Mittens-On

This is what I am calling a "mittens-on." As in, "Krassi, keep your mittens on."

My mind has been filled with all sorts of thoughts as I hurried to sew this together tonight. Something as simple as mittens has so many layers when it involves loving and raising a child like Krassi. As I put together this contraption that will make it impossible for him to take his mittens off, I think about the children who were with him for his nine years in the orphanage who were restrained - tied to their cribs, wrapped up so they couldn't move -and wonder what his reaction will be to this. Remember, he doesn't like having anything down below his elbows, so simply wearing a coat with the sleeves down is a challenge for our boy.

But this boy of ours is a Minnesota boy now. And it gets cold here. (Cold for us, lately, is highs in the single digits Farenheit, and lows lower than that. Last night when we came home from supper with Grandma it was -5 degrees F). You can't go without mittens in that kind of weather. Especially not if you're a small nine year old boy whose weight puts you in the 0%-ile for your age. (Wait a minute. How does that work? I thought by the very nature of percentiles that you couldn't be lower than 1% or higher than 99%! But this is what his medical report from one of his first visits home says...) Krassi has no reserves on his little nine year old, 31 pound 6 ounce body to keep his core warm in that kind of weather, much less his extremities. And being out in the cold without your mittens also doesn't work if you're a little boy whose hands, and especially the index finger on the right hand is so chapped because this one little finger is how you have spent nine years experiencing your world. Wipe, lick, wipe, lick, wipe, lick, until it cracks and bleeds.

This is not the post I was planning on writing tonight, but it's getting late, and now that the "mittens-on" is done, I've got to get to bed because I'm waking up early tomorrow (5am) to get Krassi to Gillette by 6am to prep for his marathon MRI. Starting at 7am he will have a one hour scan on his brain, then 45 minutes on his spine, and then another hour on his pelvis. Then there will be recovery time as he wakes up from the anesthesia. I'll be sitting in the waiting room for a looooong time.

Maybe I'll finally finish up his Christmas stocking. ;)