Profoundly Seth

Hello!

2012-05-10T09:31:00.007-04:00

I'm supervising breakfast at home right now and taking a break from writing papers for school. I should keep doing schoolwork, but I miss it here. So I'm popping in to say hi.

This past month or so has been been big for us...Seth's ears turned three, and he received a software update with new sound processing strategies that dramatically improve his hearing in noise. Usually when I vacuum, Seth pulls his magnets off until I'm done because it's all too loud and he can't hear anything else. But the other day when I started sweeping, I noticed he still had his ears on.

"Hey Seth, is the vacuum too loud?" I asked.

"Nope! Quiet!" He answered.

How cool is that? ClearVoice, this sound processing software, takes away the sounds that don't matter so that speech is easier to hear. In fact, I quickly learned as Seth continued to talk to me in a conversational tone as I swept, he was actually hearing better than I could with the background noise of the television and vacuum. He ended up super annoyed at me because I kept asking him to repeat what he said. It's a pretty good problem to have!

A couple of weeks ago we volunteered at a 5K run called the Talk Walk Run. It was a fundraiser for HEAR Indiana and although the weather was freezing cold and wet, we were able to reconnect with some old friends and meet some new ones. Since we moved here, we have yet to see another kid with cochlear implants, so we've been feeling a little isolated. In Indianapolis, where the run took place, there are more CI Kids, and I was really excited to see what Seth though. Now that he's nearly four, he's noticing things a lot more. As we ate breakfast at our hotel before the race, Seth noticed another little boy coming into the room who had CIs. He literally gasped. "Hey!" He shouted. "Mom! MOM! He has EARS!" He then turned around backwards in his chair so that he could see the boy better and ate the rest of his breakfast that way. He was too shy to talk to him, but boy, did seeing another kid with "ears" like him make his day. Later, at the race, he was running around like a chicken with his head cut off pointing out all the people with CIs. "Ears! Ears!" It was really cool to see how excited he was to see other kids and adults who were just like him. Hopefully everyone realized that the kid running around pointing them out was doing it in a positive way!

All in all we're just in a really great stage right now. Coen is ten months old, and although he is a horrific, terrible, very bad sleeper, he is great during the day. He's quite charming and can hold his own with the bigger kids, and he has a pretty impressive sense of humor already. But the nights? Oh my. A few weeks ago I had to go take a PRAXIS test a few hours away and John suggested that I go the night before so that I would make sure to make it to the test on time (Yes, I am always late). I wasn't sure about it, since I'd never spent a night away from Coen, but he insisted that everything would be fine, so I went.

It was heaven. I never even opened my laptop. I got there, ate dinner, put my pajamas on, watched some of "A Cinderella Story", and fell asleep by nine o'clock. I woke up once around four A.M. searching frantically for Coen and worried because he hadn't woken me, but then I realized I was in Toledo and passed back out until seven. That night is easily on my top ten list of best nights ever, although I was thrilled to see all the kids when I got home after my test! And in a nice bit of validation for me, John said "I have no idea how you do this" when I got home.

The weather here is beautiful right now...it's one of the best times of year to live in Indiana, and we are doing a lot of playing outside. Ava and Jace seem to have acquired a little gang of friends in the neighborhood and our doorbell is ringing constantly. Evany and Seth have teamed up to create chaos whenever possible, and I can honestly say that I'm enjoying the ages of all of my kids right now. It's so fun to watch them build relationships with one another. As an only child, I really want my kids to have strong bonds within their family, and it's really nice seeing the foundations of those bonds being built.

I am turning thirty in less than a month and getting remarried in less than two. According to my children, thirty is quite old. Ancient, basically. So that's nice.

And that's what we're up to, pretty much. It's pretty great, in fact.

Happy 5th Birthday, Sweet Boy

2012-03-28T08:37:00.001-04:00

Dear Eli

Five years.

You would be five years old today.

This seems impossible. I can still remember everything about you. The last time you kicked as I was standing in the shower. The days of labor starting and being stopped by the hospital over and over. The horror I felt when I realized you were gone. Then, you.

Delivering you. I'd never thought about its meaning before. But every mom delivers her baby to the world, hopefully safely. I didn't cry until the doctor caught you and I suddenly realized how empty I felt without you there with me.

Your curls, black as night. You pointy chin. Your nose. Your clown feet. The way you fit against my chest, under my chin. These are the things I will never forget.

Five years old. Five is a big year. You would be writing your name. Wrestling with you brothers. Idolizing your older sister, If you are anything like Jace ad Seth. Losing the dimples in your elbows and knees. Wearing holes in your jeans. I feel certain you would have impressive eyes.

Last night I cried and told your dad that it feels like after five years no one would remember a baby who died without takin a breath. I said I wished you had lived five minutes so I could have known you alive.

"But you did know him!" your Dad said. "You held him for almost nine months. You knew him better than anyone."

And I did. I knew you. And you were alive.

And what i said about people forgetting? I was wrong, as I often am when I judge other people. I woke up this morning to a bevy of texts and emails. Messages about you. You have not been forgotten. These wonderful people who go out of their way to remind me that they have not forgotten about a baby boy who died too soon will never know jut how much those messages mean to me.

Last year I found out that I have a blood clotting disorder that most likely caused your death. I am so sorry. I always knew you were healthy an we never understood why you died, and knowing now brings a bittersweet peace. It is good to know but it feels like a betrayal, that my body caused this.

I can't wait to see you one day. I love thinking of you, laughing, happy.

I love you more than more.

Mama

cvfhbcbvvcv vvvvv hhhhhhh

Thank You

2012-03-18T13:28:00.001-04:00

Did you ever play the Sims back in the day? I did. I was obsessed with the game of keeping all those imaginary people content and well cared for, with the best houses and nicest furniture. I would play for hours sometimes, just trying to get them to make friends or get married. Now, for the record, I have no knowledge of the recent Sims games...I played the original Sims years and years ago.

The game started out nice and slow with a character or two and a house and you went along and added to it all. Better stuff, bigger house, more people. Everyone is happy and taken care of. As you go along more people come, more houses, more stuff. It gets harder to keep everyone happy. It gets harder to keep track of the stuff. Before I knew it, I was barely keeping them all alive.

Sometimes that's what real life feels like to me. Whenever I am in the moment with one thing, in the back of my mind I know what else I should be doing. There is always something else. John is so supportive but he is a fixer. When there is something wrong he wants to make it better and move on. He does not have a brain that forecasts possibilities the way mine does. I can start with one small decision and before I know it, the world has exploded in my brain and we are all dead thanks to the decision I chose.

Ava has a similar brain to mine, it seems. The other day Seth was on his second round of being tested for allergies and he was lying down after the nurses had injected the allergens into his arms. There were little spots of blood that had soaked through the tissue on his arms.

"Oh NO." Ava said. "I don't like blood. Blood makes me think of dying and dying makes me think of Eli and Eli makes me think of Nana and Nana makes me think of Indy and Indy makes me think of Florida and Florida makes me think of Ella and now my day is just ruined!"

I know, kid. I know.

The problem is, it isn't all in my head. Most days it feels like everything I do is taking away from something else. If I hang out with the kids and bake a frozen pizza for dinner I'm sacrificing their nutrition. If I leave them to their own devices while I clean the apartment I feel like I'm neglecting them. If I spend all my time after the kids are in bed at night on homework for school, then I'm not spending any time with John. If I lay on the couch and watch Bones with John all evening I'm neglecting my studies. Most days, I feel like I am barely maintaining; spending a little time with the kids, a little time on the house, a little time on John, and a little time on homework. And a little isn't enough to go around for any of those things.

Parenting, or mothering, really, is such a fine balance. Usually I feel like I am treading water, getting all of us by until things get easier and someone puts more hours in a day. It makes me sad. It's not the parent I want to be, but it's the parent I am.

It's funny; this is not the post that I meant to write today, but it's the post that my fingers have put on the page. It's the post that I've been writing and rewriting in my head for weeks. This blog has become something else I have to do, and that's not what I want it to be. For so long this place was my lifeline. It helped me survive some really tough times in my life.

Not many people get a second chance at this thing, our family, like John and I have. It's important for me to make the most of it. And that means that in this phase of our life, this blog just cannot be the priority that it used to be. I don't mean to be dramatic. I am not going to disappear off the face of the earth. But I need to remove the pressure of updating from my shoulders. I can't do it all, and I need to make sure that the things I'm doing are in my family's best interest. I've removed my ads to make sure that I'm not pressured to write because of ad revenue as well.

The blog won't disappear and I'm sure I will update occasionally. I want each of you readers to know how much you have all meant to me on this journey. I have loved sharing our family with each of you and they way you have all cared for us, a family of strangers on the internet, is amazing to me. From helping to raise money for Seth's surgery to supporting me during my stint as a single parent to being so gracious as we have gone through this reconciliation; I truly believe that I have been lucky enough to have some of the kindest readers on the internet.

Please, feel free to email me for anything at all or to friend me on facebook. My goal is not to sever any relationships I have built here but instead to help me focus more on my family as they are growing up entirely too quickly. I don't want their memories of me to be of a mom staring a a computer screen who is disengaged from them.

Lastly, I always, always, want to hear from anyone who could use a listening ear due to issues I've experienced. If I can do anything at all for others who have lost children, are going through a diagnosis of hearing loss or contemplating cochlear implants, or who are struggling through a separation or divorce, I want to do it. I know that those who reached out to me made me feel less alone in each of those situations, and I want to be able to help others in the same way. I am no expert but I will always listen!

I don't know how to end this post. It feels like the end of an era for sure. Thank you for making it a great one for me.

I guess I'm officially a Hoosier again

2012-03-07T21:04:00.000-05:00

I had this whole post planned for the one year anniversary of my move to Indiana, but then I realized I had the date wrong and I've been here a year already.

My brain is obviously not functioning at it's highest level.

The first thing I think I'm going to have to do is stop saying "We just moved here from Florida!" in response to everything. It's an adjustment, but man, a year has gone by already! That's just crazy. This move was the best thing we could possibly have done. It was also the hardest thing to do. I'm so glad that I'm standing where I am today, but I also know that moving was the first step in standing tall on my own and that it was the right thing to do for the kids and I, and that it still would have been the right thing even if John and I hadn't reconciled. We made our own way, and that makes tonight, as I sit here with John on the couch and watch Coen crawl around and practice blowing raspberries on things, feel even sweeter.

Life is good.

Coen is now eight months old and he is a riot. He's also a biter, and he's got two razor sharp teeth. He's begun making the round of the whole living room/play area/dining area on his hands and knees and I can tell that we're going to be in for it soon. He's getting faster every day.

Evany is seriously the sweetest little girl. Several times a day she'll run up to John or me and say "I need a hug!" She's so cute I could just eat her up and it's causing a problem. It's very hard to say no to her! When she acts up I always find myself smiling at her before I realize I'm supposed to be stern.

Seth is just blowing us away with his speech progress. He's really warming up to his teachers at school and his therapists. It just took three quarters of the school year. No biggie. He went to the audiologist for some booth testing today and he's hearing perfectly, coming in at 15 dB or below on all frequencies! It's hard to believe that his three year hearing anniversary is right around the corner. We were also able to get in with a great allergy/asthma doctor and have him allergy tested and his asthma symptoms evaluated more carefully. He started on Singulair last week and I have high hopes that it will help us cut down on nebulizer treatments.

Jace is reading really well now and brings home a book to read to me every night from school. He wa thrilled with the weather today since he got to go out to play. Yesterday he had a neurologist appointment in the morning and I got a babysitter so that I could take him on his own. He had a neuropsych evaluation and afterwards in the consultation with the neurologist, who I love, it was confirmed that he has ADHD and some motor tics. Of course I had hoped that it would turn out to be nothing, but this is not a big deal in the scheme of things and I'm excited that we have an answer and we can move forward and help him reach his full potential. I'm really interested in any advice anyone with experience has! We've been implementing some dietary changes and trying out a low dose medication that should help him and we'll see how it goes. He's just such a great kid. After the appointment I asked if he wanted to go to lunch with me before he went back to school and he said "Yes to lunch, but I think I'll just go back to school tomorrow." Hah! I let him. Everyone needs a day off once in a while!

Ava is getting way too old. I can't believe she's going to be eight this summer. She is ridiculously tall and has the sass to match her height. She thinks she's in charge of all the younger kids and she is not a fan of being told she's not actually the top dog in the house. But she's just so much fun. Today after we finished her schoolwork and while Coen and Evany were napping and Seth and Jace were at school, Ava and I cuddled and watched The Princess Diaries. It was some great girl time. She's becoming such a young lady and growing up entirely too quickly. She's all elbows and knees and long hair and my oldest baby has all but disappeared. She stays up every night reading with a book light until I wrench the book out of her hands and insist that she goes to bed. She reads voraciously. It makes me so happy. (Yes, I was that kid who walked home from school reading a book and tripping over the sidewalk cracks because I couldn't wait until I got home to find out what happened.)

This is just such a great stage in life. We definitely have challenges and we always will, I'm sure, but I just love sitting back and seeing these kids grow into people and develop relationships with us and their siblings and others that aren't based on proximity or meeting their basic needs. It's a pretty amazing thing to see.

So yes. It's been a good year, Indiana. I guess you're not so bad after all. =)

Lots of random information

2012-02-26T20:58:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I wonder when life is going to slow down, and then I realize; not any time soon! Things have been, as usual, pretty crazy here. John was out of town last week for some training for his new job, and it's crazy how fast I got used to having another grown up around here.

I'm finally managing to get Coen on a sleep schedule. Up until now he's napped and slept whenever and wherever but I finally broke down and got him a crib last week when he basically started climbing out of his bassinet. Of course, the same day I bought and assembled his crib, Evany started climbing out of hers.

Because why not? If she had started climbing out ONE day earlier I would have just moved her to the twin bed in her room and given her crib to Coen. But no. Now we have two.

I also moved Ava into Evany's room. Ava and Jace have shared a room for most of their lives, but they just play way too much at night. One night last week they were going crazy and I told them to enjoy their last night as roommates.

They obviously thought I was bluffing, because the next night when I told Ava to gather her things and head into Evany's room she flipped out. It was quite a scene. Finally, I got her to bed and the next morning she was completely fine with rooming in with her sister. I questioned her about her tantrum from the night before and she smiled. "You thought I was really upset about moving into Evany's room?" I told her that yes, I figured that the extremely physical fit she threw before bed meant she was unhappy. "Oh, Mom!" She laughed. "I was just acting!"

I had no words for that one.

I'm neck deep in school right now...last semester I was accepted to the nursing clinical programs I applied to but due to various factors like childcare and scheduling (The nursing school's here do not offer the same night/weekend option as the school I attended in Florida), I had to make the really tough choice to change majors. I really identified with nursing, but I feel like I can make a positive difference in this field as well. So this new direction, which will give me a dual teaching license in Special Education and Elementary Education, has had a steep learning curve as had the new school I am attending. I am absolutely loving it but also absolutely working my fingers to the bone. I have averaged a paper a day the past two weeks. The program I am in is competency based, and research papers seem to be a large part of demonstrating knowledge. I thought I'd never ho through classes more difficult than my nursing classes, but these are challenging in a whole new way! Right now I'm finishing up a class on Special Education and IEPs and I have to admit I am finding it intensely interesting, probably because I have a child on an IEP. I could just read about it all day long. Hopefully that's a good sign!

Wedding planning is going pretty great. I found my dress for a steal and nearly all of my bridesmaids have already ordered their dresses and bought their plane tickets, and John got fitted for his tuxedo last week (He is insisting on a bow tie. I have no comment). Our venue is locked in, which, thank GOODNESS, because it never even occurred to us how popular July 7th would be as a wedding date. Most of the places we called laughed at us when we mentioned our wedding date and told us we should have called eight months ago. But then the place we'd both fallen in love with called back and they happened to be open! We jumped on it right away and I'm thrilled. It's a historical hotel in town and it is literally like walking into a little piece of history. Next on the list is picking the caterer and the food. Oh the food. So excited about the food!

I'm so happy that we will get to share the day with our friends and family, and the one thing that is making me sad is that my best friend Mara won't be able to make it. It's for a very good reason; she and her husband will be welcoming their fifth baby to the family a week or two before the wedding and they live in Florida, but it will be so odd to do it all without her when she has been such a amazingly supportive friend to me for so long. We're trying to figure out a way to skype or livestream the wedding so that the whole family can be a part of it. Just wouldn't be the same without them!

If you all wouldn't mind taking a few minutes out to pray for Seth and Jace this week, I'd appreciate it. Seth is finally getting in to see an asthma and allergy specialist and will be getting allergy testing done next week, and Jace will be going for a long awaited Neuropsych evaluation for ADHD on the 6th. I wish neither one of them needed to go in, but hopefully these visits will put us on the road to some answers and better tools to improve both of their lives. They're both such amazing kids and I just love them more than I can say and I know how blessed we are to have such small problems in the larger scheme of things. Still, I'd appreciate prayer that both appointments go smoothly.

And now I'm off to write another paper. Hope everyone's weekend was lovely!

Marching to the beat

2012-02-19T23:15:00.002-05:00

I was a band geek in high school, so this warmed my once-marching-obsessed little heart. Toes up!

A long post about being happy.

2012-02-18T11:04:00.002-05:00

This is intensely long. I apologize in advance. These are the things I don't want to forget.

I've been thinking about this post for days. School started back up for me again this month, however, and as it's a new school and a new routine I've had a learning curve to climb. Then three papers in 48 hours to turn in. So this post was stuck in my head for a while.

My divorce was devastating to me. I wrestled with it for quite a while. I was afraid that if I went through with the divorce, John would never have a chance to see that I really had made the changes I needed to make and diligently worked on the issues that had contributed to our problems. I didn't want to give up the title "wife." I didn't want him to have the freedom to marry someone else, to potentially bring a step parent into our kids' lives. I was afraid that by signing away our marriage I was signing away any likelihood of him returning to me.

But then one day, a very wise friend of mine said something to me that has stuck with me every day since. "Things are so far gone that you know God is the only one that can fix this. Do you really think he's not big enough to overcome divorce papers if that's His will?"

And it hit me. I was limiting God by trying to control the situation. I was trying to hold on to the title "husband" when all fighting the divorce was doing was driving the actual person further away.

So I stopped, I pulled it together, and I realized that I didn't want to be married on a technicality alone. I took one step further in the healing process. I eventually became sure, not of the fact that I would be okay until he came back, but that I would be okay even if he never came back at all. I put my trust where it should have been all along; in God, and in His plan for me. I wanted to be acting within His will, not fighting against it, and I finally realized that fighting my divorce was my own way of fighting for my own way instead of seeking His will for me.

This is all to say that unlike some of my close friends who have been through this, I did not hold out hope for reconciliation through everything. I wish I could say I had; it would add a lovely fairytale element to it all. But God never told me that John was coming back. If God told me anything, it was to get it together and fix my issues so that if I ever married again, I would be able to enter that marriage without baggage and as a healthy individual ready for a lifetime commitment.

I moved on, and by that I don't mean that I hit the dating scene; I mean that I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I stopped telling sob stories. I did my best to change my outlook from the wronged woman to someone who realizes that these things happen and makes the best of them. I actually started to like myself again, which is something, because I hated myself when I was begging and pleading and crying all the time. I stopped fighting the fact that it was in our best interest to move to Indiana. And finally, I started to heal and to forgive John and myself for the mistakes we'd made.

On the day I got in my van and started driving to Indiana, I was reasonably sure I was going to hate my life there. I was the petulant child who knew what was best but wasn't going to be happy about it. I cried through several states and actually thought about turning around more than once.

But our move was transforming for us. It offered us rest and healing and peace. Though John spoke to the kids often, he and I did not speak. In passing on the phone of course, we were civil and sometimes even cordial, but it never went beyond "Hey! Let me get them on the phone for you! Have a great day!" Even so, as the summer wore on, I began to hear a change in his voice when talking to the children that was good to hear.

I was shocked on the day he called and wanted to speak to me. I realized pretty early on that John was open to reconciling, but I had to really examine my heart and decide if I was also open to it after everything I'd worked so hard to get past. As scary as it was, it felt like it could be worth it, and things moved quickly after that. Now nearly six months have gone by. I thank God every day that John came home, but I also thank God that John stayed away until he was ready and that He kept my heart from hardening towards John. That God engineered both of our growth and healing separately, so that when we did reconcile it was healthy and sustainable. It's still shocking to me just how well things have gone for us, although I really shouldn't be so shocked. Things done within God's will almost always go more smoothly than things done outside of it. But I'm very thankful.

On Valentine's Day I woke up to my two oldest boys holding roses out to me. That was one of the toughest things about being single...there being no other parent in the house to facilitate the kids doing cute things on holidays, as silly as it sounds. So waking up to the boys with their flowers was pretty amazing. To walk into the kitchen and find Ava and John waiting to surprise me with the rest of the bouquet of flowers and candy was extra special. As I dropped John off at work, I thanked him for a great Valentine's Day.

"There's a sitter coming over after work so we can go to dinner, so be ready." He told me.

I was pretty surprised but excited. We don't get a baby sitter often. After he got home we rushed around getting ready and putting dinner on the table for the kids and the next thing I knew we were in the car without any kids and my hair was actually washed.

Pretty good day, right there.

He drove to Red Lobster, which just so happens to be the place we had our very first date about a decade ago. I can still remember that date as clear as a bell. "Do you know why I wanted to eat here? Do you remember that we came to this very spot on our first date?" He asked, and I told him of course I did. But I was distracted because I could see the line of people spilling out of the restaurant, and when we got inside it was even worse. The foyer was packed with people. When John talked to the hostess she told him that it would be at least an hour wait.

I had not eaten all day. I was ready to pass out, and I wasn't the most entertaining company as we stood waiting. In fact I'm pretty sure I begged to go to Burger King instead. After about ten minutes which felt a whole lot longer, John's buzzer suddenly went off. I gave him a strange look. "Did you tell the hostess I get mean when I'm hungry?" I asked him. He laughed. "Oh yeah." He was texting nonstop, which is pretty unlike him, but I tried to give him a pass since it was Valentine's Day.

We sat down and John asked if I remembered the table we sat at on our first date. We located it and laughed. We put in an order for Artichoke Dip, which is a dish we order at every restaurant we go to. The mood was lively and a manager came by and checked in on us.

The same manager brought out our artichoke dip, and I remember thinking they must have been short staffed if the manager was running food. We put in our dinner order, and started fighting over the pieces of lobster in the dip, and I mentioned that I didn't like the red colored chips on the plate. After a few minutes I tried to stop eating because I didn't want to feel too full to eat my salad and dinner. I was distracted because I wanted a cheddar bay biscuit and they hadn't been brought to the table yet.

In retrospect, John was fidgety. Finally, he turned the plate around to face me. "I like the red chips." He said, and I looked down and saw something written in red on the platter.

"What is this? What did you do?" I asked as I tried to unsuccessfully slide the remaining chips around on the plate to read the message. When I looked up, John was on one knee in front of me and my eyes immediately filled with tears.

I can't remember exactly what he said; I was crying, there were lots of people around us also crying, and so it's all a bit of a blur. But they were lovely words, all of them, and at the end he said "I screwed up. But I want to do it all over again, and do it right. I love you. Will you marry me...again?"

Of course I said yes, and John put the ring on my finger and kissed me and the manager swooped in shouting "I thought she was never going to eat those dang chips!" He grabbed the platter off our table and knocked the chips off it as all the people around us began to clap and cheer. It read "Ellyn, I love you! Will You Marry Me? John."

People started getting up to congratulate us, and it was so sweet. I had no idea anyone would do that! Then John said "Oh, look at that!" And I looked up, and there was part of my family, walking up to our table. Apparently they had been having a tail gate party in the parking lot the whole time, waiting for him to pop the question. The texts John had been sending had been to them, giving them updates.

It was so exciting. After we talked for a few minutes, we sat back down to have dinner and John was so excited he was bouncing up and down. "I'm so glad you said yes!" He exclaimed. I think seeing how genuinely excited he was about getting married trumped the actual proposal for me, although it was all so awesome. It's difficult to surprise me because I am a huge sneak, and he really did it. It was amazing.

It turned out that everyone at Red Lobster had been in on it as well as my family. As we prepared to leave, one of the waitresses came up to us and said "Thanks for doing this here. It was really special, and it's been so fun for all of us. Today, we didn't just come into work, you know?"

We forgot to take a picture of just the two of us, but later on at home, I insisted on chronicling the event, albeit with a cell phone because we were both too lazy to get the real camera.

I can't...I have no words. Which I know is ironic because I just wrote a book. But I had to get it all out here, just as I recorded the hard times. Because this would not be a triumph without what came before. Every bit of our life now is thanks to and because of what happened before, and without even the terrible things we would not be the people we are today. I would never want to relive the past few years, but I thank God for them all the same. I am a better person, and so is John, as crazy as it sounds.

So we're getting married. We're redeeming our old marriage date and we will be tying the knot on July 7th, nearly three years to the day after we initially separated.

We're having a wedding. Our first wedding was an elopement with three people there, and to us, this is an event worthy of celebration. For the first time I get to plan and be the bride instead of the bridesmaid. Jace says he wants to be the "ringmaster" (I think he means ringbearer), and I think that's probably pretty accurate as it will definitely be a circus.

Thanks to all of you for being there for me throughout the past few years. As I've said before, it means more than I could ever put into words. On many bad nights, the comments and friends from this little spot on the internet kept me going. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-14T10:02:00.000-05:00

Potty Time

2012-02-10T19:13:00.003-05:00

Right now I'm sitting on the step stool in the bathroom giving both Seth and Evany moral support as they hang out on their respective potties.

Yes, I have a three and a half year old who isn't completely potty trained yet.

It is what it is. We started just before school started and it has just been a slow process. He does a great job at school and during the day but we just cannot seem to conquer the poop. If this had happened when I was younger and only had Ava or Jace, I would have felt humiliated. Ava potty trained before she turned two and I remember feeling a little smug about it. Then Jace trained a little later, at about two and a half, but it took just a few days and he was good to go.

I think I was due a more complicated potty training journey, and I am definitely on it! I could be stressed out but instead I figure he will most likely be 100% potty trained before he goes off to school, and when has Seth ever done anything easily anyway? (Never is the answer to that, in case you were wondering).

The perk, I guess, is that Evany is now showing lots of readiness signs so they get to work on these new skills together. The reward for me will be going from having three in diapers to just one! Evany is working on a new record for sitting on the potty, I think...she just asked if she could move her potty to the living room so she could watch "'Pets." (Wonder Pets)

John's off finishing up the floor he's been installing at my aunt and uncle's house. He's finished his first week at the new job and while I think things have been crazy because the distribution center is still being built, he seems to really be enjoying himself.

Coen just had a well visit at the pediatrician and he's doing good! Long and relatively lean with a huge head. I thought he was doing great developmentally...he's sitting up on his own and beginning to crawl, rolling all over the place, and just generally strong. But apparently because he's not yet playing peek a boo or waving bye-bye the doctor was concerned that he was delayed. I didn't realize those were even six month milestones (his adjusted age). At first, I felt pretty bad about missing the memo that those things were a 7-9 month skill, but when the doctor wanted to have him evaluated for services because of it I got a little frustrated. It felt like overkill.

Early Intervention services have been a Godsend for Seth and Evany, but it took well over a month to get each one of them evaluated when they desperately needed it because of how overloaded the early intervention system gets. Unless there is a major disability involved, each child is required to have a 20% delay in more than one area before they are eligible for services. Coen meets every milestone on the 7-9 months chart except for the line "Plays Peekaboo/Waves Bye-Bye". I don't think that one empty check box when he isn't even technically classified as 7 months old yet is a red flag. There are so many kids out there who need services that I just can't call the evaluator up with a straight face and say that my doctor is concerned because my kid doesn't play peekaboo yet.

I hate disagreeing with doctors. But if life with Seth has taught me nothing else, it's that I know my kids better than anyone else. One fifteen minute appointment when you've met the baby all of one time before is not long enough to decide he is delayed. I have delayed kids! I know what that looks like. As of now Coen isn't one of them. After I discussed all of that with her, she told me to bring him back in a month, and in the meantime to really work on his peekaboo and waving skills, and that we would 'reevaluate' then.

I'm by no means an expert, and I put great faith in a doctor's knowledge, but I'm feeling a little frustrated. Our last pediatrician was so great about making everything a joint decisions and conversation. She presented the options, told me her opinion, and asked for mine. I don't really get that in this practice, and I hated walking out of the office feeling like a bad parent because I turned down services Coen doesn't need right now.

Wow, that got a little ranty, huh? We all have colds and may be going a little stir crazy, so I'll use that as my excuse. I'm off to put the kids to bed and cuddle with my supposedly developmentally delayed baby who is currently rolling/creeping/crawling his way down the hallway after his brothers and sisters.

Have a great weekend!

Our week

2012-02-06T21:32:00.001-05:00

John started his new job today! It went well and he's really excited. We all missed him today but it was really exciting to see the smile on his face after work and hear about how excited he is about this job! This time I've had with John around all day every day has been pretty great. While we were definitely feeling the money crunch before he started work, having this six weeks to just be together all the time was exactly what we needed to readjust to this crazy life of ours.

Funny how God's timing is always pretty much perfect even when it doesn't match up with your plan, isn't it? I'm terrible about trying to make everything meet my own timeline, but I'm (slowly) learning that forcing something into my own time frame never turns out as well as waiting for God's timing.

In other news this week, Coen turned 7 months old! He's pretty great. He started babbling MaMa and DaDa over the past few weeks, although he has no concept of what he's saying, of course. He's sitting up and creeping all over the floor and generally causing a ruckus. It's pretty awesome, although I wouldn't be too sad if he started sleeping a little more.

This next picture makes me happy. I love reading. I was that nerd in school who walked home from school with her nose in a book, so I absolutely love seeing my kids reading of their own volition. And the fact that Jace's popsicle has been abandoned for his book makes me feel giddy.

My kids pick at each other. A lot. I'm probably understating it, actually. It can get intense here. The older two and younger two, especially, are at one another's throats. I'm sure part of it is that they're all reasonably close in age. Seth and Evany, especially, have been sounding eerily like the seagulls in Finding Nemo lately. "Mine!" "Mine!" "Mine! "Mine!" It's lots of fun. Which is why when I happen upon then all getting along happily, I've been known to dive over a couch to find a camera to document the event.

I frequently find parenting overwhelming. The great thing is that just as frequently I find it incredibly rewarding. My heart could just burst with love for these five little hooligans.

Seth B. Update!

2012-01-30T17:14:00.001-05:00

An update about Seth on Profoundly Seth? No way.

Seth is doing really well.

He is finally back to wearing his processors every second he is awake after quite a while of the processors causing him pain. Turns out that he has been having chronic ear infections and they were affecting the way things sounded to him. So he is going in on Friday to get some longer lasting tubes put in his ears. This will be his third set. Fingers crossed that the new tubes will fix that and his ears can get back to normal!

He loves his preschool and is talking so much more now! I was walking out of the doctors office today and as I reached for the door handle he jumped in front of me and said "I got the door, Mom!" His expressive language is still delayed for a 3.5 year old, but his receptive language is right on track and he is making progress in leaps and bounds.

It's been a little disheartening to see him behind his peers, especially when it feels like we are always hearing about kids who are implanted early who never have a delay, but there are so many factors besides just his hearing loss...he could have delays due to his prematurity or something else, and he has had other developmental delays as well, so it could be that this is just part of life for him.

We know he hears very well, so the rest will come with practice and time. He learns new phrases and words every day, and he's making progress, so I've had to throw my own expectations out the window and realize that just like with everything else, Seth will do everything in his own time. (See: Not eating until he was over a year old, not crawling until 12 months, and not walking until nearly 20 months. The kid is STUBBORN).

In the meantime, I remind myself that Seth is first and foremost a kid. Not a deaf kid, not a delayed kid, not an implanted kid...a kid. A kid who happens to have cochlear implants. I'm so happy he has them, so happy to see how well he hears, but I don't want to let his implants or his level of speech define him.

Seth is a happy, funny, caring, wild, exuberant, mischievous little boy. All the rest are details. =)

Speaking of details, Seth's reactive airway disease diagnosis got officially changed to asthma today. We've been expecting that it would once he was older, and it doesn't change much, but Indiana's winter has been harder on him than I expected it to be. He's currently getting Pulmicort twice a day as a maintenance medicine to keep him from having issues and has been for months, but he's already had three bouts of bronchitis this winter and we've been having to do rescue treatments at night when his breathing gets bad. It's almost always at night that he has issues unless he is otherwise sick, but it's becoming more and more common. We're doing allergy testing when he finishes his latest course of steroids in case an allergy is contributing to everything.

Do any of you have experience with kids with asthma? I'm kind of at a loss. Ava has mild asthma, but it doesn't require much and she has an albuteral inhaler to use as needed. Normally it doesn't affect her unless she's already sick. Seth's asthma presents differently and it just seems like there must be a better way to control Seth's asthma than giving multiple Albuterol treatments every night on top of the Pulmicort but I don't know what it is. And to be honest I'm turning into a little bit of a basket case because he's always perfectly fine one minute and a breathing terribly the next and it's always at night after he's in bed and farther away from me.

So that's the update on Seth and thank you in advance for anyone who has any asthma advice for me!

These kids of mine.

2012-01-26T23:34:00.001-05:00

I love my kids. They're amazing. But as I'm sure most of you know, this phase of life is not a walk in the park. Actually, is any phase a walk in the park? I have yet to find a phase that is a walk in the park. It's all fun, but it can all be hard, too.

I sometimes get overwhelmed with having five young kids at home. Usually it's the older ones that cause problems though...fighting or name calling or otherwise being sick of one another. So sick of each other they completely lose it if I separate them. Makes total sense, right? I've been used to Ava and Jace's love/hate relationship for a while now. But now Seth and Evany have been coming into their own and they will. not. stop. picking. at. each. other. I could often mistake them for the seagulls in Finding Nemo. "Mine! Mine! Mine! MINE!"

It's adorable, as I'm sure you can imagine.

But lately, it's been like the perfect storm around here. Ava is 7 going on 17 and so emotional. If you critique anything she does at all she says we must not love her and runs to her room. Jace is just exhausted after school and he falls apart incredibly easily. The other night at church he threw a tantrum that lasted almost 30 minutes. Because I said he couldn't have candy. Seth has begun waking up in the middle of the night and turning on all the lights and watching the television, Evany has hit the terrible twos with a vengeance and is often seen throwing herself to the ground in protest of everything, and Coen is suddenly back to waking up every two hours at night. Also, they've decided they hate everything that I cook except for one thing. Yogurt. They like my yogurt. You can't live on yogurt alone, but my kids are apparently going to die trying. Ava and Jace have been known to burst into tears when I tell them what I'm making for dinner. It's really, really great for making me feel self-confident.

I am at a loss. I know this is a season of life, and I try hard to make sure I'm finding sweet moments throughout our day to remember when things get ugly. Overall, my kids are well behaved and reasonably kind and obedient. But right now, I have to say I'm fairly certain my children have formed an army to rise up against me. Is this what kids do in the winter when it's too cold to go outside? Go insane?

The upside is that if they are in cahoots against me, at least it means maybe they're bonding with each other and someday when they're older they'll sit around a table laughing as one of them recounts the story of how they used to drive me crazy. "Hey guys, remember that time Mom locked the door so she could go to the bathroom and we picked the lock just so we could bug her and steam came out of her ears? That was AWESOME!"

Working hard for the money

2012-01-22T21:31:00.003-05:00

I had this great plan to take pictures every day this year. I didn't do it. I also planned to blog every day. I'm not doing a very good job of either! This post is boring without pictures, so I'm including completely unrelated cell phone pictures from this week to make it more interesting. =) (And yes, they are almost all of Coen. I promise I love my other children just as much!)

I start back to school at the beginning of next month and this month I have been helping John with his job hunt here as much as possible, even when the most I could do was be moral support. When John moved here in December, he did it without a job. He had spent a couple of months searching for jobs here from Florida but it didn't go very well, so he ended up deciding to take one of those steps of faith we always talk about and move here before securing a job. He had been at his previous job for over 7 years, so this was pretty huge.

See the baby? John was doing laundry and cracked himself up.

It was pretty scary for both of us (And possibly stupid, which is why I didn't post about it before). We saved up enough money to get through January job searching and did a whole lot of praying, and John did a whole, whole lot of job searching. The first couple of weeks were tough. I had a hard time figuring out how to be supportive without being overbearing, and sometimes that meant we went along to pick up applications or hung out in the car while he went to interviews, just so that I could be there to be a sounding board when he got done or even just be there for moral support.

Harris and Coen at Harris' 2nd B-day Party! Harris LOVES babies!

The month was about half over when we started to get a little (a lot) stressed out, but I still felt a real peace about it all. Then one day he got a call for a job that he had had applied to quite some time before that we'd never heard back about. It was basically his dream job, and it's only ten or fifteen minutes from our place. We were both really cautiously optimistic, and he started on a series of interviews with some different people in the company.

Coco and Jo!

After his final interview on Friday the phone rang and he answered and was quiet for a very, very long time. I was sure it was bad news, and I my head started spinning with different ways to make him feel better. But finally, he smiled, got off the phone, and told me he was offered the job!

Date Night! Pretty Exciting.

I'm just so proud of him! This is the kind of job he's been dreaming of for a really long time and I think getting it really made him feel validated. I know he's happy to be here with us, but I also know how important it is for men in general to not only feel like they're providing for their family but also feel good about what they do, and I know that at this job he will be able to do both!

So proud of him.

And that's been our week.

I swear I'm going to get better about posting. Stop laughing. I'm serious.

Reflection

2012-01-18T23:57:00.000-05:00

In the past, John and I only pursued counseling when things in our marriage were in crisis.

It did not go well.

(That is an understatement)

There seems to be anecdotal evidence that supports the theory that marriage counseling is worthless, and I think that might be because generally, couples wait to go until things are so far gone that it's almost impossible to recover.

In any case, when John and I began to reconcile we both agreed that counseling was a non-negotiable. In November, we had our first first session. We were both incredibly nervous and as we drove up the lane to the building I kept saying "We're on the same team. The same team."

Because the last time we'd seen a counselor we had barely been on the same planet, much less the same team. And lots of times the last way something was is the way you expect it to be, even when all the circumstances have changed.

But it was nothing like we expected it to be. It was so much better.

Better, but still not what I expected, necessarily. Yesterday I found myself asking our counselor if we were doing something wrong because this transition has been so much easier than either of us expected it to be.

He laughed.

Probably the most useful thing we've gotten out of counseling so far is some very in depth personality profiles. John and I each took a pretty extensive test and I don't think either of us thought much of it; it was just something we had to do for our counselor. And when we saw the sheets with the DISC diagrams and all the lines and squares and skewed boxes, I totally lost track of what everything meant until we started going over the results.

The counselor, who has not known either one of us long enough to know if our profile was correct or not, began expounding on what our results said about us, and within about ten seconds John and I found ourselves staring at each other in awe.

"Is this magic? This seems like magic!" I whispered frantically.

It was very accurate for each of us, to say the least.

Later on at home, John and I were hanging out on the couch and reading the sheaf of papers that explained the diagrams in detail and throughout the first half we both kept exclaiming excitedly about what the paper said about us. "Hey, this says I'm a self starter!" "Hey! This says I'm well liked!" We were both feeling pretty good about our personality profiles. I jumped up to check on one of the kids after bedtime and when I came back, John was frowning. "I don't think I like mine anymore." He said. He had reached the second half of the report, which detailed the not so great aspects of our personalities. I shook my head. "You have to own it, though. Good and bad, right?" I responded.

Of course, that's before I read my second half. We were both a little bummed reading the negative sides of our personalities. But in the past day it has started so many conversations between us...it has added a new level of clarity to past disagreements, to the way we currently interact, and I really think that having a better understanding of ourselves and of each other is going to be invaluable in the future.

So counseling when not in crisis? I'm a fan. But counseling alone isn't a miracle cure, and the real work doesn't happen in someone's office. It's at home, in the midst of a life with kids and chaos and craziness. In fact, counseling is sometimes a nice break from that craziness.

Coen is six months old!

2012-01-15T21:40:00.002-05:00

Coen is six months old! He's actually closer to six and a half months now, but he was still recovering from his bout with RSV/Pneumonia/Bronchiolitis, so I didn't want to bug him taking pictures. He's finally feeling good again and so I can put his official six month post up!

This guy, along with his brothers and sisters, have been getting lots of extra hugs today. Tripp Roth's passing has really affected both John and I. I don't know his mom Courtney personally, but I am in awe of how what an amazing mother she has been to Tripp. My heart aches for what she is going through right now. It has been such a timely reminder for me to slow down and enjoy every second with my kids. I know what it's like to hold your baby and wish for them to take that breath that never comes, and, God willing, I never want to go through it again. But what I do want to do it make sure that I take advantage of every moment I have with these kids I am so privileged to raise.

Coen is pretty great. He's developing an entertaining sense of humor and cracks up laughing when he sees something that he thinks is funny. He's starting to get more interested in toys and has found his feet, which he thinks are very cool. He's rolling both ways and creeping about a little bit, but not crawling or sitting on his own just yet. I'm not positive of his weight, but when he was in the hospital he weighed in at almost seventeen pounds. One of Coen's favorite things to do is listen to John play the guitar. He's a little more attached than Evany was, more like Seth at his age, and it's been a little challenging because Seth is still quite attached himself. So it has been really nice to have John around to help out. Coen has started to spend a few minutes in his jumper or hanging out on a blanket, but he never lasts long until he just wants to be held again. Thank goodness for baby carriers! And thank goodness for sweet, adorable baby boys to put in them

dd

Where We're At.

2012-01-12T23:24:00.002-05:00

Things in our neck of the world have been pretty crazy. We have been in a state of adjustment here and it has been, in a word, amazing. I struggle, sometimes, with what to say and how to say it on this blog and in this process because I'm torn. I want to share because we have so many people who have been praying for us. But how to share? If I talk about everything too positively, it feels like I'm sugar coating things and I may inadvertently give the impression that this is a walk in the park. If I focus on the hard parts, then I'm being negative.

I know that there are women out there who read my blog who have gone through or are going through a divorce and I want to be sensitive to that. I know when John and I were apart I would read stories of husbands or wives coming home and wonder what I did wrong that kept John from coming back. I don't ever want anyone to read this and think that there is anything better about me or my life than them or theirs. It's just not true. Conversely, I don't want anyone to get the impression that this is too hard to be worth it, or that reconciliation isn't a viable option. It's tough to find that balance since in the end, blog posts are simply a glimpse of a slice of life.

All that being said, things are pretty great here. The transition has gone so much more smoothly than I thought it would, and I know that is totally a God thing. We have been under plenty of stress in the past month but have handled it better than I could have imagined. We are seeing a great counselor who has been really helpful and just started going to a marriage seminar at church. John got thrown into the deep end with the kids when I was in the hospital with Coen and he did great. It's been amazing having help cooking and cleaning and kid wrangling.

I did not expect things to go this well. I thought it would be harder. Probably, at some point, it will be harder. Such is life. But I did shock myself one afternoon when I came home from an afternoon lending an ear to a new friend who was going through some tough things. I walked through the door, just gutted and sad from hearing about the situation she was in, and I walked up and I hugged John for a really long time and then I pulled back and looked at him and I said "Thank you for not coming home until you were ready."

Then we both laughed because it sounded so ridiculous. I think he thought maybe I was drunk.

But I meant it.

John had to hit rock bottom on his own terms, with me completely out of the equation, and decide what he wanted from his life on his own before rebuilding our life together would ever have worked. He had to want to be with us so badly that he had to work for it, not fall back into our lives because it was easy. We had to be what he longed for and missed, not his fallback plan.

And thank God, that happened. I never knew it would when I packed up the kids and moved to Indiana, but it was the absolute best thing we had every done. John has shared a lot with me about things that happened or things he went through after we left Florida that show that us leaving was a bigger wake up call than I could even have imagined. And my living in Indiana when John began to do the work in Florida to rebuild our relationship was a blessing in disguise. I can't tell you how many times I cursed being across the country from him those four months we were discussing reconciliation. I thought it would never work being so far away from one another.

But being so far away from each other for those months was the best thing that could have happened. We had lots of time to talk with no other expectations. We discussed what life would look like at length. We had about every conversation you could have on every topic we could think could ever be an issue. And interspersed throughout, we had visits. Three in all, two in Indiana and one in Florida, and we slowly stepped back into our life. Additionally, we didn't tell the kids anything at all until we were positive we were completely and utterly committed to making it work. No trying to make it work. No giving it a shot. Committed. Period.

And it's because of those four months and all the prep work we did that this transition has gone so well.

Well, that and God.

Well, that and God and the fact that we love each other quite a lot and we're both willing to do that work.

The first night of this seminar we are attending at church was awkward. We sat at our table with all the couples and the facilitator instructed us to introduce ourselves, tell how long we'd been married, and what we most love about our partner.

I won't lie. I balked. Did we really have to tell everyone, air our dirty laundry? Wouldn't it be easier to just gloss over everything?

But when has glossing over anything helped at all? And we weren't at a dinner party; we were at a marriage seminar, after all.

So I took a deep breath, and I looked at everyone, and I told them. "I'm Ellyn. This is John. We were married for six years, and then we got divorced. Now that's a funny story, believe me! And now we're back together."

And that's the beginning, not the end. If this were a movie, we'd be riding off into the sunset right now. Instead we're just starting out. Not from scratch, but starting out all the same. And instead of the fancy moving ending we'll have a full life. Screaming kids, disagreements, money problems. Cookouts with friends, yelling too loud at the kids' basketball games, date nights here and there. Someone to come home to.

No, not just someone. My someone.

Sounds pretty amazing to me.

Coen's very own One Man Cover Band!

2012-01-05T21:49:00.000-05:00

This has become a nightly routine in our house the past couple of weeks. Coen is a big fan, and so am I!

Not a Know It All

2012-01-03T17:31:00.000-05:00

When I was pregnant with Ava I was excited to have a baby. This baby was totally abstract, of course, since I had no experience with kids. I would do all the things you did with babies. I would rock her, and dress her up in immaculate outfits, and take pictures of her eating her first bowl of rice cereal. I would know just how to parent, just like I knew just how to be a good wife (Hah!).

Every knows everything about something before they know anything about it, it seems to me. Myself included. Before I was a parent I knew everything about how to be the perfect one.

Which is totally laughable now! After Ava and Jace and Eli were born I was pregnant with Seth and I thought "This time, this time it will be easy." I figured we'd been there, done that, made mistakes, and that now I would have figured out how to do it all really well. And then Seth was born, and almost every bit of parenting knowledge I had when out the window, because he required a completely different skill set than the first two. From almost his first breath, he required a wholly different parenting style than I had ever used. I often say that Seth is my attachment parenting baby, and it wasn't by choice. Whatever the reason, Seth needed more from me than either Ava or Jace ever had. On the first day of preschool for both of them they ran into the classroom without a backward look. With Seth, there are times when I still have to convince him he'll have a nice time and no one will torture him.

Then Evany came along, and she was and is more independent than any one of them. And my parenting style shifted all over again. While each of my children have similarities, there are more differences between them than you can shake a stick at. While I know many people ascribe to one parenting philosophy for all of their kids, one type of discipline, one plan, I don't know if it's that simple. These kids are people, after all. And people are different from each other.

A friend of mine from high school commented on my facebook one day and said that he though, given that I had a bunch of little kids, I should teach parenting classes. "What's your parenting philosophy?" He asked me.

I laughed and responded. "My parenting philosophy? Don't let them die."

The fact of the matter is not one of us is going to be that perfect parent. No matter which philosophy of parenting we choose to follow, parents are going mess up. We fail our kids. In big and little ways. Whether we miss the big game or say "hang on, in a minute" one to many times because we're busy with something else, they are going to be disappointed in us someday. It's hard to be selfless enough, to give everything to your kids, and it just doesn't occur to children to expect anything less. Selfishness creeps in because that's what selfishness does.

So I know I will never be the perfect parent. My temper is too quick, my attention span too short. I hate crafts. Sometimes I forget to record the important moments. Sometimes I lose their teeth before the tooth fairy can collect them. But I can do my best to keep them safe, and healthy, and alive. I have high expectations for them, because I believe firmly that people often live up to your expectations, whether they high or low. And then, I can do one better and try to make sure that I consciously engage them more than I inadvertently disappoint them and teach them along the way. About God. About life and people and grammar and history and maybe even some math. Parenting is hard. It doesn't get easier. There seems to be an inverse correlation between less diapers to change and more attitude. It is, and always will be, both the best and hardest thing I have ever done.

And it is, I'm completely sure, something I will never, ever, know everything about. I'm also just as completely sure that it is the thing I will most enjoy learning for the rest of my days. I'm so blessed to be these kids mother...I really hope that one day, they same thing about me being their mom! (And if not, I hope they at least say that I was entertaining!)

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T20:36:00.000-05:00

We got to come home from the hospital this evening! Talk about answered prayers. We're holed up at home tonight doing lots of breathing treatments. John's cooking steaks as we speak and the kids are having their own New Year's Eve party in their room.

Pretty much perfect, if you ask me!

And here is a quick video of Evany wishing everyone a very happy new year!

See you next year, everybody!

Troublemaker

2011-12-29T19:15:00.001-05:00

As you may have seen if you happen to read my tweets or face book posts, Coen is in the hospital. The whole family has been sick this week (and to think I was so excited about doing everything as a family! That'll teach me!). Most with just colds, but John and Seth had it a bit rougher than everyone else. Then Coen suddenly decided to play catch up and got so sick we decided he should go into the ER last night. They did x-rays and some testing and found that he has both pneumonia and RSV, but sent us home after a dose of steroids and antibiotics with orders to do breathing treatments every four hours.

We headed in this morning to see the kids' pediatrician and while it seemed like he was doing better at first, as soon as they stuck that oxygen saturation sensor on his foot my heart sank. Even after two breathing treatments he was hanging out at around 75% and really struggling, so he bought himself a hospital admission pretty quickly.

So CoCo and I are camped out at the hospital while John, who is also pretty sick himself, is taking charge of the other four kids, two of whom are also sick. Talk about getting thrown into the deep end! John's handling it like a champ, though, and it's just proof that his great-Dad super powers are returning with a vengeance.

Coen is doing well as the doctors and nurses here do their best to fix him up so we can get hm back home. Of course I would still greatly appreciate some prayers for him and for John and the kids!

The Carousel at the Mall

2011-12-28T16:50:00.001-05:00

This holiday season has been pretty surreal for me. It's been a very long time since I have been able to have my cake and eat it too, if you will. We fought so hard for Seth to have surgery and then he finally got his cochlear implants and heard for the first time, and just when I thought things could get back to normal John left the family. So I had a hearing son, but no husband. Not that Seth had anything to do with John leaving, I just mean that every time things started to calm down, something else happened.

Then I proceeded to go through two and a half years on my own. By the end of it, I was content. I didn't even completely realize that I still wanted it to be different. I was used to living alone with the kids, used to being in charge of the remote, used to the solitary nights after the kids went to bed where I could do whatever I wanted to do (after homework, of course). So when John and I began to reconcile in September I knew it would be a process. Adjustments for both of us.

So it was a little scary when at the end of my vacation in Florida we sold our second vehicle, packed all of John's belongings up on top of the van, and began the trek back to Indiana. As a family.

The day after we got back in town, the kids were dying to run around and so we took them to the mall. We got an ornament made with all of our names on it and we had lunch in the food court. At some point in the time we've been away from Indiana, our mall took out the ice skating rink and replaced it with a huge carousel. Seth chose not to eat and instead stood just outside the fence blocking off the carousel and stared longingly up at it through our entire meal. He didn't beg or throw a fit or even ask to ride, he just watched then looked back and smiled at us, then went back to staring at the carousel.

He was tugging at my heartstrings in a real way, but I knew that letting all four of the bigger kids ride the carousel was a waste of money. When we had two kids we always bought for them each no matter what we were buying, even on birthdays. It was all about being fair, but I'm quickly learning that it just doesn't make sense to do that with five kids. Instead, we've been teaching them that sometimes one kid will get a special treat or a gift when the others don't. It's not an easy lesson to teach to small kids, but I think it's a worthwhile one since it's the cold hard truth that life is, in fact, not fair. Handling disappointment with grace is an important lesson, I think.

At the end of our meal Ava said "Mom, it looks like Seth would really love to ride the carousel. Can he ride it?" John and I both explained that we weren't going to pay for everyone to ride that day. Jace quickly piped up. "It's fine, mom. Seth should ride today! He's been waiting really patiently." Now before you think my kids are more well behaved than they are, let me tell you that Jace was basically saying all of this as he began to tear up. He means well, but he also hates getting left out!

I went to see how much tickets were, and since I only had a five dollar bill and the machines only gave tokens anyway, I ended up with three tokens. I walked up to Seth and asked him if he'd like to ride the carousel and the kid's eyes lit up like it were, well, Christmas, and he nodded frantically before he took off running for the entrance. I looked over my shoulder as I followed him and told Ava and Jace that I had two extra tokens if they felt like riding too. They did. Hah!

Seth immediately picked out a huge tiger to ride and Ava and Jace rode a reindeer and an ostrich. I helped Seth up and he gave me a thumbs up and the biggest grin ever. Seth is an amazing kid. He's also a challenging kid. I rarely see him unabashedly thrilled with life. So this was an exciting moment. After getting situated on the tiger, he immediately looked around. "Daddy?" He called. "Dad!" He found John, sitting at the table with Evany and Coen, and waved frantically. "Hey! Look at this!"

It was adorable. And the music started, and we began traveling in a circle, and it was everything in my life that had been missing for so long. Seth. Talking. Smiling. Laughing. Ava and Jace, grinning. And right in front of me each time the carousel completed a revolution? Evany. Coen. John. Waving at us. Smiling. Right there. Every time we came around, there he was. Always watching for us. His face broke out in a grin every time we came into view. He waved, too. "I see you, Seth! I see you, Buddy!"

I looked up at Seth and saw that the smile had never left his face, was wide enough to crack his face in two, basically, and I decided right then and there that I would move onto this carousel if that's what it took. That I would keep feeding the attendant dollars and tokens no matter what, just to keep this look on his face. Frugality be damned. He looked down at me and said "Love you, Mommy!" and flashed me a quick "I love you" ASL sign before grabbing onto the pole again.

All of it, the entire moment, all the kids and John and the carousel, it was one of the happiest moments of my entire life.

As the carousel ground slowly to a halt, I worried that Seth would throw a fit about getting off the tiger. That Jace would demand one more ride. But instead, they all happily hopped down. "Thanks, Mom! That was a pretty good surprise!" Ava said, passing me, as I helped Seth down. Seth got down, started walking, then reached back for my hand. We exited and met up with John and Coen and Evany and we all started walking out of the food court, out of the mall, and into this life we have somehow been so lucky to get another shot at.

And yes, it's cheesy that I would have a moment like this at the mall, but the mall, after all, is where I met John. It's where we worked and practically lived the entire time we dated and were engaged. So for me, the mall is a pretty special place.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T15:04:00.000-05:00

We're back home again in Indiana, enjoying family time and lots of movies, baking and candy making, and just plain old hanging out. It's pretty great.

I hope your holidays are merry and bright!

(Card lovingly made by Ava and including the McCall and Shelton kiddos. Merry Christmas!)

Pretty Great Day

2011-12-18T09:57:00.000-05:00

I graduated Summa Cum Laude from St. Petersburg College yesterday, eighteen months after going back to school after a ten year break while raising four young kids (The fifth was born in the middle of finals week and I was taking a final about six hours after he was born. Maybe I can tell him that story when he's being lazy and doesn't want to do his homework one day). I don't think I have ever worked so hard for something in my entire life. I wasn't originally planning on walking, but dedication to my schoolwork has really taken a lot of time away from the kids and I thought it could be nice for them to see that there is a reward for hard work.

Having my family there to see my graduate was pretty amazing and it meant a lot to me. I'm not yet done...I'm transferring to a new University for the upcoming semester but I've been feeling really burnt out and this little bit of recognition really helped me recharge for what's coming up!

Thank you to those of you who emailed and posted awesome facebook messages yesterday. It was a lovely day! God is so good.

Soaking up the Sunshine State

2011-12-10T14:17:00.001-05:00

Well.

We're in Florida!

I finished my associate degree this semester, and as such, I wanted to do something fun since I have been working so hard on school for the past year and a half. I mean, seriously. I was taking finals about 6 hours after Coen's C-Section. So...I figured some fun was in order. So I packed up the kids on Thursday and we drove to Florida.

Obviously I'm insane. I know.

The entire trip took about 24 hours. Where we live in Indiana to where we lived in Florida is a 19ish hour drive, and we stopped at a hotel to get some rest, so all in all, I think it was a pretty successful drive. I packed lots of snacks and we only stopped for a couple of meals and we're all still alive, so I think that's a win.

Thursday's drive went just great. We left after school was over and there was no traffic and it was all just really peaceful. But I got pretty tired around three AM and so I found a hotel and got all the kids schlepped inside and was so excited about sleeping. But of course by then Seth and Evany had totally gotten a second wind and were bouncing off the walls. The hotel was out of cribs and so I just kept putting them back in bed but they kept sliding off and running around. Problem was the beds were pretty high off the ground and neither Seth nor Evany was tall enough to get up on the bed without help. So they kept getting down then crying to get back up and Ava and I would hoist them back up on the bed and the whole thing would happen again until things finally quieted down around 4:30 AM. One of the younger kids was sleeping with me but I'd be lying if I said I could tell which one it was. Seth just got a hair cut and he and Evany's hair is about same length and texture and I was exhausted so I really have no clue and it was pitch dark.

I woke up when my phone alarm went off at 8 AM and looked around to count the kids, who were all still totally passed out. Coen was sleeping in his bassinett and I saw Ava and Jace and Seth, but I didn't see Evany. I sat up, all groggy and bleary eyed and started calling for her. I'm not sure where I'd thought she'd gone, but I was really stressed about it. I jumped out of bed and got the other kids up to help look for her, and finally we found her passed out halfway under the bed, head on a pillow. She must have gotten off the bed after everyone else passed out and been unable to climb back up, so she just grabbed a pillow and camped out. She's resourceful.

It was cold, in the thirties, basically until we got to Florida. But we stopped at a rest area in Florida to feed Coen and the kids got out to run around, and it was finally warm. It was amazing! It's amazing how fast you can forget what it feels like to be warm outside. The kids loved it.

It's crazy and surreal to be back here. We're hanging out with my mom and catching up with friends and I cannot tell you how amazing it is not to have to open another book until January. When we were coming across the causeway into town Jace looked out at the water and said "This cannot be Florida. I've never even SEEN this lake before!" Ava shook her head at him and said "Jace, really? That's the OCEAN."

What a difference 9 months makes.

Going off road

2011-12-07T22:56:00.001-05:00

I have read several blog posts the past week or so about life's plans. A script. An idea of how life will go. A picture we have in our head of what life looks like at 20, 25, 30 years old. I thought "Hey, I should write about that!" But because it was finals week, and because I'm pretty darn lazy, I posted CoCo's five month update instead. Because that's important. Remembering the little details about these kid as they grow is important and I need this blog to do it because my mind is going, going, gone. I can't remember anything anymore, it seems.

Then, on Sunday, the Pastor preached about the same topic. And I'm fairly certain he and I don't read the same blogs. So it's a very popular topic lately, I'm seeing.

And it's true. If you had told me ten years ago that at 29 I would be sitting at a McDonald's watching my five children play in the playplace while having a heart to heart with a woman who is going through a divorce, I would have laughed at you. "No way! I'm never having five kids!" And when you told me that the reason I was listening to this woman was because I could relate to her, having gone through my own divorce, I would have said "Okay, now I KNOW you're crazy. I don't even believe in divorce! I'm never getting married unless I know it's forever!"

And let's not even get started on what the past version of me would have said if you had told me that I was reconciling with the guy I divorced. In the past I was very vocal about how I would totally be done and gone if a guy ever cheated on me.

Like some people know everything about parenting before they are actually parents, it's easy to out forth black and white statements about marriage before you're married. Or after you're married and before you've gone through it. Or after you're married and you have gone through it. But if there is one thing I have learned, it's that it's imperative not to project our own experiences on someone else's situation.

It would be easy for me to say separated or divorced couples should always wait it out and that it will be worth it. But that's just not true, and telling someone that would be just as wrong as someone saying that no one should ever give anyone who cheats or leaves a second chance. Because neither one is right all the time. As much as we'd like to think it's a black and white situation, there are always shades of gray. So you will never hear me counsel someone to stay away or wait it out. Instead, probably the only and best thing I could and ever would do is simply listen, relate, and then say one simple thing. "You need to pray about this. Then probably pray about it some more."

Because my answer or your answer doesn't actually matter. What's right for me or what's right for you is only right for me and you. Everyone is different and everyone's situation is different, and none of us have a right to judge or tell anyone else what to do. But what does matter is making sure that we are, to the best of our ability, acting within God's will for us. It can be hard to figure out what that is sometimes, and His answer is different for different people. Not because one person deserves more or less than another, but because each situation, no matter how similar it seems, is so varied and intricate that the answer can't possibly be the same every time. It can be easy to judge and say "What's wrong with her? Doesn't she realize?" In fact, it can be easy to make snap judgments. "She must be doing it because he hits her and she has a victim mentality." "She must think she can't do any better!" Those just aren't things we can ever know, and it's silly to speculate about them. For every situation there are so many varied and numerous issues that lead up to something like cheating or a spouse leaving that it's impossible to offer a viable equation that spits out the right answer. There's no formula that is foolproof.

Sometimes, God is going to release someone from a marriage. Sometimes, He'll foster those connections even when you're doing your best to cut them yourself. Sometimes even when we're acting within God's will, the other person in the relationship isn't, and there's that pesky thing called free will...we've all got it.

So the answer is always different. And as our pastor said a couple of weeks ago, God will not always end a storm when we ask him to, but He'll always walk through it with us, not matter how long it lasts. And lots of times? Lots of times he won't let that storm end until we have had enough growth to prove that we won't be searching that storm out ever again. John quoted it back to our Pastor in counseling last week, and he said it really well. "I think it's true. I wanted out last year but I hadn't really changed. And God doesn't let you out of the storm until He know you won't cause the same storm all over again."

So life may not go according to plan. Our husbands might leave. Our kids might die. And on lighter notes, our kids may not be the perfect angels we always thought they'd be. We might not get the perfect job. We may end up staying at home when we always thought we'd have a big career. We might end up at work when all we want to do it be at home.

Life happens. And sometimes it's messy and confusing. My heart was breaking for the woman I was with last night and it was breaking a little for me, too, as I related my own story to her. But seeing that she felt less alone after talking to me made me feel stronger and less alone, too. One of the biggest blessings God gives us, even in sucky situations, is other people. After Eli died, people were pretty ugly at times. Many people don't understand that a full term still birth is no less a baby than a baby who dies after birth. In fact, it wasn't until Eli's memorial service when people saw photographs of Eli that it really clicked. We'd lost a baby. A visible, tangible, perfect baby. Not the idea or the plan or the hope of a baby...we'd lost a 6 pound 6 ounce baby boy with curly black hair who looked so much like his brother and sister I was sure he was about to take a breath.

But among the people that told me I could have another baby, or that there was probably something wrong with him (which there wasn't, for the record..he was perfectly healthy and it was instead my own blood clotting disorder that caused his death), there were the people who met me right where I was and were literally God with skin on to me at a time I could barely bring myself to pray. I felt so alone when Eli died. I didn't know anyone else who had gone through it. The same thing when Seth was diagnosed and John left. Life changing events can leave you feeling really isolated and without support. I just wanted to meet one person who had gone through it too.

And so when people email or call me when their husband leaves or when their baby dies or when they get the diagnosis of deafness for one of their children, I try to remember that even though it would be easy to just feel sorry for myself because I have gone through a trifecta of sad events and am therefore a good example of what not to do, I can instead feel really blessed that I can be "God with skin on" to other people who need it and feel alone.

And so, no matter how far I am from where I thought I would be today, I've got to say that this is a pretty good place to be and I think it's pretty awesome that God brought me here instead of going by my directions.