Patch and Mae and the Fear I Might Have Had

Since Mae was diagnosed last October I've often thought about how much more intimidating the idea of pregnancy and adding to our family would have been if she'd had a diagnosis before Patrick was born.  If we'd known then how little changes could be overwhelming, it would have seemed almost unthinkable to do something as life changing as adding another person to our family.

The first visit in the hospital to meet her brother

After all, a change of scenery can leave us all reeling (I was up at 4-something this morning dealing with someone having a very, very, very hard time), and doing something like coming home from the grocery store without a warning like "We're going home from the grocery store. Right now.  We're driving home to our house and getting out of the car and going inside." can cause an hour of tears, despite the fact that the grocery store is always the last thing on our to do list when we're out running errands so it's not exactly unexpected (in my mind at least).

Logically, if little changes can have such an impact, you'd think that fitting another baby into our not-so-big house would be earth shattering.

Except that it wasn't.  Maybe it helped that we weren't in a position for life to be all that different when Patch arrived. Since I'd been sick and in the hospital at 36 weeks, all our extra hands and extra help had been poured into that time (when it was very much needed) and I found myself, post c-section, at home by myself with a four year old, a two year old and a brand new baby the day after I got home from the hospital.  Paul was back at school day and night and my parents, who'd spent weeks helping out, really had to get back to California after an already longer-than-expected trip.

So we did the only thing we could do.  We hit the ground running.

Patch split his time between a bassinet I set up behind the baby gate in the kitchen and dozing in the Moby Wrap while we went about days that looked more or less like the days that had come before he arrived.

And honestly now I can't imagine it any other way.  Sometimes as I watch Patch and Mae playing together I can't imagine a more constant, consistent type of "therapy."

It started around the time that Patch learned to crawl.  At that point he decided that Maggie was pretty much the most spectacular person the planet.  He followed her around the house all day long.  For the first few months she evaded him.  She climbed up on top of the toy chest where he couldn't reach her... and he found that he had extra motivation to learn to stand.

Still, unconditional, unwavering love is hard to resist and Mae was no exception.

Once he learned to walk it was pretty much all over.  She'd given up on getting away from him at some point in the previous five months and they'd become partners in crime.  I'd come into the play room and discover that she'd handed him an apple sauce and was watching proudly while he smeared it on the windows.

Over the course of the last few days Mae has gradually been adjusting to being in California.  It hasn't been a horrible transition, but it hasn't been easy either.  She's waking up early, upset with the time change, and is absolutely adamant that she doesn't want to leave the house to go outside and play (which is where we spend most of our time here).

Mae peering over the baby gate at Patch in his
bassinet.

Yesterday I took her on a walk, which she was okay with, and then tried to ease into play time on the front porch by going straight up and trying to convince her that it was really super fun outside with the little pools and toys.  She headed off around the corner and sat down by herself.  And that was when Patch ran after her.  He found her in tears around the corner before anyone else could get to her and began to yell "uh-oh, uh-oh!" in a panicked voice, staying with her until she was happily back inside (after she grudgingly stayed out to eat a popsicle) before going off to play.

And that was only the beginning of Patch looking out for his big sister.  Later in the day we went to the store.  As I leaned over to reach the dairy free yogurt Patch started to sound the alarm.  "Uh-oh!  Uh-oh!  Uh-oh!"  I looked up to see him pointing at his sister (who was in my cart) and turned to see that she'd leaned as far as she could out of the cart and had managed to reach a display of gluten filled rolls and was frantically trying to open them before I noticed.  Patch had saved the day.

Later in the afternoon everyone was relaxing before dinner.  Mae had been coloring in the dining room, but Nani and I both heard when her little feet pitter pattered into the kitchen to pillage the refrigerator.  We both realized at the same time that the lock that Grumpa had made apparently wasn't on it at that moment.  Patch went charging into the kitchen yelling his little alarm and while Nani secured the fridge he ran across the room to a baby gate that wasn't up (the door was closed and Mae hadn't bothered it) and hauled it across the room to Nani to insist that she put it up immediately.  He then stood and watched while she went to work before returning to the living room, content.

Perhaps the best part, however, is that the concern is mutual.  If Patch starts to cry there's a good chance Mae will come over and touch his cheek.  If I can't get him to stop, tears are likely to start to roll down her own cheeks as she points at him, upset that he's upset, demonstrating that she very much does possess empathy, especially when it comes to her little brother.

A couple of weeks ago Mae was walking across the room when she stopped and stared at Patch. Then she walked over and threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.  I watched, making sure she didn't squish him in her overzealous cuddle.  Then she turned and walked over to the wall, a funny look on her face.  She pulled a chair over and climbed up and stared at the picture, a small smile on her lips.  She sighed and stared at one particular picture before climbing back down and going play.  And the picture?  It was this one:

 
At the end of a follow up evaluation with the local university a few weeks ago I called Sadie and Patch into the room so the evaluator could see the three of them together.  Patch came charging over.  He immediately sat down as close to his sister as he could get and started coloring on the same piece of paper, right next to her.  She didn't bat an eye and we watched as they took turns with the crayons, side by side.

And so as we begin to think about preparing to welcome another baby boy, I find myself not all that worried about how this particular change will effect the rhythm of life within our four walls.  I'm sure we'll all have our moments, just as we would if things were staying exactly as they are... but I've also seen how our girl can rise to the challenge of major changes and how they've helped her grow in ways that I could never have imagined if I'd been looking at our situation through the lens of fear that can sometimes surround even the smallest changes in our routine.

After all, if there's one thing we've learned it's that the greatest joys I've witnessed for our little group have been the result of letting our hearts stretch to contain the challenges and happiness that this call to love brings... and it sometimes seems that the challenges and joy so often come hand in hand when they show up at our door!

7 Quick Takes Friday: Northern California Edition

--- 1 ---

Let's get the weekly bump photo out of the way.  Here we are headed into the third trimester... I think.  It's amazing how my pregnancy books have "welcome to the third trimester" pages at different points. One book has it before the 25th week, another at the 26th week and while googling the consensus seems to be 28 weeks.  So maybe it's still two weeks off?  Either way in 13 weeks we'll be meeting this little guy and that really isn't that far off at this point!

--- 2 ---

Back in Michigan it's not unusual for our backyard to have a breeze and to feel cooler than the inside of the house.  And even when there's not a breeze there are the baby pools and the kids pretty much lobby to go out as soon as the temperature starts to climb.

At my parents' house it's definitely cooler inside than out (we hit triple digits again yesterday) and Maggie's response to every suggestion to go outside is to say "no, no, no" over and over again.  She is a huge fan of central air and apparently with air conditioning, the little pools outside aren't nearly as tempting.  She loves the bed that I sleep in upstairs and loves to lay in the window looking out at the horses... althoughI have convinced her a few times each day to go outside for a while!

Not tempting enough to get Mae outside...

--- 3 ---

I kind of felt like I jinxed myself when I wrote the post on the plane on the way out here.  Just as I was about to hit publish a member of our group got sick... really, really sick.  Seven trips to the restroom later I was getting the stink eye from quite a few people who apparently thought that the kid I was escorting to the bathroom was just making up excuses to get up, rather than being thankful that we were in the bathroom and not sharing the wonderfulness of being very sick on a plane with the entire cabin.

I was incredibly thankful to be on the ground when we touched down in California.

The kid that I was the most worried about ended up doing really, really well.

--- 4 ---

As you may have noticed from the last picture (or more likely not), Patch is sporting a new summer hair cut.

Usually I do hair cuts in our house, for everyone including myself, but when I started to cut his hair Patch started to get upset and so Paul took over... and Patch happily sat there while Paul used the clippers to give him a nice haircut that would be perfect in the hot weather.

He is so, so Daddy's boy.

--- 5 ---

For anyone who's curious I thought I'd post a few pictures of what are little corner of California looks like.  I lived in little towns in Northern California for most of my life.  Over the years I've met quite a few people who upon hearing the word California start mentioning palm trees and beaches and smog.  So I like to share the beauty of the far northern part of the state when I can.  And  I'll start a little further back, with some of the other parts of the north state we've lived in.

My first seven years were spent in Humboldt County near the Redwoods.

This is a visit one county north... but I don't have any pictures on the computer
from that first home so I'll share pictures of the area that I do have!

Then we moved inland to Siskiyou County for the next seven years where winters looked like this:

Then it was four hours south for college in Contra Costa County:

East to Marin County...

Before we headed north again, where we lived for five years until Paul started law school in Florida:

--- 6 ---

And that brings me to the pictures I snapped yesterday while taking Patch and Mae on a walk (and look at how brave I was being since this was about an hour post rattlesnake):

I just couldn't capture the sky and the hills at the same time on my point and click camera!  One was going to be too bright and the other just wouldn't show up at all!

--- 7 ---

In other news the girls have "kind of" adjusted to being back in the Pacific Time Zone... that is if waking up at 4:45 am counts.  But it's better than the 4:15 they woke up at yesterday so baby steps.  At this rate they might be waking up at an appropriate hour before we head back to Michigan!

Here they are eating veggies out of Nani's garden.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Theme Thursday: Vacation!

I went to bed at 6 pm last night and slept until... well four-fifteen when the girls were pretty sure it was seven-fifteen and were ready to party.  But still.  I'm pretty sure it was the most restful sleep I've gotten in ages.  I wasn't stressing about work that needed to be done or doctor's appointments or anything at all.  

Yesterday, the first day of our vacation to visit Nani and Grumpa in California, looked like this:

It was right around triple digit hot (I think it was something like 97 at 6 pm according to the thermometer in the shade on my grandparent's porch), but the dry heat felt amazing after a couple months of 60 to ninety percent humidity inside the house and there's air conditioning here, which feels a little bit like heaven.

So we played on the porch and went on walks and the kids ate veggies right out of Nani's garden and played in the little pools she set up on their porch and got to visit with Neenee and G.G. (my grandparents) and there have been no sign of the three skunks that tried to move into my parents' yard last month, which means this is our little slice of vacation paradise!

For more Theme Thursday head over to Clan Donaldson!

Edited to Add...

About an hour after I posted the original post we had an unwanted visitor try to drop in on our vacation to Nani and Grumpa's.  He tried to strike at Nani as she was walking out to water her plants (he was in a vent opening). Fortunately he had a tough morning and will not be joining us on the rest of the trip.  And thankfully he wasn't found by any of the kids since he was about five feet from the place where Mae was playing yesterday on the porch:

From 38,000 Feet...

I've spent this week starting posts and deleting them.  Everything I wrote sounded to pessimistic and I decided that no one really needed to hear what my little rain cloud self was thinking... from my ranting after finding a bullet shell casing outside our front yard this last week to stressing about what we would be doing today and coming up with every single worst case scenarios for flying cross country with three small children.
After flying with Patch last summer (which felt like wrangling a small screaming octopus) I imagined that doing something like this

was just about the worst thing that I could imagine voluntarily doing.  Especially since we were starting out from Detroit and that meant loading everyone onto a plane, followed by a short flight and then getting off the plane and onto another plane and flying another four hours.

So I spent a lot of time fretting over how horrible it just might be.  Of course I told myself not to worry because that wasn't going to get me anywhere but... I failed horribly at not worrying.

I threw myself into getting out all the orders for my shop that still had to go out, making rosaries that still need to go out and making lists of anything that might help make the trip easier.  Snacks!  We've got them!  Crayons, paper, sippie cups, every entertaining device the kids have been given over the years?  Check, check and check.  If there was anything that I could do to avoid a mini disaster I was going to give it a try.

Then we got in line for security and I opened my wallet and almost had a nervous breakdown.  My driver's license was gone.  Cue panic.  I knew where it was.  There's been some drama with our van and the title and the state of Florida not having a record of the car existing (to replace the title that they apparently never sent us.... although somehow the registration bill made it to our house) and I'd taken my driver's license out earlier in the week because the local tax collectors office needed a photo of it and apparently hadn't replaced it.

Thankfully my clipped California drivers license was still in my wallet and even more fortunately they accepted it and we made our flight.

And our flights?  They've been pretty uneventful so far.  I really was worrying for nothing!  We're headed into some turbulence at the moment but right now Mae looks like this:

Patch has been laughing hysterically every time I look at him, and his only real outburst was when we were stuck on the runway with the plane's engines turned off after we landed in Chicago, while we waited for the plane in our gate to leave.  He took the plane being off about as well as he usually takes sitting in the car when it's off when we're doing something like... getting gas at a gas station.

And since I started typing we've flown all the way to Colorado!  And one kid has come down with/had a reaction to something so... not totally uneventful but still!  No meltdowns!  No screaming!  If this lasts for two more hours I'm calling today a success!

25 Weeks

Another week down... tomorrow will officially be 26 weeks and so I figured it was time to post the 25 week picture.  This is definitely the most photographed pregnancy I've had so far, mostly (okay, only) because of my pinterest goal to take a weekly picture.  

And so here we are.  25 weeks down. 15 (or something like that) to go:

7 Quick Takes: Oddities from this Week Edition

Oh what a week!  I had a few posts planned but in the roller coaster days that followed Mae eating a bagel, things have been a little too busy to sit down and type.  So today will be mini updates (I hope... I'm so bad at writing mini-anythings... too much rambling goes on when I start to type), to hopefully combine all those posts that I almost wrote, or that I started that are now half finished in my draft bin (posts rarely, rarely make it out of the draft bin around here!):

--- 1 ---

As we roll on into the third trimester this month I had my last second trimester doctor's appointment this last week.  It was a pretty average appointment, just checking in to make sure things are going along smoothly.  I told the doctor that I thought this baby felt bigger than Patch or Mae at the same stage (only because Patch and Mae never really felt crowded to me and Sadie did, and they were both slightly smaller at 9 lbs 1 oz and 8 lbs 12 oz, whereas this baby to me feels considerably bigger already).  He's told me in the past that studies show that mother's who have had more than one baby tend to be very accurate when predicting birth weight.

Baby is measuring big on the measuring tape, so I guess we'll see if he'll actually surpass his biggest sisters record as our heaviest baby, or if he's going to continue the pattern of each baby being just a little bit smaller than the previous one (or if he'll be somewhere in the middle).

--- 2 ---

Patch, the transverse baby.

I guess he could be feeling gigantic at this point because he seems to spend a good deal of his time transverse, occasionally flipping to the breach position before flipping back over.  While I was pregnant with Patch (who had something like 14 ultrasounds before he was born) I got pretty good at figuring out babies position before they would bring it up on the screen and this baby definitely likes to flip.  He seems to be stretching out sideways and then following his brother's footsteps by turning breach (that head under the ribs with little feet kicking straight down is a pretty distinct feeling) before flipping back into his favorite sideways position.

With the section it doesn't really matter what position he's in and transverse has yet to become the most annoying position I can think of since baby still has a lot of growing to do, but I do find myself wondering if baby is going to spent the majority of the next few months kicking me in the side just like his big brother (Patch was transverse when he was delivered).

--- 3 ---

Okay this might be a quick take to skip if your at all squemish about things like c-sections and scars and c-section scars doing things that make the doctor say "if that happens again go straight to labor and delivery."

So... a few weeks ago something happened and I didn't write about or even mention it to my mom when I called her that night on the phone because... well, it took my brain a while to process it and I really sort of pushed it out of my thoughts in a "well that was scary... let's not think about it again... maybe you're just being dramatic?" sort of way.

One Friday evening Paul and I were loading the kids in the car after finishing up an outing.  I'd just picked up someone (I think all 25 lbs of Patch) from where he was standing and stood him on the edge of the inside of the car so he could climb into his seat, when I felt the worst, worst feeling I could have imagined.  It was like the pain of oh... maybe transition?  I yelled.  Paul took the kids and I somehow made it into my seat.  I waited for it to pass.  And it hurt and hurt and hurt... a sort of stabby, sort of contraction-y, sort of being torn in two sort of pain that had Paul racing to get the kids into their seats to take me to the ER.

Now I've tended to have fairly painful contractions, on and off, through the last three pregnancies, and while this was considerably more painful than average, that fact made me slightly less panicked than I would have otherwise been.  Then it stopped.  Totally and completely.  After five minutes I felt normal.  I told Paul to drive us home.  I lay down for a while, while he got the kids into bed.  Baby kept on kicking and moving and I figured it was just some weird fluke and I went on with my day, folding laundry and cleaning and sewing once it passed.

Fast forward back to the doctor's appointment when, just as it was ending I remembered and said "oh, I forgot, something weird happened..." and related the story, noticing that my doctor did not seem to think it was quite as unimportant as I did when I was telling it.  After the telling and rechecking my bump he said that while it could have been a cyst rupturing he thinks that part of my c-section scar on the uterus had adhered to something else inside my body and it sounds like it tore away from whatever it was attached to... and if it happens again, especially with bleeding, just go straight to labor and delivery to get checked.

So... here's hoping it doesn't happen again, because I'm pretty sure if it does I will completely panic, knowing what the doctor thinks it could be (and also because, incisions tearing from anything just doesn't sound like something that should be happening).

--- 4 ---

I think Quick Take #3 is a classic example of how I can never make it through 7 Quick Takes without making one way, way too long.  Hopefully #4 makes up for it.  Here's a picture Maggie made in therapy by gluing together fish that she requested from her therapist (she's a big fan of gluing):

--- 5 ---

As some of you know from my plea for advice on the facebook page, Maggie ate 3/4 of a gluten filled bagel this week.  I pretty much freaked out and did everything I could to minimize the effects.  I gave her a double dose of digestive enzymes, along with magnesium and her prescription laxative.  I sent Paul to the store and gave her a dose of activiated charcoal.  Then I sat around feeling helpless and watching as she stopped using words and bounced off the walls for therapy that day.  It happened so fast.

In the afternoon, when she was a mix of not feeling well and still super hyper I gave her an antihistamine, hoping that maybe that would stop whatever was taking place, since we don't really know what exactly it is about wheat that makes her so sick (allergy?  celiacs?  gluteo-morphine reaction?).

The week that's followed has been a bit of a roller coaster.  It hasn't been as bad as it has in the past. I'm not sure if that's because she has gained tools for managing the pain and communicating what's going on, or because some part of the various supplements I threw together actually worked.

Mornings have bee good.  She didn't lose her words after the second day or grind her teeth nearly as much.  The afternoons have been harder.  She tends to get sick (and feel like she has a fever) in the afternoons.  One night was still spent sobbing and screaming (which is always the worst part of what happens post-gluten).

I'm hoping she's through the worst of it and relatively hopeful that it might not take as long to recover this time, since she definitely doesn't seem to have regressed in the same way she has in the past.

Thank you to everyone who prayed for us this week!  We definitely felt those prayers!

--- 6 ---

Sadie and I have been entering a "win a free trip to Disney World" photo contest.  She's pretty enthusiastic about it... so I thought I'd share the photo we entered this week here.  The theme had to do with Happy from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and here are the poses she came up with:

--- 7 ---

If you're on facebook you may have already seen this but I had to share it here too.  Before the gluten incident Mae was sitting at the table coloring.  She told me "mermaid!  Mermaid!" while she drew, indicating that she was drawing a mermaid.  And she did.  I was ridiculously proud of her, since so far most of her drawings are shapes and lines and I just had to share it on the blog itself:

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Theme Thursday: Bright!

I snapped this picture last Friday while we were celebrating Mae's birthday and I just knew that it would be perfect for today's Theme Thursday topic of "bright."  But of course I just could quite save it.  It became part of the new banner within hours of being downloaded (Patch looks so much older than he did in the old one).  

So this is my picture for Bright!

It was snapped while I was sitting next to Patch, leaning out of the window of the little train at the zoo with my arm to get the perfect shot (which I couldn't see while I was taking it!):

{phfr}

Today's pictures are brought to you by the fact that we spent a lot of time outside this past weekend, probably because I felt like potty training was going to kill me after realizing that turning my back for even a second could lead to quite a bit of clean up (and let me say that I am totally not the one pushing this... but that someone thinks they're big enough to not need help...  and thus we have the potential for disaster...).  

In an attempt to sit down for more than sixty consecutive seconds we spent most of Saturday in the backyard.  

{pretty}

After spending the morning swimming a certain someone was adamant that they wouldn't be going back in the water.  And so I spent the day with my little Frozen princess hiding in the shade, thankful that it was one of the cooler days we've had in the last few weeks:

{happy}

The thing that makes Patch happiest when we're out in the yard?  Dragging his "tools" (plastic rake, shovel, that sort of thing) around from place to place and rearranging them.  Still, sometimes he manages to take a break from moving things here and there to play with his boats:

{funny}

Since Mae's OT was cancelled for the week I think this pretty much counts as the next best thing.  Almost, at least!

{real}

And then Patch demonstrated some of the ways that a little brother can try to intentionally annoy his big sister.  Especially after he realizes that she doesn't want his muddy little feet and hands anywhere near her princess dress:

For more {phfr} head over to Like Mother, Like Daughter!