Health Stuff

So I have said over and over again that I am so very thankful for good insurance and access to good health care.  Oh my, yes!

And since this is my blog, I am going off in left field.  Coronavirus.  Mass hysteria.  I am not concerned at all.  It is hitting elderly people with pre-existing conditions. Kids basically aren't getting it in China, or if they are it is a very mild form. Of course I care about the elderly, of course I do, but this is not just cutting down everyone with indiscriminate thoroughness. I'm not saying be stupid about it, but I really don't think it is going to be a global disaster.

Here's some other things to think about: China's health system isn't superb. Also, they have an aging population (so lots of old people) due to the one child policy.  Here's another interesting, sad thing.  More than 50% of male Chinese smoke. It's cultural.  Very few women smoke.  Coronavirus is a respiratory illness. It is going to hit damaged lungs particularly hard.

Ok, back to the Kendigs.

Lydia had a long awaited visit with an audiologist yesterday. She has been concerned her hearing is a bit off.  I was thinking maybe auditory processing disorder, and maybe that is an issue for her.  But it turns out she actually has some mild hearing loss in the high frequency sound range because, probably, she's been listening to music that is too loud.

Parents, don't let your kids listen to extra loud music.

Or maybe there are other factors. Anyway, she does have permanent, mild, hearing loss in the upper frequencies.  Obviously, she will turn down the music now.  It shouldn't be an impairment in the long run but we don't want it to continue.

I took Isaac in for his 17 year checkup a couple of months ago.  His doctor hemmed and hawed at his height and weight and suggested a trip to the geneticist.  It is one of those things where I am 99% sure there is no problem, but we'd feel like idiots if he really does have Marfan's Syndrome and we ignored it.  Marfan's Syndrome manifests in extreme height and low weight and heart problems can be an issue. Again, I am not worried.  I am sure he is just being a Kendig/Parfitt (Parfitt being my maiden name). We have lots of tall, skinny men in the family line.  But Monday I am running off to the geneticist with him.

Joseph has scoliosis.  It showed up last summer and it has worsened in the last 6 months.  So on Friday I am off to an orthopedic surgeon.  If anything, they will suggest a brace.

Wednesday I have a random, standard mammogram.

I look at this week and groan because wow, busy week.  I don't like running around a lot.

BUT oh my, the blessing of good health insurance and good doctors!  The blessing of being able to stay home with my kids so I can run them to the doctor.  I honestly have my hat off to people who are both working full time.  (Though few have 9 kids.)

Oh, speaking of 9 children, I follow the FB page of a little girl whose parents also have 9 children and who were married exactly the same day Kevin and I were married.  So we have that in common.  BUT their 9th child was born with Trisomy 18.  This is when the 18th chromosome has an extra strand (that isn't very scientific, I know).  Trisomy 21 is the more well known Down Syndrome.  Trisomy 18 is usually fatal before birth or by year 1, but their sweet Verity turned 3 yesterday.  She's a precious girl but has lots of health issues.  So I look at my own healthy 9 kids and am thankful.

School Stuff

So a weird thing happened.  We borrowed from a library a book called Human Body Theater for the younger readers in the house.  It is a graphic non-fiction book about human anatomy and physiology.  Sarah and Daniel, and to some degree, Rose, adored it to the point that I bought them their own copy.  Because seriously, folks, they were fighting over the library copy for days on end.  They read it over and over again.

Given their enthusiasm for that book, I figured they might like other books about anatomy so I ordered more. And sure enough, the excitement continues.

They are reading away and learning and talking about the human body.  Education at its finest, with the kids excited!

I have learned quite a bit as well, to be honest.  I never learned much about anatomy.

Rose is officially reading a teeny tiny bit. I know from experience that it is a major feat when a child can take the sounds of a simple word and blend them together.  It's a significant hurdle to overcome and she has!  She is bribed/encouraged by getting a fruity tic-tac for every word she reads. She loves them so much that she reminds me every day that we need to do reading together.

Going off in left field, I've come across a couple of articles lately about how many schools still aren't teaching phonics to children. They are using "whole word" approach or worse yet, a bizarre technique where they encourage a child to look at the first letter of an unknown word, then look at the pictures on the page, and GUESS the word.  The idea that this would somehow produce good readers was suggested decades ago by some ivory tower dude, thoroughly debunked by science a few years later, but is still embraced and taught to teachers in some colleges.

I am quite cross about that.  Some kids will figure out how to read using whole word and this nasty "guess by looking at the picture" approach, but phonics is by far more reliable. Many kids will be totally screwed up by the "guessing" approach.  People, don't do that to our kids!  Literacy is so important!

Off my soap box now.

 Rose can now put train tracks together by herself.

I have spawned a multitude of very talented artists.  Amazing. These are couple things that Miriam sketched.

And Sarah is making paper birds and dragons.  Also super creative and beautiful.  Like really, girls, where did you come from?

Ok, here's a little addendum about reading:

https://hechingerreport.org/kids-struggle-to-read-when-schools-leave-phonics-out/

Read this if you are interested. This is important if you are teaching kids to read.  

No, You Can't Play Monopoly

When I was a kid, I loved playing Monopoly with my friends.  We played long, sprawling games in which we seriously would give each other money if one person was on the verge of losing.  Winning wasn't the goal. Togetherness was.

Yesterday four of our kids were playing Monopoly together. Two of the children had total meltdowns over the game, as in screaming and howling and throwing tantrums and whining and rolling around in agony.

And this morning, one child wanted to play Monopoly.

And I was like, no.  No no no no no no no.

Mental health thing. I'm really worn out with the high emotions right now. If I was in a calmer frame of mind, I might be able to handle another round of meltdowns from Monopoly. But I'm not.  So no Monopoly until I'm feeling more stable.

I mean, I'm not going psycho, to be clear.  I'm being a GOOD mom.  But I do not enjoy meltdowns and my patience isn't at its normal levels.

So yeah, sometimes, as a mom, I have to make a decision to curtail an activity because it causes too many frantic emotions.

Sometimes those kinds of activities are valuable because Kevin and I can come alongside the child and help said child work through the emotions.

But I don't have it in me right now.

So no, you can't play Monopoly.  (Right now.)

Worn Out

I'm tired, not just physically but mentally.  Maybe more mentally.  I get like this sometimes, and when I do I often decide on a week when we aren't doing formal school.  We are doing formal school THIS week, but maybe next week?

We will see.

The three littles have been struggling to get along.  There has been a lot of screaming and howling and yes, tantrums.

There are little nit picky wearying things. Like the 1098-T.  This is a tax form for college and for some reason, Clark State doesn't have Lydia's form online. Why?  Just why?  We need it.  So now we have to have Lydia go to the cashier's office and fuss around to get hold of it.

Life is tiring in this modern day, isn't it?  And also easy in some ways. Our middle kids are watching an awesome show called Wartime Farm, which is a documentary about farming in Britain during WWII.  The rationing, the need to wash clothing by hand or with simple washing machines, wow.  They worked very very hard in those days.

There are about a million things going on at any given time.  That is fine. That is good.  But I do need God's wisdom about what to spend limited time on, and what to let go right now.

Here is some fabulous news: our neighbor had a baby boy last week!  He was a big, bonny boy.  We are so happy for them!  They are now up to 8 kids, which is quite respectable :-).

Ok, enough for now.  Many children are running around right now.

Book Review: Daniel by Tammy Chupp

I read a book this week, simply entitled Daniel, by my high school friend and classmate, Tammy Chupp.

Tammy and I were in the same grade in school.  After graduation, she went on to earn a nursing degree, got married, and had a little boy named Daniel. When Daniel was 13 months old, he was killed in a freak accident. 

I honestly was so nervous buying Tammy's book.  As a mother of many children, some of them still quite young, the reality of death in children is very hard.  I have suffered much anxiety at the thought of losing a child because it happens. It does.  In Daniel's case, it was a tragic combination of events and  I know know know that there but for the grace of God go I.  I have lost track of kids briefly. I was afraid of reading about it both because my heart weeps for Tammy and her husband and because I was worried I'd be sad and upset after reading the book.

But I wasn't. I read it in its entirety in one day and it was wonderful. Yes, very very sad.  But Tammy and Rod, her husband, are devout believers of Jesus and through the absolute agony of loss, they clung to Jesus.  It has been more than 25 years since Daniel went to be with Jesus, and the Chupps are now a happy family. They were blessed with 3 more beautiful children and now they serve the Lord, and live a good and joyful life, in the same area where we went to high school together.

 I truly appreciate real books about grief.  I have had my own share of grief, though nothing as agonizing and visceral as the loss of a baby I'd met and loved. I've lost 6 babies to miscarriage and those deaths were very very difficult, but that is different from an empty house where a baby once roamed free and happy.

  So yes, Tammy's book balances real sorrow with real hope.  It isn't trite in any way.  Losing their son was a horrible, painful experience. But God was with them always.

Diabetes Update

So I went in to see my primary doc about a week ago. My latest A1c is 6.0.

That is, frankly, a disappointment. My previous one was 6.1.  So I went down but not much, and I was really TRYING to tighten my eating.  Obviously I didn't tighten it enough.

So I'm going to work on dropping some things that I like but don't love. No more rice, no more spaghetti.

I really like french fries so occasionally I will allow myself some french fries.

I'm going to cut down on dark chocolate, but not eliminate it. Because I love my dark chocolate.

I found a recipe for blueberry muffins made out of almond flour and they are SO GOOD!

I hope next time I'll be in the 5's again.

Macro Evolution Doesn't Make Sense to Me

This is another in my hopefully continuing series about science and religious belief.

We live in a world which by and large accepts that Darwinian macro evolution is true. By macro evolution, I mean that people believe that somehow life began (which is separate from evolution, and is quite a problem on its own) and then random mutations happened through billions of years and finally we ended up where we are now.

This is taught as fact in public schools, not theory. Even though it is known as the "theory of evolution."

So here are some thoughts.  Where science is concerned, there are different branches.  Obviously. There is biology, and chemistry, and physics, and astronomy.  Materials!  My personal fave.


Chemistry usually involves something you can test RIGHT NOW.  I mean, the experiment may be compromised and the results may be confusing and people can and do screw up experiments but you can take, say, vinegar and baking soda and throw them together and see what happens. Right here, right now.

Other branches of science are way trickier.  I'd say the issues of ancient life and evolution are way trickier. BECAUSE, we are having to analyze data from fossils and we can't go into a lab and recreate evolution.

So we go off fossils. That's reasonable. We can learn a lot.

Now I am not going to take the time to go into all the details, but the fossil record does NOT support Darwin's tree of life theory.  There was a time called the Cambrian period and in the fossil record is something called the Cambrian explosion.  Over a fairly short period of time in geological terms, a ton of new phyla appear in the fossil record.

Frankly, that makes no sense.  Darwin suggested a tree of life. He said there would be a gradual branching.  The actual fossil record shows fairly simple life forms and then suddenly, boom, a ton of new, complex life forms appear in the fossil record.

How did that happen?

How does any of it happen?

People and animals and butterflys and bugs of all kinds, and trees and flowers and venus fly traps, are so crazy complex.

Mutations in the lab (they can be seen in fruit fly experiments) are negative the vast vast majority of the time.

How did random evolution work?  How did we get symbiotic relationships?  How did we get giraffes with incredible necks which have a hydraulic system to allow them to drink water?  They didn't need the system until they had a certain length of neck and then, what, the entire system just sprung into existence?

So many things -- like eyes, require multiple things working at once. ONE mutation wouldn't do the organism any good and would be lost from the gene pool before the second or third or fourth mutation came along.

And like I said, mutations are almost always bad.

So why does everyone believe in Darwinian macro evolution?  Well, they don't.  Plenty of scientists don't, including me and Kevin.  Not that we are biologists, but we can analyze data.

When there is a political aspect to something, or a religious aspect, data can become suspect. I believe that is true of evolution. It is NOT Ok for people in the public school system to question evolution.  Teachers who question it, and they have every RIGHT to question is, lose their jobs. Really.

I'm an Old Earth Creationist, personally. I believe God created, but that the earth and universe are indeed billions of years old.  More about that in another blog post.

For someone who is really interested in more details, read Lee Strobel's Case for a Creator book.  It is written in laymen's terms and is fascinating.

One more thing though. Any time a scientist discards a possibility without data, he or she should be beaten with a wet noodle.

The scientific body as a whole (with exceptions) has an argument like this.

We know that there is no God, therefore...

Why do we know there is no God?  It is unscientific to assume that.

If the data points towards a God (and I believe it does, strongly) then you need to keep it on the table as a possibility.  You can't just say "we KNOW that..." whatever.

No, you consider everything.  Then you analyze the data and go from there.

In my mind, based on my study of the data, the fossil record does not point to macro evolution at all. It points to a Creator God.