So what IS going on with Mira?

Well, we don't really know.

When we brought her into the ER Wednesday night, it was because her oxygen saturations were lower than we were comfortable with after a day of slimy secretions (with Mira's it's all about monitoring and taking care of her oral secretions. Coughing is her big business!) Usually we can bring her sats up with an extra neb, or a change of position, but they just weren't coming up.

As you know, they did an x-ray, drew some blood, and sent her home.

That next morning, her sats were even lower, and she was at one point floppy in the legs, which is absolutely NOT Mira. Her muscle tone is so high almost all of the time, and we'd never seen this. She wasn't blue or anything, but something was just not right.

So back we went, and that was when they saw the rapidly dropping blood pressure (which could be a sign of septic shock), and they rather quickly admitted her, and the doctors at Gillette said the x-ray from the night before, although it didn't look horrible, was definitely "cloudy" so they started her on antibiotics to treat for a mild pneumonia and kept waiting for the blood culture to come back.

By Friday, we had results on the culture, but the doctors working with her aren't quite sure how to interpret the results. There WAS bacterial growth in the blood culture, but of a type of bacteria that suggests a contaminated sample, which aligns with the fact that they had to do multiple pokes before getting a good one, which increases your chances of contamination. She's also not really showing any signs of a broadly systemic infection, but there was talk today of switching her antibiotic to more closely align with the susceptibilities of the culture, just in case.

She's been mostly calm and restful (with a few hiccups along the way that I won't detail) but when they tried this morning to take her off the bi-pap machine, her sats went right back down to the mid-80s.

So what's going on???

When she first went in Thursday, she was 90% of the time breathing ahead of the bi-pap (meaning - and here I am cringing a bit as I wonder if Adam or other people more skilled in the medical field are reading this laughing at my ineptitude! - that she was only needing a little bit of prompting to keep a good steady breathing rate going). Today, the bi-pap machine reports that the numbers have flip-flopped, and she's only initiating 10% of the time, and dependent on the machine for the rest.

We don't really have any idea what this means, or what's going on. I was just skimming back at old posts, though, and came across this one: A picture is worth a thousand words. It truly is amazing to me that this girl is alive, and even more so that we have been able to get inside a tiny bit and learn some of the things she likes, and are able to get to be her family for however long God gives us.

Odds and ends

1) We love having some extra help around here! Not only does Rose give Krassi and Reuben the chance to do some leisure things that I just can't (because, really, it's not just moms of many small children who can't spend long chunks of time outside in the late afternoons - with my more typical children, I can pop in and out of the house as needed to float between playing with them and keeping supper moving forward; I can't do that with Reuben or Krassi. Reuben especially, you just don't know where he's going to end up, so the safest thing is just to keep him inside.) But Rose is also a magnet for the little girls, so today isn't the only time I look out the window and see something like this:

Rinnah is just barely visible on the left, and Gloria just out of the photo on the right.

Reuben and Krassimir got to spend the entire time between when they got off their respective buses and had to come in for supper outside yesterday! With a combination of chalk, the sprinkler, and a water-logged shower base pan box, it was a delightful, messy, wet afternoon for everyone.

2) The bathtub showed up while they were out there. Our driveway is beginning to look like a bathroom!! (Though we moved the tub into the house after Daddy got home.)

Yep. That's a bathtub in there!

With the materials for the bathroom being funded by the four kids' grants, we are having to scramble a little bit to purchase enough of the supplies in time to meet the grants' expiration dates - Mira's was 4/30, and Bobbi's is coming up this week on 5/31. The next ones don't expire until September and January, so we'll be able to pick things up more on an as-needed basis after we get through this week! Even with the bathtub, we weren't quite going to use up all of Bobbi's allotment, so were glad to hear from our excavator that he's planning on coming out to dig for the foundation this Wednesday afternoon! That makes for an invoice dated before the end of the month, and it will certainly be enough to use up what's left in Bobbi's grant. ;)

3) Mira, after a very agitated day yesterday, has been much calmer today. I'm not going to go into all of the medical details (partly because they're not all that exciting), but she's still hanging out down there at Gillette, and the hope is to send her home sooner rather than later, but with a bi-pap machine and oxygen so we have the option to use them ourselves rather than have her need to be hospitalized every time she needs a bit of help. I got a chance to go visit her this morning, along with three helpers.

Gloria holding Mira's hand

Staying busy with one of the many toys available in the playroom.

Daddy knows

Mira's daddy knows what she likes.

Late this afternoon as he was getting ready to head home to help me with supper and bedtime, he told Mira's nurse that she likes the light on during the night. (Yes, she is blind, but apparently has some sensitivity to bright lights, and is much happier at night if it's not dark.) Such a simple thing, but how neat for that girl that she's got a daddy (and mommy and brothers and sisters) who knows some of her preferences, and will make sure they are communicated to those who care for her in our absence.

Matt's also pretty good at the medical side of things for Mira, too, after being her main person over her last few hospital stays. Today, when they decided to start using the bi-pap machine, the respiratory tech, who looked younger and probably newer to the job, was wondering out loud to Matt and the doctor where she was going to find a mask small enough to fit Mira well. Matt was able to tell her - go look in the sleep study lab - that's where they keep the less typical sizes. Sure enough - that's where she was able to go find one!

There's so much we don't know about our little girl, but also so much we have learned, and each time she hits one of this rough spots, we learn a little more and feel a little better equipped to keep her comfortable. We know we're not going keep her alive forever, but our hope is that she will live the rest of her life surrounded by people who love her, and know to the best of our ability what she likes and what she doesn't like, and that when her time on this earth comes to an end, she will not die alone, but with someone (or more than one!) who loves her right there with her.

She's in a room (3:10pm)

Matt gave me a call to update. Apparently, when the Gillette doctors looked at Mira's x-ray from last night, they thought it was bad enough to start her on antibiotics for pneumonia. The verdict is still out on the results of the lab work from the blood draw last night. Matt will let me know when he hears more. At the moment she's not well, but not in critical condition. Having her on oxygen with bipap means she's getting more of the oxygen she needs to keep going.

Update from Matt (11:15am)

Just got this email, following a phone update a little bit ago:

Subject: Why we started iv fluid

Body: The reasons [readings? thank you, autocorrect] were just steadily dropping, which can be a sign of sepsis. Her last reading, not shown, was 86 over 46.

 

Looks like it's good that they're back in the hospital.

And...they're gone again

Mira is NOT doing better, so she and Daddy are back downtown again. We'll see what comes of this one. Poor girls sat's are sitting at 86-89 this morning instead of 87-91. Not a good direction. She was also slightly floppy this morning as we were changing her - also very not typical for her, since excess muscle tone is her challenge.

We're so grateful again for Rose's presence in our weekly routine. She was here at 8 this morning to help get the boys ready for their therapy run and school. Reuben ended up staying home today because he's JUST showing signs of maybe coming down with something, but that means we had all the available hands we needed to get things moving - Dad and I got Mira ready to go back to the hospital while Owen pushed Bobbi up the hill to the high school while Leah brought some of her work outside so Reuben could sit happily by his fountain without fear of him wandering away.

Once again, I'll let you know what I find out when I find it out!

In the meantime, despite the challenges it brings, it's kind of odd how times like these are some of the times I'm most glad that we decided to make Mira our daughter. It is just right for her to go through these things with her Daddy by her side instead of all alone.

And... they're back home

Not necessarily because she's doing great, but I think as a recognition that "great" is not what she does, the ER doc offered to just send her home.

From a low at 85 percent saturation (yikes!) in triage to a high of 100 percent getting back from x-ray, she's been all over. They prescribed her a steroid for the next few days, and we'll see how she does.

Our "normal"

It's kind of crazy how quickly one can adapt to a new standard of normal. As I was on hold tonight with the telehealth nurse at Gillette, my mind was going over not only what we were discussing tonight related to Mira, but also past calls of a similar nature.*

It's kind of crazy to be calmly telling the nurse that your daughter has been coughing pretty intensely over the last hour or so, and just recently is coughing up blood. It's possible the blood is because Daddy nicked something while suctioning, and equally possible that the blood is coming from deeper inside. "Her sat's are sitting between 88 and 91," I calmly report, "so we're guessing you probably want us to bring her in." A moment later, "No, we don't have oxygen at home." That's mostly because, as our favorite doctor over there has said about Mira, for her, if she needs oxygen, she needs to be somewhere where she can have medical care. And that's a good thing, I think, that their impression of her (and ours, too, at this point) is that usually she's okay without it.

This photo is from a week or two ago, and needs a little explanation. One of the big things she's gained over the time she's been with us is her ability to tolerate positions other than "one side" or "the other side." She can now spend time sitting in her chair at a variety of angles off vertical, can be put on her back (when propped) for short periods of time, and can also handle this prone position very well. Until a few weeks ago, we proned her with a combination of pillows, a head rest, and some tight supervision. Now, thanks to one of our therapists who had this cushion unused somewhere, she's able to be in a much more stable position when proned, with a face cushion designed specifically for comfort and breathability while laying face down. It's been marvelous for her, and she regularly gets her best oxygen saturation readings (usually 98-100) when she's on her prone cushion.

Tonight we weren't getting the same results, with 94 or 95 being the highest we were hitting, and plenty lower than that, as well as violent, almost retching, coughing and some more blood with her heart rate topping out in the 160s. That's high for her.

It's kind of crazy to decide that after being told to take your daughter to the Emergency department that you decide a bath is on the agenda first. It *was* her bath day, and after the slimy drool she had last night, she really needed it for the sake of her hair if nothing else. The day didn't end up resulting in a bath, so it had been pushed off until tomorrow morning...but we didn't want to take her out without her hair looking pretty. 😊 Sweet girl.

So, now she's bathed, her bag's packed, Daddy's evening pear is quartered and cored so he can eat on the way, and I got to walk out into our lusciously fragrant yard to the sound of crickets and the light of the moon to send them off before heading in to call it a night myself.

I'll try to update in the morning with results. I'm guessing at a minimum we're going to be doing another "observation" stay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Can't remember if I've shared this story here or not, but it still makes me laugh, so here it is. One of my favorite (in retrospect) 911 calls involves a bad run of seizures for Reuben about two years ago. Again, how quickly we humans can adjust to a new "normal" is almost frightening. It was nearly midnight, and after a particularly strong tonic/clonic seizure, Matt and I noticed a decent amount of blood coming out of Reuben's mouth. Now, first of all, heads bleed a lot, and blood mixed with saliva can look like a whole lot more blood than it really is, but at midnight when the light's not great, it's hard to tell what's okay and what's too much. We know that at times Reuben has ruptured some small blood vessels (like in his cheeks) during seizures, and weren't sure if what we were seeing was some sort of internal ruptures, a severed tongue...or just a prematurely removed first loose tooth. So, upon not finding a tooth immediately, I calmly placed the call, explaining that he'd been having some big seizures, and now was bleeding from his mouth and we weren't sure if it was just a tooth or something more. We live very close to where the ambulances wait for calls, so they were here very quickly. We carried Reuben and the towels we'd been using down to the kitchen to make the paramedics not have to tramp past as many sleeping children. As they walked in the door, we finally found...the tooth. It fell out of the towel and rolled onto the floor.

So, yes, these very experienced parents of (at the time) seven children really did call an ambulance when their son's first tooth fell out. Granted, it was a calm, reasoned call, with no panic, but still. What parent calls for an ambulance for a missing loose tooth?? Yep. That's us.

Krassi's moment in the sun

Even though we don't have nearly the expectations physically for Krassimir that we do for Bogomila (which is why he never had occasion to visit the gait lab), it still brings a big smile to my face to see this photo in my inbox this afternoon! His teacher sent me a copy of this photo that the amazing para from his classroom emailed to the principa with the subject "Live life!" He's got a great team of people working with him at the middle school, and has both been really enjoying his time there, and really flourishing in many ways as well.

Look at how tall and strong he is! (And oops - usually he's got his shoes on - this must have been a quick-to-the-bus morning because he's got his socks and braces...but no shoes!)

And just look at the life that he's living. Nine years of this:

- a little boy who hadn't seen the outside world until he was eight years old and he got a "Baba" who took him outside on the two mornings a week she was with him. A little boy who was terrified of the sights and sounds and sensations of the outside world who is now busy spending the rest of his life just living life.

What a better day than Mother's Day to get this sweet reminder of how good it is to be his mom!

The gait lab

Today is May 10th, as I begin writing this post, a good week and a half after the gait analysis actually happened. We'll see how many more days it will take me to get it completed and posted. Mostly, the pictures are pretty cool, so I'll try to tell it mostly through images!

The room is pretty impressive. Bobbi commented to me that they didn't have anything like this in Bulgaria. I pointed out to her that they don't have things like this just anywhere in the US, either! There's a reason people come here from all over the country...and the world! And here we are, twenty minutes from home.

After capturing some video and still shots of just Bobbi (some with her shoes and brace and some without), she was back in the small room where the physical therapist made all sorts of measurements - both static and range of motion.

And then the fun began. Starting with her feet, the PT and the tech assistant began taping small plastic balls covered with reflective tape at very precise points on her body.

"Use the flash!" the tech encouraged me, and am I glad I did - look how cool that photo looks! Those little balls are highly reflective.

Next came monitors to measure muscle activity.

Each of the button pairs you saw in the photo above are then attached to little wi-fi transmitter boxes.

And then, more reflective balls - some larger, some smaller.

Back out into the room. I can tell you, walking barefoot is insanely hard for this girl! But she was in such a good mood - much more optimistic than she often is, and she pushed herself beyond what even I thought she was able to do! Those blue stripes on the floor are guides for where the person needs to walk. She's allowed to take breaks after each complete lap, but it's still a lot of walking.

More measuring, this time with her supported by a harness from the ceiling so they could move her legs through different motions. I don't have any photos of it actually happening, because I got to help support and hold the limbs that weren't moving at any given time.

Here's a video of one of Bobbi's last laps. The perimeter of the room is studded with cameras measuring from every angle. There are sensors in the floor to pick up the amount of weight she is bearing at any given point. We were able to see the computer rendering of her gait patterns right after she finished each lap! It's pretty amazing to "see" her body walking on that computer screen. Not only were there data points from the balls on her feet and legs, but also her hips and the front and back of her neck - all the major movement points are there.

After removing all of the stickies (definitely her least favorite part), back ON went the brace and shoes, and after a ten-minute base-line for oxygen consumption (during which she wasn't supposed to move, or even talk!) she was then to walk to exhaustion or six minutes - whichever came first - around and around the hallway that rings the lab itself. This lets them assess how much more energy she burns to walk as compared to someone with a "typical" gait pattern. I believe she'll do another round in the gait analysis lab in a year or so to get some comparative data.

At the moment, however, we're excitedly awaiting our June 1st appointment with the surgeon to see what his plan is after all of the information they gathered during the analysis. The goal is to get as many of the necessary surgical procedures that will benefit her done during one single event. Should be quite an interesting meeting.

There. Would you look at that! I got the whole thing done tonight! I'll just skim through for typos and get this up while Matt finishes getting Mira tucked in and settled into her cozy, bright little room for the night, and then it's our turn to head to bed!

Quick Mira update

I am so sorry! I just realized this morning that I forgot to update on Mira. After being given a room "on observation" at Gillette when Daddy took her in to the clinic on Wednesday, her status was changed to "admitted" on Friday morning. There wasn't really anything critically wrong they were chasing, just a vague not-quite-right. During the nights they were giving her a little bit of blow-by oxygen, and upper her respiratory cares to her "yellow" zone (which we had started at home before she went in.)

By Saturday morning they were ready to discharge her, calling half an hour before the girls and Owen and I were heading out to the Festival of Nations...in the van. Daddy, of course, needs the van to get Mira as he can't fit Reuben, Krassi, and Gloria (the kids who were not coming with me) - oh! And Krassi's wheelchair and then Mira and her wheelchair - into our other car (a Jetta.)

So...after some brain-scrambling, we decided to ALL get into the van and Daddy dropped us off at the Festival (yay! Don't have to pay to park or try to park the van downtown!) and while we (with the addition of Gloria to reduce Dad's entourage at the hospital) enjoyed ourselves...

Bobbi and the Bulgarian children's dance group posing before lining up to perform.

Bobbi got to help work at the Bulgarian cultural exhibit again this year.

Eating! Gyros...

...arepa, and all sorts of other tasty things!

...Dad went with Krassi and Reuben downtown to pick up Mira, bring her home, help Grandma get lunch, and then had a few hours in the afternoon to work outside (they got Reuben's fountain up and going for the summer!)...

...before piling Reuben, Krassi and Mira into the van to drive back downtown to pick us all up.

Anyway - she's home. Not doing fantastic, but hanging in there just fine - nothing at this point that requires medical care - it's just the way she runs, and we're glad to have our girly back here with us.

Do you have any help?

We often get asked by people who know at least a little bit about our family if we have any help. For a very long time, my answer has been, "No, but Matt works from home, so between the two of us, we have a lot more flexibility than other families might and we're able to make it work."

However, as of two weeks ago, we can now answer "Yes, we do!"

For fifteen hours a week, we have a young woman coming over to spend time with Krassimir and Reuben. She's here in the morning twice a week to take Reuben and Krassimir to their appointments.at the private therapy center, freeing me to focus more on the home schooling around here, and Matt to work uninterrupted on his "real" work. Then she comes in the afternoon three times in order to get the boys off their buses and give them some one-on-one time for activities. Sometimes she and Reuben take his bike out (and he comes home wet after throwing rocks in the retention pond near the high school!) and that lucky Krassi has gotten a few chances to get out in his swing, and play on the slide.

Needless to say, especially this year as I'm carrying Baby, the physical work it takes to get the boys out is a little more challenging than it is at some times, and we're so very grateful that we've got her working for us!

It's incredible how much breathing room fifteen extra man-hours a week can provide!

Great hair

That little Krassi-man is really rather vain. 😉 You even so much as mention his hair, and he's immediately all smiles and begins running his hand through it.

But, you know, looking that good doesn't come without a little effort! So proud of him I was the other day when he reached out and grabbed one of the girl's hair brushes that was laying on the floor, and brought it to his head. I was even more impressed (and told him so!) when he realized after touching it to his head that he'd grabbed it backwards, so set it down so he could flip it so the front of the brush with the bristles was on his head instead of just the flat back.

I think he's got good reason to be proud of himself!

a heart of gold

The other Wednesday [which, by the way, is now roughly a month ago!] at church for supper before the evening programs (which some of our kids attend, but Matt and I and the others usually eat and then leave to put the first crew to bed before going back to pick up the ones who stay), one of the older women in the church came over, put an arm around both of us as we were feeding the kids and sweetly gushed, "You have a heart of gold."

Mira, with her hair braided all pretty, sitting up in her chair for a while at our annual weekend-long Glewwe family reunion at the end of April. (As are all of the photos in this post.)

I always bristle at comments like this, because most of the time they come from people who don't really know me - they just know enough to know that we have an...interesting...family. 😏 What do they know about the state of my heart? I had a similar reaction a few weeks ago when, unbeknownst to us ahead of time, our pastor used us as one of a handful of examples from the congregation of how following Jesus means more than just mental consent, but actually putting your feet one in front of the other on the same road that Jesus is walking on. Yes, our feet have actually walked down the jet-way onto those airplanes and landed on Bulgarian soil where our own two feet (with some driving in between!) have taken us into some pretty dismal places, and how I wish there were more people ready to walk that same path! But what I am so very aware of is that it's not the big decisions (like adopting a child...or three...with special needs) that makes one a follower of Jesus, but more importantly, it's the boring, mundane, day-in and day-out living of that life, the knowing of that Savior, that makes the difference. It's not nearly as exciting as the international travel and the emotions of meeting a child and holding him or her for the first time, but it's where the decisions that really matter and really show where our loyalty lies come to fruition.

Krassimir playing outside the cabin with a second-cousin. We had such amazing weather for the end of April!

Circling back briefly to the woman I mentioned above, her intentions are very good, and she has taken a special interest in checking in with me every time she sees me, and I know that the motivation behind her comment was not one to build us up artificially, but one of encouragement to keep on in the work. But at the same time, it reveals a way of thinking that is backward looking and not forward looking.

Evania and I indulged Reuben in one of his favorite pastimes - throwing or dropping rocks into the river.

Maybe there's a reason this post is now nearly a month old. Just tonight in our Bible study with our (small) small group that meets weekly at our house, we got to what is probably one of the sections that has had the greatest long-term impact on me...to the point that when a younger Reuben accidentally ripped that one page holding Philippians 3 out of my previous Bible I knew I needed to get a new one very soon! We were toward the middle of the chapter this week.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

I have always found this to be an incredibly powerful way of living out the everyday aspects of life; I can't change the past, but I can, in this moment, fix my eyes on where I am going - what Christ has called me to and done in me (being made perfect!) - without any mistakes from beforehand pulling me down with guilt or regret. I can mess up and still get up and press on toward the goal.

Gloria and I out on the cabin porch with Bobbi.

But this week as we read through during our study, Matt pointed out that the "what lies behind" that Paul talks about earlier in the chapter is actually not all the times he has fallen short, but is rather his list of all of the human accomplishments that someone might be tempted to rest on and rely in. He writes:

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. (Philippians 3:4b-7)

 Have we sacrificed greatly to adopt these three precious children? Yes. Does the care of these and our other children consume most of our waking (and non-waking!) hours? Yes. Does that matter? At the moment, no. The only way to see the state of my heart at this moment is to look at my actions, my thoughts, my motivations, right now.   

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ...(3:8, and it's hard to not put the whole chapter in, so you'll have to just go read it yourself all the way through.)

As to the comment about having a heart of gold? Well, later that same Wednesday night, I received some words of wisdom from my husband (who, I must say, I appreciate more and more the longer I know him.) "Well, [gold] is softer than stone, but still not quite the same as a heart of flesh!" What a great way to think about it. Gold is flashy, shiny, it looks pretty and catches your attention, kind of like flying across the ocean to adopt children that are very visibly challenging. Flesh is rather mundane, and sometimes just plain old gross (kind of like the steady stream of diapers that Matt and I are changing every day!). It's ordinary...but it is alive. It is soft, it feels, loves, hurts, breathes. And it is the heart that God has promised to give us when he takes out our hearts of stone and makes us alive!!  

And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. (Ezekiel 11:19-20)

So glad that this is the man God has chosen for me to get to live this life with.

Loosely

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)

We knew today was going to be a busy run-around day. Mira had her g-j replaced this morning. (While we can do g-tube replacements at home, a g-j replacement is an outpatient surgery event - still quick and easy, but with equipment, like ultrasound, that we don't just have around the house!) Bobbi has pool therapy in the afternoon, and on top of our usual Wednesday afternoon library run on the way to church for supper, and then activities for some of the kids (while Matt and I run the smaller/younger/other ones home for bed before running back to pick up the ones who stayed), Leah and Rinnah (and their friend) had one last extra practice for their Bulgarian dancing before the Festival of Nations this Saturday. In Brooklyn Center...which is a good 40 minute drive from our house!

Things were complicated a little further by the fact that after a lower than typical body temp on Monday, and a just slightly higher than normal one last night, Mira has also been more prolific than usual on her oral secretions. More secretions, slimier secretions...just off. As Matt left to take her to her morning g-j appointment (a hospital appointment, so NOT directly at Gillette, but in the same building), he had me on the phone checking to see if someone at Gillette could just take a look at her. As I was describing her symptoms over the phone, I could tell the nurse was kind of waiting for me to get to the point beyond just, "something just seems a little bit off." The first appointment they had was at 2, which would have made for a long wait for Matt, so he and Mira came home so I could leave with Bobbi. 

By the time we got back from the pool, Mira's complex care doctor had called saying she really did want her seen, and Matt was able to scoot out to a 4pm appointment. 

Having a larger family, and particularly a larger family with some out-of-the-ordinary factors involved has really taught us to make ALL of our plans loosely. We sometimes joke (well, only half-joke) that we'll know what the plan is when it happens. Much mental energy is spent juggling the variables and the options available to make it work.

We've been so grateful for the young woman who started working for Reuben and Krassimir last week. Only a week and a half into the job (and only 15 hours a week!) and she's already really lightened the load. It was great to have her here this afternoon, and great to know she'll be here to do the morning therapy run with the boys tomorrow.

Mira isn't sick enough to be fully admitted, but they do want to keep her overnight (or two) "on observation" just to be able to keep a closer eye on how she's doing. We learned this about twenty minutes before it was time to leave to take the girls to their practice (library and supper at church had already been scrapped.) However, our little Jetta just can't handle all of the small people I still had with me! (Wait a minute...Matt's got that trailer up and running...oh. Wait. I suppose that's not really an option! 😛) 

As someone who's spent most of her life being able to be self-sufficient, it's not an easy thing to be the one who has to ask for help. I got on the phone, and after a few phone calls, ended up with Chad (who those of you who have been reading since the beginning will recognize as the guy who is second only to Matt for man-hours invested in the addition we put on before Grandma moved in and Krassimir moved home!) offering to leave his wife and kids at church to run my girls up to their practice, leaving me with the task of feeding supper to the kids still here (is it okay that the main meal was tater tots??) while finding out a way to get the girls home. Again, our wonderful neighbor offered to come and sit here (in her pajamas) while I drove out to get the girls, and their teacher agreed to stay a few extra minutes while I got there.

Driving home, we go right past Gillette. Leah snapped a photo for me. Hi, Tsvetomira!!