Forget Me Not

I have never really considered myself much of a "flower garden person" though I certainly like the look of them.  And I have planted flowers at the last several houses I've lived in.  But last year, when we planted our Lilly memorial garden (a little garden with lily flowers) I felt for the first time that gardening really was quite therapeutic.  Something about pulling all those annoying weeds really wasn't so horrible after all.  It gave me time to think while keeping my hands busy.  And it gave me immediate gratification to see the areas I cleaned out.  And it gave me a place to put some little angel and cherub trinkets, as I'm a sucker for those.  :)

Here is the latest thing I put together for my Lilly Memorial Project that I'm still working on for donating to the hospital:  packs of Forget Me Not flower seeds.  Since it's not the time of year where there are a lot of packs of flowers in the store, I went on Ebay and found someone to buy the seeds from. 

The super tiny seeds! arrived in little clear baggies. So I made a label and printed out a bunch of copies on sticker paper, and put them on envelopes.  Tabby helped me put the seed packs inside.  I think they turned out pretty nice:

On a completely different note, if you're looking for some cute and yummy handmade Valentine's day candy, check out Tabby's blog, The Craftsy Kitty, where she has some chocolate painted roses and hersey kiss mice that she is selling: http://thecraftsykitty.blogspot.com/2013/01/valentines-day-goodies.html   Delicious!

Homeschool tip: Our bird bulletin board

Solomon just greeted me from his nap with a hug grin.  I smiled back, cheered, and clapped my hands.  He had rolled over in his little bed for the first time!  If only I could have seen.  Yay for firsts!

(picture is the view out my kitchen window this morning - cardinals, juncos, a mourning dove - all eagerly eating)

After no snow at all last winter, yesterday mid-morning there was great excitement here in our Lilly-colored farmhouse when we saw some little white flakes starting to fall.  Sadly within the hour, it had turned to sleet.  But still, seeing some white stuff was great!  Frank and the kids had a great time sledding down the icy driveway.  Solomon and I watched from the window.  (I didn't want to take him out in the sleet.)

For the past few years, the kids and I have been learning to recognize different kinds of birds.  It has turned out to be really interesting.  Today my husband pointed out a blackbird with some color on it's wing and I was happy to see red-winged blackbirds in our yard.   Hunter said I needed to "add it to the chart."

He was talking about our bird bulletin board.  It is hanging in our dining room, next to the windows.  I covered a bulletin board with posterboard and velcro dots.  I have a box of pictures of birds that I labeled and laminated and put velcro dots on the back of.  When we see a different bird out the window, we put up the appropriate bird card on the board.  Usually, once a season, we take all the pictures down and start all over.  It has been great helping us learn birds common in our yard.  Here is our bird board currently:

 

(As you see it's nothing fancy - I really ought to "pretty it up.")  It's located next to our dining room window so we get to watch birds while we eat. Our favorite book for bird identification is Birds of the Carolinas Field Guide by Stan Tekiela.  There is also a CD that goes with it and we have been slowly learning to identify birds by sound.

The more we learn about birds, the more appreciation we have of how imaginative God was in creating such a variety of birds!  Here is our favorite Bible passage about birds - and it's extra special because it says "lilies" and "Solomon" in it (wink!)

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? 'And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?'"  - Matthew 6:26-30

By the way, Frank and I were amused at how ironic it was that I was writing about us trapping mice a few posts ago, then my last post was about Tabby bringing Martin and Katharina Luther - her new gerbils - into the house.  They are still rodents!  They are providing a lot of amusement though.

Hunter decided that he may get gerbils or hamsters when he's older.  If he does he wants to name them Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan.  I thought that was pretty funny! 

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Luther

I admit I am not a fan of men and boys wearing pink shirts.  But Solomon in a PINK Bumbo seat - now I like that!

Solomon said he doesn't mind the pink - it's fun to sit in big sister Lilly's Bumbo.  (Thanks to A.S. for loaning it to us in the first place!)  Lilly was never able to sit alone in the seat for more than a couple minutes.  But she often got practice in it during our therapy.

When I was a girl, I had pet gerbils.  One was named Rebel.  After he died I got another I named Whippersnapper.  My kids like hearing stories about them, especially the one when I took Rebel to the vet because he was dehydrated.  (Wow - I can't believe my parents spent that money.)  Anyway, Tabby decided that having gerbils sounded like so much fun that she saved her money and bought two yesterday.

Named after Tabby's long time favorite couple in history, here is Martin and Katharina Luther:

And here they are separately.  Martin Luther (looking for where to nail his 95 Theses?):

And Katharina:

I asked Tabby what the real Martin and Katharina would think, having gerbils named after them.  She shrugged and said they would be flattered.

And maybe.  From what I've read about Martin Luther he had a big sense of humor.  Though, he may prefer to have a dog named after him:

"The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common.  Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest." - Martin Luther

Of Mice and Me

I don't remember if I've actually ever read John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men but that title popped in my head yesterday as I encountered more mice goodies.  I've had several people ask if we've seen any more mice since my recent post about one that we trapped.  The answer is "yes" - we caught two more in traps in the attic.  Frank was home when I found them, so he got the fun job of disposing of the bodies.  We haven't caught any since though, so we think we may have wiped out that family.  Yesterday I was sorting through some bags of clothes that I brought down from the attic.  In one I found a big stash of sunflower seeds from the bird feeder.  In the other there was several handfuls of pecans.  Hopefully those were stored up supplies from the dead mice.  But ... we'll keep our traps set to welcome any more invaders!

The big sisters of Trisomy 18 angel Hannah Kwant are some very talented seamstresses.  Cassie has a blog and an Etsy shop where she sells things she makes in honor of Hannah.  She has started a line of "Beary Sweet Outfits".  These clothes fit bears like our LillyBear.  (Bears in memory of an angel child.)  Of course they'll fit "regular" bears too.  Here is LillyBear modeling one of Cassie's creations:

Tabby wanted me to share an outfit that Cassie's sister Heidi made for Tabby's doll named Jade.  (It's by the American Girls company)  Heidi sells doll clothes on the Etsy site. 

With our recent move and the birth of Solomon 4 months ago, my life has felt pretty crazy.  My hospital donation project still has not yet happened.  I had planned to donate everything in December.  But life has kept me too busy.  Still, I am working hard to try and wrap up my last projects.  Most of it is done.  Today I finished the 17 memory boxes.  I have them for girls, boys, and the green ones are for either:

Today as I was sorting through some pictures, I found this one, which I framed.  I love how Lilly used to look at me.  She did enjoy looking at her family, and when she was older she would smile!  (She is 4 days old in this photo):

"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost." -G.K. Chesterton

World Traveler Lilly

Lilly seems like a little world traveler to me in some ways.  Besides having the honor of being on the Every Life Counts website in Ireland, her presence is also in Israel, Hawaii, and Canada.

A mom from Israel contacted me last year after her little girl Renee passed away.  Renee had Trisomy 18.  This dear mom had already had a baby boy, Noach, pass away.  Noach had Trisomy 13.  She shared that right after Renee became an angel, she received a number of trees to plant in their yard, including three cherry trees.  She decided the cherry trees would be in honor of her two Trisomy babies, Renee and Noach.  She then planted the third tree in honor of Lilly!  I thought that was so sweet.  She said she planted crocuses and lilies under the trees.

On Lilly's 1 year angelversary last month, she sent me pictures of the cherry trees.  She said they had grown quite a bit and were doing well.





Here is a picture of all three trees.  Noach's is on the left, Renee's in the middle, and Lilly's on the right:

Amazingly, this is not Lilly's only tree in Israel.  After she died, her photographer from Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep had one planted there in her name.

Also about the time of Lilly's 1st angelversary, I received the following pictures from another Trisomy mom, which she took in Hawaii:

This mom shared that while her family was in Hawaii, she wrote Lilly's, and some other angel babies names, with white rocks. She said they have a tradition in Hawaii of using white rocks to write on the black lava rocks with.

I've posted the next pictures before, but they just go so well with this post. 

Another Trisomy mom in Canada sent me this photo that she took, in honor of Lilly, last year on what would have been Lilly's 2nd birthday:

Finally, I requested Carly Dudley take this picture in Australia:

I love how supportive and thoughtful our Trisomy community is.  I have been blessed to travel out of the country before, in the 1990s.  I have been to England, Scotland, Switzerland, France, and Italy.  If I ever get to go again, it would be neat to do something like this in memory of other angel babies and share them with their families.

Of course I don't have to leave the country to do something thoughtful.  I'm actually excited about a little Valentine's Day project I have in mind for some families.  But I can't share that here quite yet.  ;)

4 and 13

Today my happy little Solomon turned 4 months old.

Today also means my sweet Lilly has been in the arms of Jesus for 13 months.

In the above picture Lilly is in the same swing that Solomon is in, in the last picture of him above.  All four of my children have used this swing.  I took this photo of Lilly just a week or two before she died.  She was playing with the angel ornament I had bought her for the Christmas tree.

Each week, Tabitha writes a short report on a different hymn as one of her homeschool subjects.  This week she choose "Safe in the Arms of Jesus."  This was a hymn I didn't recall ever hearing of until after Lilly passed away.  (See my post about it, which includes the lyrics, here.)  I just read the story and learned that the author of the hymn, Fanny J. Crosby, and her husband had had a baby who did not live long.  She would not talk about this tragedy.  She would not even tell people if it was a boy or girl baby.  Her only allusion to it was in her oral biography: "God gave us a tender babe and soon the angels came down and took our infant up to God and His throne."

What a great example of how people all handle mourning differently.  I thoroughly enjoy talking about Lilly to anyone who will listen.  Mrs. Crosby apparently couldn't bear to say a word about her angel baby.

Ten years after Mr. and Mrs. Crosby's baby died, she was given a tune by musician Howard Doane and asked to compose a poem to match it.  After hearing the tune she exclaimed it said "Safe in the arms of Jesus" to her.  And 30 minutes later she dictated the poem she had just composed in her mind to Doane.  She said she wrote the song for the bereaved, especially mothers who had lost their children.  Now I know that she understood the loss personally.

Apparently, when offering sympathy to a mother that had lost her child, she would say "Remember, my dear, your darling cherub is safe in the arms of Jesus."

What a blessed thought.

(I got the information on Mrs. Crosby from the book Then Sings My Soul by Robert J. Morgan)

Today I added a touch of Lilly to my curtains in our living room.  I washed the curtains that the previous owners had left, but wanted different ties for them.  (The previous owners had used dark colored flower print scarves as tie backs.  They were fine but "just not me.")  So I pulled out some Lilly colored ribbon from my stash, and a red and white polk-a-dotted ribbon that had come on a beautiful quilt that someone gave to Solomon and tied them on the curtains. (You can see the quilt on the back of the recliner.)  The ribbons looked just right.  :)

Sleeping with one eye open

One of those quirky common Trisomy 18 traits is to sleep with eyes open.  I'm not sure if some of the children have their eyes wide open, or if they are more cracked, with varying degrees, like Lilly used to do:

I was interested to learn the other day about a girl that is 12 years old, with full Trisomy 18!!!, who just had surgery to repair her corneas.  If I understood correctly, they had become damaged from being dried out so long while the girl slept with her eyes cracked open.  Her mom said the surgery was quick and easy.

Unless you have been in hiding, you know that the flu and RSV are rampant this year.  (Apparently because last winter was too mild to kill off as many germs as usual.)  Yesterday my friend H. told me that her baby had just gotten over pertussis (whopping cough) and that their doctor said that there have been more cases of pertussis this winter than since 1955.  Hmmmmm.  Makes you wonder about the vaccines.  Do be careful to keep your hands washed!  And please remind your children not to touch babies or other kids in the face.  :)

Yesterday at church, we were delighted to receive the following drawing from a 6 year old boy.  A rainbow to remind us of the gift of our rainbow baby!

"What is desirable in a person is kindness, . . ." - Proverbs 19:22

I hung it up next to Hunter's page of writing "Lilly":

The "No Time for Flash Cards" website (which has a lot of really good craft, learning, and motor skill development ideas for little ones) had a rainbow Valentine craft on today's post.  Perfect for siblings of rainbow babies.  :)  Of course I'm sure many children would enjoy it.  I'm going to get the supplies and let Hunter try it.