Are you ready for some football????

At the begining of the school year we strongly encouraged Willie to get involved in some activity. We discussed options like band......he picked football. I kept talking about band. I bought a trumpet for him. He picked out the football shoes. Guess which item got lots of use? Football fever took hold and that trumpet has been forgotten.

Huh? My boy without a mean bone in his body playing football? Yes, Glenn and I were blindsided by his newly found love of a sport.

Did I mention that it was tackle football? Yikes, those kids hit HARD.

Now that the season is over, we have one sad little boy. Well, let me rephrase that....we have one sad left tackle who is almost as tall as his momma and far too big to be called a little boy anymore. The season was good for us all though.

Will made friends. He learned how to bash into opponents his size and gently shake the 70 pounders off his leg. Wouldn't want to hurt anyone out there on the field, right? That's my boy....

Isaac discovered a love of running along the sidelines taking pics of his big brother. Some of them are actually good too!

Glenn and I enjoyed watching him play.

Murray the Lhasa Apso developed a love of football. And the hotdogs dropped at football games.

And Benji decided he wants to grow up to be a linebacker. Ughhhh....that's one that's not gonna fly with the docs who have spent years keeping his messed up organs working! In the meantime he has developed a love of that trumpet that will rejected. Yes, the boy even has some talent.

So, what's next?

Spring soccer.

Right after we spend the next four months hibernating and watching Saturday AM cartoons. While Benji plays the trumpet and Issac takes pictures of the cat. :)

Be Careful What You Wish For!

We used to spend alot of time wondering how Benji would develop....would he walk? talk? be able to tell us his needs? go to school? push his brother on a tire swing, get hit by it in the belly and fly three yards through the air, landing on his skinny little butt?

Apparently the answers are yes, yes, yes, yes,

and unfortunately, yes.

When pushing a 148 pound sibling who is built like a linebacker on a tire swing, the 44 pounder needs to GET THE HECK OUT OF THE WAY before the swing goes backwards!

I must add that Benji laughed while flying through the air and after a huge THUNK, he got up shook the dirt off his pants and said "that hurted a bit." When we got home though we discovered the damage was done and his urinary stoma swelled shut. Again. After weeks of a foley catheter in, he is back to the drawing board so to say. As I was putting Humpty Dumpty back together again after cleaning the grass and dirt out of his butt crack, he had no regrets. His exact words were "this was the best day of my life momma, I rided gokarts with Isaac, played with my coufins (aka cousins), and eated pickles and ham."

Okay, so he needs a little speech therapy.....

But the point is, his best days always end badly with some sort of medical emergency. He always pays the price for a day of fun, but doesn't even care.

Well, except for the fact that he is convinced that he still has grass in his butt crack and keeps asking me to come pick it out. My glamourous life!

The rest of the pics!

Kids with fur...and also without fur!

After a lengthy period of time attempting to get the three human kids to nicely sit with the three fur kids and all smile at the camera, I sorta gave up. It turns out that the two littlest ones in the middle were the best behaved. The middle ones on the right there were just plan naughty. Funny how people are like their pets, huh? Little Murray is pretty photogenic in the rest of the pics.

After I reviewed the pictures tonight I found the least perfect was my favorite. Why you ask? Because Sadie is cleaning lunch off of Isaac's face, Will has his pant legs rolled up like there is a flood coming, and Murray is trying to flee from Benji- most likely with plans to go eat a shoe. It's a messy picture....and it's pretty symbolic of our lives.

Anyways, all canines and humans under the age of 12 had their summer haircuts this week. In two more weeks they'll be back to being shaggy with added sunburns on top so this is the best we're gonna get!

Too tired to think of a title!

This is a pic of the cake of his dreams....note the lack of smile from that birthday boy. He was a bit under the weather that weekend. In fact, he's been a bit under the weather for the whole winter. Between resp. crud, low blood sugars, venting and the persistent middle of the night awakening due to GI pain, we're lucky he made it through his birthday outside of the hospital.

Speaking of GI pain, last week we took him in for an emergency tube placement as "Mr. Mic Key the Jtube" was defective. While placing it, the radiologist showed me his extremely dilated small bowel. I do know what a small bowel is suppossed to look like...and it's not suppossed to be the same size as his stomach. Yikes. I left his GI doc a message to make sure he looks at those images. Of course, he never called back. So on Monday get to be THAT mom for the 157th time and pester the guy that my kid's belly hurts and his intenstines look like he's growing a watermelon in there. I'm so annoyed that our (aka mine because my other half is snoring away most of the time when our kid wakes up screaming) concerns about lack of sleep and quality of life have been disregarded and hope I can keep that annoyance out of my voice.

After I harrass him, we are headed to MN for appts. Urology, Neurosurgery, Nephrology, Dietician, and Endocrinology.....hoping to come home with no new surgeries and lots of new solutions! I had to pay fthe full price or Glucagon this week due to insurance issues. Holy goodness, there has got to be a less expensive way to keep this boy alive.

As for the other kiddos, Isaac is on the mend. We're not suppossed to talk about it so I won't, except to say GOD FORBID THAT BOY EVER NEED ANOTHER SURGERY. If he doesn't aspirate and die in recovery, his father and I may throttle him when we get hime home. Not the best little patient ever....

The normal kid (Will) started on medicine for bedwetting, because I am to the point that sleep comes before washing sheets in my life. He's 11, still wets the bed, and I'm done with it.

Anyways, that about sums it up!

Four. And not fixed.

I guess that the title sums it up.

Benj turned four yesterday and he's no where near being a normal kid. Actually, I could care less about the whole normal part of it. I just want him to be a bit further from abnormal.

Unfortunately, this birthday weekend gave us ample opportunity to reflect on all the parts of this child that do not function well. From the life threatening low blood sugars to the extreme tummy pain at 3 AM, he seemed to run the full gammut of illness over the weekend.

The low point of the weekend: a hands on demonstration to teach our 10 year old son how to give his little brother glucagon through his insuflon.

The high point of our weekend: the fact that that 10 year old ROCKS at this sort of stuff and handles it like a pro.

I guess if we ever get stranded in a desert and a javelina gnaws off my arms then Will can keep Benji alive with injections. Right? See if I ever take these boys to Arizona again. They enjoyed that scenario WAYYYYY too much.

I'd love it if a doctor or two would come forward and proclaim that by age five they will have his bladder, pancreas, and gi tract fixed and fully functional.

Is it gonna happen?

No.

Will telling myself it isn't going to happen make 2/19/12 any less difficult?

Not a bit.

My only consolation: This child seriously does not know that there is anything WRONG with him. How the heck is he turning out so good?

Today I asked him while at Walmart what he wants to get his cousin for his birthday.

Benji: "Gavin wants a new backpack for his Na-Na" (aka the feeding pump's nickname, because we are weird enough to name all of this kid's tubes, holes, and equipment in a futile attempt to make them seem less abnormal).
Me: "Gavin doesn't have a Na-Na."
Benji: "That's too bad. Maybe his mom and dad should buy him a Na-Na like mine!" (insert cheesy grin because this is the BEST thought he's ever come up with, in his opinion)
Me: "How about a lego toy for his birthday?"
Benji: Looooonnnngggg drawn out sigh. "I guess sooooo."

So with the obvious fact that he isn't going to be fully functional anytime soon, I will turn my frustrations to something more productive in locating overalls for this boy on my day off tomorrow. I managed to track down one pair this week at a farm supply store in Vermillion. He has reached a point where too many holes plus a glucose sensor in his belly region is making finding pants with waist bands that don't create leaks nearly impossible. But overalls are hard to come by. We live in SD though people, aren't little boys suppossed to wear overalls when they help their daddies work on tractors? Especially little boys with more "leaks" than the average farm tractor?