Thursday, July 31, 2008

Setbacks

There will be no arm-restraint burning parties around here today. Today was the day we had circled in red on our calendar, the long-awaited tenth post-operative day that we were told were be our toddler's last day in arm restraints.

But instead we received the disheartening news that he will have to continue wearing them until at least next week. He was also diagnosed with a raging double-ear infection that has thus-far proven resistant to two different antibiotics. Needless to say, our little guy is completely miserable and unable to sleep at night. We are all a little worn out.

Yesterday in particular was one of those of those days that seemed to stretch into eternity. I had been up a large part of the night with an inconsolable toddler who had also decided to start the day around 5am, and was so uncomfortable that he would only nap in my arms. My older kids, having been left to entertain themselves and allowed to watch too much TV lately, are not surprisingly climbing the walls and fighting with each other a lot.

In addition, we have been without a washing machine for over two weeks now and yesterday we were confined to the house all day to await the delivery of a replacement (finally!). This would have been fine except that we discovered during an early-morning diaper change that we were completely out of diapers.

After some frantic scrounging around the house, we discovered some swim diapers - adequate, but not quite so good on the leak-protection factor. Possibly even more tragic was the discovery that we were also out of coffee.

There was a moment in the day when red juice was spilled all over the floor, a sibling fight had resulted in minor bloodshed, and my miserable toddler wailed in my ear as his siblings continued to shout at each other. Head pounding and completely exhausted, I cast a hopeful glance at the clock. Surely my husband would be home soon. But, to my utter dismay, it was only 9:52 am. How could that possibly be??

And so we find ourselves in the school of endurance and perseverance. Perseverance, I'm told, must "finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (James 1:4) Too bad there isn't some other way to learn it. Couldn't I read a book on perserverance or something?

My husband did eventually make it home, bringing with him even more disheartening news: our washing machine would not be coming today after all.

Some encouragement did come, though. Undaunted, my daughter announced, "Don't worry, Mommy, I will make a washing machine and wash the clothes for you!"

A few minutes later she marched out the back door with a her new invention, an armful of laundry, and some soap and set to work.

Well, at least it keeps her busy, I reasoned.

Apparently, laundry is fun when you're six. One of Grace's friends came knocking on the door to play. "She's out back doing laundry," Phil informed her.

"Oooh, fun," was the response as she skipped to the backyard. And so our family's laundry became the neighborhood excitement for the afternoon. Soon our swing set was decorated with dripping socks and Batman underwear and Grace's friend went home, probably giving her parents an earful about the crazy homeschool family that makes their kids do laundry by hand outside.

On another note, one of Joshua's little buddies went in for his palate-repair surgery today. Please say a prayer for Will and his family as they go through recovery.

2 comments:

stephanie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
stephanie said...

oh my goodness! you poor thing... don't you have a sister who should be coming over to help you out or something?!?!