kittens for the Wisconsin Humane Society.  I had never heard about fostering animals before, so I did a little research.  The WHS uses volunteers to foster dogs, cats and small animals.  Animals need to be fostered for various reasons.  Usually animals go into foster care because of growth, behavior or medical reasons.

We didn't have any family pets at the time.  I thought that fostering would be a good way to learn about caring for animals and an interesting family project.  We had been pet-sitting for friends' pets (dogs, cats, guinea pigs, rats).  We enjoyed that because it gave us the opportunity to spend time with a variety of animals.  All three of my kids were being home-schooled at the time, and so fostering would also be part of our education as both a learning experience and a service project.  I mentioned the idea to my kids.  There was no turning back after that!  I filled out the online application and attended the required Foster Orientation and Cat Behavior Seminar.  We got our first foster group at the beginning of 2012, as a New Year's present.  It was a group of four kitten siblings that were about three-months old.  They needed to be fostered for growth and because of an upper respiratory infection.  

We brought the two male and two female kitties home and set them up in an extra bedroom.  They were so much fun, and we got into our daily routine of feeding, medicine and playtime.  Lots of playtime!  The kids got to know the kitties' personalities and named them Sweetsie, Stinker, Swirl and Tiger.  Over the course of the few weeks we had them, we took them in for a couple of vet check-ups at the WHS.  Eventually the time came that the four kittens were healthy and ready to go out for adoption.  I will admit - it was very hard to say good-bye.  There were tears on our part.  But we knew that we had taken good care of the cats and helped them get better.  We looked for them to be posted on the WHS website and were excited to see that all four of them got adopted within a day of being posted.  It cheered us up to know that our first fosters were adopted so quickly and that we'd be called to foster again soon.   

Buddy Skojko and Angel

Angel with my daughter

And we were called within a few weeks to foster two more kittens.  These two just needed to be with us for a couple of weeks so that they could grow big enough to be neutered or spayed and then put up for adoption.  The kids named the sister Angel and the brother Buddy Skojko.  Again, we were sad to say goodbye.  Again, the kittens were adopted quickly.  However, my daughter started lobbying for adopting from a future foster group. That leads me to our next foster group.  This time a mama cat with her two babies.  These kitties were younger than any we'd had before - only about 20 days old.

Little Buddy Jay

Little Buttercup

 

Buddy Jay and Buttercup, as well as their mom Crystal, stayed with us for quite a while.  The babies were tiny and needed to stay with their mom and nurse and grow.  They also both had eye infections for which we had to administer medication regularly.  We grew really close to this little group, and we made the decision that we were definitely going to adopt Buddy Jay and Buttercup.  We considered adopting Crystal as well, but she started to not want to be with the kitties as they got older.  The WHS recommended that we just adopt the kittens.  So they found their forever home with us and have now been with us for two and half years.  

We didn't foster for several months after that, as we wanted to focus on our new pets.  We also had trips and other events that kept us away from home.  In addition, we had rearranged the bedrooms and no longer had an extra one that could be devoted just to kitties.  But in the beginning of 2013, we decided we were ready again.  Over the course of 2013, we fostered four individual cats.  Two were adult cats that we fostered for socialization.  Two were kittens that we fostered for growth.  We were able to figure out a way to keep them separate from our resident cats, which is a requirement for fostering.  After these four, we had another period of time when we couldn't foster for various reasons. 

Charlotte

Jughead (we did not name him!)

Charlie

Leo

Nala

At the beginning of this summer, we took in another adult cat.  She was a sweetheart who we named Nala.  I had mentioned to the WHS that my daughter was really hoping to foster a group of kittens again.  And they obliged!  The day after we returned Nala to go out for adoption, they called us about taking a mama cat and her five kittens.

Mama & five nursing kittens

Five kittens in a pile

When we picked them up, they were only twelve days old.  They are the youngest kittens we have fostered.  We've had them for a few weeks now, and it's been so fun to watch them grow.  From the first day when they barely wobbled out of the crate and spent all of their time either nursing or sleeping.  To the active kittens they are now - running and chasing and wrestling and eating.

Fostering cats and kittens has been a wonderful experience for our family.  Including our current group, we have fostered twenty cats.  We'll probably take a break after this boisterous group, but I'm sure we'll continue to foster when we can.  There is work involved, of course, depending on the age of the cats or kittens and whether or not they are on medication or need additional special care.  Lots of cats or kittens means lots of feeding and lots of litter-scooping.  And sometimes even wiping little kitty bottoms.  (The WHS provides all necessary food and medicine.)  Fostering certainly has been an educational experience.  We've learned a lot about kittens and cats and about the functioning of the WHS and the roles of the different people who work there.  Fostering has also been a good service project.  Taking care of animals and helping them get ready to be adopted by their forever home is a great feeling.  Fostering has been a lesson in compassion and care-giving.  And a lot of fun!     

*****

P.S.  If you're interested in fostering animals for the Wisconsin Humane Society, you can find more information here. 

P.P.S  My daughter insisted that I include photos of all the cats we have fostered.  (I could not find a photo of Crystal, but I have the rest.)  I haven't taken time to learn about layout in Blogger, so pardon the inelegant arrangement of the photos in this post.

Our house doesn't always look like this

A plaque almost exactly like the one pictured above hung for many years in the basement of my childhood home.  My younger sister and I even memorized the saying and enjoyed reciting it repeatedly.  We grew up in a family with seven children.  With nine people living in a modest-sized house, things were always a bit busy and chaotic.  At the same time my parents were generous hosts, and always welcomed friends and relatives into our home.  People were always welcomed to come, relax and converse just as the plaque says.

I was thinking about this plaque lately and wishing I had one hanging inside the front door.  We've had a steady stream of visitors lately, many to come and see our five foster kittens and their mama.  As our friends enter the house, I always seem to mention something about "well, the house is sort of a mess."  Sometimes that's true.  And sometimes it's not, but I feel obligated to mutter something about its less than perfect state.  I don't think I actually worry about what people are going to think, but I seem to find safety in making an excuse for the current state of my house.  The truth is that I do clean my house on a somewhat regular schedule.  I do major cleanings when we are going to host book club or a meeting or a family event.  Despite my inclination to minimalism, we have a fair bit of stuff.  As people enter our house, one of the first rooms they see is our project room.  Since I have been homeschooling two or three of my children for the past seven years, our project room gets a lot of use and has a lot going on.  As it should be.  Just to be clear - I never, ever think that any of my friends are judging the state of my house.  I know that they aren't.  It's just my perfectionism that makes me say something.

My excuses about my house not being in tip-top shape remind me of a blog post that I read a few months ago.  I had followed a link from Facebook to read it.  The gist of the post was the author saying that if people expected her to spend hours cleaning her house before they visited, then she really didn't want to be friends with those people.  And she also didn't want her friends to feel they needed to do a major cleaning before she came over either.  I read it and thought it was nice.  The main point, to me, was let's cut each other some slack and not judge each other if we don't keep our homes in tip-top shape.  What was interesting was that people got all crazy in the comments.  It actually devolved into name-calling.  Yes, a lot of people agreed with the author and liked how she expressed the idea.  But a bunch of other people read into it - that she was saying it was okay to be a slob, or that it was okay to let your children be slobs and not teach them how to take care of their things and help with household tasks.  Which was not what the author said at all.  Then there were those who criticized the post because the author paired the post with a photograph of a living room that was not really messy at all.  I admit the thought crossed my mind - the photo looked more like a page out of a Pottery Barn catalog than like a messy room.  The furniture looked new and clean, the hardwood floors looked new or newly-refinished, the painted walls and woodwork looked perfect, and there were beautiful window treatments on the clean windows.  Contrast this with furniture that is well-worn or scattered with pet hair, hardwood floors that are old and worn or scratched, walls and woodwork in need of a fresh coat of paint, and mini-blinds (that don't work properly) on finger-printed windows.  What was "messy" about the room in the photo?  As I recall - a few scattered books, toys and games and maybe a blanket or a backpack on the floor.

It's all relative, though.  Some of us live in newer homes, others in older homes.  Some in big houses, others in small ones.  Some families spend a lot of time in their homes, other less so.  Some families have larger incomes, others have smaller.  Some people choose to spend resources on home decor, others choose to travel or use their resources elsewhere.  Someone's messy house might be another family's dream.  Thus one comment - "holy first world problems."  But of course the author of the blog post wasn't trying to address all those issues.  You'd need to write a whole book to cover that anyway.  What she was talking about was relationships and supporting each other rather than judging each other.

Which is why I need to drop my little "excuse this mess" bit when friends come over.  And instead remember the humor, playfulness and warm welcome expressed in the plaque:

Come in, sit down, relax, converse.  Our house doesn't always look like this.  Sometimes it's even worse.     

The arm fart story

Potty talk is something that never seems to go out of style in our house.  I doubt it ever will, although I have banned it (mostly) from the dinner table.  There are limits.  On the other hand, my husband and I have been known to participate ourselves.  It’s a family affair, and - if you can’t beat them, join them.  We’re definitely not immune to a bit of juvenile humor.  Children are fascinated with “potty talk” – that catchall term encompassing functions related to digestion or those that occur around the toilet.  In our own family, the fascination comes and goes.  But from toddlerhood through the teen years, it always surfaces to some extent.   Arm farts, on the other hand, are a thing of a past.  How I had needlessly worried it would not be so! 

Several years so, when our boys were seven and nine, their favorite activity was using the combination of one armpit and the opposite hand to make flatulence-like noises.  If your children are not too sheltered, then you already know that this is commonly referred to as an “arm fart.”  Not only did we hear a lot of arm farts back in those days, we talked about them a lot too.  Even our then four year-old daughter talked extensively about “awm fawts.”  Naturally, she took up the practice herself.

How did my children become obsessed with arm farts?  Did they pick it up on the playground or in the neighborhood?  Or did they just know - by some childhood instinct - to do this?  I suspect it’s the latter.  Noise-making in general, arm farts in particular, are not new diversions to the world of children.  What I do know, is that my own two boys became so immersed in the world of arm farts, that they started doing it completely subconsciously and almost constantly.  They could control themselves when absolutely necessary, for example - at church and at Grandma’s house.  Outside of those boundaries, they were flatulence noise-making machines.  This quickly became extremely annoying for me and for my husband.  We felt that for the rest of our lives, there would be a background noise of fart sounds.  Would this be our family’s soundtrack?

The pinnacle of our “arm fart” phase came when, one sunny morning, the children woke up and were very excited to tell me something.  My older son proudly announced that his younger brother could “arm fart” the Darth Vader theme music from Star Wars.  And could he ever!  There was my tender seven year-old.  The previous night must have been warm, because I can picture him on the couch wearing just his pajama shorts.  His blond hair was disheveled from the night, and his eyes were still not fully awake.  He looked so innocent and so sweet.  And then, he did it.  Quite perfectly.  He performed Darth Vader’s theme music with nothing more than his left hand and his right arm pit.  It was an impressive and entertaining performance.  I clapped and laughed.  Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do, if I really wanted my kids to stop making fart noises.  But somewhere in my mind – although it seemed so unlikely in the midst of it all – somewhere I knew that my children wouldn’t be filling their days with arm farts forever.

All three of my children had given up their pacifiers, had become potty-trained and left behind their diapers, and had achieved other milestones that at the time seemed so unlikely.  So I decided that, yes, arm farts too would pass.  And now I can’t really remember when it did stop.  It went on for a few more months after that, at least.  I don’t miss it, but I can see – in retrospect – that it was a phase that lasted several months at most.  Also, I know that kids do things that are a lot more annoying than arm farts.  Especially now that my kids are in or entering the teen years.  On any given day, I’d choose to be serenaded by a repertoire of arm fart songs rather than listen to backtalk or tolerate excessive moodiness.  Clearly, the arm fart songs would be much funnier and infinitely more entertaining.  Yet, regardless of the unwanted behavior, I do try to remember…  This too shall pass.   

Butterfly farmers

My sons release a recently-emerged Monarch.

Butterflies have always fascinated me.  They are beautiful and graceful.  And then there is the wonder of their life cycle and metamorphosis.  When my kids were little, I read an education-themed blog that shared information about raising butterflies.  I knew I wanted to do that!  Probably more than my kids.  In the beginning, I bought milkweed plants (either the swamp or tropical variety) from a local nursery.  In later years, as I mentioned in my gardening post, I dug out some milkweed from a crack in the cement on the playground near our house.  The milkweed that grows wild in our area is prairie milkweed, as far as I can tell.  At some point, we had one of those cylindrical pop-up mesh butterfly habitats.  We also have used a variety of other homes for our growing caterpillars - mostly recycled plastic containers and glass jars.  When my kids attended a local Montessori school, I brought a few caterpillars into to one of my son's classrooms.  They lived and grew there in the butterfly habitat.  We delivered fresh milkweed as needed, and the kids watched the caterpillars grow and enter their chrysalis stage.  When the butterflies emerged, we released them on the playground.  My son's teacher called me a "butterfly farmer," which I thought sounded great.  Over the years, my kids and I have continued to act as butterfly farmers.   

A recently released Monarch lands on a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia).

One summer, we also discovered caterpillars living on the ubiquitous dill in our yard.  Through a little research, we found out that these were the caterpillars of Black Swallowtail butterflies.  We have raised quite a few of those as well.

A Black Swallowtail butterfly that we raised.

As most people know, Monarch butterfly populations have been decreasing because of habitat loss.  Because of increased awareness about this, many people are planting milkweed in their gardens and raising Monarchs.  In recent weeks, I have seen Facebook posts from several friends and neighbors who are raising Monarchs.  Some of them have been doing so for many years.  I would encourage anyone, especially families with children, to raise Monarchs.  It's such a great experience to witness the life cycle of these beautiful creatures and to know that you are helping them.  Monarch Watch is a great website to find out lots of information about Monarchs and how to help efforts at conservation.

 

Citizen science programs that monitor Monarchs, like the nationwide Journey North program and the local monitoring efforts of the Urban Ecology Center, also aid in Monarch conservation.

There are tons of great books about butterflies and specifically Monarch butterflies.  Too many to mention here, but I will mention one.  A couple of years ago I was teaching a poetry unit to our homeschool co-op, and I came across a unique and not very well known children's book about Monarch butterflies.  The book is The Monarch's Progress: Poems with Wings by Avis Harley.

 

This beautifully-illustrated book is full of poems about Monarch butterflies.  The poems take a variety of forms, such as haiku and sonnet.  I'll close with this acrostic poem from the book:

Worldly Wise by Avis Harley

Comma-size
And worldly wise,
The tiny caterpillar arrives
Eager to feed on leafy green -
Ravenous, greedy feasting machine!
Plumping up until it splits to shed
Its skin for one that fits -
Lively stripes grow bold in rows as
Larger and larger the larva grows.
And then - it ends this gorging bliss,
Retiring as a chrysalis.

The Poland Journal

Kasprowy Wierch (Kasprowy Peak) - Tatras National Park, Zakopane, Poland

Last week, I wrote a post about the day in Guatemala that started with a bus ride and ended with a colon resection.  Thinking about that made me think of other travel adventures, including a very crazy bus ride in the mountains of Poland.  Five years ago, we took our children on a trip to Poland to visit my husband's parents.  The kids were eleven, nine and six years old at the time.  I knew we'd take a lot of photos, and we did.  But I also wanted to document our trip in a more immediate and in-depth way.  I committed to writing in a journal every day of our trip.  At the end of the day, I was tired.  This wasn't a relaxing trip to the beach or lake cottage, but rather a meaningful visit to my husband's parents and my children's grandparents in their home country.  Traveling abroad with three young children, living out of two suitcases for two weeks in my in-laws' apartment - that was already going to be a bit of work.  Why not keep a journal, too!?

Five years later, we really enjoy looking at our photos and reading the journal.  The journal gives an account of our day-to-day travels and activities, but it also includes so many little details about the kids and their experience of the trip.  Stapled into the journal are bus and train tickets, brochures, postcards and other little bits and pieces that we collected.  The writing isn't particularly careful or eloquent.  The idea was just to get down some notes about our days.  Some pages are just lists of what we did on a particular day.  But there are funny little quotes.  Upon boarding the airplane in Chicago: "Of course J. had to explore his environment by trying every button and checking out all of the items in the seat pocket."  I doubt I'd remember the various sleeping positions the children attempted on the plane, including one of the kids who sat on the floor and slept with his head on the seat.  Or that A. listened to Jim Weiss' "Good Night" on my iPod to help her fall asleep.  Or that she grabbed my hand for reassurance when we landed in Krakow.

On the plane to Krakow, two days before her sixth birthday.

We celebrated A.'s sixth birthday the day we arrived, and she was serenaded with both "Happy Birthday" and "Sto Lat."  In the journal, I wrote about our struggles with jet lag.  That it took a few days to adjust and that Anna read me a Henry and Mudge book as sat awake in bed.  I wrote about the little park nearby that we enjoyed visiting because it had a great playground with lots of fun things to do AND a lovely pond inhabited by a graceful white swan.  About how much our kids enjoyed taking the bus to the community pool.  How they had to wear swim caps, and that the lifeguard kept yelling at J. in Polish when he tried to take it off.  That my husband and sons looked out of place with their knee-length swim shorts, while most of the local men and boys wore Speedo-style briefs or short shorts.  It would be hard to forget our visit to the mountain village of Zakopane.  Such a beautiful place.  But I might not recall how excited the kids' were about the hotel bathroom's heated floor and towel rack.  Not to mention - the pool!  Traveling with young children gives you a different perspective of the environment you're visiting.  You still do the traditional tourist stuff, but you also know where to find the parks, playgrounds and pools.  Souvenirs are of special interest, too. 

When traveling with young children, you may spend some time at the hotel pool.

In Zakopane, I wrote:  "...J. and M. almost immediately started identifying various wooden souvenirs (mostly axes, swords, maces, etc. - see a theme?) that they wanted to buy."  In Zakopane, one of our children - who used to be a habitual wanderer - walked off without us noticing.  We could not see him anywhere!  He was fairly quickly located looking at some souvenir carts.  It was then forcefully explained that nine year olds do not wander off from their parents in an unknown place, particularly in a country where they do not speak the language!  Reading my journal, I also remember how much fun we had at a restaurant in the mountains.  There was live music, and A. and M. danced enthusiastically.   They loved the hotel pool that had a fish tank in the wall at one end, and they fought about sleeping arrangements when we had to fit five people in two beds.  Also, they learned that sometimes you have to pay for the toilets.  At a lodge on the mountains, I quote A. as saying:  "These are really nice bathrooms, but I don't get why you have to pay for them."  The memorable bus ride I mentioned at the beginning of this post was on our return trip from Zakopane to Krakow.  In the journal, I describe it as a "roller-coast-like, vomit-inducing bus ride" and mention "being packed like sardines on a small, stifling shuttle bus while holding a bag of puke for three hours."  We were traveling on a two-lane highway through mountainous or hilly terrain.  The driver was speeding and passing other cars in situations where there was no possibility that he could see around the curve.  The windows could not be opened, and I was holding a plastic bag of my child's puke and sitting behind the driver who reeked of cigarettes.  I was pretty desperate to get off the bus in the middle of nowhere, any farmer's field would do.  Thankfully the driver did stop once - to smoke, of course - and my husband quickly got off and disposed of the bags of vomit we'd been holding.  Without a doubt, that was the worst bus ride of my life.  We would never have boarded that bus if we knew! 

Besides Zakopane, we also made a trip to Krakow for a few days.  Our friend Celeste, who lived in Ireland at the time, joined us in there.  From Krakow, we took a trip to the salt mines of Wieliczka.  The tour guide said that if we didn't believe that statues were made of salt, that we could lick them.  I unwisely conveyed that joke to my children, who hadn't been paying attention.  One of our kids then proceeded to lick the walls repeatedly to make sure they were salt.  I tried to just not to think about the dirt.  He didn't get sick, thankfully.  The buying of souvenirs was also a very exciting event in Krakow.  There is the Sukiennice, a beautiful historic building which is now a souvenir market.  We also had some wonderful meals, took a horse and carriage ride around the town square and visited various historic sites, including Wawel castle.  The kids marveled at the street performers in Krakow at all times of day and night.  I wrote in the journal about how they danced in the street one night after dinner and wondered if they could make money as street performers themselves.

The journal also is full of random humorous moments captured in words.  About how I kept the kids busy in lines or on buses or trains by playing I-spy or reciting the names of all forty-four presidents.  (The president thing was a little project we had been working on in our homeschool at the time.)  About how they watched "Tom and Jerry" and "Scooby Doo" in Polish with as much attention and laughter as if it were in English.  At the end of our trip, the tone of my journal reflects our sadness at leaving my husband's parents and not knowing when we would get back to Poland again or see them here in the states.  There were also observations about packing us all back up into those two suitcases.  I wrote:  "There was the challenge of packing the long wooden sword and the bulky wooden mace.  But you can't find cheap wooden medieval weapons everywhere, so it's all worth it!"

When traveling with young children, you may also spend some time looking at souvenirs.

Back home, I finished up the journal by stapling in additional memorabilia and by writing a page of each family member's favorite places, foods, experiences and memories.  This trip was a treasure to us, and I'm so glad we have our photos and the journal to help us remember all those special moments and experiences.