Bedroom and a Beta

What a week!

We have been working all summer to clean out our old school room and transform it into our older son's own bedroom before he starts his first semester of high school on Aug. 12! (Still no word on our daughter's acceptance into 5th grade at the charter school, so this is a matter of ongoing prayer!) I'll be listing a bunch of curriculum for sale soon, in a separate post.

I would show you pictures of the bedroom transformation, thus far, but both of our cameras have died over the past six weeks or so. (Until I figure out how to get still pictures or video from my cell phone camera to the computer, I guess this is the end of therapy videos over at Stroke Of Grace for a while!)

This weekend my parents-in-law spent an entire afternoon helping us to paint the new bedroom. I was rather unsure about our son's color choices, but now that it is up on the walls, I do have to admit he has an eye for design.

My dad has rebuilt a bookshelf, and other than repairing a desk leg, buying a box spring, and setting up the bed frame, his new room is nearing move-in ready and should be good to go before our deadline. :)

We faced a family "tragedy" on Monday. Our daughter's beloved birthday Beta fish went belly up. The tears we uncontrollable. It was very strange and draining for me to try to offer emotional support to our girl when my own emotional processing center is still so terribly messed up. She sobbed and my heart broke for her, but try as I might, I could not bring about the release of my own tears.

Bless her heart, she choked out, "When I hunt an animal, it never hurts like this!" Being her first real taste of the sting of grief (Thank you, Lord, for protecting her from a much more traumatic loss 20 months ago!), it turned out to be a good jumping block to talk about her older siblings lost to miscarriage. She agreed that she was thankful we were only facing Rainbow the fish's death, not a human child, but it still hurt because of love invested.

A new bright orange goldfish, named Ella, and an African aquatic frog, named Lilly, are now happily swimming in her fish bowl and her shattered heart is mending and learning to love again. Thank you to her Daddy for canceling plans on Monday night to come home and love on our girl!

Stranger Than Fiction

In the "Truth is Stranger than Fiction" category, I just got off the phone with our 10-year-old's orthopedic surgeon's office. We are bypassing the standard Emergency Room visit and going directly there for x-rays since she has ended up there for the last two breaks and severe sprain to the growth plate anyway. Yup, it looks like she has yet another broken foot, the last limb to be broken in her fragile, tiny body!

For anyone keeping count, this likely makes our 3rd cast (plus staples in our son's head) since last summer! Ugghhh! She is relieved she made it through the second half of her ballet class and the recital without another cast (yes, she was in a cast, sidelining her for several weeks during the first half of the season), but is already sad that a cast would mean no swimming again this summer.

Pictures found via Pintrest.

In her defense, only one of her many breaks (3 for sure, plus likely this one as well) and sprains (two bad enough to require x-rays and prolonged medical care) was actually brought about by her own carelessness and "should" have even resulted in injury. This is just plain crazy! Today's culprit was a doll stand (I would guess weighing well under two pounds) feel from a height of about two or three feet and landed on the top of her little foot. Should have caused a bruise, maybe, but not the knot that is bulging out, nor the pain that prevents bearing her own weight.

Thankfully we had crutches at the ready, but our boot/cast is pretty frayed and stinky, after two injuries already, so if they need to cast it, we need a new one of those! I'm tempted not to even post this stuff any more, because unless you are local and watching it in person, you have got to be thinking I'm making this stuff up by now! I wish...

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Not Bleeding Ink

My heart is full and it can't be spilled out through the keyboard this time. Different reasons, but I love what my friend Lisa Copen wrote yesterday: God says no to me making it into a message. “No, this will take time. This is between you and I. You do not have to save the world. You are not God. I am God, and I have something to teach you.” I am not getting the Cliff Notes version of God’s instruction. He is digging much deeper into my heart. And my character. And it hurts. I realize how weak I really am...

 Read more from Lisa beautiful post at Mother's Day Reflections on God's Plan.

Mother's Day

I started writing on my stroke blog today, what I thought would be just a stroke recovery update. But as is typical of this after-infertility-mom, my thoughts quickly turned to Mother's Day. Read here and be sure to catch the open letter to pastors at the end!

Cutie

Our girl in her new glasses:

18 Month Stroke Update

I just posted stroke news, a year and a half into recovery, over at StrokeOfGrace.blogspot.com, for anyone interested in the progress. :) I also shared about my newest chronic illness diagnosis.

math wizard

My 7-year-old (who is whizzing through and about to finish his 4th grade math book), grasps most math concepts incredibly well, but we realized we need to readdress fractions tonight! He came in from feeding the chickens and informed his dad that they still had 1/3rd of 10/3rds of the container of water. Say what???

I think the statement would be totally age appropriate. I wouldn't have really even given it a second thought past the initial giggle, had I not seen him work out many much more complex fractions in the past!