Life on One Leg

Since Katie's birth, my foot looks weird. Instead of staying puffy and swollen, my toes look dehydrated all the time. They've started to crack and peel. I hope they get better after I can walk again. My ankle surgery is scheduled for Thursday at 2:45pm. I have to arrive by 1pm, and should be able to go home by 5pm. We've got a friend from church, Debbie, coming to help with the kids. It will be an interesting day. She'll arrive just after we put Brother on the bus at noon, at which time the only kids left at home will be Danya, Gloria, Kevin, and Katie. Daniel will take Katie and I to my surgery at 1pm.

Katie's coming so that I can nurse her a half hour before the surgery starts. After she eats, he'll rush off to pick up Miss Lady, Thumbelina, and Snow White from school (they share a building) and take them to Snow White's speech therapy appointment at 3pm. Meanwhile, Debbie will be at our house to get Brother off the bus at about 3:30pm. Speech therapy will be over at 4pm. Daniel will take the four girls back to pick me up and hopefully leave at 5pm. We hurry home, say good-bye to Debbie, and wait for another friend from Sunday school to arrive with dinner.

Two strange situations have resolved themselves to make all this work out. The first one is that while I was in the hospital recently with an infected uterus, the pastor's wife informed me on the phone that our family had used up our limit of help from the church because it had been almost two months at that point since I broke my leg. She pointed out that there are lots of other families in a church as big as ours who also need help, which is unavailable for them since everyone was coming to help our family. Since she's on the "meal ministry" email list of women who are willing to bring meals to families in the church who need help, she was aware of how many people had been helping us out three days a week. So, when the meal ministry lady called to ask if I needed more meals I explained that we couldn't accept.

She, knowing we could still use some help, contacted our Sunday school leaders. They passed around a sign up sheet last Sunday and she called me today to tell me that the people who volunteered to bring us meals and/or make themselves available to help us are not on any regular ministry team. They only volunteered to help our family specifically, so we are not taking away from anyone else by accepting their aid. (And on a side note, she pointed out that the pastor's wife is in Africa currently.) So we'll have a few meals and some friends to help out here and there for the next week or so after my surgery.

The other issue was that the transportation department (bus barn) for Brother's school informed us last Monday that they would no longer be picking up Brother in front of our house. They'd given us six weeks, they said, to find alternate transportation for him. I explained that he was a foster child and could not legally be transported by anyone else, but they said they could not make an exception or everyone would expect the same. I'm guessing they meant that every foster parent with a broken leg and a newborn would complain that they couldn't make it a mile to the bus stop. So, I told them I'd let Brother's caseworker know the situation and then I'd un-enroll him from the school since I had no alternative. We were waiting to get permission from the caseworker to pull him from the school, so he missed school all last week. We'd planned to go un-enroll him today, but the transportation lady called this morning to tell us they changed their minds. They're giving us six weeks from my surgery date. So from the day I can officially put weight on my leg I'll be expected to drive him to the bus from then on. I told them that would be fine. Daniel says they probably didn't want to lose the money the pre-K program gets from a special needs kid attending the school. I like to think they just felt guilty about the whole situation.