One Tough Cookie

It ain't braggin' if it's true, is it? Well, my 5 year old, middle Granddaughter is just plain tough in more ways than one. First, she was born with a holey heart, an atrial septal defect. She didn't feel good and was a very grumpy baby. When she was 15 months old she had to have a device implanted in her heart to fill in the largest hole. It is called an AMPLATZER® Septal Occluder, a wire disc shaped device made from an alloy of nickel and titanium. She came through the procedure like the trooper she is.

Next came the dog attack at two and a half years old. She had several puncture wounds on cheek, jaw and around her left eye. Her bottom eye lid had a chunk missing and was split open. She was cool, calm and sang Christmas songs on the long trip to the Hospital. She remained composed for all of the stitches, she was sedated but didn't like being held down. She was very brave for the removal of the stitches as well.

Then there are the splinters that you naturally get on a farm. I have removed two splinters from her fingers so far. She doesn't squirm, whine or cry when I poke, prod and squeeze, she even watches.

So that brings me up to Saturday. Somehow she managed to cut the tip of her little toe nearly off on Thursday. The entire top skin of the tip of her toe was cut loose and was only being held on by a small piece that was still intact. It looked bad and painful.

She had complained about it only after she noticed the blood, her Mom asked what happened and she said that she couldn't remember. I guess it didn't make much of an impression on her. Sometime later the toe started throbbing and she did do some crying.

Friday night the girls spent the night with us and we soaked her foot in Epsom Salts a couple of time. I was afraid that it might get infected because she was running around my house barefooted and we couldn't get a band-aid on it. After one soak on Saturday afternoon my DH looked closely at it and declared that the excess skin needed to be removed. Her Mother had talked about doing this herself. So I called her Mom for approval after our Granddaughter gave her approval.

I stuck a Banana Popsicle in her mouth, read her a funny story holding the book so that it blocked her view of what Papaw was doing and he did surgery. She never flinched, jerked or made a sound accept for laughing at the story.

My DH held out his open palm with the thick cap of skin in it and she said: "I didn't even feel it!". She did have a hard time putting it back in the Epsom Salt water because it burned but after about five attempts she finally got the nerve and stuck it in without pulling it back out.

Now bandaging it was another story, she griped, moaned and argued about having to wear a stupid band-aid on it. My DH applied ointment and wrapped it with gauze and tape, she was not happy about this but her arguments and non-stop griping was so funny that we just kept chuckling. She can be quite dramatic. She didn't want a big old ugly bandage on it and thought she could talk her way out of it.

She is tough in other ways too, like arguing. It is hard to win an argument with her and she can be pretty tough in protecting her sisters and brother. She is also quite the scrapper, her Dad has taught her to fight and she plays a little too rough sometimes.

She is the comedian of the family, is outgoing, friendly and never shuts up. Even when she is trying to be tough and serious she cracks us all up. She can also make you very nervous because you never know what she might say to strangers or even to friends and family.

Fall Nearly Done

I guess I had better hurry, if I want to blog at least once this month.

The leaves fell from the trees too quickly this year with all of the rain that we had. But I am still enjoying the cooler days. My oldest Granddaughter and I spent nearly a whole day exploring our island and the Indian Creek creek bed.

We had tons of fun opening muscle shells, looking for pearls, watching the fish and a big old crawdad. We gathered odd rocks and looked at tracks in the sand, Indian Creek is a very sandy creek.

While we were on a gravel bar down in the bed of the creek, I pointed out to her how beautiful a creek is when you are on the same level with it. Looking upstream and downstream, as opposed to looking down on it from the bank is a much better view. I wish I had taken my camera but when I asked her, she didn't want to be bothered with posing and asked me not to take it.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are sneaking up on me as usual. Arranging dates to meet everyone's Holiday schedules is the hardest part. Finding money to buy gifts is another challenge this year. I normally have all of my shopping done way before now but couldn't get that accomplished this time.

August Already?

Where did the summer go? Where did the year go?? I can't believe that I have only blogged one time this month. I can't believe that it is already the 14th of August. Christmas is just around the corner. I am trying not to panic...

If you are young, enjoy your youth while you still have time because as you get older the faster time goes by. I was young once and it wasn't that long ago. Days used to have so much time in them. Weeks took forever to go by. A month was nearly an eternity. Not anymore, years are more like weeks used to be.

This summer has just flown by. School has already started or is getting ready to start. I have been spending some quality time with the Grandchildren and they are about to kill me. Seriously, swimming with Grandkids can be hazardous to your health when you are an old Granny. I am so sore tonight as I type this that I can barely move my head and the calf of my left leg is swollen and tender from horrible leg cramps.

The problem is when your oldest Grandson says that you can't dunk him, well, then you just have to prove to him that you are still in control and he isn't as big and tough as he thinks he is at 10 years old. He is big enough and tough enough for me to lean on while trying to walk to the house after I had dunked him several times and my leg cramped up when I tried to go up the ladder to get out of the pool.

I got the pool because I wanted my Grandkids to learn to swim, which is something that I never got to do when I was a kid. They are all doing pretty well, the oldest can swim like a fish and the next to the oldest is diving and swimming with her face under the water with water wings on.

The others still have a ways to go but the trick is to keep them in the water as much as possible. Our two year old Granddaughter is just sure that she can swim. She has no fear and tries to break free of your grasp. Her Mother, Papaw and I just do not have the courage to let her try it.

Saturday Morning

My oldest Granddaughter spent the night with me last night. Unlike her sister who likes to sleep late, this one is an early riser. When she was younger she used to wake me up by lightly tapping me and sweetly saying, "It's wake-up time." Now she just bounds out of bed, gets dressed and tells me she is going outside. Of course, I try to reason with her about the earliness of the hour and the coldness of the early morning air. To which she responds that she will wear a sweatshirt.

I drag myself out of bed when she comes running back inside to tell me that there is something weird out there. I ask her what it looks like and she says that it looks like a dead Elvis but it isn't Elvis. She is talking about my Polish rooster and not the singer. She has seen Elvis and he is still alive, so now she is among the many who can attest to the fact that Elvis lives.

I put my coat on upside down and go out there to see what this is. I should have known what it was when she said that it looks like a dead Elvis, because Elvis is black and white. It was indeed a dead skunk that either Angel had killed some time ago or had found somewhere. Either way it didn't smell like skunk anymore.

My Granddaughter is truly a farm girl. After my DIL (Daughter-in-law) had told me that Elvis had tried to chase and flog her, I was standing talking to my three Granddaughters. Elvis came slipping up behind the oldest one. Like any good Grandmother would do, I waited to see what would happen.

Elvis did indeed flog my oldest Granddaughter, she turned around to see what the problem was and I told her to kick him like a football. She then spent the next 30 minutes chasing him and trying to use him for a football. Elvis has learned a valuable lesson, don't mess with the little people.

Later, Elvis tried to get her Mother again to which her mother responded by asking her daughter to protect her. So my Granddaughter got between Elvis and her mother and Elvis was subdued.

Spinning Wheel

I brought my spinning wheel home from my Mother's last night. It belonged to my great-grandmother, I believe. We bought it from my Uncle many years ago and took it to a wood craftsman who refinished it and repaired some of it.

It did have one spindle on it that had been replaced by my Grandfather, he had whittled a replacement for it with just a knife. That is what makes it extra special for me, because I stayed with my Grandparents a lot as a child and I remember my Grandpa whittling. I told the man who repaired it not to touch that spindle.

I loved my Grandfather very much and I loved spending time with him, he was an incredible man. He taught me so much about everything. My Mother worked, so my Grandparents who lived right across the road, babysitted me. I helped with their garden, helped do laundry with the wringer washer, my Grandmother taught me clothesline etiquette. Knowing the proper way to hang one's laundry on a clothesline was very important back then. Knowing how to witch a well was also important and my Grandfather taught me how to do it.

I played with this spinning wheel when I was young, all of the time and I am just thrilled to be able to own it and spin with it. My oldest Granddaughter's favorite Princess is Sleeping Beauty, and since the spinning wheel is such a part of the Sleeping Beauty story, I plan on passing this one down to her someday. I also hope to be able to teach all of my Grandchildren how to spin.

Saturday

We got several things accomplished today. One of our Granddaughters spent the night with us last night, so she kept me hopping all day while my poor DH was at work. We spent most of the day yesterday in a Lawyer's office, so I am not completely over that yet. The hardest thing on my back is sitting for long periods of time, so all I wanted to do today was recline and rest but my Granddaughter had other ideas.

When my husband got home from work, we had someone come to look at horses, then after they left, we started the milking and feeding. We moved Calico with the new babies out of the barn stall and into the goat lot with the others. Jasper was being a little too buckish and wanting to fight the new babies, so we banded him. That is, we wethered him, he is a buck no more. I usually like to wait until they are three months old to do this but Jasper is way to mature for his age in more ways than one. Needless to say that took some of the fight out of him.

Jasper also knocked one of his caps off, that is the remains of his burnt horns. They usually fall off on their own after a couple of weeks, I was beginning to think that Onyx and Jasper's were never going to come off. He knocked his first one off fighting with Calico. Onyx still has both of hers.

Tomorrow is our 34th anniversary and my Husband is trying to be nice but he is having a hard time of it. You see, Angel chewed his hose in two again. I don't know why she wants to get me in so much trouble. I offered to buy him a new hose but that didn't seem to help matters at all. I think he wants Angel's head on a platter. She really is doing much better and we are getting close to being out of the puppy stage but I am not sure I can keep covering for her.

Granddaughter

My oldest, unmarried Granddaughter is 4 years old. She is extremely smart by anyone's standards and not just by mine or her Grandfather's. She has already decided what she is going to be when she grows up; a ballerina, a doctor, a figure skater and a Mommy. This changes from time to time, so I may have left something out. She has pretty much given up the desire to be a Princess and doesn't want to just be beautiful or just be smart, she wants to be both and is accomplishing this right now.

Her Mother recently taught her how to dial both sets of Grandparents and 911 on the phone, in case of emergency. They were all at my house the other day when my telephone rang and I answered it. This little voice started talking to me, asking me who I was and then saying some other things that I couldn't quite make out. I thought that it was a wrong number and I was being nice, I asked who she was wanting to talk to and who she was.

We had talked for a couple of minutes and I kept thinking that it sounded just like my Granddaughter but she and her sisters were all playing in my bedroom and living room, it couldn't be her. Then when I ask her who she was again, she gave me the name of my other daughter-in-law, her Mother got a strange look on her face and jumped up out of her chair and went into our bedroom.

My Granddaughter was hiding on the other side of my bed, on the floor, using her Mother's cell phone. I heard her Mother's voice coming through the receiver of my phone and the little girl that I was talking to started giggling and I finally figured out what was going on.

Early the next morning my telephone rang and I answered it. It was my Granddaughter and she had lots to talk about, she is never at a loss for words. I asked if her Mother knew that she had called me and she said that her Mother was right there in the same room with her. Her Mother does sometimes let her call me but I was suspicious this time.

She told me that her sisters were still asleep and at times her voice would get very soft, like she didn't want someone to hear her. Finally after about 15 minutes of listening to her fill me in about all of the exciting things going on in her tiny world. She suddenly said goodbye and quit talking. I asked her why she was saying goodbye and she whispered that she didn't have to say goodbye right now but that she might have to say goodbye at anytime. So, I ask her again if her Mother knew that she was on the phone and she again said. yes.

Then I could hear their dogs and her Mommy letting the dogs out and I heard her Mom ask who she was talking to. Then her Mom was on the Phone asking how long she had been talking to me. I told her about 17 minutes, she was relieved that she hadn't called me at 6:00 in the morning. She also told me that she had been hiding under the dining room table the whole time and that she had taken the phone off of it's charger on the kitchen counter.