Eyes and Nose and Ears and Mouth…Eavie’s GoFundMe Campaign
How fun is it being Papa Jim to my grandson Titus! One of the perks of being the “World’s Best Grand Dad” 🙂 are the countless songs and games we play.
Some of our favorites are “Chase Me”, Titus runs screaming as PJ gives chase; “Horsey Horsey Go Down Town”, Titus rides PJ’s knee bouncing up and down giggling; and “Touch It & Name It”, PJ says, “Where is Titus’s nose”, and Titus touches his nose and says nose, or some semblance of that.
Kids love games (almost as much as their grandparents)! Games teach little ones to be active and interactive and learn. They learn about themselves, the world around them, and in our grand parenting hopes the God who created them.
Studies show that kids learn more quickly than adults due to having more neurons actively creating new connections in the brain. Who knew! 🙂
And in watching Titus learn and socialize with other kids, his realization is that kids look different. Brown hair, brown eyes, super big dimples characterize him. He’s noticed there are little girls. He can even recognize belly buttons (his is herniated and protrudes out), an outie, and he wants to see if you have an “outie or inie”! He’ll learn as more neurons fire that belly button checks are not always acceptable. 🙂
And so here’s the question I know is coming some day. Why? Why Papa Jim do some kids have outies and others inies? Why are kids different? Why do some kids have body parts that don’t work or look different? Did God make them that way?
Brian and Jody are our good friends. We have lots in common though they are considerably younger. We have traveled some good and hard roads together. Adoption has been one of these. In May of 2010 Brian and Jody traveled to an orphanage in China for unwanted babies and children. Most of these little ones were abandoned because they looked different. Their eyes or nose or ears or mouths, well they
were different.
Sweet little Eavie, five years old now, was born with a birth defect (Hemifacial Microsomia) and the absence of her left ear (Microtia). Brian and Jody chose her as their child, and as she recently graduated kindergarten they say that, “She has brought more life and love into our home than we could have thought possible.”
Doctors can fix Eavie’s ear. Actually they can reconstruct a left ear and then fit the bone with an anchored hearing aid. Who thought of that medical technology? Lot’s of neurons firing in those Doc’s brains! As you might imagine it’s not cheap, even with insurance the cost will be $37,500. But we would all do it for our kids, right?
Brian and Jody have set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the surgery scheduled this summer. Sharon and I are in. Would you consider helping? $25, $50, $100 and some of you can do more. Click on this link to make a difference http://www.gofundme.com/r736uk
Here’s the deal. It would be really cool to tell Titus and other kids like him, when they ask, “Who fixed Eavie’s ear?”, and to say lots of people did. Good people came together to make a difference in a little girl’s life. Isn’t that what we want our kids to know? God has called us to be difference makers in this world, one child at a time.
Be the change,
Jim
