New blog to share

Thanks to little miss mayhem, i've had the privilege of meeting this wonderful, very supportive and always helpful lady named Debi. Debi and Taylor both have congenital upper extremity amputations. Taylor's on the left and Debi's on the right. We first met when Taylor was about 4 months old, minutes after Taylor received her first prosthetic arm. Debi shared a glimpse into her life from birth to present and I left that day knowing without a single doubt that Taylor would grow up strong and always be able to do anything and everything she put her mind to. I love being able to get her feedback on things. Generally I really only have the insite of other parents of children like taylor who have been in my shoes, I don't often, or ever usually, get to hear and see things from the amputee's perspective. Debi has shared her experiences as a child, teen, adult, mom and now grandma. She's been through it all and then some i'm sure. With '1/2 a century' of knowledge and experience, Taylor will always be in great hands with Debi around. That said, Debi has started a blog so that she can reach out and help and educated even more people. She just started it a few days ago so there are only a couple posts so far but i'm truly looking forward to her posts to come. Her blog is called
Single-handed Solutions and the site link is:
 www.singlehandedsolutions.blogspot.com 

Enjoy!

-- Sent from my Palm Pixi

Another butterfly lost

A while back, this girl stumbled across my blog. She was looking for help, support and answers reguarding the recent news of her 20 week gestation nephew's limb deficiency. We exchanged emails a few times and then her sister, the one having the bundle of joy, joined in and we exchanged emails too. We have kept in touch as best you can in the busy world of work, family and play. 'Little Man' was due to be born on august 30th and i've been waiting to hear the great news of his arrival. I got it this morning. But it wasn't the great news it should have been. 'Mom' had some bloodpressure issues suddenly and so the baby needed to be delivered early. He was born on saturday august 7th, and he passed away on tuesday the 10th. My heart aches. Rest in peace Nathan. I hope you find peace 'mom',  'aunt' and all of your family.  My thoughts are with you.

-- Sent from my Palm Pixi

Shrine On 2010 Pictures (Thanks Mom)

Click here to view these pictures larger

Oh the joys of the last days of April

The entire month of April is a crazy one as far as my family goes. There are somewhere around 18 birthdays!!!! Of those, we usually are part of 5 parties, 2 of those I get to play hostess (Ashtyn's and mine, which are generally celebrated the same day). Saturday was my birthday, Ashtyn's birthday party day and Jeremy's going away party night. Um, busy much?! Yeah. I don't do the one party thing anymore, all of our parties have become multi-party parties. But, anyway, Ashtyn had a blast, I enjoyed myself (Thanks for the Dos Equis Brucie) and Jeremy had a tough night, or should I say morning. My cake came out pretty good. I was killing myself trying to come up with decorating ideas. Shrek, Dora, Sponge Bob, My Little Pony, ZuZu pets, blag blah blah.... I'm tired of that kind of stuff. I like the self designed stuff better. If I'm making it then I want it something I made, not Disney or Nickelodeon made.


Sadly, pictures of the cake are basically all I have for photos. I was too busy running around and forgot to snag my mom's photos before she went home. I didn't even get a picture of the cake Sue got for me (which was awesome by the way, Thank You!!!)
Our "Night of Mayhem" was a lot quieter than expected but Jeremy did fire up his chainsaw at 1am to cut up pallets for our very little "bon fire" (I married a redneck). His little shindig was the usual crowd: Me and Jeremy, Brian, Sam (his wife Rene was here for a while and even got to witness me kick Sam's butt in a very random wrestling match....Sam won the 3rd round, but I won 2 out of 3 HAHA), Chris showed up and decided to be "smart" and not drive home...problem was he didn't call his wife to let her know...dummy, I told you so.....and then Jeremy's friend from work Chris and his wife Tracy, and "T-Bone" aka Mack (who "tackled" our F-350) came for a bit and Justin and Crystal. Its sad and funny, as I'm writing this and re-reading it I'm seeing how redneck we really are.....I'm not sure how that happened.....yikes. All in all it was a good night, and day, and I think the fact that about half of the people I invited showed up was actually a good thing. The little crew of us just sat around our mini bonfire and shot the breeze until we were too tired to speak and went to bed.
Reality set back in today and it was work as usual. My morning kid pulled a no call no show, so it was just me and my girls until my afternoon kid showed up around 3:30. Jeremy moves up to camp in 4 days!!!! I'm sad, scared, horrified, and hoping somehow this all works out. My house has yet to be shown, let alone sold. I don't do the two-weeks-without-seeing-my-husband thing. I'm not a fan of the idea to be honest. I only have to deal with it for 5 weeks......hopefully those 5 weeks fly by.

Seriously, I need to pause life

Everything is flying so fast I barely have time to think about it, let alone write about it. Last Wednesday, Taylor took her first digger. The 3 kids and I were getting ready to run away from the house for a little while and Taylor was last up the (cement) stairs..... suddenly my dog decided she wanted to go back outside.... Taylor going upstairs + Dog RUNNING down stairs = bump and bruise on forehead and road rash on the nubbie. The even more cruddy thing about it is: if she had her prosthetic on, she would have caught herself, therefore not smashing her poor little face and nub. She started acting shy about her nubbie lately so I decided I'd give her a couple days without her arm to "gently force" her to not be embarrassed or whatever about her arm..... nice idea that worked out horribly. So I called down to Shriners and talked to a couple of the OPD crew and had my thoughts confirmed.... no arm until its healed.
A little while later my so far lousy day got better. I received an email from a guy named Jim who saw my Tabs For Taylor ad on Craigslist .... and to my surprise.... this email wasn't spam.... he informed me he had a 5 gallon bucket full of tabs that I could have if I knew a way to get them from him in Rochester..... no problems there thanks to my Aunt Lisa who went and picked them up for me. So that made me pretty happy.
Then, Little Miss Chaos, broke her nite-lite. SCREAMING, bleeding EVERYWHERE, more screaming.
"Where is the glass honey?"
"I broke it in the kitchen"
"Well if you had broken it in here there would be more than just the one piece that was stuck in your finger"
"I brokted it in the kitchen!"
This goes on for 5 minutes while I run frantically around looking for this glass before either of the 2 little ones find it. I then get her band aided up and continue my hunt. I can not for the life of me find it anywhere. She laid down and watched some TV while I continued frantically searching for the pieces of light bulb. I blocked the little ones in the living room so they can't get into the kitchen and find the glass for me..... another couple minutes go by and I hear it. The sound of a little metal pan from the kids kitchen set falls to the floor and lands on the itty bitty pieces of glass. And where is this glass? RIGHT WHERE THE LITTLE ONES ARE PLAYING!!!!! There was a baby doll outfit on top if it so I never saw it. What a monster. Thank God neither of the little ones touched it. I grabbed them and put them into the glass free kitchen and vac'd it up. Once Ashtyn woke up I found out she was trying to hide her nitelite so I wouldn't be mad. She failed, but she won't be touching glass again anytime soon. So my day was kind of back to not great. The phone rings. My father in law is calling to let me know my dog ran away and is at their house. Once the kids all wake up from their naps, we walk down to get her (they live 3 houses away). Taylor and my "borrowed kiddo" are in the stroller and Ashtyn's holding onto the stroller with me and the dog is practically glued to my left knee (the one closest to the road). We get about 30 feet from the end of the side walk where we would cross the street to my house and SQUEEL BAM YELP This idiot hit my dog. The dog limps over to the house and lays down in the yard. I'm standing there stunned thinking: A) my kids are watching their dog die, B) they're going to see me kill that moron and C) they're going to see me die when daddy gets home and finds out "his baby" is dead. I hurry across and check her out and she's okay, just really scared. The 90-someodd year old guy huddles over and asks if she's okay. Once I tell him she's alright he starts going off on me. He's lucky I was the one he dealt with and not Jeremy.
Long story short: Wednesday wasn't a good one, aside from the tabs.
Saturday the kids and I went with Grammy and Grampa Precourt to Yankee Candle and Ashtyn got to make a jarred candle at their wax worx station. She thought that was just the best thing ever. And then we had an awesome lunch at Chandler's (the restaurant at Yankee). Sunday was Ajlyn's birthday party so we hung out at Sam and Rene's house from 11:30 until around 8. We brought up the tractor to do some work in their yard so I got to "play" with the 'bota for a little while which is always fun.
And now for this week: Ashtyn's learning to ride her bike (finally). The little one is just too little for her and we still haven't found (or remembered to look for) the itty bitty inner tubes for the little bike....so I brought down her big one. She did awesome! She went all the way down our street and around the round-about-thing and back up the street a bunch of times. She loved it. Other than that its been normal craziness: getting ready for the birthday party/going away party on the 24th, getting ready to move Jeremy, Ashtyn's school stuff and all the last minute stuff for my Shriners fundraiser. Oh I can't wait for August. I'm not doing ANYTHING! (I hope)

Had to put this one on.... gotta have my princess dress on with my muck boots to play in the mud..... that's Mommy's girl.

Happy Easter

SHrINE ON 2010~ Walk for Shriners Hospitals for Children

The info, fliers and sponsor forms are now posted on ShrineOnSpringfield.Blogspot.com Drop me an email or RVSP on facebook so we know who is coming. Thank you to everyone who is supporting Shriners Hospitals for Children.

Taylor's New Arm

We went to Shriners yesterday and picked up Taylor's new arm. Taylor's prosthetist showed me some "sport hands" (as I call them) for bicycle riding, baseball, stuff like that. Its really wonderful that there are so many different attachments to do different things. I was also able to bug Bernadette and Lee for a bit which is always nice. And I brought down our tab collection...... almost 100,000 tabs!!! That was interesting..... trying to carry 4 5-gallon buckets, which were full, as well as my purse, camera and diaper bag....and both girls.

I grabbed the blanket I made for her and she realized right off that her arm matched her blankie.


Ashtyn and Taylor worked their charms on a Shriner that was there in the morning and he gave them each a Potentate pin. Miss Ashtyn decided to wear her chocolate milk instead of drink it so she got to sport the very last Shrine On 09 shirt instead of her St. Patty's Day greens.

You can tell Taylor was exhausted. It was a very long day.....too much car time and not ANY naptime.
I'd jabber on more but no one wants to nap today either so I have to cut it short.

"Oned-handed" ambidexterity

I tried to upload this video onto blogger but after 5 hours I gave up.



Probably not the most exciting video to some people, but I'm pretty gitty about it.

She has been doing so much two handed stuff lately, like holding her cup with both hands and "driving" her ride on toys.....she tried to dig in the dirt with Ashtyn using her pro arm to hold the shovel.....the dirt was still frozen...but she tried :)

Taylor, my dear, you get an ATTAGIRL from Mommy. (and not the sicko definition....weirdos)

5 more days until we get her new hand. I have no idea if its the same type of hand or if they're just making a new arm for the hand we have..... I really never thought to ask....... it doesn't matter.....I'm just happy that they are able to provide prosthetics for Taylor. We know she can do anything and everything without a prosthetic, but she uses and LOVES her hand(s)..... I would be so heartbroken for her if she wasn't able to have them. I know she's super happy to have a helping hand.

Another day in paradise

I have another fight with my insurance company today about Taylor's "unapproved diagnosis". I've pretty much determined that our coverage is minimally useful at best. It covers the basic well-child check ups...... and I think that is about it. I paid more for medical care last year, than I made for the year last year. Same with 2008. I'm not impressed by any means. After my informative-and-not-helpful-at-all conversation with the insurance company, I called the billing lady at Taylor's PT's office to talk to her about what was going on and to see where we stood and what to do. She basically confirmed my feelings about my insurance company not knowing ANYTHING and not covering anything and basically being being junk in general, and then calmed me back down by informing me that this would in no way harm Taylor: she will still continue to get her OT/PT and if the insurance co doesn't pay, then that's that. The PT group will basically eat the loss. If it weren't for this group and Shriners Hospital, I don't even know, nor do I want to think about, were Taylor would be right now. I, and Taylor, are so fortunate these 2 companies exist and are willing and able to help her. I am eternally grateful.

Time for some much needed rambling...

I finally have a couple months off from the neverending birthdays. My goodness there are a ton of them in December and January. Not to mention the 4 thousands Christmas's and New Years Eve...ahhhh. Anyway, if you have checked out my slide show below, you'll see the kids faces all banged up. Ashtyn had a cavity that needed to be filled....she did great up until the ride home when she fell asleep and chewed her poor lip almost off! Then the next night Taylor was chasing Ashtyn around the living room and slipped on a blanket that was on the floor...SMASH...right into the coffee table. Ripped her poor lip and gums. I think her Daddy (and I) cried as much as she did. So that week, I had the privilege of a dental visit and 2 trips to the doctors office...ugh! And because of the first dr's visit I get to go down to Shriners again in 4 weeks....which is awesome.... and scary. Its awesome because I obviously love having any reason to go there, the scary part is that Taylor needs to get her feet looked at. She walks "funny" and has some pretty bad flat footedness(?) so her pedi wants an ortho to check her out. I know at least if she does need some sort of help with her feet then SHC is where I want her to be. This past weekend we went up to Newport/Brownington, VT. And when I say "we" I mean a ton of us. Jeremy, me, the girls, Ron, Sue, Justin, Crystal, Mack, Shawn, Greg...and 3 dogs... all fighting for sleeping space at camp. It worked out well even though it was cramped. We also found out the f-350 won't stand up to being t-boned by a mac....I was right there and I still don't know how exactly it happened..... sometime around midnight Mack ran full bore into our truck. The truck never stood a chance. He kind of killed our door. And this was after he rolled Jeremy's death quad....while we weren't even there...... which is why I don't leave my keys to ANYTHING, EVER. Mack is fine and Jeremy is surprisingly calm......I cetainly wouldn't be..... but boys will be boys I guess. Friday night (which is why we weren't at camp when the ATV was in a one- manned collision)Jeremy and I were at East Side for the Vermont Railroad's Christmas/New Years/Retirement dinner. Awesome food, 4 courses of it, and an open bar (thank goodness....their drinks are pricey) and no kids allowed at the meal..... oh man. I honestly think that was the first time since our honeymoon that we had dinner at a restaraunt without at least one of the kids. Those 4 hours were definitely a VERY MUCH needed break.~~~~Thanks Ron and Sue~~~~~
That pretty much sums up the excitement of the last few weeks.



On another SHC note:

MARK YOUR CALENDERS!!!! I have set the date for SHrINE ON SPRINGFIELD 2010. Its going to be Saturday June 5. It will be at the Toonerville Trail in Springfield, VT, registration starts at 9:30 and the walk will start at 10. Its going to be the full trail this year, so get ready!

My Dad (Unique Signs) said he is going to purchase the tshirts again and Roland Irish III (Sunrise Graphics) is donating the stickers and silk screening supplies (and his shop space so I can ink the shirts again.) Huge thanks go out to both of you!!!!!

I'm still in the process of figuring out the post-walk party, food, etc. I've got a bunch of ideas/plans.... its just a matter of time and pulling it together. I'm sure it will work out no matter and I know that at least as far as last year's participants went, they'd all have been there whether we had the party after or not.

TABS FOR TAYLOR is going well. We've collected around 162,000 tabs to date and more are being gathered up almost daily. Taylor's PT/OT brought in 2 bags full from a co-worker last week and she brought one of my jugs to the office/daycare in hopes that others will get involved. Our Parents As Teachers home visitor is rallying troops in her circle to start saving them and I'm hoping to talk with her supervisor and the other groups at her office building to see if I could put up another community drop box there. The Old #4 Fire & Hose Ladies Auxiliary in Charlestown (who started Tabs For Taylor) voted at their last meeting to put up a community drop box for tabs. Hopefully soon we will be overwhelmed with tabs.

I'm out of blog time...Taylor just told me nap time is over.

Photos of the month(s)

I have been so busy I can't even see straight. You'd think with less kids to take care off and no money to go out to do anything I'd have all the time in the world.....nope! Here's a tidbit of pics of the 3-4 weeks. Bump after bruise, gash after bite, a little snow, a little camp, a ton to talk about, and no time yet to do it. Maybe nap time will be kind today. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

ATVs to be allowed on state land: Times Argus Online

Awesome good news!!!!! (as long as it really happens)

ATVs to be allowed on state land: Times Argus Online

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U.S. snowboarder Pearce remains hospitalized

U.S. snowboarder Pearce remains hospitalized

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