CrossFit 90 Day Fitness Challenge - Day 51

What do you do with your 13-year old son when he's all mouth and attitude?

You take him to the gym and work him until you both collapse in sweat and exhaustion on the floor.

Then, when you can, you both crawl to the car, where he looks at you with new found respect and says "Wow, Mom, you're kind of a bada**"

And you get mad at him for his bad language, but inside you secretly smile....

Because...yeah... you kind of are.

Homeschool Monday - Summer School

"Do you take a summer vacation?"

I get asked that question all the time during April and May. Homeschoolers and non-homeschoolers alike are endlessly fascinated, it seems, by summertime plans.

I find that non-homeschooling people are surprised to find out that there is no real consensus on this subject. Each family does their own sort of thing, and they may not even do the same thing from year-to-year. It evolves with your children, their ages, and the situation we're in.

Our family has tried it all. We've had normal breaks, and partial breaks. We've schooled at the way through the summer, and taken off just the month of July. We've tried half school days and schooling only three days a week. In the end, here's what works for us:

We follow a regular school schedule until the kids are at the end of their school books.  One was done a week ago and the rest will finish by the end of June. When they're done with their books, they're done for the year.

Kind of.

Because math and foreign languages are so easy to forget, and we don't want to have to review material in the fall, my children keep on with these two lessons throughout the summer. Also, my kindergartener will keep doing his reading lessons every day. We do these in a much more informal manner. Math and Spanish for the big kids are on the computer. They can do them at any time of the day that they choose, but aren't free to play until they are done. This means that most of the kids will sit down at the computer for an hour as soon they get up or right after breakfast. It's extremely rare for math and Spanish to not be done by 9am. As for reading with my little one - I move his primer in by my bed. When he's done with breakfast, we snuggle under the covers and he reads.

So, that's what's happening this summer at our house. What's going on at yours? Inquiring minds want to know.

Smiling

I'm thrilled to report that #4 is feeling better, her face is returning to normal, and most important of all...

She's smiling again!

She's healing faster than we ever hoped she would. Thank you for your prayers and kind words throughout this trying time.

God bless you all,

Rebecca

Useless

I have come to the conclusion this past week that the stress migraine is the most useless stress response EVER! Unfortunately, it's the one that I've got.

Fight or flight make sense to me....there's a bear that wants to eat you...you fight the bear or you run away.

The zombies are after you...you fight them...or you run away.

The house catches on fire ...well, you get the idea...

I don't do any of these things. In the midst of a scary crisis, I collapse into a puddle of goo, holding my head and sobbing from the pain. Which accomplishes what...exactly? This is not helpful, and I'm not sure how this little gem got passed on to me through the beauty of genetics.

I'm actually not sure how my people lived long enough to produce me, because our stress response looks like:

The bear is chasing me! Quick, curl up on the floor in the fetal position holding your head and sobbing! .... Get eaten by the bear.

The zombies are after you! Stumble around blindly because the light hurts your eyes muttering ow..my brain..my brain... Okay, it could totally work as camouflage in the case of zombie apocalypse. I'll give you one.

But house on fire? Bar-be-que.

Completely and utterly useless.

At least to myself. My 13-year-old son pointed out last night "I can see how that's bad for you, but let's be honest, it kinda works for the rest of us. In the case of a full on bear uprising, we know who's the bait."

Nice.

Today

Today the swelling is starting to go down around her eye and she can see out of it again.

Today her mind was clear even if she was too tired to talk most of the day.

Today the she didn't have to put gauze in her mouth to keep the spit from dripping out.

Today she could swallow well enough, even with a mouth she can't close, to get down a blended up bowl of wonton soup.

Today her mom grabbed a can of spray paint and painted the broken edge of the sidewalk bright orange so that no one else has to hit it again.

Seeing It

I saw the spot today where #4 had her accident. A steep hill, a broken sidewalk...it was a tragedy waiting to happen.

I stood there this afternoon and looked at the four inch height difference between the slabs of concrete. Just beyond it was the already fading stain from a pool of blood. Her lost teeth were still there - one in the grass and the other nearer to the street. I held them in my hand awhile and jiggled them like dice. The neighbor's boy, who had spotted them and come to fetch me to this spot, jabbered on excitedly. I didn't hear a word he said. My eyes kept returning to that blood stain where my baby had laid.

I took a few steps and began to follow the spatters of blood that traced her pained lurch toward home. She staggered past several houses, wailing - I've been told. She screamed and cried until our next door neighbor heard her and came running. I found that spot too. The place where he scooped her up and began to run with her toward our house, and the place on our porch where he set her down again.

I stood on my porch and looked awhile at her scooter with the marks from her teeth on the handlebars and her blood all over it. I can't bring myself to touch it to move it off the porch. A part of me wants to throw it away and have the hated thing gone from our home. The rest of me is afraid to move it, as if moving it would make this all real and not some sick and scary daydream. Touching it makes it final. It makes her broken. It means that awful day is over and that we can't somehow go back to before this ever was.

Update on #4

This seems like the easiest place to get everyone up to speed at the same time.

If you don't know what's been going on, let me catch you up to speed:

Yesterday around dinner time, our sweet #4 was in an accident on her scooter (the foot powered kind.) We don't know exactly what happened, but my neighbor brought her home wailing like a siren and literally covered in blood from head to toe. She was so covered that I did not immediately recognize her when I opened the door and saw her.

We took her to the ER (here's the new stuff) and discovered that she had knocked out her top, front, adult teeth. The jaw where the teeth go is cracked.

Based on the lack of abrasions to her hands and arms and the blood on her scooter, we think that she hit her mouth on the handlebar and knocked her teeth and herself out. Because she was unconscious, she fell forward and slammed her face into the cement of the sidewalk. Her right eye is swollen almost shut, her face is covered in road rash, and she has a concussion.

Due to the concussion, she is having short term memory issues. She seems to have a memory span between 5-8 minutes. She keeps rediscovering that her teeth are missing and asking if she will have to go through life toothless. Because of her altered mental state, she can't have any pain killer other than Tylenol. I can't even imagine the pain of a cracked jaw and swollen face with no pain relief. She's only 8. That just seems so young for everything she has to deal with.

I was holding it together yesterday until she started crying and said in a pained whisper "My life is hard."

She's right. Her life is hard and it isn't fair. I know that God doesn't really do fair the way that we think of it, but she's at her limit right now.

Will you please pray with us for her speedy recovery and for the wisdom and skill of the doctors and dentists as they work to put her back together again? And that the next crisis is a long time in coming....