Best Buddies

I am not sure exactly when it happened.  When they clicked.  But they did and there was no stopping them!  Wyatt and Lunden are together the peanut butter and jelly in a sandwich, the icing on a cake, butter on your popcorn.  These two can spend hours together and never get tired of each other.  They play trains and cars.  They like to sit next to each other in their strollers at exercise class just so they can show each other what they brought that day to play with and do a little swapping.  They are the kind of friends that know what the other one is thinking.  They can get each other into trouble faster than you can imagine.  One is into the mischief and the other laughs encouragement.  They are quite the pair!

When life keeps them apart for too long, they let us Mom's know they miss each other.  Get that playdate scheduled please!  When you see them together, they are like brothers.  I can only imagine how they will be when they get older.  I will be calling Lunden's parents looking for Wyatt and they will be calling us.  We may have to put beepers on their ankles to keep track of them!

They have had such a good time together in their short little lives and it is going to be so neat to see them grow up together.  I hope they always treat each other with respect and a pat on the back.  You just can't do without a best friend in your life and these two have been lucky enough to find one already!

Harvest 2011

We missed harvest with my Dad this year.  Life got crazy and traveling the 4 hours to the farm just didn't happen.  Luckily, my cousin was cutting down by Wellington so we drove down to see them and Wyatt had the time of his life!

Waiting for his ride!

Last year he was so afraid of the big combine and tractors.  He wouldn't go near them.  This year he didn't want to stop riding!  What a difference a year makes.  Austin took him on a ride in the combine and they cut a while until the header plugged up.  I am sure with two little kiddos in the cab, Austin could put his full attention into keeping the header cleared out!

Getting out of the combine to work on the header

Plugged!

 After they got the header figured out and the combine back to work, it was time for a tractor ride.  Austin's dad, Eldon, took Wyatt and they were so cute.  This was the first time Wyatt had met Eldon so I was shocked when he went off without a second look back.

Wyatt and Eldon headed to drive the tractor

There is obviously some farming in this little boy's blood.  Maybe next year we will get out to Grandpa Kemper's for harvest.  I have a feeling he will be asking to drive by then.  Wyatt never ceases to amaze me!  Thanks to the Lawless family for letting us have some fun!

Talking it over with Eldon and cousins Austin, Chalea and little Audie

Wyatt Driving the Tractor

 Harvest was always a fun time on the farm.  It usually lasted a good couple of weeks when I was younger.  My Dad and Uncle Marc used two old yellow New Holland combines with a header width about the size of a car. :) It took them forever!  Only one of them had air conditioning too.  Pretty miserable in the KS heat.  They had two old, small grain trucks too.  My brother and I would climb up into the fully loaded trucks and a crawl over all the wheat.  There would be grasshoppers and other dead and alive buggers in there but who cared.  It was kind of like walking in sand.  You would sink as you moved!  My Mom made the best dinners to take out to the guys and it was fun to go riding along to help feed the crew.  I still make a lot of the food she made year after year.  Brings back good memories when I do.  Lots of dust and wheat chaffe blowing.  I need to find some of the old pictures from back then.  I have a VHS video from 82 in the basement.  Pretty funny stuff!  One Summer I worked at the grain elevator, probing wheat trucks till the wee hours of the morning.  Leonard Long and I sat there waiting on those trucks.  The harvest crews that came through town usually had some pretty good looking guys running trucks too so staying up and working was way worth it!  Now my family operates a much larger combine, a semi truck, tractor and grain cart and they aren't out there near as long (provided Mother Nature cooperates).  There is something about a Kansas harvest that just makes me happy.  Hard working people making a living off the land.  Just as it should be.

Kohake Homestead Weekend

On July 9th, my Mom and her three sisters got together along with those of us who could come and finished cleaning out my Grandma Kohake's home.  She passed away four years ago and some was done then but my Aunt Marcia and Uncle Max planned to retire there so much was left so they would have the things they needed to stay there.  Life has changed and along with it, plans, so the farm will be sold.  They planned this day to finish going through the barn and home and give everyone little treasures that belonged to Grandma.  Whether it be a recipe book or the buffet that sat in the dining room for as long as I can remember, everyone left with a piece of memory.

I took the time to sit and remember all the fun we had at Grandma Kohake's house.  The Christmas holidays with all the cousins.  Chalea and Chanda would orchestrate some sort of a Christmas play with all the kids.  We would talk it through in the back bedroom and then head to the living room to put on our performance for the parents.  I remember being afraid of the basement.  There is a bedroom down there but if you go into the back part, she had a storage room where she kept all her canning and boy was it dark back there!  Even the sounds of the house.  How the bedroom doors sounded when they shut, the locust and other critters that were in the fields outside while we slept with the windows wide open.  A benefit to the living in the country.  The full length mirror that hung on the wall outside the bedrooms.  There were so many of us crowded around that mirror on Sunday mornings doing hair and getting our clothes just right.  The brown and white colored canisters on the kitchen counter.  Austin and Tony climbing the big oak tree in the front yard. 

I was pregnant with Wyatt when Grandma Kohake passed away and I am so happy he got the opportunity to go play at her home and enjoy the yard and being in the country.  He had so much fun and I enjoyed every smile.

I know this had to be tough on my Mom and her sisters but they pushed through like a Hulsing woman knows how to do and I think they had a great time just being together in their home.  We found so many treasures.

And got rid of some too! :)

I will miss going back to Goff.  I have a stack of Grandma's handwritten recipes to go through. Some don't even have the recipe name listed!  Grandma has lines drawn around some with little notes and others have ingredients listed with the words "more or less" written after them.  It is nice to see her familiar handwriting.  I love my Grandma, love her family and definitely love going back home to her farm. 

Blogs In My Head

I have so many blogs floating around "upstairs" and I don't know where to start.  I have been busy which is why I am so behind on blogs but if I am behind on blogs you can only imagine what my house looks like right now!  So forgive me as I slowly weed through pictures and thoughts and post them here.  There won't be an order but as life goes on I am expected to do nothing but try to keep up, any which way I can.

DDD

For years I had lower back pain.  It felt like I needed to be stretched out.  Like my spine was somehow compacted.  I have seen my fair share of chiropractors and they provided relief but nothing long term.  Then, almost five years ago I changed chiropractors and after some xrays, I was given a diagnosis I had never heard before.  Degenerative Disc Disease.  Part of me was happy to have finally found out what had been causing all my trouble but the other half of me was sad to know there isn't anything to reverse it.  I went to an orthopedic surgeon, had an MRI and he confirmed the diagnosis and gave me a better idea of what was happening to my spine.  I had moderate degeneration of the disc between my L4 and L5 vertebrae and inflammation of the vertebrae around that disc.  As a side note, my spine and tailbone are actually fused together.  Something he said is very common but to me explains why I think I don't have very good flexibility to touch my toes!  The surgeon was surprised how well I was getting along at the time due to how bad it looked but I turned down epidural injections and opted to stay with my chiropractor.  I wanted to keep from doing anything "invasive" for as long as I could. 

In 2007, I got pregnant with my son.  Life was great.  All of my back pain was gone.  I felt amazing and couldn't believe it.  But, as I have read happens, within 3 days of me giving birth, all the pain was back with a vengeance.  It was horrible.  I crawled around on the floor a lot trying to care for my son.  Anything to ease the pain in my back and legs.  I just had my second child and while I still had some pain during my pregnancy this go round, it is back full force and really affects my day.

You don't realize how much you bend over in a day until it is painful to do so.  Especially with a baby.  I am not a short person, 5' 10" tall, so there are a lot of things I do that require me to bend. 

Laying my baby down for a nap
Changing her diaper on the bed or changing table
Loading and unloading the dishwasher
Getting anything out of the lower cabinets in my house
Using my oven
Getting clothes in and out of the washer and dryer
Getting up out of a chair or sitting down in a chair
Turning my head upside down to blow dry my hair
Vacuuming
Picking up toys
Putting on my shoes, pants, etc.

And these are just a few things.  It is also quite painful to lay down and if I sit for too long, I walk like an elderly person, all bent over as if I was using a cane to walk. 

I am writing about it today because I just wish it would go away.  I wonder often what I will be like in another 10 years.  I wonder what medical treatment I will be dealing with as I age.  I wonder if all the years of competitive athletics sped up the degeneration.  It gets to me when I have to stand over my daughter's bassinet, trying to summon the strength to bend over to lay her down for bed without crying.  It gets to me when my son wants me to play and I know if I get on the floor to build those block towers, I am going to be in serious pain when I move.  It gets to me to know I am not supposed to be exercising like I do but I don't know how else to stay fit so I try and push through it. 

Oddly enough, since my diagnosis, both my brother and sister have also been diagnosed with DDD although it isn't as advanced and I hope they never have it be so.  I will continue to see the chiropractor from time to time when insurance allows and work to strengthen my abdominal muscles after having my daughter.  Both of these will help me manage some of the pain and discomfort.  Chronic pain is not a great way to spend every day of your life but I guess it is what I have been given and it could be worse.  I myself will hold out for stem cell research and hopefully one day I will be able to regenerate the bad disc.  Until then, one day at a time, one day at a time.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

A few weeks ago we loaded up the truck like the Clampetts and headed back home to visit my brother, his wife and my nephew.  They travel back that way about once a year so it was pretty important we get there.  First time to travel with the 2 dogs, 2 kids and 2 adults.  I think we did fairly well.  The trip out took forever.  Lorelai was hungry about every hour so there was lots of stopping.  I also got to introduce my Grandma, Viola, to her great granddaughter Lorelai Viola.  It was so sweet to see how happy it made her to hold Lorelai. 

Lorelai Viola and her Great Grandma Viola

It was such a great trip.  Many family friends stopped in to see Lorelai and visit and there was plenty of just being a family all under one roof. 

Great Grandma with Brayden, Lorelai and Wyatt

These two get in more trouble together!

Still more trouble!

 My nephew is a total card.  He doesn't like to sit still for a minute and oh so completely has his parents wrapped around his little finger!  I wish they lived closer so I could see the little guy more.  He had spent some time at the Sutter grandparents house before venturing to Logan and must have checked a lot of cows with his Papa because he yelled "COME BOSS!" all the time.  Way cute!

Cowboy Brayden

Brayden trying to get his mom to eat instead of doing it himself!

Reading a book and playing the guitar to keep Wyatt occupied while the nuggets go down the gush!

I miss my little home town and all the people in it.  We are so fortunate as a family to have each other and our traditions to keep us coming back together.  Time spent with each other is priceless and more important to me now that I have two kids that need to know where their momma came from. 

Chillin' with my Uncle Tony on the front porch

Lorelai and her Aunt Shelley

I think they were trying to decide what they were going to eat next.  Definitely not working!

A little conversation with Grandma

The trip home went much easier.  Not many stops along the way.  I miss home already........

Education in Kansas

Since Wyatt was about 6 months old, I have been receiving home visits from the Parents as Teachers organization in whatever school district we lived in.  Lorelai just started hers shortly after she was born.  It is a wonderful program for kids and especially the parents who are raising them.  Each month, our Parent Educator comes to our home with fun, developmentally appropriate tasks, games, books, etc. for my kids to do.  She monitors their development and suggest things for us to do such as working with Wyatt on his fine motor skills.  An area he is not as strong in.  She visits with me about how everything is going.  And, as all you moms know out there, just having someone genuinely ask you how it is going means the world.  We talk about behavior and ways to correct or mold a bad behavior into a good one.  She completed developmental screenings to make sure they were on the right track.  And we celebrated their accomplishments.  At two years old, she taped, only audio, Wyatt answering questions about his day, favorite this or that and animals he saw in a book.  It is the most precious thing.  You put it in the tape player and close your eyes and see him in your mind, answering her questions.  It is amazing to just hear his little voice.  Wyatt loves Miss J and if anyone could get him to do something, it is her. 

Today was our last home visit.  I didn't know this until she came.  Miss J is losing her job because of the dire situation the Kansas budget is in.  This is a very competent person.  Someone who I consider an expert in her field.  Someone who has helped me realize the potential in my child and has been there to show me milestones I didn't even know they knew how to do.  Miss J is part of our family.  She watches over my kids to make sure they are all they can be.  She is an extension of me and a huge support to me.  But no more.  While the state isn't completely closing the program down, they are going from around 13 employees to 5.  Because we have received fewer than 30 home visits, our name will go into a pool to be pulled out when they have space.  They are taking special needs kiddos into consideration first which is great.  I know those families need PAT but I wonder if there is enough educators to go around for those who need immediate assistance?  It just all makes me sad, mad and just plain speechless.  I don't understand why our government bails out GM and the likes but cuts valuable education programs.  We are not going to be in trouble if a couple of executives lose their lunch money but when we fail to educate and support our children I shutter to think what is going to happen.  I just don't understand the logic behind this.  The economy is a mess.  True.  Just wait until the generation that is currently in the 3rd grade graduates high school.  Talk about a messy economy.  These kids will have had so much taken from them when it comes to education I really worry about where they will be in life.  I wonder if they will have the tools to keep their economy going.  I wonder if they will have the preparation to attend college.  It goes on and on.  But, those GM execs now are retired and living in their condos on South Beach.  Seriously? 

Miss J, even though she knew she would never visit our home again in this manner, stayed for 2 hours and completed as many things with my kids as possible.  She completed developmental screenings, made sure we talked about anything that concerned me regarding the kids, made play-do with Wyatt and held Lorelai.  She didn't have to do any of this.  She won't have a job in a month so who cares right?  She does and that is exactly why this is so sad.  She cares enough about my kids that she would spend the time to say good bye to them and read to them.  I bet I couldn't get 5 minutes of a GM execs time, even if I owned one of their stupid vehicles. 

So a toast to Miss J.  I hope whatever life has in store for you is fun and reward filled.  An most of all, I hope it includes kids.  They love you, respect you and most of all need you to help them find the way.