Profoundly Seth

Happy Sixth Birthday, Eli

2013-03-27T23:27:00.001-04:00

Eli

It's supposed to get better, this loss thing, and day to day life has. But honestly, March is really hard to get through every year. Reliving the weeks leading up to your birth and the day you were born and all the things I would do differently if I had the chance is pretty heavy.

You'd be six today. If you're anything like your brothers you'd be into silly jokes and jumping off furniture and superheroes...oh, the superhero obsession in this house is insane!

I miss you. I miss the baby you were and, even more, I miss the boy you'd be today. Would you have kept your curls? Your black hair? Would your feet still be huge? This past fall, you would have started kindergarten.

Your dad and I are so, so blessed. Your siblings are pretty amazing and there are many days that it hits me just how great our life is.

But we still miss you. And we still love you. That wont ever change. And I would give anything to see you and hold you again. Always.

Godspeed, little man.

I love you to the moon and back.

Mama

Here we Are - Thanksgiving

2012-11-21T09:40:00.001-05:00

When I stopped writing regularly on this blog, of course I missed it. The post I sat down to write a year ago this week was a hard one to write. After the roller coaster my life had been on, I didn't know what kind of reaction I would get. Of course everyone surprised me, as usual....I have to say that I have been incredibly blessed by the majority of people that read what I write...they have always been wonderful, and I should have known you would continue to be wonderful! I was rereading the comments from that post this week and I was overwhelmed all over again by how everyone was just so genuinely happy for us even though we were embarking on a relatively unusual journey. Still, stepping back seemed best, so that we could focus on living our story instead of telling it.

And here we are, a year later. I didn't speak much about our reconciliation back then, because I was in the midst of it. I didn't want anyone to think I was giving advice or that I knew what I was doing, because we were both just figuring it out as we went along. While John and I never ever questioned our choice to reconcile, it's still been challenging at times! I think it was harder for John in the beginning, when his guilt was weighing him down the most. For me, the hardest part was realizing that I still had forgiving to do even when I thought I had done it, and that I have plenty of my own security and self-esteem issues that have come about due to our divorce that I still struggle with. But thanks to all the things we have learned about each other and about how to handle these challenges without letting them affect us as a couple and a family.

I can tell you now, over a year after our reconciliation, that our marriage is better and stronger than it ever was before. Sometimes it amazes me that it can be like this after everything we have been through, especially since, to be honest, it was never like this before our divorce. We loved each other, we loved our family, but we did not know how to be married, and that combined with all the stress we were under otherwise, our marriage was not anything to model. Now, we're older and definitely wiser, and it shows in every aspect of our marriage.

I used to think that it would be a relief to live somewhere where no one knew our story...where I wasn't that single mom people felt sorry for or where everyone didn't know that John and I were remarrying each other...we had some interesting conversations for sure when we went to get our marriage license or signed up wedding vendors...turns out that when you have the same last name, people tend to think you're related, which is always a little awkward.

But now we've moved a couple of hours away so that Seth can go to a school designed especially for children who are deaf but use spoken language, and no one knows us here. I go to MOPS, we found a new church, we have been here more than three months, and as far as anyone knows, we're just a typical family with five children. I thought it would be a relief, but in all honesty, I hate that our story is a secret because our story has turned into something that I am proud of!

Our life isn't easy. It never will be, honestly. We continue to be put in situations that stretch our faith and our tenacity. John currently commutes nearly two hours to work so that Seth can go to his new school. It's hard on him. Seth has to commute, himself, logging long days at school and on the bus home. I miss them both like crazy. In many ways, I'm still the sole caregiver most days, and it's hard! It's hard on me and it's hard on John because of how much he wants to be here. I'm still in school, which sometimes feels like it will never end!

But no matter how hard life can be, it's even more blessed. John has a great job where he is respected and liked, and in this economy, that's something that many people don't have. Yes, I'm on my own with the kids a lot, but having John's emotional support makes a bigger difference than you'd probably realize. I never feel alone. Seth is gone all day now, but in just two weeks at his new school, he has made truly incredibly progress. As a parent, you fight for what your child needs without thinking about how it will affect you. When I realized Seth would see his teacher more waking hours of the day than he would see me, I was really sad. So seeing such immediate progress for him was exactly what I needed to know that the sacrifices we are making so that he can go to this school are completely worth it. Our kids are getting older, and I am amazed every day at just how secure they are considering how crazy their lives have been for the past few years. I love the way that God has protected their hearts and allowed them to accept every new change with grace and, most of all, adjust to being a complete family again so well.

This Thanksgiving, I have a lot to be thankful for. My life is crazy, and beautiful, and blessed, and we're still choosing joy. One of the things that I am most thankful for is that I have been able to form so many relationships through this blog. I can't tell you how many emails I have received from women who are hurting, or families who are struggling through a stillbirth or dealing with the shock of a diagnosis of hearing loss. It is truly my privilege to be able to come alongside these families in a small way. There is nothing like that moment when all the hope drains out of you in the midst of a tragedy. I can't guarantee an outcome...I don't know what will happen. But I do know, without a doubt, that great good can come from great sorrow, and I have been blessed enough to see it happen over and over in my life.

Happy Thanksgiving. I hope that you all have something wonderful to be thankful for this year.

Wedding Pictures!

2012-10-01T09:58:00.003-04:00

My wedding was not the most traditional. We kept some old traditions, added new ones of our own, and threw others still out the window, and in the end we had a day that was completely ours. That day and the ones leading up to it were stressful and wonderful and frustrating and fun. I am thrilled that we had a wedding with all the trimmings this time around, but I can tell you right now; I never want to go through all of that again! I had an amazing week with my friends and family and now I have some beautiful pictures to show for it thanks to my close friend Amie Jones (I would link her blog but I don't think she blogs anymore. Get on that, Amie). Here are some picture from our day, picked out of many more. I was trying not to post too many, but it's hard! Thanks to all of you for being a part of our day, and I'm still so sorry the simulcast didn't work!

Still missing

2012-09-24T08:39:00.001-04:00

A year ago two people I was very close to died. I still miss them and think about them literally every day.

Sara's laugh was infectious, her sense of humor both sweet and dry, and my friends and I will still mention one of our old jokes and laugh before it makes us feel like crying.

Sara was the best example for living a good life I have ever seen. Despite all she went through, all she suffered, she always, always chose joy. Every day I try to the same. I hope she'd be proud of me.

Jeramy was the most charismatic person I've ever spent time with. As a child, I would follow my older cousin around and beg him to hang out with me. He always did. He was always good for soul searching conversation and he was always interested in what everyone had to say be had a way of always making you feel special, important. Loved.

I miss them. I always will.

Third Time is a Charm

2012-09-11T09:46:00.001-04:00

Seth just began his third year of preschool. While we are waiting on his placement at the school we moved here for, he is attending a local preschool here in town. Seth has always been a really shy kid. He's very attached to me in particular, and sending him off to school each year has been a big challenge. He's always been "that kid"...the one that is screaming outside the classroom while everyone else is trying to drop their kids off without letting Seth set their own kids off in a big bawling chain reaction. His first year in preschool he cried every. single. day. for the entire year. Last year he cried at drop off for the first half of the year.

As Seth's understanding and language improved, I was able to work more with him on planning ahead. And last year we did a whole lot of work at school at getting him into the classroom appropriately and greeting the teacher, finding his name on the chart and putting his things away. We ended the year on a really high note and Seth was finally excited about school. Seth is extremely stubborn; he does things when he does them. Would his third year in preschool be the charm?

After a summer off, I had no idea what to expect. Seth has really come out of his shell the past several months, so I had a feeling this year might be different, but I was still completely unprepared to pull up in car line, unbuckle his car seat, and stand there as my four year old grinned at me, yelled "Bye, Mom!" and ran off into the building without even a backward glance.

I texted John: "Seth just ran inside the building happily. He didn't even look back. This has never happened...I don't know how I feel about this!" He texted back: "You're crying, right?"

And now, back at home, my emotions are still all over the place. Seth has always been the child, out of all five, who has needed me the most. My other children are independent and social and have never felt even a qualm at heading off to school or church or wherever. I'm proud of that...proud that they feel secure leaving. I know that Seth gaining this confidence is a great thing and that it means we've done something right.

But of course, I still cried. Happy tears at how he is growing up, sad tears at how he is growing up. I'm a girl, I can have conflicting emotions, right?

Here's Seth on his first day of school at 2, 3, and 4 years old.

Not much for content, but there are pictures!

2012-09-09T19:47:00.002-04:00

Hello!

Well, we've moved. Throughout last year it became clear that the school system we were a part of did not have the resources or understanding to offer Seth appropriate interventions. We've learned that some areas of the company are very well versed with cochlear implants and what users of cochlear implants need to succeed in school, and some areas just haven't had enough exposure. In our school district, Seth was the first child with cochlear implants they had ever dealt with. After a lot of prayer and soul searching, John and I realized that we weren't comfortable spending Seth's pre-K year in the district we were in.

We're incredibly lucky to have a school that is designed just for kids like Seth who are deaf and use listening and spoken language to communicate just a couple of hours south of us. We visited the school and spoke with them at length, and at the end of the visit everyone involved was convinced that this was the perfect fit for Seth. The problem was that we would have to move and then qualiy Seth for an alternative placement through our local school district before he could officially be enrolled in the school.

We were so torn. But in the end John said it best. He said he would do whatever it took to make sure that Seth had all the tools to succeed, and that he was running out of time to close his language gap. (The language centers in the brain are the most flexible and adaptable in the first six or so years of life). And so we started house hunting. Of course it was a total God thing, the house we found. It's just about halfway between John's job and the school, and it was owned by a couple who bought it for their kids while they were college. It's in a college town, and they were pretty thrilled to rent it to a family instead of college students. It's an older home but it is so spacious and literally perfect for us. We met, we liked them and they liked us, and we had a great feeling about it all.

And then a month later we were moving. We've been here for a few weeks now and it wasn't until we were pulling into the garage the other day and Seth was singing out "We're HOME!" that I realized that we were. This house feels like home in a way that no other place has in a long time. Everything has fallen into place in a beautiful way.

Ava and Jace have begun school at a local charter school and they are loving it. I'm loving it. Selfishly I am loving the extra time I have with the little kids while the big kids are in school. I love homeschooling as well, don't get me wrong. But I know this was the right choice for Ava at this point in time. We've had our first case conference for Seth and we're going through the evaluation process to qualify him for the school that will be able to help him. AWANA starts this week and we're quickly learning that with a little extra space the house really does stay much more clean in general. We're down to just a few boxes that are still unpacked and for the first time since she was an infant Ava has a room to herself. Heck, for the first time since Seth was an infant John and I aren't sharing a room with a baby either!

Of course there are sacrifices as well. John has a long commute which makes for long drives for him and long days for me. I'm not burning through my own school work as quickly as I once did. Gas is crazy expensive. We're on the hunt for a new church right now and that's always hard. But overall, we know that for now, this is the place for us to be. And we know that we're incredibly blessed to have kids who make friends easily and who think of their siblings as friends. They've got friends wherever they go!

Evany is finally growing some hair! She's impossibly silly and makes us all laugh. Coen is FOURTEEN months old and is so cute that I kiss his fat cheeks entirely too many times every day. Ava is impossibly grown up for a just-barely-eight year old and Jace is an encyclopedia of random information. Seth thinks he is in charge of everyone else in the house and regularly checks with me throughout the day to make sure he knows where everyone is and when they'll be home. "Ava? Is she at school? Oh, okay." He'll nod soberly, like he's just making sure everyone is where they should be. One day I asked him if he heard the door open, and he rolled his eyes at me. "No, Mom. Dad's at WORK." He didn't say it, but there was an implied "Duh!" at the end of that sentence.

And now I've got five children in bed and a husband to hang out with before the week begins all over again. Pancake batter to make and uniforms to iron. There's always something to get done, right? I hope everyone's doing well!

I'm married!

2012-07-20T13:57:00.002-04:00

Hey! I got married! That was pretty awesome.

It was a great day. A great week! We had friends arriving every day from Wednesday on and we had a blast with all of them. The kids loved having lots of grown ups around to hang out with, and since not many of our bridal party have kids, our kids were a pretty novel concept to lots of our visitors. John's groomsmen, especially, were pretty taken with the kids and really had fun playing with them and letting them tag along on their adventures.

One of the biggest things that John and I wanted out of this wedding was to share it with our friends and family. The first time we got married, we eloped on the beach and while it was beautiful and fun we always regretted not having a "real" wedding. Luckily this time we were able to do everything we wanted to do. My mom came in a couple weeks before the wedding to help out, which made everything better!

I had an amazing bridal party. My best friends from high school, my cousins, and of course my best bloggy friends were all there to stand up with me. And as a last minute great surprise, my best friends from Florida Mara and Laura were able to fly in at the last minute and be there, which was unexpected because Mara had a five week old at home. Her husband graciously offered to hold down the fort and take care of all five kids so that Mara and Laura could make a 24 hour appearance.

After Sara died, a few of us started using a group messaging program together and literally communicate incessantly throughout the day. Not one day has gone by when I haven't talked to them. We were all friends of Sara's, and it meant so much to me that almost everyone made it to the wedding, even though they had to travel from Iowa, Texas, and Louisiana. Alece couldn't make it and we really missed her, but considering she's in Ethiopia on yet another missions trip, I think she gets a pass! And I even found a way to include Sara in the day, as well as members of my family who have passed away. It felt really special for me to have them all with me as I walked down the aisle.

(Picture of Sara on my bouquet. On the other sides are pictures of my grandfather, aunt, cousin, and Eli)

(Mandy, Candy, me, and Amie)

It was so great to finally all be in one place and hanging out in person! My bridesmaid Lindsey offered up her beautiful home to us, which was incredibly sweet of her, and gave us a great place to do last minute wedding craftiness, have the rehearsal dinner and to hang out and talk, watch movies, and sing karaoke until the wee hours of the morning. She's an amazing hostess and it was so great to see how well all of the girls in my bridal party got along even though some of them had never met. By the end of the weekend they were all friends on facebook and following one another on twitter. Hah!

(Clockwise from the top, Jordan, Kara, Logan, Lindsey, and Mandy)

Between everyone, they kept me from stressing myself to death with last minute details and we made it to the wedding day. I couldn't wait until it was time to put my dress on...I got married in jeans the first time and never understood the dress obsession until I found my dress, and now I get it. I kind of want to go put it on right now. It's not easy to feel like you look amazing after having six kids in six years but this dress definitely made me feel that way!

It went by so fast...and then all of a sudden I was standing there waiting to walk down the aisle, watching my kids go before me. Of course Seth ended up walking with me and my mom. No surprise there! And Ava ended up carrying Coen. We're flexible. It's all good. Somehow I made it to the end while my favorite song ever played and there was John and Jordan, my beloved cousin, who was officiating our ceremony and pulling double duty as a bridesmaid. It went by fast. Jordan said some really beautiful things and then we read aloud and signed our own personal copies of the Resolution from Courageous. At one point I was supposed to say something when John did and I missed it so I said "Ditto", which was incredibly classy. And then we were saying I do and Jordan was pronouncing us married all over again.

The reception was so much fun...I wasn't sure how it would go with five relatively small kids but they were all just great. During our first dance they all came out to join us and Ava and Jace danced together. And then they never stopped. All four of the older kids were on the dance floor for the rest of the night with short breaks to eat, have a drink, or sing some karaoke. Coen fell asleep in the stroller and slept peacefully for the next three hours. Then he woke up in time to dance the last dance of the evening with me.

(Evany doing the splits during a breakdance move)

After great food, some great singing and dancing and time with family and our friends, it was time for us to head for Chicago and catch a flight out to Orlando, where we took a cruise and visited with friends in Florida.

We missed the kids like crazy on our cruise but it was really nice to get away and get to sleep in and eat food that other people cooked! It was a great time together, and I'm so glad we went, but you'd better believe we were THRILLED to get home to the kids on Saturday! My mom had a blast with them, though, and I doubt they missed us as much as we missed them.

So now we're home again, gearing up to start school next month. We are looking at an amazing school for Seth and really hoping things will work out for him to go there when school starts. It'll take some juggling on our parts but I know it'll be worth it if we can make it happen! In other news, Coen is officially one and walking and Seth is four. July is a big month in our house!

This is the song I walked down the aisle to...I love every word.

I just want to thank you all for coming along on this journey with us. We appreciate it more than we could ever tell you.

____________________________

(This should be a separate post but let's be honest; it's unlikely that I'll manage another post in a timely fashion)

Oh! I was just about to publish this when I found out that my friend Sarah's new book 31 Days to Lovely: A Journey to Forgiveness is available for FREE until midnight! Sarah is a very close friend of mine who has one of the biggest hearts I've even seen. She has been such a blessing to me and her book is a lovely, convicting devotional about the importance of forgiveness in our lives. Oh, and I was very honored to be asked to write the foreword to her book. Hope I did it justice!

McCall Wedding - (Apparently not) streaming live at 7pm EST

2012-07-07T18:41:00.001-04:00

UPDATE - Guess what! The interwebs didn't work. So sorry, friends. Rest assured it was a beautiful, beautiful wedding and Amie took lots of pictures. Use this post to wish them well and say a quick prayer for them.

There's a lot of love here tonight.

(See the bottom for a picture of the beautiful couple)

---

John and Ellyn's wedding will stream starting in about 20 minutes at:

[There was a URL here before but you no longer need it.]

I plan on recording it and posting it here later as well. This is all assuming the interwebz stay put at the venue. I can make no promises, but John and Ellyn are about to again!

Much love,

Mandy

Live streaming the wedding!

2012-07-07T08:39:00.001-04:00

So, Mandy is going to do her best to live stream my wedding tonight! So excited to share it with those of you who would like to see it. If you're interested it will be embedded here at 7 PM EST.

Oh happy day!!

Daddy's Helper

2012-07-01T15:47:00.001-04:00

We've been fixing up a few things around the apartment to get ready for the influx of guests who will be staying with us for the wedding. Ava and Jace are camping with my mom and since we were short a couple of kids we decided to go out to brunch at a restaurant where kids six and under eat free. It felt like a great deal, especially considering just how much our three "little kids" can eat. It seemed much more simple eating out with five rather than seven, and after we were all stuffed we headed out to pick up a rug doctor to clean the carpets. John thought the kids would nap off brunch while we cleaned, and it almost worked. All three of them passed out in the van within minutes. When we got home, we managed to transfer Coen and Evany to their beds without waking them, but we weren't so lucky with Seth. He had caught a second wind and he was all about helping his dad out.

"Dad! The water! Put it here!" "Hey! That goes there!" He's a bossy kid, for sure, and he bossed John through every step of getting the rug doctor ready. But he wasn't just bossing John around...a minute later I heard "Mom, you sweeping? You done? Okay!"

He was convinced he was integral to the carpet cleaning process. John let him run the machine thinking he'd get tired of it, but no. We offered To let him watch his favorite show but he said no. "Mom," he protested, "I'm helping!" He would tell John "Right here, see? Ok, good, no more!"

A job John thought would take a couple of hours was shaping up I take triple that thanks to Seth's 'help', and I could see John calculating just how long this was going to take. I kept expecting him to ask me to take Seth away so he could work in peace, and eventually he did turn off the machine and look up at me. "Are you hearing all of these sentences he's using?!" John asked me. "He's doing so great!"

Seth shrugged. "I'm just helping dad!"

It's those moments when I see Seth thriving and being a normal kid who can hear just fine when the vacuum is running and boss us around verbally just like any of his siblings that just knock me over in gratitude. These experiences are what make all of it worth it. I can't believe Seth is almost four years old. It's been a roller coaster ride for sure but he's an amazing kid. I can't imagine life twithout him bossing us all around.

Checking In

2012-06-27T15:14:00.002-04:00

We're alive! I know I sound like a broken record but as usual, things are crazy around here! I'm beginning to think this is the permanent state of our lives. The wedding is a week from Saturday and there are a million and one loose ends to tie up. Every time I knock something off my to-do list it feels like I add two more things.

I am so excited. The first time around, John and I eloped on the beach, which was beautiful, but we always regretted not having the whole shebang, if you will, so this is our do-over in more ways than one. When we started planning everything, John joked about how we'd need a "bride's side, a groom's side, and a blog side" at the reception, and what I love about that is that it's actually true. There will be bloggers in attendance, bloggers standing up with me, and a blogger photographing my wedding. I love that some of these women have become my closest friends thanks to this little spot on the internet. Getting to have my family, my blog friends, and all my other friends together with me on this day makes me feel pretty great. It's so surreal to think about everything that has happened the past few years. It's been a lot of work on both our parts, but John and I are so blessed to have been able to put the pieces of our family back together. I just can't wait to make it official again with everyone!

The kids are enjoying their summer...they just came inside from having a big water balloon fight with the neighbors. We now officially have a Pre-K student, a first grader, and a third grader. They're growing up so fast! Last night we were at a cook out with some family and the kids were just running around and blowing bubbles and making us all laugh. It was just a really enjoyable evening and I always try to really soak those times up because as I'm sure you all know, taking a bunch of little kids out in public is almost never as fun as you think it will be. Hah! My mom just got into town for the boys' birthdays and the wedding and we've been having a blast with her too.

We've got some birthdays coming up...Coen will be a year old on Tuesday, which is just insane, and Seth will be four on the seventeenth. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was stressing out about whether Coen would stay put and wait to be born until after Seth's birthday. He didn't of course, but it all turned out perfectly. Every day now Seth tells me "First Coen turns one, then I turn four!" We are on birthday watch around here, for sure.

Speaking of birthdays, I turned thirty earlier this month. It hit me harder than I was expecting! John was great, though, and coordinated a couple of really fun outings with friends to keep my mind off of it. =) On my birthday Ava told me "Mom, you don't look thirty. I think you're just pretending to be old!" I'm fairly certain it was meant as a compliment, but in any case it made me laugh!

I don't have any pictures handy right now because I've been lazy this summer and have yet to break out my good camera, but Mandy and Amie will be here a week from today and I have a feeling there will be many pictures I can post after that. I have big plans to get some one year pictures of Coen, so I'll hav to make that happen, too. I do have a short video to post of Seth reciting the alphabet, though. Letters are such a simple thing, but learning the correct pronunciation of all the parts of each letter can be tough, especially for a kid with cochlear implants. I love this video because he's being his regular goofy self that people outside our home don't always get to see because Seth is a little shy in public. (And yes, at the end, he says "We're done!" Hah! He cracks me up.)

Thanks so much for the comments and emails. I miss writing and talking with everyone. I hope you're all doing well!

&lt;p&gt;jjhjhj&lt;/p&gt;

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.