Reflections

A dream come true

June 14, 2013 by Taylor 1 Comment

There were some things about my life as a child that were not so good. And then there were some things that were absolutely amazing. One of those things was how much time we spent at the beach during the summer. Some summers we only went for a week or two. But other summers we relocated to the beach stayed for months.

It has been a dream of mine for a long time to continue that tradition into my own children’s lives and spend an extended amount of time at the beach during the summer. And this summer it finally happened, due to the amazing generosity of my family.

The girls and I hit the road a couple of weeks back and headed to the beach. The beach of my childhood. The beach I grew up on. The beach I shared with my friends. The beach where I met boys. And the beach I sat on with my mother year after year after year. This place is in my heart. And it is in my soul. And I love sharing in with my children.

The days have stretched out long and slow before us. And our routine is simple here. There is no rushing. There is no agenda. There is only sun and sand and water.

The girls have been a delight. They play hard every day and sleep well. It is all I can do to keep up with the little bundles of energy.

There were only a couple of rainy days, which we filled with movies, coloring, and game after game of crazy eights.

In the evenings, there has been lots of cooking. The girls are quite the little sous chefs now.

Jay has been coming and going as work allows. But we have not had to go too long without seeing him. We are always so glad when he is here. Our family isn’t the same without him.

I prayed a lot before we departed about where blogging should fit into my life while we were away. I intended to blog a few times a week, but I also wanted to see how everything shook out once we were here. Would there be time? Would I have anything interesting to say?

But turns out, time alone to think and write has been scarce here. And when I could have possibly snuck away to write, I haven’t wanted to. Because it means I would miss out on something else, something important, something real. And I haven’t been able to tear myself away from what is going on around me to go sit at a computer.

Our favorite time of day is dusk. We head back to the beach after a couple of hours rest at home with snacks, drinks, and fun toys. And we play and sit and watch the sun go down.

And then we start it all over again the next day. And it really is all a dream come true.

Filed Under: Life, Reflections, Travel

Wrapping up and a big getaway

June 1, 2013 by Taylor Leave a Comment

We are finished with school. Friday was our last day, thank God. I had fleeting thoughts of making Lilla go a little bit longer, squeeze in a little extra work, but we couldn’t do it. She was done. And I was done. We all needed to be done.

I didn’t even take Bette to her last two days of school. You know, deaf school. The kind of school a deaf kid needs to go to as much as possible. But one day was a school wide picnic at a park I had never been to way out God knows where. I probably could have mustered up some directions if I’d tried (I hear there is thing called Mapquest?), but as the picnic approached, my introverted self was too busy thinking about what a nightmare the picnic would be. Kind of like the parent’s meeting on the first day of school, where I hid in the bathroom, because I am cool like that.

All I could think about was the very high probability of being at the picnic and me standing around with all the parents I don’t know. And then eventually me standing apart from the group feeling totally self conscious and awkward because I didn’t have anyone to hang out with besides my kids. And we can just hang out together at home. In our jammies. Which is what we did.

The very last day of school was graduation – the graduation of a bunch of little deaf kids, which I am sure was adorable. Bette was suppossed to sing a song with her class, but the last time she sang, she sat in my lap and cried the entire time. We don’t need to go all the way to school to do that. Because again, we can do that at home. In our jammies. Which is what we did.

We didn’t do too much to celebrate Memorial Day. We took the girls to a freezing cold pool that they happily swam in while Jay shivered.

We did let our duck Butter go. None of the others made it, which is a little sad, but also compelled us to set him free as soon as possible. We were determined to release him before something happened to him.

We took him to a nearby pond, but before he was even in the water, we were swarmed by kids fascinated that we were releasing a duck. One mother grilled me about Butter – how he would adjust, how much we had read up on on all this, and all things duck. I was able to answer her first couple of questions, but that about exhausted my knowledge on ducks. Then I just started lying and making stuff up, because she was super concerned about Butter. Much more concerned than we were. I mean, come on, he’s a duck.

When it was time, Jay threw him in the water, which he seemed to find odd at first, but then he got it and swam off. We followed him around the pond for awhile, and even went back to check on him later, and he was happily eating, swimming, and bathing.

The girls are heading out of town for our summer vacation. We have been cleaning, packing, and preparing for days. We are taking so much stuff. This this is only about half of it. But going somewhere for so long is like moving households, and that requires taking a lot of crap.

This will be the longest we will have ever stayed at the beach, and we are so excited. We are going to spend lots of time with family and have invited friends to visit, all of which are coming, because no one turns down an invitation to the beach. Yay!

And just in case you weren’t sure, the girls are ready. And I am so thrilled to be done with school and getting away to our favorite place in the whole world and have lots of unstructured time with my babies!

Filed Under: Life, Reflections, Uncategorized

A big decision

May 23, 2013 by Taylor 2 Comments

We had Bette’s end of the year conference at school, or as I like to refer to it, the big conference. In the days leading up to it, I wondered how it was going to go since her last one didn’t go so well. I was both excited about it and dreading it. Would they tell us she had made significant gains this spring? Or would we hear, again, that she still wasn’t making enough progress for her hearing age and IQ?

We didn’t know what they were going to say.

The conference included everyone – all her teachers, therapists, and the school director. Bette has quite a little team, I must say. And we were so relieved when they all said the same thing, which was she has made a lot of progress since our last conference and they couldn’t be more pleased. We asked a lot of questions, like we always do. But the general consensus among everyone was that she is on the right track.

Because her words are growing clearer. And she doesn’t have that deaf sound when she articulates them, even the higher frequency sounds, like f and s. She is stringing more words together to make phrases and sentences. And while we can’t understand everything she says, we understand her more and more. The conference could not have been more encouraging and we are thrilled we are ending the year on a high note.

*******************************************************************

I spent a great deal of the winter season in meetings. Meetings about where Bette should go to school next year. And the big questions was, should she stay at the private school she attends now, or should we put her in the public school, special education system?

I talked to all her teachers and therapists. I consulted with all the people who work with her. And I tried to keep an open mind and let the research lead me where it may.

But mostly, I prayed, for months and months, that the Lord would show us what was best for Bette.

I was very tempted not to pray. A part of me did not want to. I wanted to make my own decision. That really would have been so much easier.

But still, we owed it to Bette to pray for her; to set aside our own preferences, opinions, and wisdom and seek His will for her. Because she is His and she is on a path that He has set for her.

And after months of praying, we finally figured out the answer: she needs to stay where she is.

Because she loves her school. She has a great team there, who all love and adore her. And they are giving her exactly what she needs. And when her needs change, they adjust and change with her. They change the plan. They change her teacher. They change her classroom. They do whatever it takes. Because more than anything, they want to give her everything she needs to be a fully hearing, speaking child.

There is no doubt it is the best place for her. But we are still trying to process that decision. We are calculating the cost. And we are reworking our budget.

We are also taking very deep breaths. We are preparing ourselves for what is to come. And we are trying not to hyperventilate, or be overwhelmed by the ridiculously large number that is staring back at us from our spreadsheet. (Yes, we have spreadsheets. We are nerdy like that.)

But it is where the Lord has led us. It is what He has shown us she needs. And when it comes to our babies, how can we be anything but obedient?

Filed Under: Hearing Impairment, Life, Life with a Special Needs Child, Reflections, Speech Therapy

Sweet and seven

May 21, 2013 by Taylor 1 Comment

Sweet Lilla B finally turned seven. I say finally because she has been counting down the days forever. She was so excited and so ready to leave the age of six behind her.

I, on the other hand, am sort of lamenting she is not six anymore. It seems an invisible change takes place when girls go from being six to seven years old. They are leaving forever the little girl phase of life. And overnight, they become girls. Or young girls. Or young ladies. Or whatever you want to call them. They are just no longer little. And it was a bit sobering to watch my baby leave her little years behind her forever.

But all my mixed emotions didn’t hold us back any. We partied hard. Her big day began with her gift from JackMike and Julie – a long awaited for American girl doll. She was giddy when she opened it and immediately proceeded to name her new doll Emily. Emily then accompanied Lilla, JackMike, and I to a birthday breakfast. Lilla and I sat on one side of the booth, and she had the biggest (and messiest) plate of chocolate chip pancakes. JackMike and Emily sat together on the other side of the booth. Emily did not eat.

That night, I made Lilla’s requested birthday dinner – noodles with butter. But not before she opened her gifts from us, which were a glittery purse AND… a pogo stick. She told me the day before her birthday that she desperately wanted a pogo stick. How she even knows about pogo sticks I don’t know. But I jumped on Amazon and overnighted one and it arrived for her birthday. And she was so happy. And as you can see, Bette was pretty happy for her too.

Her party was a few days later at our favorite bakery. I discovered about five years ago that they host parties, and for five years I have been trying to convince Lilla to have it there. And finally, this year was the year it sounded like a great idea to her. We invited all her good friends, and ended up with the perfect number of ten.

This was my first year completely outsourcing the party planning, and it was awesome. They bakery did an amazing job and took care of everything. Hats, aprons, favors, cake, icing. We just had to show up.

And it was a good thing too. We are all so tired and worn out as the school year comes to a close that if we had to spend an entire Saturday preparing for a party, decorating the house and making tissue puffs, it might have done us in.

The girls were so cute, sweet, and well-behaved. And Lilla felt so loved. Which is all I really wanted. Homeschooling is always a balancing act, especially when it comes to birthday parties. I always have a few days of anxiety at the start of the planning process about who are we going to invite and do we have enough friends and damn, I should have scheduled more play dates throughout the year and for God’s sake, are enough kids going to be able to come to make it feel like a party? Because there is not an automatic group of friends to invite, like if Lilla was in school. But then I get it together and realize it is all going to be fine. And it always is.

Most of the girls Lilla loves to spend time with were able to come. And what I love about the picture of them together is that only two of the girls go to the same school. All the others go to different schools or homeschool. None of them really knew each other. They just all knew Lilla. And I love that she has sweet friends from all different areas of her life. It is a blessing I am thankful for.

And I am so thankful for Lilla and the girl she has grown into. I could not be any prouder of her and I can’t wait to see what seven holds!

Filed Under: Homemaking, Homeschool Realities, Life, Lilla, Parties, Reflections

Mother’s Day at the strawberry patch

May 15, 2013 by Taylor Leave a Comment

I had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend. It was busy, but good. Of course, no Mother’s Day is complete without a gymnastics recital, which kicked off the weekend’s festivities. Lilla was so excited to show off her moves. She has been practicing in the yard for weeks. She did so great. She even had her very own cheering section, led by none other than Miss Bette herself.

I also got a lot of sleep, which I have been desperately craving, and ate some delicious meals, the best being the Mother’s Day breakfast Jay cooked. We also went to the strawberry patch, which has become our Mother’s Day tradition, and then made homemade strawberry jam, from the 8 million strawberries we picked. We even had a visit from Aunt Mimi and Cousin Alex.