Category: Health and Wellness

Special Needs Resources: Cerebral Palsy Toolkit

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Recently, I came across a glitch on the blog that had caused the requests put through on my ‘Contact’ form to not be delivered to my email anymore. I found several questions and requests. I have made a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ page to hopefully answer some of those. One of the requests was to post this special resource.

Finding out that you are expecting can be one of the most exciting times of your life, but it can also be very scary. We know from experience that things can be downright terrifying, especially when faced with the knowledge that your child may have special needs.

Our youngest daughter, Shyanne, was born with multiple diagnoses and health conditions. Before she was even born, the odds were stacked against her. The doctors never expected us to make it through the pregnancy, and things got very scary towards the end when both of our lives were at risk.

It felt like someone had taken our life and made a HUGE jigsaw puzzle out of it, then added some extra pieces in there that had to fit. Every time we thought we were making progress, someone would come along and mix it all up again or ‘find’ a couple more pieces that needed to go in. Her story was complicated, and no one knew what the big picture would even look like… but God did!

He helped us through that very emotional time, and even though we couldn’t figure out how we were going to make it all work, HE gave us a sense of peace. We had to hand it over to HIM and HE put the pieces in place… one at a time, to create a BEAUTIFUL masterpiece that we could have never imagined.

HE made a way when we couldn’t see one, and we have witnessed miracle after miracle in our daily lives… That is why we created her blog:

Sweet Shyanne: The little girl who could

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Is self-sufficiency possible?

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I know there has been a lot of talk about self-sufficiency and I’ve even written about it a bit but can anyone truly be self-sufficient?

Screenshot from Bible Chat app
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Stomach Bugs, Garden Bugs, and a Bathroom Remodel

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Whew! What a week… we finally got started on our master bathroom remodel but it is far from being completed. When we started peeling back the flooring we found that this was not the first time the floor had been ‘fixed’ and we also found more of the drywall mud patches on the floor like we had found in the kitchen and laundry room. We also found that some of the previous fixes included glue and nails which made the removal process more tedious but more on that in a bit.

Our garden has been coming along quite well other than a surge of pests which are eager to eat all of the food we’ve been working so hard to grow. The weather has been extremely hot but we have been getting a few showers that have helped. I did invest in a couple of new sprinklers that I’ll try to share about later. We have been putting up a few more videos on YouTube as well if you’d like to check them out.

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Eating from the Garden: Butternut Squash Medley

Published on by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog8 Comments

Hey guys! It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve sat down to write a post and so much has happened… the most exciting thing is that I’m a GRANDMA! I was able to spend a bit of time with the new parents and I got quite a few snuggles in with the little one before I had to come home. Mr. Awesome and the kids did a great job holding down the fort although the goats did get out and they ate my blackberry bushes. When I asked my husband about it he looked to where I was pointing and said ‘What blackberries?’… they have had quite a hard pruning but I’m hoping they’ll come back better than ever.

We’ve been busy before and after this little ‘vacation’ trying to get our winter gardens in place… the chickens had eaten some of our plants and then someone forgot to water them for a few days so we had a little bit of triage to do and we did have to replace s few things. While planting we are also harvesting what we can from what plants are remaining. I know we really enjoyed the Rosella greens last year so we definitely wanted to give them a go again. I also wanted to try to use some sweet potato leaves as a spinach alternative. I had read something the other day about how it wasn’t always hard to grow different foods but we need to learn to eat what we grow… I really want everything we put our time and energy into to provide us with something whether it’s just nice to look at, to smell, or to eat.

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Rainbows after the storm

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I started writing this post in January 2019 but LIFE happened and somehow it got left unpublished. A lot has happened since then and I have updated at the end… so be sure to read all the way through! It is now February 2024 and I am working on getting this published for Pregnancy Loss Awareness Day later this year. I trust that God had a reason for letting me ‘LOSE’ track of this and I PRAY that this helps someone.

Many of you have probably heard the term ‘Rainbow Baby’ and you probably already know that these are babies born after a miscarriage. Well, I consider both of my youngest to be Rainbow Babies as I had four very difficult pregnancies that ended in miscarriages before they were born. Not only that I had already been told that, because of some other female issues, my chances of carrying another baby to term were very slim… and I had completely given up on the idea of any additions to our family.

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