Grandma Cripe

This past month has been a whirlwind.  I never knew that so much emotion could be jam-packed into one little month!

Several recent deaths in our families have affected us.  My Grandma Cripe (Dad's Mom) passed away the week before Thanksgiving, and we attended her burial on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.  She was cremated, as she requested, and her ashes were taken to Garden City to be buried next to Grandpa.  The boys were well behaved during the short service, which was good since I was crying too much to be able to watch them fully.  Mike only had to take Oliver away once when he was getting squirmy.  The flowers were beautiful, the sun was shining, and I met some people who had known Grandma well and talked to me about what she was like in her younger years.

Grandma attended school in Bucklin, KS.  She went to Wichita Business School, worked at the Air Force Base in Garden City, got married to Grandpa, then worked as a seamstress and homemaker until 1971, when she went to work at Purnell's Fabric Store until 1990.  After she retired, she continued doing alterations for people.  I am reading this from the "In Remembrance" printout that was given to us at the burial.  It has a lovely picture of Grandma wearing her candy-apple-red eyeglasses, and a big red rose on the front.     

Talking with Grandma's old friends and relatives, and reading about Grandma, and also looking through the scrapbooks that she kept -- all of these things have inspired me to revive my sewing skills.  I know they are still lurking inside of me somewhere, possibly just waiting for a few lessons from my mom or Grandma Schwemmer (Mom's Mom), who are both excellent seamstresses as well and have taught me all I know about sewing.  It seems that sewing is a lost art, especially because it is less expensive to buy your clothes off the rack now than it is to make them.

I have a sewing machine that needs a new pressure foot.  I have some bits and pieces of fabric, and a few spools of thread.  Grandma left us some money that she said can be used for Christmas, and Mike told me that I can use it however I see fit.  So here is my plan.  I am going to use the money to buy supplies and sewing equipment, and then I will make some items to sell so that I can raise money for the sewing machine that I really want.  I would love to learn embroidery, so my goal is an embroidery & sewing machine.  I think that developing a skill that Grandma obviously possessed will honor her memory.

Pray for This Family

Hello faithful blog readers. I have some disturbing news today, and any of you who pray, please say a prayer for this sweet little baby girl. My friend Bonnie, who I have mentioned, oh, forty or fifty thousand times on here (!) went through an awful experience last night. Her baby girl, Diamond, was attacked by a ferret. Diamond will be fine, thank God, but has 19 bites on her face and scratches on her body. The doctors don't think there will be scarring, and Bonnie says that she looks a lot better today than she did last night. I just wish I could be with them right now!!

They spent the night in the ER and are being released today. The worst part of all of this is that Bonnie and Diamond are not at home, but on a road trip with friends (who must be absolutely mortified, as it is their pet ferret), and Bonnie's husband Caleb is here at home and has to be feeling so powerless to help them right now.

It was a life-altering experience for Bonnie, and I haven't talked to her in depth about it as she had very few minutes left on her cell phone, but I just wanted to ask everyone to lift their little family up in prayer, both for Diamond's well-being, and also for the emotional well-being of some of my best friends on this earth. Prayer is powerful!

Thanks, people!

cough.. couGH....... COUGH...........ugh

Well, we have all been sick now for over a week. This bug has taken its toll on all of us, and we are ready for it to be gone! It's too bad that you don't become immune to colds after having one once. Needless to say, we didn't go to church AGAIN. I think this is the 6th week, or maybe the 7th, that we have missed. Well, we're staying away until I know we are all better. There is no use exposing an entire congregation to this stuff. At least we are not nursery coordinators anymore, like we were at our last church. We needed to be there every Sunday, and that just wouldn't work right now!

Sammy has had a fever of 100-103 for the past three days. He is still a bit more warm than usual today, and has been moping around and willing to snuggle at a moment's notice. Griffin had a cough for a few days, but his has lightened up considerably. Mike and I have been up and down for the past few days. I'll just say... it is a good thing he was on vacation this past week, because he would have missed a lot of work anyway! We both have chest congestion and head colds, and are just waiting for the madness to end.

The good part about all of this is that is has forced us to stay at home more, spending time together and relaxing. It has been a restful week, and that is nice.

Mike and I stayed up and wrapped all of our Christmas presents last night. Well, he wrapped. I made bows. He had to stop and wait for me to catch up, because I like to be just a bit elaborate with my bows, so each gift took me a while. We had fun, but were very tired and ready for bed when we were done.

Well, Griffin is waiting for me to change his diaper, so I suppose I had better end here.

Griffin... has what?

Griffin has Mono. Wow. I totally wasn't expecting that diagnosis! He hasn't seemed to be more tired than usual in the last few days. He has asked me, "Is it naptime yet?" a few times, and has been sleeping a bit longer than usual for his naps, but other than that and the swollen lymph nodes and the tiny bit of sore throat he had for two days, you'd think the kid was perfectly healthy.



He goes back in to the pediatrician for a sonogram of his spleen in two weeks. In the meantime, I am supposed to keep him from playing too roughly (ha! this should be interesting) and keep him away from large groups of children in areas such as playgrounds where if he were running and fell off of something, his spleen could rupture. So I guess he's not going to be going to church for a while. Six to eight weeks, the nurse said. Seems like an eternity, and yes, it is over Thanksgiving AND Christmas. Yippee. We'll go back to church in 2008.



Really, it's not as serious of a diagnosis as it could have been, so I am relieved, but it just seems weird to think about. At least it's not very contagious. We're supposed to avoid kissing him on the mouth and sharing utensils and drinks with him for the next few weeks. This means we're going to have to be on "sippy cup patrol". I may go out and get him his very own cups. He's getting big enough that he doesn't really need a sippy cup anymore, but he's just so used to being able to set them down anywhere without thinking about them spilling that it'll be a new concept to teach him.



The nurse told me that we didn't need to worry about it too much, and I checked online and the website I went to said that it's not as contagious as people think it is, but I really don't want Sammy to get this too. More doctor's bills and isolation we don't need.



Griffin will have to have surgery on his finger befoer he turns four, too. His "trigger thumb" is still there and is not getting any better. It has popped back and forth very few times, but he says it hurts a lot when it does, so I have a feeling it's not a problem that will resolve itself. Poor kid. That won't be a fun thing to go through for any of us!



Well, this was a depressing post! I hope the next one will be better.

Wow, what a week this has been! And today was the doozy. First off, Griffin's lymph nodes, the ones on one side of his neck, have been noticeable since he was about one year old. Well, they seem to get bigger and smaller at various times, but last night I noticed that there seemed to be two (rather hard) lumps instead of just one, and the whole side of his neck seemed to be swollen. Then this morning he woke up complaining that when he swallowed, his throat hurt, so I made an appointment for a few hours later to get it checked out. I had looked online last night, and pretty much read that it could be anything from strep throat to leukemia. Yikes!

Anyway, before Griffin went to the doctor, Mike went to the doctor. He has been fighting a "cold" for the past two weeks, and his boss told him yesterday that it sounded like sinusitis, and that he should probably see a doctor or take Mucinex or something, so he did go in, and, guess what, he has sinusitis and is now on an antibiotic and a decongestant. He slept for almost 5 hours this afternoon, and seems to be feeling better this evening.

So at Griffin's appointment, Dr. S (his pediatrician) checked him over, and they ruled out strep and pretty much any other type of throat ailment. Of course, Griffin HATED the strep test. It took three of us to hold him down. I think the nurse was scared of him, after he blatantly refused to step up on the scale for her so she could weigh him. Well, she kept telling him it was like being on stage! And HOW many people in the world have stage fright?! Okay, so he probably doesn't even know what a "stage" is, unless you are referring to a stage of life that he or Sammy will hopefully soon outgrow; he has probably heard us talking about that kind of stage quite frequently. So anyway, the nurse thought she would need a little help, and when they all trooped into the room to do the strep test, I think he freaked out just a little. I know I would have! So we're all laying on top of him and she's making him gag, and he was talking about her shoving the Q-tip down his throat for the rest of the day.

So anyway, Dr. S decided that it is probably one of three things. Cat Scratch Disease, which doesn't have too many symptoms except for swollen lymph nodes that go away after a few months, or Mono, which she said seems highly unlikely given his "activity level"... yeah, he was misbehaving in the doctor's office, but he had just been lain on and gagged; I think I would have been a bit feisty too... or leukemia, which I hope and pray they will rule out with the blood test they did at the lab they sent us to after leaving the doctor's office.

Dr. S said she felt about 6 or 7 swollen lymph nodes in one side of his neck alone, and the muscle on the side of his neck was being pushed out by the lymph nodes behind it. It sounds painful to me, but Griffin said it didn't hurt.

She looked down his throat and said it really wasn't that red at all, and then she didn't say too much else about his throat, we mostly talked about the swollen nodes.

So now I have this to worry about for the next week until we get the results of the blood tests back. I was thinking about all of the possibilities, and hoping it was nothing life-threatening, and as we were leaving the doctor's office, Griffin turns to me and says, "Mom, my throat still hurts, did they give us some medicine?"

He was absolutely wonderful at the lab. I held him on my lap, and held his little arms down, and he sat so still, except for one minor kicking thing, but the nurse knew how to use her stern voice, and he stopped quite quickly. He loved his Donald Duck band-aid, and the little eagle finger puppet she gave him, and the sucker the lady down the hall gave him as we left the building. He was pretty proud of himself, too, as I told him over and over what a good boy he had been and how brave he was.

Okay, so that's Griffin. And Mike. Who else? Oh, yes. The animals.

ALL of the animals.

Cleo has worms that need to be treated. Yuck. Makes me shiver just to think about them! I wonder if there is an over-the-counter product that is effective enough to get rid of them completely... hmmm... or a natural remedy.

Miles looks like a prize fighter who just lost a fight to someone wearing brass knuckles with spurs on them. Seriously. Do cats do this to each other? It wasn't Cleo (although she does enjoy batting his face around with her claw-free paws), it was probably an animal (cat or possum or raccoon or squirrel) he encountered in one of his not-quite-so-frequent-since-he-got-torn-up outdoor escape episodes. He lost all of the hair on the front and sides of his face, half of his whiskers, and has scratches above his eyes and under his chin. He looks like he has a Roman nose, too. His fur is finally starting to grow back, and the skin is healing -- which makes him look like an alien cat with a pink, wrinkly face and whiskers that need ironing -- all in all, he still looks quite frightful. I'm sure he'll scare away plenty of kids on Halloween.

And then there is Gordon. Just tonight, as I was trying to get his mind off of his growling belly (yeah, we ran out of dog food yesterday, so the poor dog hadn't eaten yet today, but Mike was at the store buying some for him at that very moment), I sat petting him, and of course I reached for my favorite part of the dog-- his soft, silky ears. Well, they are still soft, but in a whole other way. They are both filled with fluid and feel like they have little pillows in them. We were told that this could happen with Great Danes if you don't have their ears cropped. Really, any dog with floppy ears. If they get liquid in their ears, the liquid has a hard time drying up because the big ears are blocking it from evaporating, and the dog shakes their head to get rid of the water, which causes the ears to hit the sides of the head with such force that it breaks blood vessels and causes swelling. It looks like he'll have to have surgery. I am wondering if there is another alternative. The websites I read said that if you leave it alone, the swelling will eventually go down, but the ears will be left looking like raisins. Yikes!

I just can't wait for the vet bill from this one. We'll be taking him and both cats in tomorrow. Griffin's swollen lymph nodes and Miles' face... are they connected? I don't know. I'm hoping I'll find that out tomorrow too.

Well, good night. I need some rest!

Ode to Hippo

You were there

when we brought

our first new baby

home from the hospital.

You were cast aside

many a night

because the doctor said

"No toys in bed."

You were snuggled by Mommy

more than by the babies

because she loved

your softness.

You are the reason

Griffin says

"hippopotamus"

so clearly.

You have been thrown across the room

and used as a

pillowfight weapon

on more than one occasion.

You started to get

a bit faded and worn

after Sammy turned

one year old.

Then came the day when

two little boys brought

a bottle of lotion into their bedroom,

and you got in the way of their fun.

Mommy checked your label

and it told her

to only wipe you down gently

in order to clean you.

Wiping

didn't

work

out.

So here's to you,

Mr. Hippo.

You were a wonderful part

of our lives

for three soft, fluffy,

light-blue years.

Mommy will miss you.

--------------

Would anyone else care for a tissue?