Life's Chaotic Pace

I don’t think there is enough coffee to get through weeks like the one I experienced. Each night about 10pm, I wished for a couple of extra hours. Life is chaotic, but it is a good chaotic. A majority of the weekend was spent preparing for our Sunday School kickoff. Tom took the kids outside while I attempted to get through all manner of signage, prizes, and game supplies while simultaneously printing off student handbooks, teacher handbooks, and game directions. It’s not rocket science, it just takes time and energy. When I agreed to do this, I didn’t have a writing project. This week, there was smoke rolling off my keyboard (not literally), as I finished a project. This made the weekends work a bit more tedious, but it was manageable. Thankfully, there are a group of us (“the lifers”) who stay year after year who pitch in with one another. I never mind the work of planning; it is the execution of the event which I like to hand off to others. I am usually glad about 15 minutes into the activity. If nobody has come up to me breathlessly looking for something, things are off to a good start.


Sidney and I visited the physical therapist last week. She wears splints at night to help with the scarring on her right hand. We alternate hands each night. This serves two purposes. It reduces the scarring with something inside the plastic, and it keeps the webbing from her fingers from creeping back between her fingers. Web creep is quite common with syndactyly (webbing), because it is her body’s natural tendency to fill in the space between her fingers. As she gets older, she will most likely require more surgery, but for now, we are trying to prevent it for as long as possible.

Right now, Sidney is too young to completely understand there is something different. I love this age, because, we have not faced any of the tough stuff like kids making rude comments or questioning the difference. I call it blissfully living in a bubble. Eventually, we know the bubble will pop. We have already heard things from children. It might sound rude to an outside observer, but Tom and I know kids lack the right words. We never look for the “right” words. Of course, this doesn’t mean we don’t cringe, but most of the time, a kid is genuinely concerned. They want to know why, but they lack the communication skills. Typically, after a period of question and answer kids find nothing else to ask about and continuing playing as if we never had the conversation. It is our hope this is the case when she enters preschool next year. Kids are simple, and I sometimes wish I retained some of this as an adult.

We enjoyed dinner last night with our good friends. It was great last night when the kids were exhausted from playing outside. OK, off to enter the world of German supermarkets and another writing project.