Create your own family sticker graphic at pYzam.com

Ainsley entertains -- or is entertained by -- lifeguard Emily at the pool.

Isn't she adorable? This isn't even a swimsuit. It's a gymnastics leotard. But she wanted to wear it and when you're 3, you ought to get to pretty much wear what you want. There are plenty of years left when she has to stick to fashion "rules."

Shalee swims with the kids, and Elizabeth follows her around like an adoring puppy. 

Elizabeth, Ainsley, Hope, Hannah and Noah take a "break." I hate breaks. I hate that they are enforced every hour at the pool. But I guess the lifeguards need to change shifts sometimes! What I love about our pool is that breaks are only five minutes long. In the next town over, they are 10 to 15 minutes, every hour.

Shalee hugs and warms up Ainsley, who LOVES the teenagers and college kids!

Noah, the designated pitch slugger! 

He LOVED his first year of DP. And it was fun for us, too -- they won all but one game, and they had a good time. Their coaches were really great, and all of the kids on our street were on this team.

For Suso -- a photo-illustration of how to know when radishes are ready to harvest. This one? It's ready.

This one? Not quite ready.

This one is ready!

A good rule of thumb for me is that I can pretty much pick any radishes about four weeks after they're planted, even if they're not poking out of the ground. If they are poking out of the ground, it will be obvious when they are ready.

Elizabeth gets basketball handling tips from K-State Lady Wildcats Shalee Lehning (lying down) and Ashley Sweat.

(I thought my friend Lori might enjoy this photo. There will be more to come.)

Elizabeth LOVES T-ball, and so do we. The non-competitiveness, the fun coaches, and the camaraderie amongst the adorable little kids just makes it a really worthwhile summer experience. 

Elizabeth's coaches are just awesome, too! (I love her red mitt. She doesn't use it much, as she spends most of her time turning cartwheels in the outfield.)

Hannah at bat during summer softball. I LOVE her red cleats. They're just awesome! This was the second pair we had to buy, because apparently Pumas run a little small. No worries, though -- Noah can wear the other pair next year.

Hope in the outfield. She has a cool glove -- and it's HARD to find a leftie glove out here in the middle of nowhere.

WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Hope on the water slide at the pool in the next town over.

Ainsley:  I need some piracy!!!  

                      (followed by slamming of bathroom door)

Garden Update

First, look at this Portaluca. I just love this flower. It's so ORANGE. And so beautiful!  I thought I had lost these ... all the flowers died and the stems wilted -- and then last week, they resurrected themselves. Hooray!  I have two white pots of these on my porch. They make me happy. 
Now, on to the garden. I lost my first batch of tomatoes when they twisted off in a 70-mph wind, so I replanted with three Romas and one Fourth of July. I have a couple of Patio tomatoes in pots on the porch, but they're not looking too good either. We'll see what happens. (That reminds me ... must beg dear darling overworked husband to build the supports for my trellis).

Above is our Square Foot Garden on May 28. Ignore my shadow there in the corner, and orient yourself looking east (I'm standing on the west side of the boxes).  Bottom box, top row, L-R: Roma tomato, American Marigold, green bell pepper, spinach.  Second row: Fourth 0f July tomato, green bell pepper, parsley, lettuce.  Third row: Roma tomato, green bell pepper, bush beans, empty square for future radish crop.  Bottom row: Roma tomato, dill, orange Marigolds, radishes. (This first crop of radishes is almost ready to harvest!)

Now I'm going to get all out of order, because Blogger drives me BATTY. I can't seem to get the photos in the order I want them and keep losing them, so I'll just label them in the order they uploaded. Feel free to pass along Blogger tips, because I am apparently an idiot. Anyway ... this is our "succulents" barrel.  These are Hannah's and Noah's succulents/cactuses, and Hannah dumped nearly a whole package of Marigold seeds in there too -- and they are sprouting wildly.  I don't think she has the heart to thin them.  It's a lesson she has to learn on her own.

This is one of my orange hanging buckets on the porch, filled with yellow pansies and ... oh, phooey -- I forget the name. Maybe I'll edit it in later. Pretty blue flowers.

These are yellow pansies and red verbena -- I have two white pots of these on the porch, and they are so cheerful!

This is my Rhubarb Garden-in-progress.  I built the box way too big. Mark told me 2'x3' and I forgot what he said, and told Chris to cut it 3'x6'. So it's huge.  I decided to keep it this size, and use half of it for three rhubarb plants, and the other half for an herb garden. I'm building this on the south side of our house, where it is protected from the wind between our house and our neighbors' house, but gets lots of sunshine from about 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Hanging basket in the front yard ... full of vinca, and portaluca, and some yellow flower I've forgotten. I did write this all down somewhere, but my memory fails me.

Front porch. I suppose I could have Photoshopped out the empty Pepsi cup, the smudges on the front door, and any other imperfections, but hey, this is reality. You can see that we have almost no grass left in our yard up near the entrance. That's OK, because I'm planning a curved walkway from the sidewalk corner west to the street, and then flower beds on either side of the pathway, so I don't intend to put grass there. Once we're done with the bones of the pathway and flower beds, the Bermuda and Fescue that cover most of the front yard will creep in to fill in. Or they won't, in which case I guess we'll re-seed. I'm not too concerned about it right now. Oh, and we also need a new garage door. That one is supremely ugly.  I'm trying to decide what to do with the front porch. It used to have brown indoor-outdoor carpet, and I could either recarpet, or put down a stone facade, or just paint the thing.  Or I could leave it bare. Also on my list: a bench for sitting, and a new porch light. And I should probably clean the smudges off the window.

One of my geranium boxes.  I have three, each with random color schemes because the kids wanted different colors of geraniums.  I chose red, and they chose some pink, fuschia, and coral ones.  I tucked in some other annuals around them for color.

Another orange hanging bucket, where Vinca and those pretty blue flowers make another appearance.

Aha! Back to the garden!  This is lettuce. It's coming along nicely!  I will be mulching soon and then it will look even prettier. Mark collected a lot of used coffee grounds for me at work.

Onions are poking up their little heads!  Since past experience tells me that regular onions take too long to grow in the quantities in which we use them, I decided to just go with green onions this time.

Yellow squash! These seeds took about a week to germinate and I wasn't sure if they were going to be viable, but then they pushed up through the soil and took off like crazy. I'm going to grow these vertically if my dear darling overworked husband builds me those trellis supports. My kids love yellow squash, sliced and sauteed in a skillet with some garlic. Mmmmm, mmmmm.

Carrots!  These should have been lined up real purty-like in rows, nine per square.  But overzealous little waterers (I'm not naming names, Hannah ... ) flooded them and the seeds floated a little. Oh, well. They're growing and that's all that matters.

Cucumbers, which are Hannah's favorite veggie, are finally peeking up.  We originally started with seedlings from a greenhouse, but they had been sprayed for bug infestation and died within a day of transplanting them. So I just got some seeds -- burpless in one square, pickling cukes in the other -- and grew our own. These will also be grown vertically on the trellis that my dear darling overworked husband is going to build.

See that black line on the wood on the left? That's where the boundary lath is supposed to be. Someone (I'm not naming names, Mark) stepped on one of the lath and broke it, and I haven't been to the lumberyard to replace it. Then one day I was at the garden center, and they had just gotten in some cantaloupe ... and I bought one on impulse.  But oops! I hadn't planned on growing cantaloupe, so had no place for it. So I thought I'd just put it there where the boundary should be, and grow it vertically between the cucumbers and the eggplant.

And here are the bush beans, which are just growing like gangbusters.  Their leaves are pretty ragged due to the three hailstorms they've survived, but I'm certain they are going to get past their early injuries and keep us well-stocked in beans later this summer.

I had photos of all the other seedlings and sprouts, too, but lost them when trying to rearrange and don't have time to repost them now.  But things are growing well.  So far, I'm pleased with the SFG experiment!

Hail!

We had THREE separate hail storms today.  Happy anniversary to us!

Today is our 16th wedding anniversary. We were going to go out for dinner and possibly a movie, but with the severe weather in the area, didn't want to leave the kids.  Maybe we'll celebrate another time.

I sent this photo to KAKE and they aired it on TV.  The stones from storm #2 were about 2-inch size, around the size of a golf ball but slightly larger.  Storms #1 and #3 were much smaller, nick and dime-sized, mostly.

Ainsley was in the hospital for four days last week. I journaled about the whole experience, but will shorten the story a bit here ...

She had strep for a week or so, and had been on amoxicillin. But her fever kept spiking, and she complained of a sore throat constantly. She wasn't eating, and she was sleeping a lot. In general, she was miserable. Occasionally, though, she'd feel better and act like herself, even feeling up to going to the playground on Friday.

Then on Sunday, (May 18) we went to a friend's high school graduation party, and at the party she wouldn't eat and got really fussy and whiny. Her fever spiked again.

At home, she snoozed on my bed for awhile, intermittently waking to whine and fuss. Around 10 p.m. I noticed that her neck was very swollen across the front. I Googled for possible reasons, and came up with nothing but scary things. It wasn't swollen at the lymph nodes, but across the front of her throat. I wanted to take her to the ER, but knowing that the docs at the local ER would likely just dismiss my concerns, I waited until morning.

Monday morning, May 19, I got up and called the local clinic as soon as they opened. I explained the problem and asked to bring her in, since the PA there had already been treating her strep. They said they had no openings, and when I insisted that it was emergent, they said they could "work me in around 2:00 this afternoon, but you might have to wait." Uh, thanks, but no thanks. So I called the clinic in the next town over, and they said to bring her right in.

The PA there acted kind of odd. He called me her grandmother THREE TIMES. I so do not look like her grandmother. Ack! But he was very concerned, and called a pediatrician in L-town (bigger city to the south), who said to bring her right there. The PA told me to get her there immediately, so I swung by the house, picked up Mark and the kids, and quickly packed a suitcase. I called my friend Suso to get all of our friends praying, because we were frightened.

We got to Dr. Pediatrician's office and he saw us right away. He was very concerned also, and explained that the swelling could cut off her air supply and we needed to take her to the hospital for immediate admission. This, by the way, is the hospital where all five kids were born, and we've always gotten excellent nursing care there before.

We got to the hospital shortly after 11 a.m., and then mostly sat in a room waiting, with five kids -- one of whom was miserable -- until 6 p.m. Then Mark had to take the other kids back home, as Hope had a band concert at 7 p.m. (and this was 40 minutes from home). We still hadn't seen a doctor that the pediatrician had called to consult. They said she would be there by 7 at the latest. We did get an IV in, and Ainsley had a CT scan done, but most of those hours were spent sitting in the room, with her crying and begging for something to drink -- which the nurses refused, as they were waiting for doctor's orders. They wouldn't even let her have an ice chip or a washcloth to wet her poor little chapped and peeling lips. :(  It was truly heartbreaking to hear her cry, "Please, Mama, please, can I have a drink?"  They gave her a Tylenol suppository around 3:30 for her fever, which was 103 degrees, but it did no good.

About 7:30 Dr. Surgeon arrived. She said the swelling was too diffuse and there wasn't a distinct area to the mass, so she wanted to give more IV antibiotics (Rocephin) overnight and would be back at 7 a.m. to reassess. She said Ainsley could eat warm, soft foods and drink warm beverages until midnight. So, I went to get her something, and the nurse said the kitchen was closed. I finally did convince a nurse aide to bring her a bowl of chicken noodle soup from their little kitchenette on the floor, as well as something to drink, and Ainsley ate the entire bowl, drinking the broth through a straw.  Ainsley was up all night, with pesky nurses and nurse aides poking at her. No one brought me a blanket, food, drinks, or anything else. No one asked, "Do you need anything?"  Around 10 p.m. I finally asked someone for a blanket and tried to get a little sleep in the recliner between Ainsley's restless periods, but to no avail. (And she had to get a new IV in the other arm at 11:30 when the first one came unthreaded).

Dr. Surgeon came back around 7:30 a.m. and said the  mass was softer and she would do surgery. The nurses came in and said the OR was booked so we would wait until the afternoon. An hour later, a student nurse asked me to give her a shower, which I did. As soon as she was bathed, the OR team came in to get her! Since this was 3-4 hours earlier than expected, Mark missed the whole thing -- he was at home with the other kids. They asked me to carry her down two floors to the second floor OR Holding, and the first people I saw there were the nurse anesthetist and anesthesia technician who did my spinal with Ainsley's c-section. I remembered them by name, and they were impressed. :)  They are great ladies and I was pleased to see them. They gave Ainsley some Versed to relax her, as she was VERY agitated and frightened, and she then went to sleep. The anesthesiologist that I despise from previous births, Dr. Horrible, came over to get consents, and decided to take Ainsley's case himself. He is a competent doctor, even though his bedside manners stink, so I gave him the consents and held Ainsley's hand until they wheeled her in to the OR.

A tech took me to the waiting room and I was there about 35 minutes before I heard a scream and knew it was Ainsley. A few minutes later a nurse came to get me, and I was taken to Recovery to help calm her down. She was distraught and disoriented, but also making a lot of sense. 

(Nurse: "You'll be OK."  Ainsley:  "NO I WON'T! YOU HURT ME! I HATE YOU!"  Me: "Shhhh, don't cry, Sweetie; it will hurt your throat more if you keep crying so hard."  Ainsley:  "I CAN'T STOP CRYING!")  

It would have been funny if I hadn't been so worried.  A nurse gave her Demerol and she snoozed again.  Dr. Surgeon came in, and told me she had drained 3 tablespoons (about 25 milliliters) of pus from her neck.  I didn't know at that time that it would be the last time we would see Dr. Surgeon.  (By the way, she is a plastic surgeon, and chief of staff at the hospital).

Tuesday evening, Ainsley's fever broke.  (She had a fever for a week and a half from the strep, so this was great!) She slept and slept and slept. And I got labeled as an "uncooperative" mother in her chart because I refused to let an aide wake her to ask if she wanted something to drink, and then I refused to let a nurse wake her to see if she needed to pee. Hello? She needs the sleep. She has bags of IV fluids running into her, and I'm not waking her to see if she wants a drink. She has a Pull-up on so if she needs to pee, she will. Leave my kid alone!

That night, a nurse aide brought me a blanket and pillow. They also fed me three times. :)  Hallelujah!

Wednesday morning, the nurses said that Dr. Surgeon had left orders for them to teach me how to change Ainsley's dressing, ostensibly so she could be released that day. I helped do it the first time ... and this was when a glob of tissue came out of the wound with a bunch of blood and pus, and the nurses freaked out.  So did I.  They called three more nurses and Dr. Pediatrician, who came in and said he was pleased with her progress. He said he wanted to dismiss us, but needed Dr. Surgeon to look at the wound first to make sure there wasn't a problem after the tissue thing.

Dr. Surgeon never showed up.  They kept telling us she was out of town, but would be there in the evening.  I changed Ainsley's dressing a few more times, and it was getting better -- less drainage every time.  She didn't nap at all on Wednesday, and was a BEAR.  She told pretty much everyone in the hospital how much she hated them all. She was impossible to please, even though the nurses on Wednesday were MUCH nicer and more attentive. Twice she lost her IV and we had to rethread it both times. This is not fun with a 3-year-old, by the way.  She had screaming fits dozens of times.

Mark and the kids came to pick us up in the evening, but Dr. Surgeon never showed up.  He waited until 9 p.m., and then went back home.  (With gas at $4.04 a gallon, this ticks me off, too.)  I was out of clothes, and Ainsley was out of underwear.  Argh.

On Thursday, Dr. Pediatrician came in around 7:45 a.m. and seemed surprised to learn that Dr. Surgeon had never showed up. He said he would give her a call to come and look at the wound, and then we could go. "Give me about 10 minutes to talk to her, and then you should be able to get ready to be dismissed," he said.

At 3 p.m., I still hadn't heard back from anyone.  I had gotten progressively more pesky with the nurses.  I threatened to leave AMA when they put a new bag of IV fluids on at 2:30 p.m. (I forgot to mention that Dr. Surgeon had ordered the IV removed the day before and just a hep lock for antibiotics, but that the nurses were confused and wouldn't remove it until they got to see her, and ... she never showed.)

Ainsley was eating and drinking just fine. She was using the toilet a lot. There was no real need for the bags of IV fluids, except to annoy her greatly.  So anyway, at 3 p.m. we got a new nurse, a guy named Chris.  (Ainsley had told him the night before that she hated him, by the way, when he had to rethread her IV).  I told him that we HAD to go home, that I had four kids at home who needed me, and that he needed to DO SOMETHING NOW.  He agreed that the hospital wasn't doing anything for Ainsley that I couldn't, and called Dr. Pediatrician's office.

Dr. Pediatrician was shocked to learn we were still there.  He had called Dr. Surgeon at 8 a.m., and she had promised to get right over there and dismiss us.  He apologized profusely, and told Chris to let us go if we promised to take her to the local hospital every day to have them change the dressing. I said, "Why should I do that when I am the one who has been changing it here?"  So he called Dr. Pediatrician back and told him that, and neither of them had realized I was the one doing it -- the other nurses had just written "dressing changed" and didn't note that the UNCOOPERATIVE mother ;) was doing it.  So, he apologized again, and said to let us go.  i called Mark, and he was there within 45 minutes to pick us up.

I know doctors are busy people. But come on. Two extra days she left us sitting in a hospital with not even a phone call to check on her patient? That is ridiculous.

Now, the "why it happened" part, since everyone, including the nurses, asked that question.  Dr. Pediatrician explained that rarely, an infection of any kind goes bloodborne. Like, perhaps when she coughed, it weakened some blood vessels and allowed the Strep to enter her bloodstream.  It localized in the neck.  Sometimes viruses or infections localize around the heart (myocarditis) or in other remote areas. He had a kid last year with bronchitis who developed an abscess on his hip! So we were lucky in that it localized in a spot that I could see and caught it rapidly. He said that it was a freak occurrence and we don't need to worry that it will happen every time she gets strep. He explained that the urgency in getting her to the hospital was the worry that 1) it would continue to swell and cut off her airway; and 2) it would rupture and drain into her trachea and down into her lungs, both of which were VERY BAD scenarios.

I'm grateful for Dr. Pediatrician, who was really great and who answered all of my questions kindly. And I'm grateful for some of the nurses who made our stay easier. I'm especially grateful for the myriad of friends, especially those from the NFP Board, who prayed for Ainsley.

Larks That Dance?

Hope and Hannah were chosen to be in "Larks in Flight," the after-school honor choir for grades 4-6 at the public school, based on auditions at the beginning of the year.  Tonight they performed in the Spring Concert.  (Last week they did a performance "tour," singing at five different venues, including traveling to a larger city and performing for a group there).

This is one of the photos from their final song, a song-and-dance number that was really great. Hannah is on the left, and Hope is the third one over in the same row (their friend Augie is between them).

We were very proud of their efforts this year, and their choir director nominated them for the Kodaly Children's Choir Camp at Wichita State University this summer.  They are going from June 8-13, and will perform a concert for the community at the end of the camp. It is being directed by the conductor of the Calgary Children's Choir, and should be a great experience for them!

(By the way, their group's name, Larks in Flight, was chosen because Larks are the school mascot, and apparently larks do their best singing when flying. Mark calls them "Larks That Bite.")

I want to go to college!  I don't have any moneys.

 -- Ainsley, piping up out of the blue while riding in the car.

City Day!

Hope, Hannah and Elizabeth danced with their Cheer/Dance troupes at the annual City Day festivities in a nearby community. They have been taught by our friend Rosa weekly since January. She hoped to instill in them self-confidence and enthusiasm along with some dance and cheerleading/tumbling skills.  They did very well in their performances, which were right before the parade.

Then they had to run with me to the car, and I drove them to the end of the parade route so they could climb on their 4-H float and ride in the parade. :)  It was a busy morning!  (All five kids rode on the float -- Hope and Noah have their backs to us, then Elizabeth, Hannah and Ainsley are facing the camera).

Heard after the parade ...

Mom:  Ainsley, what color is that horse?

Ainsley:  BIG!

(Ainsley, singing while playing with the Little People):

Our song, your door, slam the door, 'cause your Mama don't know ...

Oh, yeah, kiss, 'cause your Mama don't know ...

The S-Word

Ainsley:  MOM!!!! Noah said the S-WORD!!!!

Mom:  What S-word is that, Ainsley?

Ainsley:  He said "hate"!!!!

Starting a garden

In a departure from our usual sprawling, 25-foot-long and 10-foot-wide row garden, we've decided to try something new: Square Foot Gardening, AKA French Intensive Gardening.  Yesterday Mark and I built two 4'x4' wooden boxes out of 2x10 lumber.  We had no scrap lumber, so I bought four boards at Chris and Diana's lumber yard, and Chris cut them to 4-foot lengths for me. I also bought 12 laths.  One of which Mark stepped on and broke -- which reminds me that I need to go back to the lumberyard .  (making mental note)

I can't use my back yard right now, since the dogs have taken up residence there.  Someday we'll get them a kennel and pen them up. But for now, I want vegetables anyway!  So, I put the boxes along our driveway in front of our house.  They will get full sun after June 1, and until then the eastern box has shade until 11 a.m. and then they both have full sun.  The drainage is good, since it's right down our driveway.

First we put big sheets of cardboard underneath them to act as a weed barrier and natural mulch.  The cardboard was free, courtesy of the Dollar General dumpster and the 800+case truck we got at the store on Tuesday.  :)  I knew all that breaking down of boxes would come in handy someday!  We watered down the cardboard after layering it in about an inch thick.

Then we went out to the horse pens, and dug up two barrels full of composted horse manure. Another free source.  I guess the horses ought to be good for something!

We layered the manure over the cardboard, and watered everything in.  Then we mixed in a bale of peat moss and a couple of ginormous bags of potting soil we got at Sharon's garden shop (because we didn't plan ahead and had no good sources of soil), and watered all of that in.

We measured out square-foot increments, and nailed on a grid made of lath to mark my square-foot garden plots.  Then Hannah and I researched and mapped and plotted what we 

wanted to plant, based on what seeds and plants were available locally, and a few we ordered from Burpee.

We also got one patio tomato from Sharon so we could have an earlier harvest of tomatoes, and she gave us a leggy Big Boy tomato that she was going to toss, and I potted that, too.

We still have some seeds coming in the mail, and the trellises to build along the north sides of the boxes so we can train the squash, tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplant to climb.  More on that when it happens.

And because I can't resist flowers, I also potted everything in sight that I could lay my hands on inexpensively.  I ran out of pots, even after using the stash I've had in the garage for the past 15 years.  

In these two 4'x4' boxes, we have:

4 cucumber plants

4 yellow squash plants

2 eggplant plants

4 oregano plants

4 basil plants

1 jalapeno pepper

32 carrots

8 bibb lettuce

18 bush beans

32 radishes

9 spinach

3 bell pepper

4 tomatoes

4 dill plants

4 parsh

ley plants

8 marigolds (to look pretty and keep bugs away)

16 green onions

... and we still have a few empty boxes to plant radishes and lettuce at later intervals so we can rotate the crops and have a steady supply of the quicker-growing produce.

It's a work in progress, and I'll try to update at each stage.  (And thanks to Marcella and Ray at the NFP Board for the inspiration to do it this way!)

Hope:  Suso made you that quilt, Ainsley!

Ainsley:  But Suso's not my gwandmudder!

Ainsley:  I wouldn't DWEAM of taking this dwink into the wiving woom, Mommy!

Ainsley, spinning around and mimicking the voice of Swiper the Fox from "Dora the Explorer":  You're toooooo LATE!  You'll NEVER get your toy now! Mwahahahaha!!!!

Ainsley:  Sank you, Daddy! That was vewy sotsful of you!

Noah:  Ainsley, you ate a lot! You must have a big tummy!

Ainsley:  And big arms!  And big legs!

Mom:  And a big nose?

Ainsley!  Yes!  Just like yours, Mommy!

Mom:  We're sending Hope's clarinet in to be fixed.

Hannah:  Is it a boy or a girl?

(you know ... "fixed"? Her main experience with that word has involved dogs and cats. ;) )

Noah:  Mom, will you tell us a bed-night story?