Stop running with those scissors!

Sophia is going to start preschool next week. You may hear me yelling, "See you later suckers!" as I peel out of the parking lot. I kid. Sort of. I think it will be a good thing for the both of us. As much as I joke about her spirited personality, I do believe she is going places. And when you are in that ray of her focus, it's like nothing else matters. She has something special, that girl. But sometimes that intensity she brings is just so exhausting. Today we went to drop off some paperwork for Ava's high risk program. That could be another post entirely. Anyway, on our way into and out of the building, we met a total of 3 individuals. Each remarked at how smart Sophia was. Boy do these preschool teachers not know what's coming for them. The man we spent the longest time with (the case worker guy for Ava's program) told me as we walked out the door, "I can tell you have a lot of patience. You are blessed. You really are. And that Sophia is so smart." Ha, I have a lot of patience? My empty threats are growing by the day. "Don't make me..." "If you don't knock it off right now missy..." "If I have to come over there..." "I'm going to count to three and then...one, two..." I honestly don't know what the end of those threats are. It's enough for Sophia to hear the first words and then she usually hightails it. Which brings me to my latest yell, "Stop running with scissors!" I'm already yelling at her for running with scissors? How did she grow up this fast? And she can do some scissor work, that one. I have daily piles to clean up now. The recycling bin is going to take a beating this week.

In preparation for preschool, I've found that I am entering uncharted territory with clothes shopping. We have been incredibly lucky that my best friend's girls and my nieces are just old enough where we had a steady rotation of great clothes. Well, that gravy train has officially ended now that Sophia is the same size as all of them. I'm not a great shopper as it is, so this has given me some anxiety. I don't even know my own style, let alone trying to figure out style for Sophia! Oh, and figuring out how many pants, dresses, tops, etc. is a little overwhelming too. But if that's my only concern these days, then we have it pretty good right now.

It was one of those nights

I had a bad night the other night. It started around midnight, when both of my arms fell asleep while crossed under my pillow that my head was resting on. I was laying on my stomach, and couldn't turn over. I had to wake Rick for help. I can laugh about it now, but oh man was it scary. Once I gained full mobility of my arms and convinced myself I would not be one of those freak situations where I have to have both arms amputated, I dozed back to sleep. About an hour later, Sophia climbs into bed. She had already started out restless, so I anticipated her visit, but not quite so early. Her restlessness continued, and I soon felt feet digging into my neck. After an hour or so, Ava started crying. Lately Ava has been wetting through her diaper, PJs, and bedding. She is a side sleeper and I think the diaper just doesn't do its thing for side sleepers. She wakes up cold and wet and, being lazy in the middle of the night, I typically just deal with what's wet on her and bring her into our bed instead of changing her bedding. But with Sophia in our bed at that point, it was already pretty cozy. So I changed the bedding and brought her into bed just to get her settled back to sleep. When I picked her up to transfer her back to her bed, she wet again, this time getting our bedding wet. I threw a blanket down over the wet spot, got her cleaned up again, and snuggled her into our bed. Cozy as clams we were. Not. I could not get back to sleep.

I'm not good with the middle of the night thoughts. They are haunting. I haven't had to deal with middle of the night thoughts in a while, since Ava is such a star sleeper and no longer requires midnight feedings. However, on this night, those thoughts creep into my head.
Julia
My heart has such a big empty void where Julia should be. She should be waking me up too. She should be physically creating her own little chaos in my night of chaos and frustration. Instead the thought of her fills my mind of what could have been. And I know these are romantic notions, but I can't stop my mind from thinking them. One of the big things I need to get past is that there is no filling the void. With each miscarriage, although painful in so many ways, that void ended up being filled. I wouldn't have had Sophia if I didn't suffer through my first miscarriage. I wouldn't have had Ava if I didn't suffer through the others. But I would have had Julia, had she been able to make it. She was tangible; she was part of a package deal. She was real. I touched her. I held her in my arms. But I didn't get to keep her. And it haunts me. And it frustrates me, because I know she wouldn't have made it, had she survived until birth. But your mind doesn't like reason in the middle of the night. It likes romantic notions.

But then I finally fall asleep with my thoughts, and wake up to a new day. And things seem hopeful and much clearer. It's a bad time of year for me. This is the time when we were going back and forth to Cincinnati, to all the tests and big decisions. I can't believe it's been a whole year. We're working hard on a plan to honor Julia. I want her to be remembered, and I want to make it special. I know that I can't have her, but I can honor her and the meaning of her. I'll let you know when I get it all together.

Late blooming garden

This year we did a few things differently in the garden. Rick set up a drip system to most of the vegetables. Our new inhabitants to this year's garden feature pumpkins (and lots of them), peppers, and cantaloupe melon. Our regular fare includes beans, tomatoes, 3 kinds of squash, and basil, strawberries and wild blackberries. Our grapes decided to come in this year, too.

Things are finally starting to happen in the garden. It was a late season, the weather has been really mild. However, it's turning out to be worth the wait. I love the drip system, and I think Rick has come around to love it too. He's more of a purist with gardening. He believes things should be watered individually, and by hand. And then I got involved with the gardening (i.e., I was home now so it fell onto me), and well, it seems like lots of very crazy things happen in my life around this time. So in the past few years the plants died, or got over watered, or rotted. And then I think he put 2 and 2 together, and decided maybe the less I have to deal with it, the better. Anyway, crossing my fingers here, but this seems to be our best garden yet. Because I only go out to pull the occasional weed, and to pick what's grown.

Dinner has been easier around here now that the vegetables are coming in. We'll have grilled zucchini squash tonight, sauteed crooked neck squash tomorrow night, and stuffed scalloped squash the night after. Sophia better get used to this, because it seems like squash is on the menu for awhile. I read that you should serve something up to 10 times before the kid agrees to eat it. I believe we are past #10 now. The beans have started to come in, so we'll probably go through the same thing with those. I can't wait to get my hands on some fresh tomatoes. These guys are teasing us at the moment.

So whats for dinner? A whole lot of vegetables!

Ava kneads me

I try to make a point of laying down with Ava for one nap, or while putting her down for the night. It's a time that I make for just me and her, because there's not a lot of one on one time throughout the day, and Sophia usually calls the shots. It's the squeakiest wheel kind of thing around here, and Sophia sure is squeaky.

Ava likes to knead. She does this when she's in that hypnotic trance rhythm of sucking down her bottle. She grabs at my clothes, just like a cat does. Pretty fitting or a baby who came out mewling like a kitty. But when I'm feeding her the bottle, she can only grab so much. when we are laying down, side by side, she has much more real estate and easier access. My cheeks, my nose, my hair, my shirt and my chest are all within range. It's a good indicator of when she needs her fingernails clipped, for sure. It reminds my of the old Looney Tunes cartoon when that kitty kneads the back of the old bull dog and he just sits there and takes it, because as annoying as it was, he loves that little kitty and wanted to make her happy. That's how I feel. It makes her happy. After a few minutes of that, she slips off to slumber and I get to watch her and enjoy the sleeping baby sweetness for a few minutes.

Speaking of needing (yes, I enjoy the use of puns now and then), Ava is sure making things hard for Rick and I to get away for a bit. It's funny how she is such an easy baby (compared to the squeaky one mentioned above) for me. But she is not so easy when left to the in-laws. We get there, I set her up so that she's happily playing on the blanket on the floor, and then we leave. Apparently once she realizes we are gone, she cries the whole time until, by exhaustion, she falls asleep. Which is what we usually come back to--her sleeping peacefully. And I just never see that side of her. I joked that I need to install a video camera over there just to see how it all goes down. I hope this is a stage, but I have a feeling it's just another difference in personality.

There's a party in my tummy

Rick is gone for dinner. It's a guy's night type of thing. Sophia was pretty bummed, so I thought I'd make a special dinner for her. Ha, I guess this covers the dinner part of the blog, huh? Anyway, I decided to use up the really healthy whole wheat bread I got the other day, by doing something really unhealthy to it. (Side note: Rick fixed a meatloaf sandwich with this bread today and said, "This bread isn't good. Please don't get this bread again. Sophia doesn't like it either." Um, wrong! Sophia now likes it now. Continue reading to see why.) I made a grilled Nutella and strawberry jam sandwich. Yes, I slathered it with butter, chocolate and strawberry jam and fried it. Sophia took a bite and exclaimed, "There's a party in my tummy...so yummy, so yummy!" She got that cute phrase from her cousin Alyssa during the houseboat excursion. I'm not sure where Alyssa gleaned that from but it's used often here now. I had to agree with Sophia; I felt the same way about our dinner--so yummy! I also agree with Rick. Unless the bread is doused in butter and filled with really bad-for-you-stuff, it's way too healthy for our tastes.

Chompers

We had a busy week last week. That's my excuse. Laundry, packing, grocery shopping, packing, shopping for the kayak and life jackets and sunscreen, more laundry and then more packing (side note: with all that packing, you'd think I would have remembered to pack my own underwear. Good thing swimsuits were the fashion of the week. However, I packed enough clothes to stay for at least a month, for all of us--maybe even longer.) Throw in Rick's birthday followed by my birthday--the day before we were to leave. Needless to say, it was very hectic.

In hindsight, I should have noticed teething signs from Ava. The day before we left, she had projectile vomited on my mom. At Noni and Papa's that night she had been really fussy. she felt a little warm to me that night but I was in denial because I really didn't want a sick kiddo on vacation. She didn't sleep all that well the first night on the houseboat, but I chalked it up to new environment. The next day she seemed fine, her normal chipper self. I was helping her with her cracker. As I pushed the sticky goop that once was a crispy Mum Mum back into her slobbery mouth, she bit down (hard) on my finger tip. That's when I discovered her tooth had broken through. It literally jumped out and bit me! Followed shortly by the second tooth the next day. Ava has her two bottom teeth now.

S'mores

When I was a little girl, we did our share of camping as a family. My Grandpa Jack always had a boat or RV or both, and my summers were about going on the lake and campfires and S'mores. It was the summer between kindergarten and first grade that my grandpa told me on one particular camping trip, while roasting marshmallows by the dying fire, that he invented S'mores. I took that literally. For our first Show and Tell day at school, I told everyone that my grandpa invented S'mores! I explained what they were and how to make them. To my surprise, some of my classmates had tried them before, and even made them on their camping trips. My grandpa was a genius AND famous! I'm not sure how that bubble got popped, maybe the teacher shared it with my mom during Open House or maybe I shared my excitement with my mom and she set me straight. However, that did not dampen my enthusiasm for S'mores.

Sophia has been talking about camping for a good six months. She saw an episode on one of her programs where the kid goes camping and they make a fire and roast marshmallows. Marshmallows=camping in her mind. So last week while I was shopping for our houseboat vacation with our family, I made sure S'mores was on the menu one night. And we just so happened to find a halfway decent place to moor for the night, with plenty of dried wood to make quick of some hot embers. The older cousins learned that they are old enough to earn their reward and collected the wood, under the nervous watchful eye of their mother. (It was a pretty steep slope, but not that steep, jeesh.)

The sun had set, dinner was done and dishes were washed. I had set up exactly how this first S'more experience was going to go down with Sophia. The fire was started.

I anticipated the perfectly browned and gooey marshmallow between the graham cracker and chocolate. And then Rick stuck a marshmallow on Sophia's stick and thrust it into the flames. Out pops a charred marshmallow, everyone is barking at me to hold the graham cracker and chocolate plate towards them, and in the chaos of eager hands, Sophia gets that S'more and starts chowing down. This is not going as planned. And we all know "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray" so I was going to try to recapture my own experience. After I took some pictures of Sophia, obliviously enjoying her first S'more no matter what shape of form the S'more was in.

I head back out to the campfire in search of a stick. Everyone was finished with their S'mores and had thrown their sticks into the fire. I settle for the best stick in the shortest amount of time and stick two plump marshmallows on the end. No sooner had I roasted half of the marshmallows to brown perfection, my brother runs out with a fire extinguisher and douses the fire out. It was a nice finale to my quest for the perfect S'mores experience. (I think my sister in-law may have the fire extinguishing in action...I was too busy trying to salvage what little marshmallow and patience I had left.)

I'm sure there will be plenty more S'mores experiences. I bet it wasn't the highlight of her trip anyway. How could anything trump the glorious four days of non-stop play with her cousins? I know this makes a much better story than the scene I had imagined in my head while shopping for the supplies. I'm still bitter that my brother used the damn fire extinguisher on what was turning out to be a pretty good marshmallow roast.

Developmental assessment

All is good. All is better than good, actually it's fantastic.

I remember so acutely being in the hospital the day Ava and Julia were delivered, getting prepped for the c-section and the Neonatologist coming in to discuss expectations for a 27 week delivery. As I laid there uncontrollably shaking, she listed off a number of things that we might encounter upon the delivery. It was the worst case scenario. "The best we can do" was echoing in my head, making all the other crazy scary things she was rattling off feel like a whisper of things to come. Her face was somber, and I feared the worst. In hindsight, probably not the best approach to take with me. I always fear the worst, so by saying all the things that can go wrong I automatically think it will go wrong. Imagine my surprise when Ava came out mewling like a newborn kitty. When Rick turned to me and said, "She looks really good." When instead of whisking her away to the NICU where machines were set aside for her, the team spent some time in the delivery room with her assessment and let Rick take a few pictures. From that day on, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I looked for signs of cerebral palsy, for sight or hearing issues, muscles too tight or too limber. I dreaded her first cold, fearing that it would turn into bronchial pneumonia and we would end up staying long past her release from the NICU--or if at home--back in the hospital. I waited, and I held my breath, and I feared and I worried. When everyone told me she looked great, she was doing great, she was better than great, I still feared and I still worried. But that voice inside my head told me everything is going to be OK. I just didn't want to really listen to that voice.

As of today, I actually believe everything is going to be OK. I still held some nerves going into this assessment, even after being reassured last Friday from Ava's pediatrician that she looks great, and that she will have no issues. Still, the glass-half-empty person that I am had anxiety about this appointment. Ava had no hesitation proving the miracle that she is. She was textbook perfect. She did everything that was expected of her and more. The Dr. and nurse repeated what so many had before, they couldn't believe she was born at 27 weeks. Leaving the appointment, I felt such relief. I know how lucky I really am (we all really are). I know how much worse it all could have been.

It's a head game, this baby making stuff. If you are one of the unlucky ones to have experienced a miscarriage or fertility issues, it's a constant battle of positive over negative thoughts. "I just want to be able to get pregnant" turns into "I just want to make it past the first trimester" and then graduates into "I just want to make it to 24 weeks" and if you are lucky to have that then you can pray that the baby has 10 fingers and 10 toes, is born healthy, you know...all that normal parental worry stuff. And the kicker is, it's just the beginning of worry. You don't really understand what worry is until that baby is now outside of your body and what little control you may have felt you held is now completely out of your control. With Ava, the stakes were higher, the worry was just plain harder. But I am starting to put that all behind me now. It's such a burden, this constant worry. It turns your hair gray, adds wrinkles, makes your muscles and head ache and your back stiff. And it's hard to let go of. It's not something you want to define you. You have to work to tamper it out. I'm working hard. Today boosted my resolve to another level. Maybe that other shoe doesn't have to drop. Maybe it's OK to feel like things are going to be just fine.