Plumping up

I never thought I'd have to encourage my kids to eat.  I certainly have no problem loving food myself...although I do have vague memories of battles over sauerkraut, mustard, rye bread and polish sausage when I was a small child.  Anything that awakened the palate was too spicy for me.  But since becoming a mother myself, I've become more aware of feeding issues.  And I assume my kids are probably easy to feed compared to many...breastfed until 5-6 months and started directly on hand-ground table food, they never had flavor or texture aversions suffered by many children today.

We started getting the evil eye from our pediatrician back when Rosy wouldn't gain weight or grow taller.  She wore 3-6 month clothes until 18 months, and 6-9 month clothes until after age 2.  Finally, once we figured out that she was lactose intolerant...and really more borderline allergic...and became religious about avoiding milk products in her diet, she started to gain inches and pounds.  We had our share of feeding problems with Katy and Amy due to their chicken allergy, too.

But by far the most drastic issue to date is Amelia's aversions and low appetite ever since encephalitis last October.  At a time when fat is critical in her diet, she wants nothing to do with food, especially high fat, high calorie foods that most kids love.  In the hospital, she almost entirely existed on cheese pizza and green beans (greeeaaat diet, right?!!).  Since then, we've slowly come to terms with her need to eat ground food instead of  chewy food, liquids over solids, and have come up with myriad ways to add fat to foods without her knowing.

My wise friend Melanie recently suggested coconut milk smoothies as a way of adding both calories and lots of good-for-the-brain fats.  For more on the benefits of coconut products (and I'm not referring to the powdered sugar coated shaved coconut used for baking!), read here.  This smoothie is easy to make and a big hit with my kids!  With the benefit of no added sugar, this is a stick-to-your-ribs snack that is sure to keep the kids out of the kitchen between nap and dinnertime.

Easy Coconut Milk Smoothie

1 can canned coconut milk

1 can (use your coconut can) of whole milk

1 banana

Handful of berries or other unsweetened fruit

Mix in blender and serve immediately.  The coconut milk should not be low-fat or reduced calorie; should be about 180-200 calories per serving, with no added sugar, for the best health benefits.  I slice bananas when firm and freeze the cubes in a large ziplock bag (my mom's trick), and use unsweetened frozen fruit from the freezer section of Aldi or a grocery store.

Katy's 7th

Katy waited long for a birthday party with friends at the York's horse ranch in Pepin.

A big dream finally come to fruition...an embarrassed smile of joy.

I learned today that my fatigue is probably NOT due to a pacemaker infection, which would require surgery.  Instead, my cancer suppression med (Synthroid) has gotten out of balance again and I am hypothyroid, which is why I am constantly tired.  I still need an echocardiogram (ultrasound of the heart) to insure that there is no "vegetation" growing on my pacemaker wires, which could also cause my symptoms without an elevated blood count.  I will speak to my oncologist on Monday as well, to have my meds adjusted.  The only bad news: it takes weeks to take affect.  Please pray for strength for me for these next few weeks.

This beautiful life

Her palm quivers across horseflesh and an age-old ache awakes deep in my heart.  This life is so beautiful.  It seems too beautiful to ever leave.

I watch a friend walk over the last threshold of childhood and into a bright and indefinable unknown, and a shiver of cold and loneliness sweeps over me as she is bathed in the beautiful light of evening.

She smiles a smile that you can only smile when you are young, and alive in your skin, and stretching your arms in flight for the first time.  The light catches my eye and sends a prism shooting, a millisecond of glorified sunbeam that sparkles like a jewel off this beautiful piece of sod, high on the hills, up in the late summer wind with the moist smells of horses and hay and apples floating on the evening breeze.

A whisper between girl and horse falls through the shaft of light around the corner of the aging barn.  It's gray bones a silent reminder in a harvest-time moment of fullness and promise and beauty, and the ache grows deeper.

I have been so tired the last few days.  It is one of those seasons of a long battle when you would almost rather give up the fight than keep fighting.  All the beauty that surrounds as autumn approaches is like the poisoned apple proffered Cinderella, the sadistic lie of Life, that promises an everlasting horizon of entertainment and beauty instead of the slow sink into eternity as bones grow old and crippled and sore and tired.

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them"- before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; and those looking through the windows grow dim; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets.

Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.  (from Ecclesiastes 12)

I remember my Creator, I quake sometimes, in awe of Him.  In awe of an awesome God who first gives us a beautiful creation we are loathe to leave, and then promises, if we believe, to perfect that beauty for all eternity.  As the yellow late summer sun strains through the kelly green of the grass, the barn crumbles, and the dogs shiver in the cool evening shade, I stand with my arms outstretched to a heaven I cannot imagine and do not want to go to now.  I see, in one moment of this achingly beautiful life, that I do not and cannot understand what it means to walk this mortal clod nor what it entails to leave it.

This week has been a week of contemplating, again, death.  Leave-takings.  My last grandparent gone.  A friend from the internet writes that she naps all day long, how her hours grow shorter as she approaches the final days of her 10 year battle with cancer.  A young man, my age, grows visibly weaker every Sunday in the back rows of church, spotted with cancer and hunched in a wheelchair.  My own body is weak now, either from infection or cancer meds that have gotten out of balance again.  I spend long hours on the couch and bed.  Mocked by the dishes in the sink, the dirt on the floor, the mounds of summer clothes that must again (endlessly, this twice a year task comes) be sorted into bins and organized before the air chills further.  I sit at my computer for a few hours today, and sigh as I peer through a pink bed sheet haphazardly strung up against the strong late summer sun of eventide, where a curtain should have been hung years ago.

Nostalgia

What makes it into the photo albums and scrapbooks is not necessarily the memories that make it into our mental bank from childhood.  A spur-of-the-moment stop at the Trego Dinner Bell, where I remember eating many lunches with my travel-weary grandparents, made it into the memories, but there were few photos romantic enough to make it into the album.  It was a random joy...the hot beefs with instant mashed potatoes, the homemade apple dumplin's thick with dough and cinnamon, the weak diner coffee and the kids drinking from the half-and-half single serving cups while we waited for our onion rings.  After dinner, outside to "blow the stink off" in the mostly-deserted parking lot on Labor Day evening.  Sisters instructing the younger ones on how to balance along the parking lot stanchions made of cement and railroad ties.  The younger ones abandoning organized play for a through and unorganized running about the entire pitted tar lot, giving chase to a butterfly.

This is how life happens.  Not in the right light.  In the most humble of surroundings.  No special guests.  No special plans.  Herein in the gift that life is, how it goes on without our planning it, how it provides beautiful moments even outside our schedule or even our expectation.

Seeing Grandma on Saturday was like seeing a husk.  She is not here.  Thanks be to Jesus...her spirit is somewhere much more beautiful.  The husk she left reminded us all of the love she gave.

My children will someday remember childhood.  Remember childhood with Aaron and I as parents.  As I stood outside the Trego Dinner Bell, waiting for a camera worthy moment, I realized that these moments, these moments unworthy for the camera, are what will define their memories.  So I snapped some pictures, and thought about my own childhood.  The Trego Dinner Bell pie.  My grandparents, footing the bill every time we stopped.  Love.  How to smother my children in it.  How to recognize the real moments of childhood, and capture them, in my mind and theirs, in my camera and their albums.