Meghan GWine

He Gets His Point Across

Meghan — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:57:00 +0000

So, Oliver is 20 months old now. And…he’s still not really talking.

He says a few things consistently. “Uh oh!” and “Hot” are the most common. He’s getting better about saying “Bye!” even though it sounds like “Bah!” and the other day I swear he added a “guys” to it. Cracker and cookie are pretty interchangeable, but there’s a slight difference in how they sound when he says them. He yells “Backpack!” when he watches Dora, and sometimes he’s even willing to say it when we ask him to…

But usually, if I ask him to say a word, especially if it’s not one that I listed above, I get the look of death. Seriously, if looks could kill I would be dead. Time and time again.

You want me to WHAT?

HOW DARE YOU!

I swear he’s just screwing with me.

Insert maniacal laughter here

Maddie

Meghan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 07:01:10 +0000

It’s been three years and her death makes no more sense now than it did in those first few days and weeks.

My heart still aches for her family. For their loss. For their grief. For the indescribable unfairness of it all.

I’m certainly not alone in this. People around the world grieve for her. Remember her. Love her parents. Love her Grandparents.

Love her.

Please, take a few moments today to remember a little girl who, in 17 short months, touched so many lives. Who, three years after her death, still touches so many lives.

If you can, please consider supporting me in my effort to raise money for the March of Dimes in her name. And if you’re near Los Angeles, we’d love to have you join us on the March for Maddie team.

We love you, Maddie. We miss you. Always.

Kisses, sweet girl.

Missing In Action

Meghan — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:20:52 +0000

I know. I KNOW.

I haven’t written anything in this space for a month. And the year started off so well.

I got sidetracked and I have no excuses. Except that I’ve been busy writing over at Babble. And shuttling the boys to and from Baseball practice and games. And working on the house. Which, I’d link you to that site, but I haven’t posted there, either. Sigh.

So, to fill you in:

We have walls! We’re almost ready to paint them, which is very exciting. Except that I can’t decide on paint colors. More on that eventually.
Baseball…is pretty much the story of our lives.
Zachary is thrilled to be able to play this year, too. As you can imagine, watching him play is entirely entertaining.
I had a really funny conversation with the boys a few weeks ago.
For all intents and purposes, Zachary is ready to start Kindergarten in August.
I opened up about something that happened a long time ago.
We had a really disgusting plumbing issue.
Dylan turned 7.
I decided my kids will never be allowed to participate in extreme sports. My heart can’t handle it.
We jumped feet first into the world of LEGOs.
I gave myself a black eye.
And I share with you my tips on photographing your kid’s sporting adventures. Not technical photography stuff, just tips and tricks that anyone can use to get better photos!

Phew. Okay. I’m sick (again) so I’m going to go back to sitting on the couch staring blankly at the television. Hopefully I’ll be back to writing on a regular basis soon. Really soon.

My Medical Mysteries

Meghan — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:06:58 +0000

My children continue to baffle me. I suppose, if I’m honest with myself, this trend will continue for the rest of my life, so I should probably just get used to it. But good lord, sometimes I just can’t figure them out.

We just hit the one year anniversary of finding out about Dylan’s food allergies. Long story short, I took him to the allergist to find out what to do about his seasonal allergies, only to be blindsided by the fact that he has a host of food allergies. Soy, Tree Nuts, and Peanuts, to name a few. Also milk, but mildly. His reaction to the skin test was alarming, and upon seeing the results, his Doctor said it was the worst reaction he’d seen in the past year. At least.

We followed the skin test up with a blood test, just to be as thorough as possible. The results came back from that and showed that he’s also allergic to Corn, Eggs, Sesame Seeds and Wheat. We finally met with the Allergist the other day and, upon reviewing the results of the blood test he said, again, “This is one of the worst reactions I’ve seen. Wow. Look at the corn results!”

After looking Dylan over and talking to us about his symptoms, or lack thereof as the case may be, he declared him a “very lucky kid” because, based on his test results, he should have some major issues associated with eating these foods. But…he doesn’t. His symptoms are all gastrointestinal in nature and usually result in just a mild stomachache. So, we’re going to avoid corn, tree nuts and peanuts, and try to limit wheat as much as possible. Gluten free foods, here we come! He can have things that have eggs in them, but we’re going to avoid plain eggs. Which is fine, because he was never a scrambled egg eater anyway.

Now Ollie, on the other hand, shows some pretty obvious symptoms of food allergies. He’s never had any anaphylaxis issues (thankfully) but he’s usually covered in eczema, has hives on occasion, and often has…nasty…diapers after eating certain foods. After eliminating dairy and green beans (of the legume/peanut family) his symptoms seemed to clear up, with the occasional flare up that we could never figure out.

So, on Valentine’s Day, it was his turn to visit the Allergist. After discussing his symptoms, it was agreed that he most likely suffers from food allergies as well and we decided to do a blood test. Yesterday, I got the results.

He’s allergic to…nada. Nothing. Zilch.

Zero food allergies. Which is FANTASTIC news, but left me speechless for about an hour. I would have bet good money that he had a whole host of food allergies.

So, to sum up: the kid who has crazy, off the charts food allergies shows almost no symptoms of them and the kid who has no food allergies exhibits most of the symptoms of them.

These kids, they keep me on my toes.

So Much To Do, So Little Time to Blog

Meghan — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:03:03 +0000

We have so much going on lately, it’s insane.

Zach got new glasses today…you can read all about it (and see them) over at Babble.

We’ve been working extra hard on the remodel lately, and we’re finally ready for drywall! “Ready” is somewhat subjective, because we have a few things left to do, but they’re coming tomorrow anyway! Whoo hoo!

Updated: Just kidding. Now they’re not coming tomorrow. So, next week it is. Hopefully. Sigh.

Dylan was cracking Ollie up earlier. It was obnoxious until Ollie’s laughter made it adorable.

A Look Back

Meghan — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:46:04 +0000

I’ve been looking through old pictures lately. Specifically, I was looking for a picture of the heart shaped cake I made for DJ on Valentine’s Day in 2005. I KNOW. He’s so lucky to have me.

It wasn’t long before Dylan was born and I’m pretty sure it was the last Valentine’s Day we actually celebrated. And by celebrated I mean we ate heart shaped pizza and cake. At home. Crazy lovebirds, right?

Anyway, it made me realize how different each of our Valentine’s Days have been since then. With each pregnancy and added kid…my how times have changed.

Because I know you’ve spent all day wondering about this very thing, I put together a little slideshow of our past seven Februaries…you can check it out over on Babble!

Deja Vu…All Over Again

Meghan — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:23:50 +0000

Today was Oliver’s turn to visit the Allergist. I wasn’t at all sure what to expect, even though we’ve been down this road before.

After asking all of the usual questions and looking him over, the Doctor asked me if I wanted him to do the skin test or the blood test. I’d thought this might be an option, so I’d already put some thought into it. Getting Oliver to sit still for 20 minutes while the skin test was allowed to do it’s thing didn’t sound pleasant at all. On the other hand, getting him to sit still for a few minutes while they poked him to draw blood didn’t sound pleasant at all, either.

In the end, I opted for the blood test because it includes more foods than the skin test, and I hoped that the blood draw would be quick and painless. Except I forgot to account for the wait time involved at the lab. Whoops.

Luckily, there was only a 15 minute wait, so we busied ourselves jumping on the bench in the waiting room.

Then it was our turn and of course, it took two sticks to get the job done. The first one didn’t work correctly, so although blood went up the little tube thingy it didn’t make it into the collection vial(I obviously am a trained phlebotomist, I know all the lingo). So they tried again on the other arm, and although he’d done fine the first time, the second time he was on to them and he was piiiiised. Thankfully it worked that time and it was over pretty quickly. Except then they couldn’t get the tape stuff to stick, so they were holding the gauze over the bleeding hole in his arm, while trying to get it to stick and all he wanted to do was get the eff away from them.

That was actually the most traumatic part.

Also traumatic was the fact that they had a few tables FILLED with cupcakes, I assume for the clinic staff, and Zach was beside himself that he couldn’t have one. So now apparently I’m making cupcakes later. Yay.

Ollie was fine after about 30 seconds in the car. I think he realized they couldn’t get to him again.

So pathetic

But then we got home, and I thought it would be a good idea to take the bandages off before he took a nap. As soon as I tried to get the first one off he started freaking out. He was screaming and his whole body was shaking. It was like baby PTSD.

Neither of us have ever been so happy to find a pacifier.

Results within the next week. I am not optimistic and assume he’s going to be allergic to everything, just like Dylan.

Hopefully they’ll surprise me.

Song Time with Ollie

Meghan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:03:58 +0000

No related posts.

Lazy Day

Meghan — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:05:37 +0000

While DJ and I were busy working on the house (new kitchen windows! YAY!), the boys lounged around. Ollie made himself comfortable, as usual.

I’m Pro-Choice – Not Pro-Abortion

Meghan — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:10:03 +0000

Yes, there is a difference in those two things. A BIG difference.

Believing whole-heartedly in a woman’s right to choose doesn’t mean that I “like” abortions and celebrate the fact that they exist. It doesn’t mean that I hate babies or children and think abortions are the greatest thing ever invented.

Quite the opposite, actually.

I have three children. I love and adore them and wouldn’t give them up for anything in the world. I love babies and will take any opportunity available to snuggle a newborn. I assure you that I am not an evil, awful person who wants to kill babies.

I hate the idea of abortions. The thought of them makes me feel a bit ill and it saddens me that they occur. It would be wonderful if there was no need for them, but the sad fact is that there IS a need for them. They are a necessary evil, if you will, and until we wake up and realize where the real issues are, and then fix them, there will always be a need for women to receive safe, legal (non-medically necessary) abortions.

It’s easy to yell and scream that abortion is bad and should be illegal. But if abortion was made illegal tomorrow, where would we find ourselves? Making abortions illegal is easy enough, but it opens up a whole new host of issues that we have to be willing and able to address and deal with.

Here are my thoughts:

- Until we recognize the need for, and agree to fully fund social welfare programs, we can’t force a woman to have a baby she can’t afford.

- Until we recognize the need for, and agree to fully fund government programs to protect children’s rights and safety, we can’t force a woman to have a baby she doesn’t want.

- Until we can make contraception affordable and readily available to anyone who needs it, we can’t force a woman to have a baby she doesn’t want.

- Until we recognize the need for, and figure out a way to provide, low cost, comprehensive health care for women and children, we can’t force a woman to continue with a pregnancy that will likely bankrupt her.

- Until we recognize the fact that abstinence only sex education doesn’t work, and start teaching America’s youth about various forms of contraception, we can’t force a teenager to have a baby she’s not prepared for.

- Until we can reliably collect unpaid child support from dead beat dads, we can’t force a single mother to have a child she can’t afford.

- Until we figure out a way to bring people back from the dead, we can’t force a woman to continue with a pregnancy that will kill her.

Yes, adoption is an amazing option. But it’s not the only fix to this situation. There are already hundreds of thousands of children in the US who need homes and not enough people who want to adopt them. Unfortunately, we don’t have a reliable enough system in place to add hundreds of thousands of newborns to those numbers. Yes, it’s an awful way to look at it, but in reality, who is going to care for those children, both emotionally and financially?

I would love to live in a world where (non-medically necessary) abortions are a thing of the past. Unfortunately, we need to make some pretty major changes to our beliefs and policies before that’s going to be possible.

I am a woman. I am a mother. I am pro-choice.

Photo Credit: AlexandraLee via Flickr