Want a laugh? Try mixing a bottle while bouncing a hungry, cranky one year old on your hip (moments like this I really miss when he was willing to nurse) then shove it in his mouth and shove an Oreo in your mouth and go sit down and then realize what a dumb idea it was to attempt to eat an Oreo when your hands are full and the one year old’s hands are NOT full and he really wants that Oreo that’s inches from his face.

Bennett’s in that delightful stage of very deliberately getting into anything he’s not suppose to and then laughing like crazy when you tell him no, or he sees you coming to stop him (and he starts doing whatever he’s doing faster, like calling long distance on the phone? shoving things in the VCR? emptying the laundry basket of clean clothes you just folded? crawling into the fireplace? sticking a dead bug in his mouth he just found by the door? taking every piece of tupperware of out the drawer and throwing it on the floor? pulling condiments out of the fridge door?) He’s so proud of himself and he KNOWS he’s not suppose to be doing these things because he sees me coming from across the room and laughs and then does it faster and screams when I intervene. I forgot about this stage.

And he’s getting FAST with the crawling. Opening anything is now a race - dishwasher, freezer, fridge door, bathroom drawers - because you hear his little slap-slap-slapping hands and knees as he frantically races to get access before you slam shut whatever you are doing. It’s quite comical in a horror-movie, impending doom sort of what. It’s become a challenge to keep him safe while trying to not bend constantly to snatch him from danger/mess and put myself into contractions. Thankfully he’s getting more adventurous with taking steps and standing, so when I need to move him from room to room he’ll hold my hand and walk. Though that doesn’t help when I need quick intervention, but still. I’m amused and thankful for these new “skills” of his - even if he is wearing me out!

At breakfast this morning everyone is eating and Moira turns to Christopher and says, “Hi, C. How doing?” with a cute little hands lifted questioning gesture. She was making small talk at the table! It was so cute!

Then I go to get her out of her chair (okay, don’t tell anyone I lifted her but I was very careful) and she says, “Emy big! You BIG!” and pats my belly.

Kit assembled her new red tricycle last night and surprised her with it this morning and I’m hoping he caught her expression on camera because I could hear her squeal and yell, “BIKE! My bike!” We had to peel her little rear off the seat to get her to breakfast. Her cousin six months older, Colton, has one and she loved it and her occupational therapist said the traditional red trike is the best style for kids’ motor development so Tamara & Cesar got her one! How sweet is that? They also got Bennett a bubble gun that all three kids are madly in love with and I personally love that Christopher and Moira can use it themselves (without it spilling) so I don’t get lightheaded from bubble blowing. Though Christopher just told me, “My hands are killing me!” since he’s been doing it for Mo & Ben for so long.

So much cuteness and it’s only 8:30am. I love mornings like this.

Yesterday the kids were lining up to race to bed, a nightly ritual. I said, “On your mark, get set…” and Bennett said, “Guh!” Then today Christopher was helping him clear a path for his push toy/walker and Bennett pulled up on it then said, “Guh.” He wouldn’t repeat it either time. So I don’t know if it counts…

Then for lunch I just gave him a ripe banana that he didn’t want to eat but thoroughly enjoyed smashing to slimey little bits all over his tray. I took it away, commenting that he looked all done, and as I pulled it away he very clearly signed, “More” with his fingertips together and repeated it several times. We’ve signed that to him before a couple times, but we’ve not been very consistent. It was the fingertips together part that got me - not clapping, or smacking his messy little hands, but very clearly doing the sign “More” - but I can’t decide if it was deliberate or not. It was appropriate for the context…

Of course, I also said his first steps didn’t count until I saw him do it again, because I couldn’t believe he was walking. So same thing - he just started really babbling this month so I don’t want to imagine he’s speaking yet - or signing. But wouldn’t it be cool if he was?

Christopher wants to go into the garage and get something and Kit tells him no, he doesn’t want him out there without supervision. Christopher’s response?

“Course I have super-vision! I eat my carrots!”

We’re driving to drop off Jenny and she’s sitting by Moira. When Moira offers Jenny a semi-sticky pretzel, Jenny accepts because she’s a good sport and she’s lived with these kids for months - she knows toddlers are damp. Though she starts laughing when she looks over at Moira and sees her gnawing the salt off the pretzel before offering Jenny the next one. That would explain the sticky!

Bennett has started laughing. When we put his glasses on, whenever anyone takes his picture, whenever someone plays with him. He’s just laughing and it’s too funny for words to watch. We’ll try to catch it on video.

There are pictures up in gallery, though not captioned.

So our little guy received his glasses this afternoon.

And just so you know, he does this

Longer than he keeps these on his face.

(And click on either of the above images to see more in the respective series.)

Kit is reading Christopher several books at bedtime, rotating through them. “The Princess Bride” (one of my favorites, Kit read it to me while I was pregnant with Christopher) and “Little House in the Big Woods” (I loved that series as a child, but we only have the one book right now) and “The Hobbit” (which Kit received from his parents in 1980!)

So Christopher has learned all about Gollum, that scary little man/creature that’s chasing Bilbo through the creepy caves. Christopher asked me why Bilbo can see in the dark and I said it was the magic sword he had. Christopher responds, “Oh, I can see in the dark because I eat carrots.”

Then a couple days later Kit is showing the kids these classic Superman cartoons that have come into public domain and can be downloaded for free and he Superman catch a building. Kit mentioned that Superman is strong, and Christopher said excitedly, “Superman has strong muscles! He eats carrots!”

So here are all 17 Fleischer cartoons of Superman now in the public domain all in one convenient location courtesy of Cartoon Network’s Toonami.

Warning - do not read this blog if you are pregnant, nursing, postpartum, having a bad day, or feeling particularly fretful. Or if you have a good memory, because you don’t want to remember this. Be warned, okay? In all seriousness, don’t read this blog if you are tired or emotional or anything like that. For those brave of heart, click on the link there.
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I was reading up on a preemie site and the mother was told that the doctors would try to intubate her preemie for 15 minutes. That was the limit at this hospital, I don’t know if it’s universal - after that they said it was medically unethical to continue. 15 minutes to try and get your baby breathing and then they call it. I had never heard that. In that case, it took them 13.5 minutes because they could not find a tube small enough to get down his windpipe. (That in part answers the question we’ve received about why they can’t save babies prior to 23 weeks - they are so, so tiny that they literally can’t even get them on a vent. Sure, make smaller tubes, but then you’re risking blowing out their lungs from the force of the ventilator. Plus they just don’t have enough lung there to inflate. Which is what happened to Bennett when he was a day old.)

Anyway, before reading about this little boy, I had not even considered for a moment what would have happened if they could not intubate Bennett. Thought never crossed my mind that they would not be able to keep him alive because of something like that. I knew the neonatologist was in the next room and they knew we wanted them to do whatever they could to keep him alive. My fear, going under for the c-section, was that Bennett would be gone before I was awake and able to touch and see and kiss him. But I thought he may be gone from an abruption or the trauma of delivery or something beyond anything we could do.

My delivery report (I requested it from my files) states Bennett’s apgar scores - 1, 5, 7. He came out blue and limp, eyes sealed shut, not responding. Within one minute of life he was intubated. ONE MINUTE. Can you imagine how quickly this doctor was working with this carefully rehearsed team to have Bennett receiving help to breath within one minute of life? By 10 minutes of age he was pink, responsive, had good breathe sounds, and was grimacing when they touched him. How smoothly everything must have gone, from moment to moment, to make that happen - for Bennett to be able to move so quickly from the failing life support system in me to this beautifully orchestrated life support system at Baylor.

We later learned in the NICU, and had confirmed in the PICU and during a surgery last fall, that Bennett has an unusually large windpipe. He kept leaking air around his vent and they had to move up sizes on him a couple times because the size appropriate based on his weight was too small. So his doctor, apparently, had no problem sliding in that tube to keep him alive.

I didn’t realize the miracle it was that Bennett was able to be intubated so smoothly and I know that he was being attended to by inspired and caring men and women and beyond that, I absolutely believe he was being very carefully watched and attended to by loving friends we could not see. It overwhelms me to be learning these new details of the miracles he’s experienced.

When Moira was 9 months old Christopher’s SLP (speech therapist) commented that Moira wasn’t babbling and suggested we have her evaluated. We did and she was found to be delayed enough to qualify for speech services. They mentioned the chance of her having apraxia, but we didn’t know anything about it and didn’t research it. (I know, how weird is THAT? I didn’t obsessively researching something?) When Moira was 18 months old, Mommy went on bed rest. I was down for 3 months, moved into the hospital (and cried the whole way there, believing I wouldn’t be home for months and months) but came back a week later, leaving Bennett behind in the NICU for another 4 months. (And yes, I would have happily stayed at the hospital for 4 months if it would have spared Bennett the NICU experience but I felt guilty either way - leaving my older children, or leaving my baby. No win situation, it just stunk. I’m on a tangent…)

So when we had Moira’s testing done after Bennett was home and learned she was really, really delayed and it was probably apraxia, suddenly the speech delay was a lot more serious. Christopher was in speech therapy for 6 months but it seemed to just click with him and every session he would walk away with more words so we weren’t too worried about Moira. When apraxia came back up and I began to research it, I just cried. There’s a whole spectrum of how severe it can be and it affects more than just speech, explaining Mo’s gross & fine motor delays. Her situation is obviously NOT the most extreme, for which we are very grateful. But at the time we had no idea how severe her situation was and we were reading about kids with apraxia needing years and years of intensive therapy, special education, technology aids to help them communicate, even qualifying for disability assistance. No parent ever wants to hear that their child’s abilities may be limited in any way - we all want the world and every possibility for our children. But to hear it when you’ve been focusing so intensely on another child, trying to keep them alive through sheer will power, the guilt was overwhelming. I knew Moira had not been getting a lot of our focus and I felt horrible… for about 3 minutes and then I realized how counter productive it was and I set to work in standard Heidi fashion, calling in the professionals and researching and joining a local & international apraxia support group for parents and learning more sign language and trying to figure out what we were going to do to help Moira.

I’m happy to report Moira is making amazing progress because she’s an amazing, highly motivated kid with a great team of professionals helping her in every way they can. I’m thankful beyond words for her therapists, both ECI and the school district and Spirit Horse. The reality of dealing with this situation has not been as scary and challenging as I feared - maybe because Moira adores therapy and is blossoming with the attention!

Then Bennett. As soon as he was born the social worker came into our room to have us sign him up for disability. Any child under the birth weight of 2 lbs 10 ozs is immediately considered to be disabled and qualifies right away for benefits. They speed you right through that application process because babies born under that weight have, in almost every case, either one severe or several less severe conditions that qualify them. We were very, very thankful for that benefit because the last thing any parent wants to think about when making life or death decisions about medical treatments (that are costing more that Kit’s annual salary times times 10) is what it’s going to cost them. Seriously, these babies cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not over a million. You don’t want to think about spending a million dollars to keep your baby alive, knowing it’s numbers beyond your comprehension - you just want to worry about how you’re going to send this kid off to college and a mission and pay for a wedding. Okay, sorry, another tangent…

I was thankful to have Bennett qualify for disability, but we had no idea what that really meant. They told us he would probably be blind, deaf, severely brain damaged, may never walk, may never speak, may not breathe on his own - IF he survived. We heard the words, but how can anyone ever comprehend what it means? How it feels? Even now I cannot recall the emotions those “talks” elicited when they tried to prepare us to make the decision to intubate or not, to intervene or let him die peacefully. Stopping now, before pregnant Heidi freaks out with the memories….

Bringing Bennett home was a miracle and despite the oxygen and compromised immune system and waiting for the other shoe to drop, I didn’t feel he was “disabled” - I felt he was a miracle. I just read today a parent being told that having a micro preemie is like being in a war zone. You don’t stop to think while being shot at you, you just run and try to stay alive. But even after the shooting stops, you never forget that fact that you were being shot at… (I’ve got to find the source of that.) You still jump. You still live on edge. You don’t feel safe.

As we’ve fought to get Bennett off of disability over the last 6 months, it’s really made me think of what disabled means - to the child, the family, society, the government. As Moira is enrolled in PPCD (preschool program for children with disabilities) it’s hit me with both kids. I have two children that are “disabled” and/or delayed by the definition of the government, the school district, ECI, and maybe even people we know. It’s been a lot to ponder on…

I’m thankful for the miracle that these children are, all four of them, and for the joy they bring. I’m grateful for the way they challenge me, and make me evaluate, and help me learn. I feel blessed these incredible spirits are in my home and that I have this chance to be their mother and I hope and pray I’m becoming a better person through this experience. I hope it’s making me more sensitive to anyone that’s struggling with extra special needs.

I wonder if I would have noticed the date if Beverly hadn’t said something?? One year ago today, Bennett came home from the NICU. I watched his “New Day” movie I made and I cried… I don’t think it’s made me cry before. It was wonderful but painful to see how far he’s come, and how much he endured. Though the tears were tempered by laughter as Bennett crawled up onto the couch, onto my lap, then started smacking the keyboard of the laptop as we watched.

Two other exciting milestones - today Bennett moved into a toddler bed. He thinks it’s wonderfully fun to play in, but he’s less impressed with sleeping in it. He did nap for a bit, so we’ll get him in there eventually. I’ll post pictures of it later. It has a side rail and he kneels leaning against it and yells, like he’s trapped in some prison.

Also, Bennett is babbling so much - more than Moira ever did, which at least alleviates some fear of apraxia. Two days ago Kit and I were babbling back to him and he repeated us! He said, “Bababa” and we both looked at each other and looked at him and started cheering. It was so exciting and I had to laugh at us because he’s our third child and we’re jumping up and down because he babbled back sounds at us… at least I can assure my children that the novelty did not wear off and their “firsts” elicited giddy new parent happiness from us, even if they weren’t the first child. I’m happy for that.

You always hear that the first child’s milestones are recorded and celebrated but each child after that gets a bit less enthusiasm or notice. That thought made me sad, but I don’t think it’s true. Moira’s firsts were so hard won, with the apraxia, that we sure screamed and cheered with joy for her. Bennett’s firsts are hard won in another way, because of the prematurity and the whole living/dying thing. I hope we all cheer on Emiline but I hope it’s not because of any special challenges she faces and instead is just because she’s Emiline and she’s our fourth and she’s so darn cute.

Christopher is getting off his cast right now. Bennett’s asleep on my chest and Emiline is not amused and is violently kicking at him and that’s not too comfortable. She’s now almost up to my ribs so I’m getting beat up in places Bennett never reached - which is kinda cool. Moira is talking up a storm - last night she asked if she could hold Emy and this morning said, “Emy no bite me.” I’m guessing that’s prompted by Bennett’s teething.

Okay, have to move this little man off my chest so I can breath and give his sister some space.

Around the time Christopher was born, there were very few things I would lose sleep over. Notable events include when I stayed up all night talking to Heidi and we knew then that we would be together forever. Being with Heidi was so easy, and for the first time I felt what I call, for lack of a better idea, adult love. Our love is practical, direct, easy, and exhaustive. I was able to give all of my being to Heidi without a thought, and I was surprised as just how much I loved her, yet when I thought about it for a moment, it wasn’t a surprise at all; it was so obvious I laughed at myself for not expecting it.

With Christopher, I remember nights standing up with him before we knew he had a dairy allergy, holding him, propping myself up in the doorjamb not daring to sit or lay down with him because the minute I did he would wake up in screaming pain and we’d have to start all over again. But I did this night after night with him because I love him.

When Christopher came to our home, I had no idea how much a man could love another being. I quickly came to realize that I need my family like I need air. I was shocked to discover just how much I cared for them — how much their comfort and desires consumed me and shaped my motivations. Now I had two people whom I loved with all my might: my wife and my son.

I remember having discussions with Heidi when we were preparing for Moira’s arrival. Neither of us really believed that we would be able to love our second child as much as our first, as though there was an amount of love that we had to divide evenly between our two children like an emotional budget with resources stretched to their practical limits. Though when Moira came, we were both pleasantly surprised that we could, in fact, love another child as much as the first.

Our third baby gave us pause. We didn’t know whether we should get attached or not. The thought of losing a child was more that I could bear, and when he finally came far too early for comfort, the ideas came back that somehow we would be cheating Moira and Christopher from all of the love they were used to and deserved when we had to divide our emotional budget between three children.

In those first few nights when we were told to make our peace that we would be most likely losing our third child, I grappled with all of the dark little things floating around my heart. Some were cast aside easily, and others were merely subdued indefinitely, but through it all I came to a moment where I felt I truly understood Christ with his counsel to love.

“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Matt. 22: 37-38

And

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13

The atonement is infinite. The atonement is the ultimate expression of Heavenly Father’s love for his children. Therefore, love is infinite and as children of Heavenly Father we all have that capacity to express that love.  It resonates within us and shapes our potental. I have no delusions of a level of enlightenment that even approaches Christ, but for a fantastic moment I was able to give words to what I should have known all along but never realized:

Love has no beginning and end. Love is a force older than the universe. Love is infinite and all-consuming. Love is simple, but not always easy. Love is the reason I chose the life I live. And I love each member of my family completely, totally, infinitely with no contradiction or paradox.

And now it’s time for bed.

I received two adorable gifts from Christopher today that I had to share. The kids also made me sweet crafts at ABC club. And we got candy bars at church, how cool is that?? I love when they give us chocolates. Anyway, in Primary they answered these questions and then wrapped the paper around a chocolate bar and tied it up with a ribbon.

1. My mom looks prettiest when… Always
2. My mom’s favorite dinner is… lettuce & tomato sandwiches
3. My mom’s eyes are… brown.
4. If my mom could do anything she wanted she would… do chores.
5. I love my mom because… she’s my mommy.

How sweet is that?? Though I don’t like tomatoes, so not sure where he got that from. And I had to LAUGH at #4, but maybe he’s picked up on my stress at not being able to help around the house so much?

Then from preschool I got a beautiful laminated picture and this:

My Mom
My mom plays Dinosaur Monopoly with me.
Her favorite thing to do is her chores like laundry & cook.
My mom likes to play with me.
Her favorite food is a lettuce, tomato, ham and meat sandwich with two pieces of bread.

So we all know the way to Christopher’s heart - play a game with him. I do love to cook, and the laundry thing - folding laundry is one of the few chores I can do sitting down and “resting” so I always ask Kit to let me do that. How funny that he noticed! Again with the sandwiches - I guess we do snack on those a lot.

Funny to learn how our kids see us. Kit took some photos of me with the kids in the front yard today, you can see them in gallery.

We hope your Mother’s Day is full of joy!