[a few minutes before supper tonight, as Daddy stepped out of the house for a moment to do something in the yard]
Gloria: "Where Daddy go? Go get Mira?"
Mom: "No."
Gloria (whining a bit): "Me love Mira! And Daddy love Mira. Mira sick?"
Yes, sweetie, Mira is sick again and in the hospital, but she's been doing better every day this week and hopefully will be back home again soon. I am so glad you are happier when she is at home. We are, too.
Matt got to spend the whole morning with Mira today before needing to get home so we had enough adult hands to wrangle afternoon appointments. She again was looking better still, but had vomited while trying to have a dirty diaper moments before Matt walked into the room. This happens occasionally. It's usually not a good thing a few days later. The nurse said she happened to be right at her bedside when it happened, so she thinks she was able to suction it all out. We'll know more in a few days.
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Almost ready for him to show up
I had a mother's necklace made after Evania was born, and wore it almost every day until Gloria came along and it wasn't complete anymore. After Bobbi and Mira came home I intended to try to add the correct birthstones onto my existing necklace, but it took me long enough to get around to it that before it happened, we learned about number ten showing up this summer, so I figured it was time to start fresh.
My official due date for this baby is July 14th, but I've never put much stock into due dates. I've run the whole range from Rinnah (tied for my biggest at 9 pounds) who came two days before her due date, to Evania (tied for my smallest at 7 pounds, 10 ounces) who arrived a full thirteen days past hers, with most of them coming on the later side. Regardless, I figured with a July 14th due date, if you count the 38-42 week window within which 90% of babies come on their own if left to their own devices, that I was safe ordering a new necklace with a July birthstone at the end. So, since January, I've been wearing this almost every day (with my wedding ring lately because it just doesn't go on and off my finger nicely anymore!) and if this BIG boy can make it until Sunday, I should be good to go. ;)
(Gloria happened to come on her actual due date, which I think I've heard only 4% of babies do. But she's always been that kind of baby - her first word was "yes", she's so far been my smiliest baby and by FAR my easiest 2-year-old. Just last week we had a friend of my parents' stay with us to help out, and I decided (among other things) that it was the week to potty train, and so we pulled out the underpants and the potty chair, and by the end of the week, I'd say we were 95% of the way there. This week has continued to be amazing (with one really funny story I may add to this post later if I get another moment), and I think we're well on our way to top out with four max in diapers at any given time!)
This is not only a celebration of no more diapers photo, but also a tiny bathroom peek. See the cords going out the window behind Gloria? That window will become the doorway into the new bathroom (it will get wider), and the bathroom Gloria's in will become a sink hallway. Right now, the window is also Matt' point of access when he needs to get into the inside of the bathroom to work on it. (Not that he's gotten any work done in the past week!) But mostly, we're so excited not only at how well Gloria's transitioned to underpants, but also that she's already decided she prefers the big toilet to the little training potty chair!
(Gloria happened to come on her actual due date, which I think I've heard only 4% of babies do. But she's always been that kind of baby - her first word was "yes", she's so far been my smiliest baby and by FAR my easiest 2-year-old. Just last week we had a friend of my parents' stay with us to help out, and I decided (among other things) that it was the week to potty train, and so we pulled out the underpants and the potty chair, and by the end of the week, I'd say we were 95% of the way there. This week has continued to be amazing (with one really funny story I may add to this post later if I get another moment), and I think we're well on our way to top out with four max in diapers at any given time!)
This is not only a celebration of no more diapers photo, but also a tiny bathroom peek. See the cords going out the window behind Gloria? That window will become the doorway into the new bathroom (it will get wider), and the bathroom Gloria's in will become a sink hallway. Right now, the window is also Matt' point of access when he needs to get into the inside of the bathroom to work on it. (Not that he's gotten any work done in the past week!) But mostly, we're so excited not only at how well Gloria's transitioned to underpants, but also that she's already decided she prefers the big toilet to the little training potty chair!
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Looking back
She's come so far.
Our church pulls together all of the Sunday School classes into one group for the summer - adults, youth, kids - and this summer we're going through a simple chatechism one question each week. This past Sunday part of our discussion time centered around what it means to be made in the image of God and the implications that has on the inherent value of human life.
Many of the examples that were shared do not appear to have any bearing on Tsvetomira (she is not particularly "creative", nor do we know if she is capable of thinking about thinking). So I go back to conversations that Matt and I have had over the years - that being made in God's image means that each one of us in a different way has inherant qualities that reflect a tiny piece of who God is, and that through knowing one another and looking for these qualities in one another, we are able to get a broader picture of who God is and what he is like. An image does not capture the whole, but as you look at more and more different images of the same thing, the layers begin to build and give you a more three-dimensional understanding of what you are seeing in each one of those images.
There's also something to be taken from a picture like this one, also from our first trip to visit Mira:
As she's hospitalized again, I am so grateful for living in a country that still has enough of its Christian origins that both the system (insurance) and the individuals (hospital staff) treat her with dignity. She has value and it's worth investing time and money to give her the best life possible.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
The bathroom is growing!
A tour in photos of how the work has been progressing...
May 30:
Matt got to hand dig the northeast corner because when the electric company marked the line, they showed it cutting right across where we were going to excavate. Hmmmm. That didn't jive with what was on our survey from a few years ago (only moderately reliable), and our memory of how the line was originally dug based on where the HUGE lilacs were, so we went down with a shovel, carefully, hoping that we wouldn't have to have electrical work done before we could excavate. The photo on the right below shows the line. There is j-u-s-t enough slack that we'll be able to ease the line around the corner of the foundation wall.
May 31st:
Today's supposed to be excavation day...but...it gets pushed off one more day. Matt uses the time to get the drain tile roughly laid out, ready to go down, with the sump basket, once the hole is dug.
June 1:
The rest of that day was also quite full. They had started talking that morning about sending Mira home from her last hospital stay, but with extra equipment. Matt got home from the hospital where he was with her just in time for he and I to leave with Bobbi for her appointment with her neurosurgeon to review the results of the gait lab. I'm realizing that I have not yet shared what we learned at that visit!! Hopefully I'll get to that yet. Anyway, as we were finishing up with the meeting and walking out to the van to head home, we got a call from Mira's nurse saying they were planning to discharge her and could we be there at 4pm to meet with the medical supply representative who would teach us how to use her new equipment. Um, sure. That gave us *just* enough time to drive from Gillette's south metro office where we currently were with Bobbi, past our house to drop me and Bobbi off, and for Matt to then continue north to the main campus where Mira was. Busy day.
June 3:
June 5:
June 7:
June 10:
June 11:
June 14:
June 21:
June 23:
Matt spent 14.5 hours out there working on this day! Most of the work was really a one-man job (because of ladders/access/etc), but there were a few points along the day when he called Owen back home to hold stuff...because, you see...he was racing against the threat of rain on Sunday.
Sunday, June 24:
It rained.
Matt had gotten everything done the day before except the tyvek over the parapet. After the short burst of rain on the way home from church, he popped back up there to tack down the last bit over the parapet. Good thing, too. That roof is now holding up to 1.5 inches of standing water. (The hole for the scupper is sized for after the rigid insulation is put down under the final roofing membrane, so we've got a shallow swimming pool up there!)
BUT, despite the wading pool up there, there are only four leaky spots, and all at junctions that do not surprise Matt considering the state of things, so we're not going to think too much about it.
The rest of that day was spent monitoring Mira, who was rapidly going downhill, running Owen and Bobbi to a graduation open house for someone at church, running to Menards to get a pump to put into the sump basket, and then Matt getting a quick shower after that so he was clean to take Mira down to the ER to be admitted to Gillette.
June 25:
Matt, despite a good solid eight hours of (interrupted) sleep after Mira's 2am transfer to the ward at Gillette, was exhausted upon getting home Monday evening. There wasn't quite enough time for him to take a nap before supper, so I suggested he just spend a few minutes outside with Reuben by his fountain while I finished getting the food ready.
When I went to call them in, this is what I found:
I think my favorite detail is the Superman* shirt. 😏 Even Superman gets tired after pushing hard all week!! He informed me that he intentionally had his leg over Reuben's so if Reuben tried to get up and wander away he would notice.
That gets you pretty much up to date! The last two days have been mostly Matt catching up on his "real" work (the stuff he gets paid for) on his computer while hanging out at the hospital with Mira.
*Bobbi's gift to Dad for Father's Day last year. She started calling him Superman soon after she got home because of how often he scoops her up and carries her where she needs to go.
May 30:
 |
| The big lilacs are down, and we're getting ready for tomorrow's excavation. |
 |
| Matt and I measuring off the corner of the existing house to get the extents of the excavation staked in. |
 |
| Meanwhile...Owen is trimming back the mock orange bush to make room for the mini-excavator to get around the garage to the back of the house. |
 |
| Rinnah and Evania helped by dragging all of the branches he cut off over to a pile near the fire pit to be burned up at a later time. |
Today's supposed to be excavation day...but...it gets pushed off one more day. Matt uses the time to get the drain tile roughly laid out, ready to go down, with the sump basket, once the hole is dug.
 |
| Oooh! There's a trailer with an excavator in front of our house! |
 |
| Bobbi's bed is the best place to sit to watch him get to work. |
 |
| Looking out the living room window also gives a decent view...if you're as tall as Daddy is. By lunch time, the crawl space is dug and filled with gravel. |
June 3:
 |
| A perfect afternoon to sit in the shade and drop gravel into the sump basket at the bottom of a hole. Daddy took the time to start dropping some lumber into the hole as well to begin the work of putting together the foundation. |
 |
| A wood foundation wall saves money on materials (treated lumber is less expensive than concrete), AND, more importantly, is something Matt can do on his own, thus saving money on labor! Since it's a very small space, wood footings were also appropriate, unlike the big addition from a few years ago when we had concrete footings poured, and built the wood foundation walls on top of that. |
 |
| Getting the ledger onto the existing rim for hanging the new floor joists. |
 |
| Surveying the work. Matt's dad's cousin, Ray, who grew up in the house next door to the one we live in now (which is where Matt's dad grew up) worked in the excavation/earth moving industry for years, and we joke that he's got an internal radar for big holes in the ground. 😊 More importantly, as we're approaching the six year anniversary of Matt's dad's death, Ray is someone Matt really enjoys sharing these sorts of things with because he *can't* share them with his own Dad anymore. |
 |
| Back to work. Daddy's framing up the floor of the crawl space and Reuben's working on filling up the sump basket with gravel. Two happy boys. |
 |
| A friend from church who does framing (and other construction work - we paid him to do all of the framing on the house addition a few years ago) agreed to work with Matt for a few days to get the bigger stuff done. He's also got the benefit of lots of experience. Matt can absolutely DO the framing, but Mike's got all the tricks of how to do it faster and straighter all figured out. Here they are framing up the main floor structure. |
 |
| By the end of the day, this is what it looked like! This has got to be the best part of construction - the whole skeleton is there all in one day! |
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| From the inside, you can see the back corner where the recess for the flush-entry shower pan will sit. |
 |
| Mike came back again, and today they got the plywood sheathing on the exterior and framed the ceiling/roof structure. |
 |
| A fun action shot. |
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| Matt took a few shots of how the junction with the existing house turned out. This is always the "exciting" part, when things are half finished, and now the actual finished house is subject to things like...rain. |
 |
| All neat and tidy, and the hole for the scupper to drain the flat roof is cut and framed out, too. |
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| Tyvek housewrap to keep water off the untreated plywood...and no photo yet, but he was out there until the two-days-past-the-solstice sun finally went down putting some basic waterproofing membrane onto the roof to protect it (and the existing house!) from water until the flat roof contractor can get out to measure and then back to install the real flat roof membrane. |
It rained.
Matt had gotten everything done the day before except the tyvek over the parapet. After the short burst of rain on the way home from church, he popped back up there to tack down the last bit over the parapet. Good thing, too. That roof is now holding up to 1.5 inches of standing water. (The hole for the scupper is sized for after the rigid insulation is put down under the final roofing membrane, so we've got a shallow swimming pool up there!)
 |
| Standing water. A bad dream waiting to happen for any home owner! (I was reminded of this post: Rain, rain... from our last construction project, and in re-reading it, see that I did NOT write down Matt's thoughts upon waking in the night and looking down from our bedroom window at that "swimming pool." "Maybe we should just call the excavator back and have him just push it all back into the hole and we'll forget we ever started anything!!") |
The rest of that day was spent monitoring Mira, who was rapidly going downhill, running Owen and Bobbi to a graduation open house for someone at church, running to Menards to get a pump to put into the sump basket, and then Matt getting a quick shower after that so he was clean to take Mira down to the ER to be admitted to Gillette.
June 25:
Matt, despite a good solid eight hours of (interrupted) sleep after Mira's 2am transfer to the ward at Gillette, was exhausted upon getting home Monday evening. There wasn't quite enough time for him to take a nap before supper, so I suggested he just spend a few minutes outside with Reuben by his fountain while I finished getting the food ready.
When I went to call them in, this is what I found:
That gets you pretty much up to date! The last two days have been mostly Matt catching up on his "real" work (the stuff he gets paid for) on his computer while hanging out at the hospital with Mira.
*Bobbi's gift to Dad for Father's Day last year. She started calling him Superman soon after she got home because of how often he scoops her up and carries her where she needs to go.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
That little Mira
Mira's off on another date with Daddy to the hospital connected to Gillette. She did great at Grandma and Grandpa's house last weekend (five hours away in WI), and then has been great all week until last night about 8 or 9 pm. She was coughing (normal) and coughed up something yellowish (not normal.)
All day today was similar, with her coughing up quite a bit of junky yellowy stuff, and needing some oxygen to keep her saturations at a good level. As she kept getting worse instead of better as we switched into her yellow zone, we finished up a few things around the house (like Matt running out to pick up and then install a sump pump into the sump basket to keep the new bathroom dry during the rain we're supposed to get for the next few days!) and then got her ready to head downtown.
It's not so much fun to always share hospital photos (besides the fact that I don't have one yet from Matt!), so instead, here's a sweet smiley one I found on my phone that I think Leah took of her about two weeks ago. *This* is the girl we've had for most of the week! But not tonight.
All day today was similar, with her coughing up quite a bit of junky yellowy stuff, and needing some oxygen to keep her saturations at a good level. As she kept getting worse instead of better as we switched into her yellow zone, we finished up a few things around the house (like Matt running out to pick up and then install a sump pump into the sump basket to keep the new bathroom dry during the rain we're supposed to get for the next few days!) and then got her ready to head downtown.
It's not so much fun to always share hospital photos (besides the fact that I don't have one yet from Matt!), so instead, here's a sweet smiley one I found on my phone that I think Leah took of her about two weeks ago. *This* is the girl we've had for most of the week! But not tonight.
Friday, June 22, 2018
So proud of her
Bobbi gave me permission to brag to all of you about how proud we are of the work she did at the high school this past semester!
I can't remember (and am not going to take the time to read through past posts to check) if I said anything about her decision in January to take a few classes at the public high school instead of just being home schooled. We'd always left the decision up to her, though had been hoping for a variety of reasons that she would choose to try it. She ended up taking three classes - an Intro to Foods, an English Language Learner's class, and one called "On Your Own" which went over many independent living skills - budgeting, finding and renting an apartment, goal setting, debt avoidance, buying a car, planning a vacation, etc, etc.
We started the year with a 504 plan which was the simplest way to allow for some adaptations to meet her needs. This meant she would have a paraprofessional to help her get between classes and access the things she needed because of her physical limitations. It took a good month or more before they found a permanent person, which meant every day we didn't know who was going to be there, if they were going to be a good fit or not, or if there was no one and the school nurse would help her get where she needed to go. The other significant piece of the plan was that she was allowed exemptions from some assignments in the two gen-ed classes because of her English limitations, knowing that it would take her a notably longer amount of time to get through material because of the language gap in addition to her physical limitations (typing and writing are very tedious and slow for her), and she was also allowed to re-take tests, or opt to take them at home with me, again so I could read the questions for her and "translate" them into the English that she knows.
It was only three classes, but this semester was HARD WORK. Not just for Bobbi, but also for me and Matt in supporting her. Partly because she had never been given the opportunity to develop self-study skills, and even more so because she just couldn't handle the level of English that the material was delivered at, almost every single piece of homework that she had was something that she needed to do with one of us. Our home school curriculum for the first half of the year pretty much went to the wayside, and we worked on the new set of skills that these classes presented to her.
The semester had a somewhat rocky beginning, but as she got a few weeks underway and realized that she wasn't doomed to fail (a big fear of hers), her confidence slowly began to improve, and she worked hard at the tasks set before her. One of my favorite parts of this was her frequent marveling at herself: "I didn't used to care at all about school, and now I really want to learn and understand and not just know it like a poem." (Not her exact words, but gets the idea across.)
The year was going well, with her grades being mostly A's and B's on the various assignments, coming up to finals week. She only had one actual "final" in exam format - the other two classes had projects that were prepared in advance. But the final for her foods class came with a nineteen page review packet!!! I have to admit I was even a bit nervous looking at it before we started together, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much about each topic she was able to volunteer with me simply introducing the topic - she had learned so much about nutrition, safety, cooking methods - it was beautiful!
Before the test, her teacher sent an email with details of the time (since she doesn't do a full day at school, the final exam week was a little outside of her normal school hours), she also reiterated that Bobbi was going to be allowed to retake the test at home if she so desired.
She was nervous, but cautiously optimistic as Daddy wheeled her up to school on the day of her exam.
She came home afterwards in what appeared to be a decent mood, but I soon learned that she was so disappointed with her score on the test that she left the final exam crying.
Because I haven't shared very much personally about Bobbi over the last year and a half, I don't know how many of you who don't see us on a weekly basis know about Bobbi and crying. Bobbi doesn't cry. She's told us that she doesn't cry, and we've seen that she doesn't cry. She has other ways of expressing strong emotions, but crying isn't one of them. In fact, until this final exam, we had only once before seen Bobbi cry in the almost one and a half years that she's been with us. [I will recount that story at the end of this post - it's a good one!]
Turns out she had gotten a score that rounded up to 52% on the exam. That's an F. For a girl who's been terrified of failing - almost so terrified of it that she has for a long time been afraid to even try because to not succeed when you haven't tried isn't nearly as hard as failing after giving it all you've got - this was a really tough blow. And she cried about it! I told her later that night that as odd as it sounded, I was so very proud of her. So what if she got a failing grade, *I* knew that she had learned an incredible amount of material (and English language to go with it along the way), and more importantly, I was so proud of my girl who really cared about trying hard and doing well and what that showed me about how she's changing and growing and maturing.
So, with that behind us, we settled in the next morning to do the retake. It was a timed test, and was a combination of multiple choice, multi-answer multiple choice, and some matching. It was a hard test covering a very large amount of material. We used every single minute we had, and still left a few unanswered. I was very careful to only help her with understanding the language without giving away answers (with some answers ones that I didn't know for sure myself, even after studying with her all semester!) Three times we had to leave the test (with the time still ticking!) to de-stress. We'd had a number of conversations over the week leading up to this about the negative impact adrenaline has on our ability to think clearly! Managing to find something to laugh about, even if it's just a ridiculous possible answer to the "how long should you wash your hands" question, was mostly successful in bringing her back to a place where she could focus.
The test finished up with her scoring 72.78%, a score which I believed to be a much better representation of what she actually knew. Still not a great score, but better, and appropriate to what she had learned.
Imagine our surprise when the teacher emailed back later in the day telling us that the new score was high enough to gain her a Food and Nutrition I certificate!!! The final exam was not just a test the teacher had put together, but is part of a national standard exam that includes a certification that she can put into her resume! The cut off was 73%, and her score rounded up - by the very skin of her teeth (time for a lesson in English figures of speech!) she made it!!
And not only that, it finally made sense to me why the scoring rubric for the course had the final exam scored out of 73 - everyone who gained the certificate got an "A" for the class final (and the other scores were curved from that score, because this was a post-high school certification, so even her 52% wasn't really an F, but a C-).
That girl of ours worked so hard this semester, and her hard work paid off.
She's also learned that she's kind of become a late-blooming academic. The morning after that exam (her last one), she woke up and told me she was bored, and wondered when summer school started. ;) So she's taking an ESL class this summer (2.5 hours a day for five weeks), and then will go from there to the ESY (extended school year) morning program for the special program she'll be in for the fall that is going to be a mixture of electives like she took this year and practical classes (functional math, food prep and home maintenance topics in the full apartment built into the high school, and other skills directed at independence despite her physical disability and her lack of strong academic background).
We are so proud of our oldest daughter!!
***
And now, the crying story.
So, we have three cats. Two of them in particular are special to Bobbi - Bridget, the beautiful "old lady" cat that I've had since before Matt and I married - she'll be nineteen years old next month! and Noble Hunter, Owen's cat, who is just a plain old gray tabby, but lives up to his name, and spends much of his time outside prowling around...and yet will still come when Owen whistles for him - never quite seen a cat like that before!
One night last fall, Owen and I were driving home around 9pm after I picked him up from a friend's house, and just before we got to our driveway, we saw Noble there, lying motionless along the centerline of our road.
"Oh, Owen!" I cried.
Owen let out a yelp and leaped out of the (stopped) van and ran to his cat - the body was still limp and warm, and there was a slight heartbeat and a bit of movement, so he scooped him into his arms, sobbing over him, and we whipped a U-turn and drove right to the vet (late hours), while calling Matt to let him know what was up. They whisked the cat (and us) right into the operating room with a team of 4 or 5 people, but within a minute or two sadly told us there was nothing they could do. I called Matt, really worried about how Bobbi was going to react - anger is her typical response to strong emotions, and this was going to be a really tough one for her to take. Owen and I cried together over Noble, and then asked if we could take his body home so we could bury it in our yard as we did for our cat, Foo, who died on Thanksgiving Day the day after Reuben's epilepsy diagnosis almost eight years ago. They were able to do so, and the two of us sadly drove home with our poor tabby in the box, and the four of us all sat on Bobbi's bed stroking his fur, and, believe it or not, all four of us crying over him, our tears blurring our vision as our hearts broke for this dear cat, and for me and Matt, even more so for our heartbroken children.
Owen asked if he could sleep with the box in his room for the night one last time, and though I told him I didn't think we could wait that long to put the cat into the freezer until we were ready to bury him, I did tell him I'd call the vet to make sure. Their response was the same as mine - the body would start to smell within a few hours, and by morning would be pretty bad.
As we took just a few more minutes to say our last goodbyes, Bridget walked into the room with a really funny look on her face. She smells the scent of dead cat, we reasoned, as an animal with a better sense of smell than we have. We heard a cat walking down the stairs, starting the crying up again as it reminded all of us how it used to sound when Noble used to walk down the stairs. Soon after, Foozie (cat #3) came in as well and walked out, similarly disquieted.
Then Matt looked out of Bobbi's room with a really funny look on his face and we all stared as...Noble...walked into the room.
I can't even put words to the emotions that went around that room as we all tried to process what was happening. Here, we'd been sobbing and blubbering over this cat for at least two hours now, and then he walks in. Talk about internal confliction - our cat's not dead...but someone's cat is dead...and we've been crying and crying for a long time now...but our cat's not dead - he's sitting there in the doorway staring at us!!!
Bobbi whispered, "It's just like Jesus!"
And now we were all a mess of laughing and crying and hand-washing (because the real Noble didn't want anything to do with us while we all smelled like dead-some-other-cat), and phone calling BACK to the vet to ask what we should do now with this cat...
Phew. What a night. Both Owen and Bobbi were so weirded out by the whole thing (and it didn't help that it was nearly midnight by this time, either), that neither one of them was comfortable sleeping alone, so we piled some couch cushions on Bobbi's floor for Owen to sleep on!
Matt and I went to bed marveling - what a beautiful way for God to begin to break down some of the emotional barriers that Bobbi has built up over the years to protect herself. She cried!!! Not just a few little tears sneaking out, but the full out real deal. We got to cry together as a family: hugging, comforting, talking, crying some more...and then when it was all over, we got all the benefit of that closeness without losing our cat at all!!! Yes, someone did lose their cat that night, but as we all told each other, that cat didn't die alone - he died with Owen snuggling him and telling him what a great cat he was and how loved he was, and he got the full mourning any cat could hope for. And what a way to go.
So there's the crying story.
I can't remember (and am not going to take the time to read through past posts to check) if I said anything about her decision in January to take a few classes at the public high school instead of just being home schooled. We'd always left the decision up to her, though had been hoping for a variety of reasons that she would choose to try it. She ended up taking three classes - an Intro to Foods, an English Language Learner's class, and one called "On Your Own" which went over many independent living skills - budgeting, finding and renting an apartment, goal setting, debt avoidance, buying a car, planning a vacation, etc, etc.
We started the year with a 504 plan which was the simplest way to allow for some adaptations to meet her needs. This meant she would have a paraprofessional to help her get between classes and access the things she needed because of her physical limitations. It took a good month or more before they found a permanent person, which meant every day we didn't know who was going to be there, if they were going to be a good fit or not, or if there was no one and the school nurse would help her get where she needed to go. The other significant piece of the plan was that she was allowed exemptions from some assignments in the two gen-ed classes because of her English limitations, knowing that it would take her a notably longer amount of time to get through material because of the language gap in addition to her physical limitations (typing and writing are very tedious and slow for her), and she was also allowed to re-take tests, or opt to take them at home with me, again so I could read the questions for her and "translate" them into the English that she knows.
It was only three classes, but this semester was HARD WORK. Not just for Bobbi, but also for me and Matt in supporting her. Partly because she had never been given the opportunity to develop self-study skills, and even more so because she just couldn't handle the level of English that the material was delivered at, almost every single piece of homework that she had was something that she needed to do with one of us. Our home school curriculum for the first half of the year pretty much went to the wayside, and we worked on the new set of skills that these classes presented to her.
The semester had a somewhat rocky beginning, but as she got a few weeks underway and realized that she wasn't doomed to fail (a big fear of hers), her confidence slowly began to improve, and she worked hard at the tasks set before her. One of my favorite parts of this was her frequent marveling at herself: "I didn't used to care at all about school, and now I really want to learn and understand and not just know it like a poem." (Not her exact words, but gets the idea across.)
The year was going well, with her grades being mostly A's and B's on the various assignments, coming up to finals week. She only had one actual "final" in exam format - the other two classes had projects that were prepared in advance. But the final for her foods class came with a nineteen page review packet!!! I have to admit I was even a bit nervous looking at it before we started together, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much about each topic she was able to volunteer with me simply introducing the topic - she had learned so much about nutrition, safety, cooking methods - it was beautiful!
Before the test, her teacher sent an email with details of the time (since she doesn't do a full day at school, the final exam week was a little outside of her normal school hours), she also reiterated that Bobbi was going to be allowed to retake the test at home if she so desired.
She was nervous, but cautiously optimistic as Daddy wheeled her up to school on the day of her exam.
She came home afterwards in what appeared to be a decent mood, but I soon learned that she was so disappointed with her score on the test that she left the final exam crying.
Because I haven't shared very much personally about Bobbi over the last year and a half, I don't know how many of you who don't see us on a weekly basis know about Bobbi and crying. Bobbi doesn't cry. She's told us that she doesn't cry, and we've seen that she doesn't cry. She has other ways of expressing strong emotions, but crying isn't one of them. In fact, until this final exam, we had only once before seen Bobbi cry in the almost one and a half years that she's been with us. [I will recount that story at the end of this post - it's a good one!]
Turns out she had gotten a score that rounded up to 52% on the exam. That's an F. For a girl who's been terrified of failing - almost so terrified of it that she has for a long time been afraid to even try because to not succeed when you haven't tried isn't nearly as hard as failing after giving it all you've got - this was a really tough blow. And she cried about it! I told her later that night that as odd as it sounded, I was so very proud of her. So what if she got a failing grade, *I* knew that she had learned an incredible amount of material (and English language to go with it along the way), and more importantly, I was so proud of my girl who really cared about trying hard and doing well and what that showed me about how she's changing and growing and maturing.
So, with that behind us, we settled in the next morning to do the retake. It was a timed test, and was a combination of multiple choice, multi-answer multiple choice, and some matching. It was a hard test covering a very large amount of material. We used every single minute we had, and still left a few unanswered. I was very careful to only help her with understanding the language without giving away answers (with some answers ones that I didn't know for sure myself, even after studying with her all semester!) Three times we had to leave the test (with the time still ticking!) to de-stress. We'd had a number of conversations over the week leading up to this about the negative impact adrenaline has on our ability to think clearly! Managing to find something to laugh about, even if it's just a ridiculous possible answer to the "how long should you wash your hands" question, was mostly successful in bringing her back to a place where she could focus.
The test finished up with her scoring 72.78%, a score which I believed to be a much better representation of what she actually knew. Still not a great score, but better, and appropriate to what she had learned.
Imagine our surprise when the teacher emailed back later in the day telling us that the new score was high enough to gain her a Food and Nutrition I certificate!!! The final exam was not just a test the teacher had put together, but is part of a national standard exam that includes a certification that she can put into her resume! The cut off was 73%, and her score rounded up - by the very skin of her teeth (time for a lesson in English figures of speech!) she made it!!
And not only that, it finally made sense to me why the scoring rubric for the course had the final exam scored out of 73 - everyone who gained the certificate got an "A" for the class final (and the other scores were curved from that score, because this was a post-high school certification, so even her 52% wasn't really an F, but a C-).
That girl of ours worked so hard this semester, and her hard work paid off.
She's also learned that she's kind of become a late-blooming academic. The morning after that exam (her last one), she woke up and told me she was bored, and wondered when summer school started. ;) So she's taking an ESL class this summer (2.5 hours a day for five weeks), and then will go from there to the ESY (extended school year) morning program for the special program she'll be in for the fall that is going to be a mixture of electives like she took this year and practical classes (functional math, food prep and home maintenance topics in the full apartment built into the high school, and other skills directed at independence despite her physical disability and her lack of strong academic background).
We are so proud of our oldest daughter!!
***
And now, the crying story.
So, we have three cats. Two of them in particular are special to Bobbi - Bridget, the beautiful "old lady" cat that I've had since before Matt and I married - she'll be nineteen years old next month! and Noble Hunter, Owen's cat, who is just a plain old gray tabby, but lives up to his name, and spends much of his time outside prowling around...and yet will still come when Owen whistles for him - never quite seen a cat like that before!
One night last fall, Owen and I were driving home around 9pm after I picked him up from a friend's house, and just before we got to our driveway, we saw Noble there, lying motionless along the centerline of our road.
"Oh, Owen!" I cried.
Owen let out a yelp and leaped out of the (stopped) van and ran to his cat - the body was still limp and warm, and there was a slight heartbeat and a bit of movement, so he scooped him into his arms, sobbing over him, and we whipped a U-turn and drove right to the vet (late hours), while calling Matt to let him know what was up. They whisked the cat (and us) right into the operating room with a team of 4 or 5 people, but within a minute or two sadly told us there was nothing they could do. I called Matt, really worried about how Bobbi was going to react - anger is her typical response to strong emotions, and this was going to be a really tough one for her to take. Owen and I cried together over Noble, and then asked if we could take his body home so we could bury it in our yard as we did for our cat, Foo, who died on Thanksgiving Day the day after Reuben's epilepsy diagnosis almost eight years ago. They were able to do so, and the two of us sadly drove home with our poor tabby in the box, and the four of us all sat on Bobbi's bed stroking his fur, and, believe it or not, all four of us crying over him, our tears blurring our vision as our hearts broke for this dear cat, and for me and Matt, even more so for our heartbroken children.
Owen asked if he could sleep with the box in his room for the night one last time, and though I told him I didn't think we could wait that long to put the cat into the freezer until we were ready to bury him, I did tell him I'd call the vet to make sure. Their response was the same as mine - the body would start to smell within a few hours, and by morning would be pretty bad.
As we took just a few more minutes to say our last goodbyes, Bridget walked into the room with a really funny look on her face. She smells the scent of dead cat, we reasoned, as an animal with a better sense of smell than we have. We heard a cat walking down the stairs, starting the crying up again as it reminded all of us how it used to sound when Noble used to walk down the stairs. Soon after, Foozie (cat #3) came in as well and walked out, similarly disquieted.
Then Matt looked out of Bobbi's room with a really funny look on his face and we all stared as...Noble...walked into the room.
I can't even put words to the emotions that went around that room as we all tried to process what was happening. Here, we'd been sobbing and blubbering over this cat for at least two hours now, and then he walks in. Talk about internal confliction - our cat's not dead...but someone's cat is dead...and we've been crying and crying for a long time now...but our cat's not dead - he's sitting there in the doorway staring at us!!!
Bobbi whispered, "It's just like Jesus!"
And now we were all a mess of laughing and crying and hand-washing (because the real Noble didn't want anything to do with us while we all smelled like dead-some-other-cat), and phone calling BACK to the vet to ask what we should do now with this cat...
Phew. What a night. Both Owen and Bobbi were so weirded out by the whole thing (and it didn't help that it was nearly midnight by this time, either), that neither one of them was comfortable sleeping alone, so we piled some couch cushions on Bobbi's floor for Owen to sleep on!
Matt and I went to bed marveling - what a beautiful way for God to begin to break down some of the emotional barriers that Bobbi has built up over the years to protect herself. She cried!!! Not just a few little tears sneaking out, but the full out real deal. We got to cry together as a family: hugging, comforting, talking, crying some more...and then when it was all over, we got all the benefit of that closeness without losing our cat at all!!! Yes, someone did lose their cat that night, but as we all told each other, that cat didn't die alone - he died with Owen snuggling him and telling him what a great cat he was and how loved he was, and he got the full mourning any cat could hope for. And what a way to go.
So there's the crying story.
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
Sunday, June 3, 2018
Friday was a big day/Mira is home
There's lots to share about Friday - we've now got a big hole behind our house, we've had our meeting with Bobbi's surgeon, and Mira came home!
This post will simply serve to let those of you who have been following her progress know that she is back home, finishing up a round of j-tube antibiotics, and with a whole round of new equipment - a bi-pap machine to use at night, and oxygen to use on an as-needed basis. We're still working on figuring out how to rearrange her corner of the dining room to make room for everything! But it's so good to have her here with us again, and after a relatively short stay. Nine days is practically nothing after some of the visits she's had there!
More to come on Bobbi and the bathroom as I'm able.
This post will simply serve to let those of you who have been following her progress know that she is back home, finishing up a round of j-tube antibiotics, and with a whole round of new equipment - a bi-pap machine to use at night, and oxygen to use on an as-needed basis. We're still working on figuring out how to rearrange her corner of the dining room to make room for everything! But it's so good to have her here with us again, and after a relatively short stay. Nine days is practically nothing after some of the visits she's had there!
More to come on Bobbi and the bathroom as I'm able.
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