I have a few blog posts that I am working on but none that are ready yet so I wondered what I could share today…
A few days ago I shared this link in the comments and I felt the need to share it again.
I love this post.
Oh… and in keeping in the spirit of unschooling… here is another good one…
What do you think?
Today, just a bit more than an hour ago a family lost their little girl… A daughter, a sister…
My heart is breaking for them… I can’t even imagine…
Her name is Anaya and I first started to hear her story when buzz started on the Internet in search of milk donors not long after her diagnosis. I have been following her story ever since then.
Baby Anaya was diagnosed in May 2010 with Infantile Krabbe Leukodystrophy. She first started showing symptoms in February of 2010 at the age of 4 months. This rare disease causes demylination in the brain due to lack of a specific enzyme required to metabolize fats. It can strike families with no medical history of any neurological problems. Two healthy parents who both carry a recessive gene for this enzyme deficiency can produce a perfectly healthy looking newborn, who, at the age of three or four months, will begin showing symptoms of Krabbe Leukodystrophy.
The outlook for kids with Krabbe is bleak. In most cases a baby diagnosed with infantile Krabbe will develop normally for a few months and then lose their motor skills, the ability to hold their heads up, the ability to smile, laugh or speak, followed by loss of sight and hearing. Seizures may or may not occur and average life expectancy is less than 2 years.
With the love of her family, the gift of mama milk from many candian moms and amazing care, Anaya lived for nearly 2 years and 3 months.
This is not the usual type of that I write but there is something about Anaya and her family that touched me and effected me so much. When I looked at her pictures, I saw my little girl in her. I felt a connection, I had her in my thoughts often especially when I was next my own little girl’s bedside.
So today I grieve with the family, and thank them for sharing her life with so many people.
To know more about Anaya’s life you can read her mom’s blog here…
Another week, another menu…
This week, fondue beef was on special, and Khéna has been asking for fondue for a while now so that will definitely be a meal. In the fridge we still have Tofu so that also has become part of our meal plan. And then on Friday, I am going to be taking “not-school” portraits at Communidée, the homeschool resource center in Montreal, so I won’t be home and Simon will be home with the kids and will be cooking for them which means that we will be doing an easy meal that I don’t really have to plan…
So, here is my Menu plan for this week….
Elimination Communication has been an important part of parenthood for me. We have used the method with 3 of our children and it has only been a positive experience.
With Colin we started when he was about 2 months old… before that, he hated peeing in his diaper and would cry and cry if he did. I had heard of it before but didn’t think it was for us. Honestly I thought it would be messy, it would be more work, I thought that I wasn’t attentive enough. I had the same misconceptions that people often have the first time they hear about it. I was open to try however and it changed everything. My upset, crying baby was now a happy baby that refused to go anywhere else than in the sink or potty or toilet. He showed me that EC was so much less work than diapers, it was cleaner and he showed me just how much control a baby could actually have. I never looked back. He was completely potty independent by two.
I started with both Khéna and Wilhelmina at birth. Though Khéna still has a few accidents at night, he was also potty independent at two.
With both Colin and Khéna we ECed with diaper backup. They didn’t actually use the diaper that often, but we seemed to feel more comfortable having it on. With Wilhelmina I decided to go diaper free from birth.
We used diapers (gdiapers with washable liners) during our trip to BC when she was 8 weeks old, but after that she was in either in normal underwear or the one-wet trainers that I had made, but she was consistent enough that we didn’t see any need for diapers.
Things were going great until the camping trip in June and her becoming sick afterwards.
At the age of 18 months, she was in diapers for basically the first time in her life. Though we still brought her to the potty and kept the routine intact she was having many more misses. EC also proved to be a lifesaver more than once in the hospital and in tests. (Urine tests, VCUG etc) The biggest setback however was because of the nephrostomy. We could get the trainers on her but it was much more complicated with the tube, so having her naked or in a diaper was easiest. The other setback with the nephrostomy was that it was draining directly into the bag on the outside, which left her with only a small portion of urine which made things much more complicated as she probably didn’t have much pressure on her bladder so she didn’t feel that she had to go.
When we headed to the hospital for her surgery at the beginning of October, I didn’t even bring the potty. I knew that it wouldn’t get much use. I couldn’t even hold her or get her out of bed for the first few days and of course she had a catheter anyway, but once she was a bit more mobile and then tubeless, I would just bring her to the toilet. However, I think it took time for her to get used to the feeling of having a full bladder again, so, since coming home she has been using either the one-wet trainers or has been in diapers…
But in the last few days things have now changed. I noticed that she had an interest in using the seat reducer on the toilet, so we tried it out and has not turned back. She now she runs to the bathroom and says “pipi” when she has to go. Instead of going often and in small amounts the timing is again spacing out as it did when she was smaller when EC was at its easiest point.
I think it is too early to say that this is it… but I definitely feel that we are at the end of diapers for good.
The Kitchen table is truly the heart of the home… it is where we eat as a family (though with 4 kids it is not often the most relaxing of times) It is where we sit and talk. It is where the boys play with toys, or where Colin draws.
A few years ago we bought a new table. It looked OK right? It wasn’t… It was not only very boring, it was cheap… I learned my lesson…
I had bought it used and it was clean and the table was sturdy (and it actually could extend to fit 10 which was a lot of fun when we had people over) but within months the cushions that were covered with plastic when we had bought it were stained and dirty and then as time went by and the kids were… well… kids… the chairs just couldn’t keep up with the abuse of everyday use.
We kept on finding screws on the floor and after many times of repairing the chairs they just could not be repaired anymore and in the last few months we were down to just one or two chairs that were actually usable. Being that the boys have grown so much in the last years and are all too big for the higher chairs that we had for them it meant that we not only needed the four chairs that we had, we actually now need 6… we were four chairs short. That meant that Kitchen table was no longer the heart of the home anymore… it was not inviting, it was not a comfortable place to be. We used it when we had to but avoided it the rest of the time.
So, for the last months I have been looking for a new set. Money is tight so we needed to look for used and after seeing a few sets up on Kijiji that I really liked but had sold quickly, I knew exactly what I wanted.
On Saturday, about an hour before I left to go grocery shopping and go out to supper with “the girls” it happened… I found it…
It was listed for 300$ neg… and they said that there was one chair that was in need of a bit of repair… So I sent a message and said that I would offer 200$ and I would go get it right away (I was heading around that area any way) Just before I was about to head out the door I got the call… price accepted and I could go get it…
I got to the house with the idea that if it was not to my liking, I was willing to back down. But, I was not disappointed…
It is perfect… even with one chair that needs a bit of repair (there is a rung missing that can be replaced)
We have a new heart in the house, it makes me happy… we are back to eating at the table, I now sit at the table again and read and have tea. I look at recipes and the boys are back at the table to draw and play… We sit there for breakfast and lunch and supper and talk.. it just feels good to have that back…
Now I can’t wait to quilt a new runner and display things that make me happy…
Where is the heart of your household? Do you eat at the table on a regular basis?