Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Learning to Wait Well

I asked my dear friend and blog reader, Jamie, to share with us about the trials her family has been through. We have been blessed thus far to be a mom to two fairly healthy kids. I have much to learn from the strength Jamie has gained through the trials that God has seen them through with her sweet boy. I so appreciate Jamie’s openness and honesty about how God has touched their lives, and taught her to wait for His timing while begging for His healing of her son’s precious little body. Mamas, read this one with some Kleenex nearby, and if you are a mom whose child has been through medical trials, please know that you are not alone in waiting for God’s healing. Jamie, I love you so much sweet friend. Thank you so much for your openness and for being willing to share, knowing that you may help other Mamas whose hearts are breaking for their babies. And now, without further ado… here’s Jamie’s Words From the Heart:

Our Family had traveled through a long, hard season of trials. We had been through so much, but our faith had grown. We learned to trust God more, and we appreciated more. I could see the meaning for it all. Surely we were now due for God’s blessings.

I never expected what came next… it was our season of wait.

This was a completely different test, just when I thought I had passed them all. It was an agonizing one; one that I would fail at over and over again. I was at the mercy of time. It felt like the same suffering, day after day, with no end in sight. Just when we thought we found the answer, just when the doctors claimed it was over, the battle continued…

The waiting continued.

“Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time He said ‘My grace is sufficient for you. My power works best in weakness.'” 2 Corinthians 12:8-9

It was January 2014 and we began to notice our son, Dawson having dirty undies. We thought maybe it was a boy thing, and made sure to help him clean up after going to the bathroom. He was only five, after all. But by March, I was receiving at least one phone call a week to pick him up from school because of the accidents.

[When Dawson was born he did not have a bowel movement in the hospital. He was transferred to the NICU and after several days of testing, was diagnosed with Hirschsprung’s Disease, a genetic disorder where the ganglion cells in the intestine do not form. He had to have a colostomy because he was a preemie and didn’t weigh enough for the corrective surgery. At ten months old, he had the surgery to remove the part of the intestines that wasn’t functioning. The day before his first birthday his colostomy was reversed. He healed perfectly and never had any complications.]

Because of this history we decided to take him to his surgeon. We thought something went wrong, causing leakages. Dawson was taken to the hospital for a Gastrografin enema. The report said the intestines were healthy. He was just very backed up. The surgeon assured us it was normal and not related to his history. The Gastrografin would continue to pull fluid into the intestines and everything would pass. When the blockages were gone, the accidents would stop.

Days later, nothing had changed. The surgeon referred us to the GI doctor Dawson saw as a baby. He was started on Mirilax as xrays still showed blockages. He went three months without any change. In June, I received a call from the GI that the recent xray showed substantial back up; He would have to be admitted to the hospital. They ran an NG tube to his stomach which would pump medicine in to clear him. An xray was taken to verify placement. The staff was baffeled. His blockages were so bad that he should have been vomiting everything he ate; they should have ruptured; he should have developed toxicity. But even in our trials, God is faithful. He protected Dawson through it all, and Dawson’s bravery and positive attitude never ceased amazing me.

He was there for over two days and finally had a normal xray. Praise the Lord the blockages were gone! We even had a couple days of clean undies, but then the accidents returned. Dawson had developed megacolon from all of the blockages stretching his intestines. We had to continue the Mirilax, the pull ups, the pads, and of course, the waiting.

And I continued trying to control the situation. I was angry that God wouldn’t fix this. In November we went for a follow up. His GI advised us that if he didnt improve in three months, we would have to consider further, more invasive testing. This was the last thing I wanted him to go through and I was stressed. I gave up hope.

But in the weeks following, something changed. I finally surrendered; I stopped trying to change it. I prayed for God’s will and trusted Him, if that was the road we were meant to travel. I started a daily prayer journal, and I began to let myself hope again.

“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength…” Isaiah 40:31

God showed me our minds were not developed to figure out the future. This waiting was a lesson in trust like no other. And all the while I saw a young boy full of unparalelled strength and grace. I had found peace. Regardless of the circumstances, I had a healthy boy and I placed him completely in The Father’s hands.

Then it happened; God showed me a reason…

My husband’s grandma fell and fractured her hip. After surgery the nurses said she would call out Dawson’s name in her sleep. She would yell, “Okay Dawson, I will do this with you.” Grandma had taken everything he had been through as motivation. It gave her the strength to recover. She told us, “If he can handle all that, I can do this.” She drew her strength from my darling young man, and I could not have been prouder. If that was the reason she could recover, it was all worth it. I didn’t know when his body would heal, but at least I knew all this had purpose.

After Christmas, I heard that still, small voice.

I felt God urging me to call the doctor. I explained to her that Dawson was showing no signs of improvement and I felt it was time to move on. January of this year we went to the GI. She had spoken about his case with the specialists that would perform the testing. Low and behold, they first wanted to make sure it wasn’t related to the Hirschsprung’s after all. They explained that some patients will develop a spasm in the colon, even years after surgery, that can be causing the accidents. It may have even caused the blockages in the first place. She stopped the Mirilax and prescribed an anti-spasm medication. We also scheduled a biopsy to make sure there was no residual Hirschsprung’s.

That was a Friday. Saturday morning Dawson took his first pill. Saturday after lunch was his last accident. Just like that, it was over. In God’s perfect timing, not my own.

His biopsy was a couple of weeks later and everything was normal. It was unbelievable, and I found God still teaching me to trust Him that Dawson really was okay.

“God is keeping a careful watch over us and the future. The day is coming when you will have it all, Life healed and whole.” 1 Peter 1:5.

This was our season of wait, and God taught us how to wait well. I had no end in sight, but when I was no longer looking for it, God ended it. He taught me to fully rely on Him. Our Father loves Dawson more than I ever can, and he is safe in His loving hands.

(If you have any questions about this condition or children’s constipation, I’d be happy to share my advice with you. [Of course, I’m not a doctor!]. We keep Dawson on a very high fiber, whole grain diet. His dairy is limited but not eliminated. Whole foods are best. He takes apple cider vinegar daily, fiber supplements, as well as his Levsin. I also try to implement coconut oil daily, and lots of fluids!)

Jamie and her husband live in Florida. They have two beautiful children – Dawson and Peyton.

Baby Proofing for Baby #2

When you have your second child, everyone can tell you that life is about to get interesting, but nothing really can prepare you for just HOW VERY interesting life is gonna get. Especially when that second one is a boy who is into EVERYTHING. (And is a very special but large part of why I haven’t had much time to blog lately…)

So when we had Becca it was easy to childproof – because we over did it, really. Ya know, it’s first child syndrome – everything was super super safe. But we also didn’t have a whole lot of tiny little toys everywhere. We had age appropriate toys because, well, she was it. But now that she has tons of little tiny toys, and puzzles, and paper back books, and, and, and, and… little Brother is coming along and crawling and pulling and opening and pushing and dropping and EATING everything… Whew. Let me tell ya’ll… it’s really fun in our house. (Not to mention all the fights that are caused when Baby Bee grabs something that belongs to Big Butterfly….) So baby proofing took on whole new meaning. I thought I’d write a post to help those with second babies not yet crawling to give you some ideas of how to prepare for what is to come.

1. Plan a place for special toys.
We had Becca’s art cart and activities for downstairs on shelves in the dining room… quick and easy access, and a great place for her to use them while I’m cooking dinner… but also right where Brother could get to them and mess them up, or worse yet, get hurt by them. So this was probably the biggest baby proofing we’ve had to do. I had to clean out and move stuff to the attic from our under-stairs closet so create room for a set of shelves I got at Target, and for her art cart. That has become a FABULOUS storage area for her special things – that she can easily access, but he can’t because there’s a closed door in his way. Even if you don’t have a closet you can use, if you have a cabinet you can put a child lock on, that’s better than nothing. I just love having them in the closet because she can easily help herself – just like she’s been used to doing. Obviously, you’ll have to make use of whatever space you have.

2. Give your Big Butterfly a safe space.
When he was younger, we would often carry Gray into Boo’s room for visits, and she loved that. But as soon as he started crawling around, we started having issues. She has toys that are not only unsafe for his little mouth, but are more “sacred” that are in her room. So we have chosen to instate her room as her safe space. Brother isn’t welcome until he stops putting things in his mouth. I’ve made it very clear to her that this is not a permanent arrangement – he WILL be welcome in her room down the road, but rather than feeling we need to childproof her room to protect her toys from going in his mouth, he’s just not coming into her room right now. She likes knowing that her special things are safe and aren’t going to get chewed up. She really appreciates that, and it also helps when I see her playing in his room and abusing one of his toys or using it inappropriately – I remind her to take care of his things or she won’t be allowed to play with them. Touché.

3. Find some products that make your home safer. (Each of these includes affiliate links, thank you!)

We have this baby gate and love that we can move it and have two different locations where we use it. It is high quality, and has worked well for us since Becca was little. It also works to keep our dogs confined to a space as well. Dreambaby Retractable Gate

These sliding locks work great to keep our side-by-side refrigerator doors closed, and also to keep the closet doors closed. Dreambaby Sliding Locks, 3 Pack

These latches are super easy to add to cabinet doors and drawers – we have them all over our kitchen, and like that they are hidden from view, and easy for any adult to open. Safety 1st 14 Pack Wide Grip Latches

These plug protectors are easier to use than some of the others – just press the button and they’ll come out… but kids can’t get them out, they really do lock in securely. Safety 1st 24 Pack Secure Press Plug Protectors

What’s your favorite child proofing tip? Do you have more than two kids? What did you learn about baby proofing for boys vs for girls? PLEASE SHARE in the comments!!!

I’ll be back!

Whew. Life is more than a little crazy around here lately! I just haven’t had a spare moment to type up all the wonderful things going on! Don’t worry. I’ll be back. It’ll just be a few days before I get a chance to sit down and write!

Making Music At Home

Special thanks to Jennifer Hayenga for sharing today’s From the Heart segment. She’s very passionate about sharing music with her kiddos, and I sure appreciate her sharing some of the songs that they enjoy in their home, and what her kids have been able to learn by participating in music education – both at home and in class! Jennifer’s family lives in the Dallas, TX area. You’ll learn more about her in her post. Here’s Jenn:

One of the subjects across the board that I see overlooked is music education and the mentioning of children’s music CD’s or songs that parents are sharing with their children. As a gifted educator in science, MS in curriculum, Mom of twins, I see that many skill sets are often introduced to children but few are truly developed. Most parents tend to gravitate towards sampling, allowing the child to decide, since there are so many choices out there.

Music education for children doesn’t necessarily mean playing an instrument or being able to correctly identify one when asked. It is about making neuro-connections with your child’s brain and stimulating the receptive and expressive systems. The receptive system primarily impacts music aptitude which continues to develop until approximately 9 years of age. During this time, music ability increases or decreases from the lack of quality stimulation which is when a child’s singing voice is also developing. From birth through age five, the brain is much more active than later on, making this a crucial time for “laying down the foundation” and “building the connections” that will last a lifetime. In addition, children also build vocabulary through music and learn how to pronounce words correctly which is why an early start is beneficial to proper language development.

Not all children need to be enrolled in a music class for this type of learning to be achieved. Parents can implement these kinds of activities at home teaching their children about macro and micro beats, vocal play, verse variation, fingerplays and more.

Some of my favorite songs are:

“Me, You, and We” by K. Guilmartin

“I Had a Little Frog” by Mary Anne Hrin

“My Ball” by L. Levinowitz

“Apples and Cherries” by K. Guilmartin

“Great Big Stars” (credit unknown)

“Between” by Wayne Brady

“Buzz Buzz “by Laurie Berkner

Laurie Berkner has wonderful children’s music and her CD’s can be checked out from the library for FREE. Another favorite one of ours is Road Trip Sing-Alongs which is a 3 CD set playing familiar songs from your childhood. My twins still love them today. We also play our music at home, in the car and do fingerplays and activities together. My children have just turned 2 and have been singing verses to songs since they were a year and have been doing fingerplays since that time. It has been amazing to watch their vocabulary and understanding of words grow. They learned their pronouns at age 1, opposites such as (Big-Little, Short-Tall, Up-Down, In-Out, On-Off, full-empty, Open-Close, Stop-Go, Push-Pull) and many others all because of MUSIC that I played and sang with them in our home and not from a paid music class! If you have any favorite songs or music, please share. We would love to hear what your kids love.

I am including a few pics from our music class session so you can see some of the things occurring in class and how the parents are participating.

I have cropped other children out of Jenn’s pictures since we don’t have their parent’s approval to post their photographs on the internet. You can see her two sweethearts participating in a drum class with their teacher.

Another great music/tech/language connection Becca enjoys are the Signing Time dvds as well as Rachel and the Treeschoolers dvds – which we find at our library. Rachel Coleman teaches kids through songs how to use sign language to communicate in Signing Time, and in Rachel and the Treeschoolers, they not only learn signs, but also a lot of basic preschool concepts as well – our favorite is the weather dvd. I love how she encourages the Treeschoolers to not be afraid of a thunderstorm!!

Our favorite cd to listen to in the car is by the Justin Graves Band and is children’s worship music – we have their Happy to Be Me Cd!

Mini Engineering Challenges

Here we are, once again, on the 2nd Thursday of the month! I’m not quite sure where March went, to be perfectly honest with you! But, we did some awesomely fun mini engineering challenges in March… so here are some new ideas for you to try with your little engineers!

We love our Bristle Blocks! If you don’t have a set of these, you can definitely purchase them on Amazon here (Battat Bristle Blocks Basic 112 Piece Set Building Kit – affiliate link, thank you!). Bristle blocks are fabulous for so many reasons, but Becca really enjoys the way they feel – as a sensory seeker, she will sit and rub these blocks while she’s thinking about where to put them. They just feel really neat in her hands. Many times, I just let her build whatever, but sometimes I’ll say “see if you can build a ______” and give her an idea. It is fabulous to let your little engineer free play with blocks and building materials, but it’s also a wonderful idea to give her a specific task to focus on – it puts her brain into the mode of needing to solve a problem, and figure out how to best complete the task at hand. So next time you get out the bristle blocks, try some of these fun things as building challenges:

boat
car
house
rocket
dinosaur
school

Becca loves to build cities. Who knows, maybe someday she’ll be a civil engineer and work for some large city, or be an architect who designs skyscrapers. I love that the sky is the limit for her. And all of the activities we do encourage her to grow and play in new and different ways. She loves the wooden blocks that my dad made for me when I was a kid, and she plays with them frequently. (If you see the apples on some of them and wonder about that, check out this post from last fall about our Ten Apples Up on Top activity – she still enjoys doing that, and anytime I mention taking the apples off, she gets very defensive of the apples! HA!) But anyway, if your kids don’t have a wonderful set of wooden blocks, there are some fabulous ones available on Amazon – try this set: Melissa & Doug 60-Piece Standard Unit Blocks. (aff link, thank you!)

So when your kiddos are building with their wooden blocks, free, imaginative play is awesome, but you can also take it to a different level by creating a challenge for them – see if they can create a variety of structures. Becca loves to build towers with her blocks, so I asked her one day, “well, how about if you build a city this time?” (She typically builds cities only with her Duplos.) She had so much fun creating roads and buildings and even decided where each person in our family would live and work, where the park and school and church were located… she really got detailed with it! I would definitely encourage you to play blocks with your kids and challenge them to build a city! See what fabulous ideas they come up with!

Becca loves straws. She’s fascinated with them – not only in their function, but also in the various ways she can play with them. The other day, she decided on her own that we could “probly” make a rainbow with them, but informed me “I’m gonna need some major help.” So I obliged, gladly! She knew the rainbow started with red on top, so we found all the red straws and laid them out, then we talked about each color and figured out how to place them inside of each other. When she was done, she declared “George is the treasure under the rainbow!” and proudly placed him underneath. That made me smile so big. This girl has a heart of gold. And she really does cherish her little friend.

Encourage your little engineer to play with straws. Remember that building doesn’t always involve making a 3d structure – but also can be a fabulous 2d construction as well. We’ve made several other straw pictures since then – we’ve built a house, a pirate ship, a dinosaur, some clouds, and an airplane. I love how so many of the STEAM subject matters overlap each other! This project is clearly engineering AND art… as is our next idea!

I’ve mentioned previously how much Becca LOVES the Amazon show, Creative Galaxy. She watches it on her Kindle regularly. She has seen each of the 9 episodes at least 9 times, if not 20. In one of the shows between the shows (where real kids make art), they use recycled materials to build items. One of the ideas they mention but don’t build is a fire truck. So, Becca got it in her head that she wanted to build a fire truck! She told me the materials she wanted to use to make it, and I obliged. I held the hot glue gun, but she placed each item where she wanted it, and did the art work to draw the windows and headlights. She even determined she wanted the ladder to stick up like it was going up to a house to help someone. So, we figured out how to do the glue so that it would dry sticking up into the air.

I loved so much that she came up with this project on her own, and that I took the time to make it possible for her. So many times it’s easy for us to hear an idea that our kids have and say there isn’t time, or we don’t have the supplies. But this was a project that really benefited us both – I was amazed to see what she is capable of and how her brain works, and she was given a confidence boost because Mommy believed in her idea and helped her make it a reality!

What we used: an old puffs container, fruit pouch lids, straws, hot glue, Sharpee marker, scissors (she cut the straws into pieces – fabulous fine motor practice!)

I’d love to see your kids make items from recycled materials! Please share your finished engineering feats on my Facebook page anytime and label them #engineeringrocks!

Looking for more engineering ideas for your kids? Each month on the 2nd Thursday I post Mini Engineering Challenges! Check out my Engineering page for links to my previous months, and visit next month for more new ideas including a Lego game your family is gonna love!