State of Affairs

As much as I want to press the 'pause' button on my life so that I can get my bearings on all that has happened in our family life outside of the normal things that happen when one chooses to have a family, I have not found a way to do that. Therefore, each day I trudge on trying to make the best of each day. After all, that is all that any of us can do, right?

Some days around here are better than others and it seems that as of late there have more bad days than good (at least with me), but as each day passes and I get a hold on this life I have created for both myself and my family I find that my roots are once again taking hold and I am able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Spring, it seems, has finally arrived. With that comes the knowledge that my children are out of doors more often than not enjoying the fresh air and the (sometimes) sunshine. We aren't letting a little bit of rain deter us though, and last week we found ourselves on a 2 miles hike in the rain that led us through muddy paths and puddles. Springtime also means kids who pass out almost immediately upon their heads hitting their pillows. This turns out to be a bonus for me as there are not children in my house who climb out of bed 50 times needing to tell me one last thing or to get a drink or use the restroom. It also means that friends are once again in abundance and laughter fills the air.

Sarah is doing okay. On Friday, she will have an MRI and an appointment with an ophthalmologist at the Cleveland Clinic who will (hopefully) be able to determine if she has a second autoimmune disease which is causing her frequent relapses when she comes off of her steroids. I am not holding my breath as time has taught me that so much of what is happening to Sarah stumps even those who have years and years of training is diseases such as hers. Vision wise it seems that she has once again gained some of her vision back, but I find that she still struggles with distances very much. Glasses will not help her as the damage that is causing these vision issues are not at the front of her eye, which is where I understand glasses can help improve vision, but rather in the back of her eye deep in the recesses of her optic nerve where glasses cannot help. She is taking her medication faithfully although I am not sure if this is even helping. Time will tell, I suppose.  Mood wise she has her struggles. Steroids can cause an increase in a persons agitation level, and I see Sarah losing her patience with Elizabeth a little more easily than normal. She is also struggling with her weight as she now weights as much as Josh. (She found this out when both children were weighed to determine the appropriate resistance level for bands while on a bungee type ride at Fun-N-Stuff.) I have told her that while her weight is higher than it used to be this is only because of her medication, and that once we can figure out her right dosage of Imuran (which should stop her frequent relapses), and can get her off of steroids her weight should begin to fall off. Still, it is not easy having to have these kinds of conversations with a little girl, and is yet another side effect of a disease of such gravity as the one that resides inside of her small frame.

Soccer season has begun which is both a blessing and a curse. I love watching my kids play soccer, and I would most definitely describe us as a 'soccer family' with myself at the helm as your typical 'soccer mom'. All 4 kids are playing again this year and their practices all fall on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It becomes difficult when I am trying to get all of them to different practice locations at around the same time. It does not help in the least bit that 3 of the 4 soccer teams are going to be changing their practice locations on a regular basis as well. This coupled with Bob working second shift means that it will make for an interesting season as I navigate through the web of different practice schedules for all of them. I am thankful that I have had several families offer to help get the kids to where they need to be and I very may well end up taking them up on their offers. We shall see.

I am getting ready to put my garden in, and I am very excited about this. I think that we are almost getting to the point where the temperature at night will not fall too low as to kill any seeds I am trying to grow. I hope that I have a somewhat successful garden, but I also know that a lot can go wrong. I do know that gardening has a learning curve, so I suspect that I will learn a little more each year allowing me for more and more success I get a garden or two under my belt.

The changes inside the house are slowly taking shape. I think that we have a game plan for every room now which is a comfort. I do realize that I need to stay off of Pinterest for a while, as I will never be the type of person to have a Pottery Barn interior. I was finding that I was getting extremely discouraged at what was taking shape in my home because it didn't look any where near perfect. Bob was able to pull me off of the ledge this week, and get me to realize that our house isn't going to look the way I want it to over night and as long as we make some progress each week that is all that we can ask for.

Schooling is back in full swing much to some of the kids dismay. For a while there we were on a bare bones schedule of Spelling, Reading, and Math so as to give the kids some time to explore their own interests, but after talking with Bob we both realized that they all need a bit more than that to get the kind of education that we want them to have. So, we are once again back to grammar, writing, reading, spelling, latin, logic, math, history, and a smudge of science. I learned this year that I am terrible at science in terms of creating a curriculum, and for those children who will be staying home with me next year I will be purchasing an actual science curriculum. Josh and Sarah have taken to this new schedule very well. Elizabeth, too, seems to be getting her work done without too much of a fight. Andy hates this renewed schedule and feels that he has too much work to do. I think that he just tends to be a bit lackadaisical and  would rather be spending his day in his room playing cards or reading.

I am still hoping that all of the kids will choose to stay home in the fall although the likely hood of that does not look too good. I am trying to prepare myself to let those that want to go back to do so, although it will make me very sad  to send them back. Our school district seems to be going in the pooper with lines drawn between the school board and the rest of the community. I hate Common Core, and feel very badly for teachers now-a-days as they struggle to keep up with the ever increasing demands of what the government is mandating children "learn". I also worry about the fast paced environment of technological advancements that I will be sending my kids into. They will be walking into a world where cell phones, ipods, ipads, and the like are welcomed by our school district, and in which children are accessing porn and other things I absolutely don't want any of my kids exposed to. (When Andy was in the middle school last year he regularly told me that kids would pull up inappropriate content while on school property even though when I inquired about this I was told it was impossible because the school "blocked" access to certain material online.) I find my conservative parenting to be even more challenging when I send my kids out into a world such as this on an almost daily basis during the school year, and it makes me want to hold on to my group even tighter and for longer. I want to make sure that they have a really solid foundation so that when they do have to be thrust into this world they will have the ability to handle adult situations and adult content with more skills emotionally than just sending them into this world with immature minds that are still growing and learning how to navigate between childhood and adulthood.

I am going to try and venture out to do more things with the homeschool group that is available in the Falls. I did 1 thing with them all year and I think that my kids may have benefited from getting together with others in their same situation a bit more. I wonder if they would have had the opportunity to forge friendships with some of these kids if Josh and Sarah would be so eager to go back to school. (Josh is now leaning more and more towards going back to school - although his reasons - school lunches and hanging out with his buddies more - are not sitting well with me. We still have time to discuss this with him though to make sure that he wants to go back for something more concrete than those two reasons.Especially since he sees his buddies on a regular basis. I know that he doesn't like it when his friends talk about stuff that is going on at school and he has no clue what they are talking about although, again I struggle to see the validity in that being the main reason he wants to go back.)

Bob's birthday is on Monday and the kids are I are really excited about the gift he will be getting. I think he will enjoy it as well although he is a tough cookie to buy things for sometimes. Sarah has another appointment on Monday with Dr. Rensel, so we are going to spend the day in Cleveland hitting up the West Side Market and the Great Lakes Brewery when her appointment is over. It should be a relaxing day - provided we don't get bad news from Sarah's MRI that she is having the this Friday.

Bob has really been helping me out lately, and I appreciate the man he is more and more as our lives move forward. He really is a stand up guy, and he puts up with a lot from me. I am a very complicated woman, and it takes a special guy to handle all that I am. I am grateful that he has stuck by my side all of these years because I don't know that I would have had the strength to do so if our roles were reversed. I am trying to soften up a bit because I am just such a tough cookie.Taking the time to figure out what it means to be me in a Real sense has helped our relationship by leaps and bounds. We have been through so much this past year, and I truly think that most couples would have cracked - to be honest there was a point recently where I thought we were going to crack, but we stuck it out and worked harder than we ever have to get through a really tough time. I am so grateful to him that he is as willing to make this marriage work. There have been times when it was his willingness alone that has carried us, and it means the world to me that I matter so much to him to stick it out. Marriage can be really hard, and when you add in a child that is as sick as Sarah is it can make it all that much harder as each person tries to come to terms with the illness both on their own and together as a family.

I am still working very hard each day to find out what it means to me to be Real. I have never really taken the time to get to know myself as I am, and not as I should be that there is so much about myself that I do not know.  I find myself retreating a lot and reflecting on a lot of things, and taking this time has helped me in a lot of ways. I still have so much work to go, but just getting myself on this path and working towards this goal is a step in the right direction.

I find that I am cautious about the future as of late. I am no longer optimistic about it, but I am not pessimistic about it either. Experience has taught me that both optimism and pessimism haven't served me as well I as would have liked them to, and so now all I can do is wait for each new day to come while doing my best to not worry or celebrate the future too much. I am constantly trying to remind myself that all I have it today - actually all I really have is this moment.

Life can be really, really hard sometimes. Harder than I ever imagined it possible. I hope someday I can look back on this part of my life and reflect on all that I have learned, and more importantly, to see how this piece fits into this puzzle called My Life because sometimes nothing seems to make sense.