The Front Porch Swing

[Oldmomma]

Such heartwarming stories here. I try not to dwell on the wrong and see the silver lining in things but with slow internet, time zones, adjusting to life here well I have days. When I try to see the good folks say im living with rose colored glasses. Well what better way to see the world when gloom is all around?
I try to find my small joys, shake off dark clouds but I dont have many folks to talk to who really understand my situation. Like I said I get lots of opinions but the reality is its not the solution I need so I get more depressed and just try not to be around people til I feel better.
Use to care for kids with special needs and one of my old clients would call me every few months to chat. I was always humbled by the fact that no matter how bad I thought I had it others had worse.
like when my son died, I had met a woman from the UK whose husband was killed during the war. I called her to help me through those 3 days of mourning. She dropped everything and came. When I was greiving the loss of one child I was surrounded by women who had lost more, one lost 5 sons. We in america are blessed with not having war at our doorstep and unless we send our loved ones to other places we dont live with the fear of war. Im a military brat so I know and I hated wars since I was little but until this war it just wasnt real to me. It was something happening a world away to no one I knew or cared about. But this war was right in the middle of where my husbands family lived. Friends I knew lived here and suddenly I had to be part of it. Those 9 months wreaked havoc on me and I now cant watch much of thungs I use to. Even stupid shows trigger something in a memory and can set off mood swings. Psychology and social work were my majors in college so I have self analyzed my issues pretty well to know when im in trouble. Books are a great resource and I have over 3000 ebooks not to mention real books. But reading can set me off too. Im a big questioner of faith and its always given me problems. But faith is what keeps me whole. You should be able to find answers in faith. I have never judged a person by faith each person will find their own guide. Im a shoulder for leaning, an ear for listening and a guide for anyone who loses their way. But even then we all need another to be there for us. People say im strong, no ive just built better walls. I liken faith to education. We all learn it we just have different teachers. We might speak in different tongues, call our teachers different names but in the end the graduation certificate of life is all stamped by the same principle. The greatest thing I find from being online is that regardless of where we live, who we follow or what languages we speak we are all one being. And in our greatest moments we reach out as one to help another. We all on this site come together for one purpose, love of animals. We dont care how many, what kinds or what you use them for it unites us. Have a blessed day folks.

 

[rrrmamma]

What wonderful news. Kendra is such a trooper. I can't imagine what she has been through just trying to do the things we take for granted. God is good and if we are patient he answers our prayers. Tam has done a great job. I have tears of happiness in my eyes right now.

 

[heartsizedfarm]

I feel so sad for everyone that didn't enjoy their Mother's Day, but I think we all have to cope with negative experiences in our own ways. It takes time and we don't always get over loss or betrayal, but we all must do the work to heal ourselves. I'm still young, though, so what do I know?

Also, just thought I'd share the Mother's Day video I made for Mom. She really liked it!

Loved your video. Loved that bit with you on stage, doing your own thing! Your mum must have been so touched by this.

 

[heartsizedfarm]

Hurray for Kendra! Is the plan to use the gait trainer to make it possible for her to walk on her own, or with braces, one day?

 

[rrrmamma]

Thanks, right now she seems ready and anxious to come, but she has never been here and reality may not be to her liking. I am hoping that the animals, especially the puppy will help her adjust. I am contacting friends with teens about her age to see if we can have her meet some of them. I am sure this is going to be a roller coaster ride.

 

[Blooie]

yes she is registered. Both of the Highlands are. It is Misty Morn's Clara and Misty Morn's Red Dawn. My granddaughter was running with a rough bunch of semi-dropouts. She was stopped for a traffic stop and was found with drugs and stolen property, both belonging to her boyfriend. The detective knows the boyfriend and wants to cut her a break. If she comes here and gets her diploma ( only 15 hours to get It) then he will not file the charges against her. Since she is 18 he is cutting her a huge break because none of this will go on her permanent record. Hubby says if BF shows up he will be looking down a gun barrel. Since he is a gunsmith, we have a few to look down! Lol.
he

The situation we were in they did press the charges against Little Diane and we had to wait until she was off probation to move her out of the state. She had blown off school for so long that the day after we got her here and I took her to the high school to enroll her, (they had already received her transcripts via her dad) the counselor and principal told us that she'd have to start in as a freshman - that would be awkward for a young lady almost 18 and her 14-15 year old classmates so they recommended the GED. Signed her up and she sailed through. If the young man and the other characters she was running with had shown up here they'd have been greeted about as cordially as your granddaughter's boyfriend!

The greatest thing I find from being online is that regardless of where we live, who we follow or what languages we speak we are all one being. And in our greatest moments we reach out as one to help another. We all on this site come together for one purpose, love of animals. We dont care how many, what kinds or what you use them for it unites us. Have a blessed day folks.

And that says it all beautifully. We can hide behind anonymity, reveal only what we are comfortable revealing, and don't worry about being judged here, yet one prayer request goes out and the Good Lord is inundated with them.

What wonderful news. Kendra is such a trooper. I can't imagine what she has been through just trying to do the things we take for granted. God is good and if we are patient he answers our prayers. Tam has done a great job. I have tears of happiness in my eyes right now.

Hurray for Kendra! Is the plan to use the gait trainer to make it possible for her to walk on her own, or with braces, one day?

It's been so much fun watching her try to learn to do the "normal" things all kids do, but finding her own ways to get those things accomplished. I remember my kids learning to crawl, then walk - but I never noticed HOW they learned to do those things - they just sorta happened gradually. We saw the progress, but not the process. With Kendra we have to observe how each muscle group helps the next in order to crawl. We had to teach her about co-coordinating so many things - the nerves had to tell the muscles what to do, the muscles had to wait their turn in the sequence, and then it all had to come together into movement. I remember my kids learning to talk, but I couldn't tell you how the words went from my mouth to their ears, found the right place in their minds to settle in, then come back out their little mouths as communication. One day day they were babies, the next they were running and chattering a mile a minute. With Kendra we celebrated when she crawled 6 feet without toppling over - and she was 15 months old. She is our teacher, and we've learned a million things from her.

The goal is to have her walk independently. She has no nerves in her feet or ankles so she can't feel contact with the floor. That contact gives us part of our spatial sense - where our bodies are in relation to the world around us. So she will never walk very well or for very long. All we would like for her to be able to do is to do things like walk from the bedroom out to the kitchen, or to the bathroom - just short distances - so she doesn't have to get into the wheelchair for every little task like getting a drink of water or something. She will probably use those crutches with the arm rests and hand grips and her braces. She's been in the braces (or casts) most of her life already. The gait trainer is to teach her the mechanics of mobility - she can't strengthen bone and muscle without using them and becoming weight bearing. It's all so interconnected. It's fascinating. If I weren't already in my 60's I'd love to go back to school and learn what these therapists do, then become a therapist myself. Unfortunately it's a very physically demanding life and as Kendra is getting bigger it's getting harder to carry her from room to room or pick her up from the floor, so I know realistically that I could never do the job.

Kendra also has no nerves to bowel and bladder. So we have to catheterize her 5 times a day, and she gets a cone enema at about the same time every night. Katie is a big help with this - calls it "booty duty"! Most kids with Spina Bifida have learned to self-cath by about 4 or 5 years old and tuck the day's catheters in their backpacks to go to school. Obviously it's anatomically easier for little boys to cath than little girls. But Kendra is a good candidate for a special surgery where they move the access to her bladder via a tiny opening near her belly button and she can cath through there. They can, at the same time, do what's known as the Ace Malone surgery, where the appendix is moved to hold stool and her bowels can be cleaned out from the tummy area via a stoma. She has quite a future ahead of her but the social issues are critical to resolve for her to find her place rather than hide from the world.

Thanks, right now she seems ready and anxious to come, but she has never been here and reality may not be to her liking. I am hoping that the animals, especially the puppy will help her adjust. I am contacting friends with teens about her age to see if we can have her meet some of them. I am sure this is going to be a roller coaster ride.

Never underestimate the healing power of a fluffy puppy!

Remember that on any roller coaster ride you spend a lot of time sitting still at the bottom, dreading but excited about the ride to the top, before that cart really gets moving upward. And remember too that the downhill plunges on that roller coaster are fast and sharp, but followed by a quick ride back up! Then at the end of the ride things slow down and you're riding on the section of track that's flat and straight. You and hubby can do this! She can do this.

 

[LindaB220]

Just wanted to share 15" of snow. We ended up getting quite the spring blizzard. The interstate closed Sunday morning and after snow and blowing for a day and a half, we have 4 to 6 foot drifts everywhere. This is out my dining room window. It is 36 degrees today, so the snow is melting, hence the green showing through. The wood fence on the right is 6' tall, and the little grow house is 4' tall at the back and was at one time yesterday, completely covered. That snowbank in the back is in front of a 4' snow fence. Hubby mowed on Saturday...

This is out our patio doors in the basement - can't open the doors yet, still have 2 feet of snow there.


Hope everyone is feeling warm and fuzzy now! This is not quite typical, but a friend of a friend drives plow for WYDOT and says he has plowed snow in every month of the year.

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Are you going to be able to do ANY gardening?

 

[LindaB220]

Cindy and Will adjusting straps on Kendra's gait trainer. Her first time in it. She was not happy - don't know if this picture shows the alligator tears in her eyes or if it was the other shot. Who cares? She ain't crying in it any more!

Okay, okay, this is huge! I need to see if my brain will let my fingers keep up. KENDRA WALKED TONIGHT. YEP YEP SHE WALKED!!!
Calming down...taking a breath.....breathing...okay, ready GO! This is a bit of a story!

Every year cash donations from the citizens of Cowley pour in for families in need here in our community. People add 50 bucks to their water bill, or drop off $10 or whatever at the town hall, and since we don't have a large list of people on the gift list it amounts to a pretty good Christmas for lots of people who might not have had much - usually a couple of hundred in the form of gift certificates from the grocery store and cash for each family. I'm in a awkward position because they keep Tam on the list as a single mom, even though every year she lets the council (especially me!) know that she and Evan are fine. But Evan wormed his way into the hearts of every member of the council so they just leave her on the list because of him, and because they admire how hard she's worked to provide. Besides, Evan built the mayor a bat house. LOL Problem is that when her name and Kenny and Jenny's come up, I step outside. I just can't vote for the distribution for my own family for some reason. It doesn't seem right.

Anyway, for Christmas this year the town of Cowley gave the kids the funds to buy Kendra a gait trainer. It's a medical device that puts her in an upright position with her feet on the floor so she can learn how to use her legs in that familiar way we do. The insurance the kids have wouldn't pay for one. They denied it because they'd already bought her the wheelchair, so they determined that they had already provided her with some form of mobility and she didn't need a different one - even with a recommendation from her doctors! But by the time it finally arrived, she was in casts again. No way to get her to be able to use it when she has two casts on each leg and can't bend her knees. Then after the casts came off her legs muscles were very sore and weak, so then we had to start all over from crawling. She simply couldn't stand in the gait trainer. Besides, we're pretty isolated out here and Kendra's amazing physical therapists had never worked with a gait trainer before and they weren't comfortable with trying to fit her when they weren't even sure what the proper fit was. But we got a call on Thursday - a therapist from Billlings had agreed to come down for Kendra's session on Friday afternoon and help get it fitted to her properly and show all of us - Ken, me, Jenny, Katie and Cindy (Kendra's regular therapist) how to teach her what the gait trainer was for. She HATED it. She cried almost the whole time. Didn't help that it was 45 minutes past nap time either.

After the fitting and the lessons, he told us if we had any problems to call him directly, but in the meantime to start her out being in it for about 15 - 20 minutes a couple of times a day until she wasn't fighting it any more. So that's what Jenny was doing all weekend. The most we were hoping for was that she'd figure out that if she stood rather than sat in it she'd be more comfortable. Tonight I got a FaceTime call from Jenny....apparently there was a sleeve of crackers and Kendra's sippy cup on the coffee table in the living room. Jenny was doing supper dishes. Next thing she knew, Kenra was eating a cracker and enjoying her juice. Nobody else was home to help her, so there's only one way Kendra got from the kitchen to the living room.....she walked in her gait trainer! So Jenny held the iPad about 10 feet away from Kendra and I called her. She WALKED over to see me on the iPad screen. And she was grinning - she was walking and she LIKED it! Oh, boy, what a God we have! I'm going over as soon as I get home from my doctor's appointment tomorrow and get it on video!

KENDRA WALKED! I'm so excited tears are running down my leg!

Oh, Blooie, what a vast improvement. Kudos to the money people and kudos to y'all that helped make this happen!!!

 

[LBejaran]

Loved your video. Loved that bit with you on stage, doing your own thing! Your mum must have been so touched by this.

Hehe, thank you! That wasn't me though, haha! That was my older sister. I have several siblings: Olivia (on the stage), Tony (boy in the beginning of the video), Esteban (boy with a basket on his back when we was being a turtle), and Nivia (the girl in the very beginning of the video). I was the little girl who was staring somberly at the camera, haha!

 

[wyoDreamer]

Are you going to be able to do ANY gardening?

All the gardening that I am able to do is done in that little 4x8 "growhouse" you see in the picture. I grow tomatoes, green onions, peas, lettuce, baby bok cabbage, and spinach.
I have found that I need to protect all gardening from the wind and the critters. The wind dried stuff out too quick and the animals will eat anything. With 12" of rain a year, we need to work very hard to maintain moisture in the soil and humidity in the air for growing anything.
The gophers were chewing on my irises on Saturday and as soon as my daylilies start to form blooms, the antelope will nip off the buds. Sigh...

Wisconsin here I come!


Editetd to add: I bet my husband that the snow will be gone by the weekend, if not sooner.