Feast of St. Madeleine Rose

Oh sweet Peanut, what a bittersweet day this is! The day you left, and the day you arrived. In 11 days, you'll be a big sister...help us work hard and remain like little children so that someday we'll be where you are! St. Madeleine, priez pour nous!

Peanut...unveiled!

This is the last picture of Madeleine and mom together. These were taken by the Children's Mercy staff to be used in an educational pamphlet about "Kangaroo Care"...the advantages of holding premature babies. She LOVED it...went right to sleep and always forgot to breath when they'd put her back!


Here is an enhanced Peanut for your viewing pleasure!

Pretty Peanut

Madeleine's headstone finally showed up last Sunday. And while this is not nearly the end of the story...this blog will only be for Madeleine updates from now on, and I've opened a new blog about art, life and other lovely things called Tellulahville.

The engraver also added her name to the Infant of Prague wall...


We took sandwiches from D'Bronx and just hung out...

'Maters...

And weighing in at 1 lb. 4.1 oz, is one big ol' tomato! Let's see...at the local organic farmer's market, that would cost $5.60 to buy this night shade! And it's not the biggest, just one that's actually ripened in all this silly rain we've been having.


Timmy has his eyes full of tomato. He can see the salsa in his future...

Feeding Frogs

Watch at 0:18 for the flipping of his feet (getting ready to pounce), he's quick!
Hopper is at the far left of the screen on the moss.
This is the swampy frog pond in the nature preserve at 47th and Troost! Yes...there's a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a check cashing place just a block from this. We caught about 20 large grasshoppers in our backyard and took them to feed the frogs. All the grasshoppers are named "Dennis"...as in "Hopper". The road has come to an end for this Easy Hopper!


The hopper drops in between, they both miss it as they BONK heads!
(no frogs were injured in the making of this video ;)
There are a lot of frogs in this pond...and not many bugs! We have more mosquitoes in our backyard...I didn't see ONE in this nature preserve. There's high competition for a Dennis landing in this bog. I doubt many huge hoppers hop into these frog's lives on a daily basis. Here, two frogs have it out for this Dennis...he never knew how much he was loved...

Growing Things...

Bees, enjoying our zinnias...

Tim is very excited about his gnarly tomatoes! He has 4 plants that have at least a dozen or more tomatoes each on them. We've been paying $4 a Lb. at the farmer's market...so we'll be thrilled when these babies ripen up! Tim says, "Hey...that's a $2 tomato right there!"

The gnarliest of them all...


Jimmy Nardello peppers...these are dragging the ground, as you can see...they will ripen to a gorgeous red color before they are ready to chop up into salads...they'll be sweet, unlike the lettuce I planted... (no photo available!)

June 30th

Today...was Madeleine's due date.

River's Bend

Tim and "Peter", the owners' lab...he spent all day with us on Thursday. He walked the trails, swam after us in the river...then would ditch us for the next set of people he found!

A view down the river...it was low but the canoes were still able to go over *most* of it. We hit rocks because I was supposed to be watching for them but mostly looked for fishies.

A "donut" or "bagel" we found, made of swirling river foam!

The view from the deck...tall, straight hickory trees...and you can see the jacuzzi just inside the window too. This IS camping at it's best!

Peter was very into sticks...but seemed to also fancy rocks! He would plunge his head in the river and pull out the exact rock that you threw for him. Then he would drop it on the shore and "pounce" on it with his front paws and bark. His bark was SO LOUD echoing down the river...that in that silence, I thought that they would hear him barking and come to "rescue" us as if it were an episode of Lassie..."Kimmy and Timmy tipped the canoe and fell in the river...come help them!" Peter was awesome, until he jumped INTO the canoe and would not get out!

Vacation!

Madeleine's mom and dad are going HERE for 2 days. No internet, no phone, no tv (not that we have one of those anyway!)...

For Posterity...

We went to the cemetery today to order Madeleine's headstone. It will be light grey granite with the above design sandblasted into it. Had I known that they allow you to somewhat customize the design, I would have been working on this for weeks! Hopefully they'll be able to make the peanut look like a peanut, and not an amorphous blob!

When we visited her grave site, there was just a little rectangle of yellow grass where the temporary marker was...they removed it on Monday while I was still dog paddling back from Arizona. There were also two new "punkin's" in Madeleine's neighborhood. And then I saw the saddest thing I've seen in a long time...a headstone where the child lived almost the exact time and months as Madeline...March through May...and the inscription on the headstone said, "We're so sorry that we didn't know how to take care of you". So very sad, on many levels. Sad because you could see that the parents felt guilty and helpless...but mostly sad because they thought it was only their will in charge of the situation. Hopefully their little peanut will pray for them!