Since Samuel’s death four years ago, I have occasionally been asked some questions about him. I don’t mind at all. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to talk about him and the things that happened. The truth is that Samuel’s short life did have a huge impact on our family and losing him did change some things about how we parent the rest of our children, but especially our relationship with Wildchild.

As you can imagine, Samuel’s death left Bear and I with empty arms and feeling very very lonely for him for a long time. We still feel that way at times. When we found out that our little Wildchild was on the way, there was a tendency to surrender to fears of all sorts… Would he survive? Would the birth go okay? Would he remind us of Samuel? Would we bond with him the way we bonded with Samuel (and we did even though Samuel did not survive until birth)? As it turned out, the answer to those questions were quite different than we would have thought.

Wildchild’s birth was quite an event. He decided to come early due to his umbilical cord being wrapped twice around his little neck, but, due to medical intervention, he did arrive quite safely. We did NOT bond with him the same way that we did with Samuel because he was not the same child. For that matter, we did not bond with him the same way that we bonded with Tech, Kutless, Flash or Hulk either, but we DID bond with him just fine! As for him reminding us of Samuel, well, he just doesn’t. He didn’t act like Samuel in the womb at all. He didn’t look much like Samuel when he was born. Quite frankly, Wildchild has clearly been his very own little person from the moment of conception and we should have been trusting our Heavenly Father to know what we needed and could handle much better than we did!

The truth is, we will always love and adore our Samuel. His life was horribly, painfully short, but it was important to us and impacted all of our lives forever. Our other children and their lives are just as important. No more, no less. Every individual is uniquely created by G-d and is a completely unique creation and important in his or her own right. I will be the first to admit that we probably did hold Wildchild a little tighter, spoil him a little more and take turns cuddling him until we began to wonder if he would ever learn to walk (which he did just fine). Samuel’s left a mark on our lives that will last forever but the best thing he gave us was a newer and deeper appreciation for each other.

We seem to be having a bit of a difficult run of things here in the nest. I’m having some of the worst morning sickness I have ever experienced (Pity my family). We have had to give up both our cat and our dog for the sake of our family’s health and well-being (the bird seems unnecessarily happy about that for some reason), but the asthma and allergy problems have been dramatically reduced. My last grandmother has been and still is in the hospital fighting for her life. The bug man came and sprayed (may he be greatly blessed and even sainted!) after we developed a major bug problem. Bleh! My husband and all but one of my children got severely sunburned and have suffered much after losing their sunblock at the water park (free tickets and they had so MUCH fun, though!). We have friends who have been suffering from everything from fear for their children (two in need of heart surgery!) to heartbreak. These are some difficult days. Please be praying for us, for my grandmother and for our friends. Thank you so much.

We have rented an industrial strength carpet shampooer and are cleaning ALL of our carpets and much of our furniture. So, why are we doing all of this TODAY you might ask? We have discovered that some of us are quite allergic to our little cat, Sasha, who is leaving us for a new life elsewhere. Sigh.

Friday we experienced a horrific tragedy. I started bleeding and cramping and showing all the usual signs of a miscarriage (just like the one last February for those keeping track). We have been experiencing the usual cycle of mourning and loss… until tonight. You see, something just wasn’t quite normal, not quite right. We kept praying and seeking G-d and He kept gently nudging us all to head to the hospital and find out what on earth was wrong. In this case, what is wrong is also what is right! It seems that we did not lose our baby after all! I have experienced some internal bleeding which is now a hemotoma and our condition is somewhat fragile, but Baby Boo (we have been calling the baby that since he/she is SUCH a surprise) is doing just FINE! In fact, he/she is actually a week further along that we knew!

Please be praying for our continued good health. We are having to be super-cautious right now. But the praises being lifted would almost deafen you if you were here to share them with us!

You know the those moments. They come somewhere between those first panicky moments after finding out company is coming to visit and finishing up the sweeping and the baking. This particular moment came when the sofa was excavated from the piles of school books, toddler toys, children and a very lazy cat and I re-discovered that it’s a SOLID COLOR! Wow. Now I’m wondering what other amazing finds I will make this week… … and why, oh why didn’t anyone ever tell me that homeschooling would mean that I would never see or have access to my sofa again?

This one straight from the hand of the Father. Unfortunately, he or she comes wrapped in morning sickness at this stage. Please pray. I’m not as young as I used to be.

We have had a doozy of a week complete with a stomach bug (super mild, though), a MAJOR water leak that is resulting in an emergency plumber call today (Eek!) and a major household disruption due to a big change in our family. Please consider this prayer request. I’ll try to give a few details when we get back home. However, with five kids and no water, I am packing a cooler with a picnic lunch and making a mad dash elsewhere! Thanks bunches!

Life is pleasantly boring at the moment.

We managed to get the truck taken care of enough to get it inspected and registered in our name. It does still need a few repairs, but it is safe to drive. Our car is currently not running well, however, so we are still waiting on a chance to do things as an entire family once again.

The garden isn’t dead yet and has even produced actual food that we have actually been able to eat. It is even continuing to do so much to all of our amazement. Don’t worry, though, we are still managing to kill off quite a few plants for no apparent reason so my record as serial plant murderer still stands.

Homeschooling is somewhat back on track once more, except for those days when it isn’t. Also, there was a very unpleasant week of head colds and sinus infections when almost nothing got done, but we don’t want to talk about that bit of nastiness, do we?

After many years of trying this and that with our homeschooling, we seem to once more be back to the formula that has served us so well again and again. Everything is centering around science, reading and the Bible. All of the other subjects just seem to fall into place on their own when we do things this way. I love that.

Most of you who have been reading here for awhile know that the past few years haven’t been terribly gentle with our family. We still consider ourselves to be wonderfully blessed and we love each other dearly, but we have had our share of struggles. One of the more recent dilemmas we had been dealing with was trying to figure out how to get the entire family from point A (our home) to point B (any other destination at all) with only one vehicle that had only three consistently working seat belts. I will be the first to admit that this has not been one of our more fun situations.

Until Saturday. Why? Because on Saturday Kaylaugh called to let us know that she and Cardoc wanted to bless our family with Cardoc’s little truck which has, by the way, four seat belts (can you hear my heart fluttering with excitement over that one?). After a few days of scheduling conflicts and weather problems, we were able to pick it up and bring it home yesterday. The excitement here has reached an almost uncontainable level with constant pilgrimages out to the driveway to make sure that the little truck is really really here. I am pretty sure the boys, in particular, are in love.

Thank you just seems so inadequate right now.

Upon walking into my closet last night, I was more than a little surprised to find a dinosaur eating my socks. What a little stuffed dinosaur was doing in my socks in the first place, I have no idea, but there it was. I guess I can’t blame the loss of all of those odd socks on them becoming separated in the laundry anymore, though.