Next Step!

Verdict: Not pregnant.
Translation: I didn't screw things up and even with all the right post-ovulation meds, I won't get pregnant easily.
Is anyone surprised? Not me.
Truly, this is okay for the next few months. Perhaps in the spring things will be different but for now, my husband and I can focus on preparing for the next step in this grand adventure we have embarked upon: life without TTC.

Basal Body Temperature Charting

If you go back roughly 12 years into my memory, there was a time when I learned that the female body does a rather remarkable thing with body temperature. At that point, my husband and I had been "not preventing" pregnancy for almost a year and I still hadn't conceived. It was at that point that I started researching how hormones impact basal body temperature to see if I could increase our odds.
If you're unfamiliar with what basal body temperature (BBT) is, think of it as your body temperature when you've been asleep for several hours. It is a baseline, where no physical activity is impacting your temperature.
During the first half of a woman's cycle, the BBT is typically 0.4 degrees lower than after ovulation. This part of the cycle is the follicular phase and the second half, prior to menstruation, is the luteal phase.
I thought it might be interesting to share a few of my own BBT charts.
As a quick aside, it is best to use a BBT thermometer when temping. They measure your body temperature to the nearest hundredth degree rather than the typical tenth degree. Also, taking your temperature orally is an option only if you are strictly a nose breather and not a mouth breather. If you are a mouth breather, then you would want to take your temperature vaginally. Gross? Maybe. I absolutely hate mouth breathing so I've always been an oral temper and haven't had to worry about temping the other way.

Chart #1

The red lines, called crosshairs (if you've ever fired a gun with a scope, the name makes complete sense), indicate 2 things. The horizontal line represents the average temperature between the two halves of the cycle. In general, during the follicular phase the majority of the temps should be below the red line and during the luteal phase, the temps will be above the line. The vertical line represents the day of ovulation. It is quite normal to have a temperature dip on the day of ovulation. I will point that out in another chart. At the end of the cycle, if pregnancy has not occurred, the BBT drops back down to the baseline. Typically, menstruation will begin the day of the drop. On this chart, my period started the day after the temp drop.
Perhaps I should have mentioned that the hormone responsible for the increase in body temperature is progesterone. This lovely hormone is secreted via the corpus luteum, a little cyst left behind after an egg releases. Progesterone is vital to pregnancy and in the right dose, it prevents the uterine lining from shedding (the period).

Chart #2

This chart is one of a small handful of anovulatory charts that I have. My cycles aren't perfectly regular, which is one thing that has contributed to our infertility. Maybe I can only see it because I've been building these charts for over a decade, but there is almost a temperature shift. However, it wasn't clear enough for this particular program to pick up. Also, although I had a good dip on Day 19, it was another 20 days before my period arrived so I definitely didn't ovulate. The luteal phase is only going to be 20 days long if progesterone meds are used. Typical length is 12-16 days, thus the nickname "two week wait".

Chart #3

This is the chart for the cycle where Dash was conceived. If you recall, Jackson's stillbirth was March 31st, 2014. On May 7th, I had my first postpartum period, as indicated on this chart. On the bottom of the chart you can see the 3 days where I had medium flow bleeding, and then three other asterisks. The asterisks indicate spotting. In the case of cycle days 8 and 10, the spotting was likely caused by a still-sensitive vaginal wall, something that remains with women after birth for some time, depending on circumstances such as breastfeeding, time since birth, etc. On cycle day 30, the spotting was most likely due to a phenomenon knows as implantation spotting, As Dash continued to burrow into my uterine wall, that can sometimes cause a little spotting.

Bleeding or spotting during pregnancy are quite common, even if it scares each and every mother who experiences it!

Pregnancy tests have improved vastly over the years and can now detect pregnancy incredibly early. For Dash, I used a very inexpensive brand by the name of Wondfo. They're just a skinny little strip you dip in a urine sample. Wait 5 minutes (but no longer than 10 minutes) and then check the test. Even the faintest of lines is considered positive for pregnancy. With Dash, I saw that positive at 9 days past ovulation. She was my earliest positive pregnancy test.

That brings us to Chart #4.

The date for the chart isn't visible because of how I cropped it. Along the top row, the 1, 2, 3, etc are November 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so forth. Back in October I was quite sure I had ovulated so I took my progesterone for about a week. I had to stop taking it because it was causing such bad spotting and my pregnancy tests were still incredibly negative. You can see the impact of the progesterone suppositories in those first 2 high temps.
Once out of my system, my temps dropped but remained fairly erratic. I had thought that they'd steady out and begin to resemble more of my follicular phase on charts 1 and 3, prior to ovulation. Once they steadied out, I would know that ovulation was coming and my husband and I could go to necessary lengths to prevent pregnancy from happening.
I was wrong!
Imagine my surprise last Monday evening when I felt the very distinct pains of ovulation on my left side. Oh crappity crap!
Maybe I was wrong? Maybe it was just a 20 minute gas bubble that didn't move?
But no, Monday morning my BBT was up.
Okay, that one temp didn't mean anything. I had definitely had similar temps over the last couple of weeks.
Tuesday temp? Still up. Uh Oh.
Wednesday temp? Up again.
Once Wednesday's temperature was put into the chart, my crosshairs showed up, indicating that this program detected a temperature shift indicating ovulation.
I believe I mentioned back in October that for me to get pregnant now would cause some major scheduling issues in the fall. I have 2 options and I know women who would see either as completely viable options but for me, there is only 1 that sits well with my beliefs.
Without my lovenox injections, any attempt at conception would be killed by my killer immune system.
Thanks, but no thanks, Antiphospholipid Syndrome.
To me, not taking lovenox is akin to the "morning after" pill and although I don't know when life begins from a religious standpoint, I do know that if "egg meets sperm", a unique set of DNA is formed and that under the right circumstances, that becomes a baby.
Our Baby.
With this in mind, I can't just skip my lovenox, knowing I would be assigning a sure death sentence to any baby of ours if I did so. I have to give that small clump of cells, if they try to grow, every chance it can get.
I have 6 more injections until I take a pregnancy test and find out if God decided that after 13 years of infertility, he was going to give us a hole in one. Remember, I have yet to have a period since May 2014. This is my first ovulation since Dash and only my third since November 2013.
The chances of conception, given my medical history, are less than 1 in 13 (based on my tendency to take 13 cycles to get a positive pregnancy test). Slim at best.
But not zip-zero-zilch.
This weekend, if I see a BFN, it will be the first time in my entire life that I let out a sigh of relief over a negative test.
And if it's positive? Well, I'll jump for joy while mentally swearing at the same time and then work under the assumption that my Father in Heaven has a ridiculous sense of humor and we'll work something out, somehow.
But I'll cross that bridge if it comes to it and not before.

Good News, Bad News?

Yesterday I was given a super rare special treat: I had the entire day off from daycare. I still had an hour of tutoring, but it was at 8pm, after the children had gone to bed.
Since Christmas shopping for Spitfire isn't something I can do while she is with me, I have had a difficult time getting the gifts for her that I've had my eye on. With the day off, I was able to get quite a bit of my shopping done before she came home from school.
Once she was off the bus, I nursed Dash quickly and we loaded up into my husband's car (he had taken the van to help keep the miles off his aging car) and headed down the road to Taco Bell for a quick lunch before driving on out to Leesburg to finish the rest of the errands on my list.
One errand on my list was for something specific for my husband that can't be bought online and I didn't get it done.
Why? Because while I was accelerating into a left hand turn at a stop sign something broke on the undercarriage of the taurus. I heard it. It thumped, rattled, and I could see it bounce behind me in the rearview mirror.
The intersection was not at all busy but there was no safe place to pull over and grab the part, which appeared to be some kind of bolt roughly the size of a pre-schoolers fist.
As I turned into the Taco Bell parking lot, it was painfully obvious that something was wrong as I could hear something moving in the undercarriage of the car. There's a repair shop in the same shopping center, so I parked the car, walked in with my two littles, and explained what had happened. Since the diagnostic is a flat fee, I had them take a look at a few other problems, too.
Might as well do it all at once, right?
Just a few weeks ago we kerplunked $350 into the car for an issue involving the battery that had made his car just stop dead in an intersection. Five days before that we'd put $500 in new--and very necessary--tires.
That part under the car that started clanking around is the sway bar. It's a suspension part that balances the car when turning and yes, one of the bolts that holds it in place was gone so they're going to replace both end links. The brake light issue turned out to be a problem with a master cylinder but I know zero, zip, zilch about that one other than they'll be flushing the brake fluid once the sensor is fixed.
Total for the repairs is just a hair under $840. We've started doing some repairs on our own, but a quick youtube search and watch let me know these were well out of our league. The the repair shop gets our money today. Boooooo.
I wanted to sell the car this last summer but my income was at a minimum and buying a new car under those circumstances didn't seem even remotely prudent but it is looking light we really should have done that. The car has cost us $1700 in a matter of 4 weeks. Even if we had a car payment of $300/month, that's almost 6 months of payments.
So I guess the good news is that no one was hurt but the bad news is that some of those Christmas gifts I bought yesterday morning may have to go back, unless the students I tutor need quite a few more hours in the next 5 weeks. .  . which doesn't seem likely.

Come Unto Christ

On November 1st, a member of our bishopric asked me to speak on November 14th in Sacrament meeting.  I agreed, knowing that it had been over 4 years since I had been given that assignment and knowing the Dash is now old enough to sit in the pew with my husband and be perfectly content without me.

The only thing that scares me more than speaking in Sacrament meeting is giving a Relief Society lesson.

The topic I was assigned was "Come Unto Christ". My heart jumped in my chest because it's a subject I hold near and dear, especially after the events of the last few years, but an added emphasis after some policies were changed in the church that caused quite a disruption. 

I sat down this last week and put my talk together. Each time I tried to pull quotes and stories from here and here, my mind would go blank.  The following talk is what was presented, with a few minor moments of ad libbing in part because I was having a hard time seeing some of the words on the page.

You know those Sundays where you sit down there on a bench or a seat in the back and think, “wow, she’s a really good speaker”?

That won’t be what you’re thinking today. If my assignment had been to teach the congregation how to use the Law of Cosines to solve a triangle or how to find the roots of a 5^th degree polynomial function, then I’d have felt as calm as a cucumber and you would have been well-taught, walking out the doors having feasted on the awesomeness of my mad math teaching skills.

But Sacrament meeting isn’t designed for math lectures, so I’m going to do my best with the topic I have been given. Just hold tight and keep me in your prayers because I may not make it through this.

Every once in awhile, when I have something that is weighing heavily on my mind, I compose letters in my head addressed to whatever or whoever is bothering me. I have never written any of these “letters” out for mailing, but have on a few occasions added them to my journal. Over the last few years, I’ve written more letters than I care to admit; some of them have been to my mother, who passed away a few years ago, a lot have been to other family members, and some have been to the doctors who were responsible for the death of our son 19 months ago.

These letters don‘t remove my burdens by any means, but they do allow me to see a clearer path towards forgiving others, forgiving myself, and understanding the role the Savior has in my life. Sometimes as I write these letters in my mind, I can feel the Spirit guiding me, bringing specific thoughts to the forefront of my mind. And when I do this, when I allow him to carry these burdens, I am learning how I can come unto Christ.

Coming unto Christ is an extremely personal journey for each of us. It’s not like taking the Sacrament, being baptized, or making temple covenants, where others are there as witnesses in one form or another. It’s also not something that you can do once and then never do again.

It took me several days to decide which direction I wanted this talk to go and I’m not entirely certain I picked the right direction. I knew I could rely heavily on several talks that Elder Holland and Elder Oaks have given but I decided that I wanted to talk a little more about some key moments on my journey towards coming unto Christ and staying with him, even though Elders Holland and Oaks are far more eloquent than I will ever be.

The music video to go with the theme song last year is beautiful. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, it’s worth the 5 minutes. Part of the lyrics go like this:

He’s the One who healed the leper, and who brought the dead to life. He’s the One, who fed the hungry, and who gave the blind their sight. He’s the One who walked on water, then He brought them safe to shore, and whenever you may need Him, He’s the One you’re looking for. So let Him in, and He will take away your pain. When you feel His love you’ll never be the same. Come unto Christ. Come unto Him, and by His grace be made holy again. He’s calling your name. He’s waiting for you with arms open wide. Come unto Christ.

I love the simple imagery in that first verse as well as knowing that Christ didn’t just heal those who were physically blind, or hungry, or the leper but He has always done these in a Spiritual sense, too.

Dallin H Oaks taught that “His Atonement reaches and is powerful enough not only to pay the price for sin but also to heal every mortal affliction. The Book of Mormon teaches that “He shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people” (Alma 7:11; see also 2 Nephi 9:21).”

This is where things get a little personal. During my sophomore year in college I experienced a significant amount of depression and with it, entertained the notion of suicide, although I knew that ending my life was something I could never actually do. After several months, I recognized that I needed help and asked to speak to my bishop. I was fortunate enough to have a bishop who had converted to the church after having completed his training as a Presbyterian minister as well as having received a doctorate degree in psychology and marriage and family therapy. He had sought those degrees with every intention helping his congregation emotionally as well as spiritually. I met with him a few times a week at first, then once a week, then once a month until I moved out of that ward. It was this bishop who reminded me that the pains Christ had suffered weren’t just physical, but emotional as well and that the Atonement allows all who are hurting to seek comfort and healing from him.  

I grew up with music in my home, so during this time in my life, one particular hymn was on my mind.

                Master, with anguish of spirit

            I bow in my grief today.

            The depths of my sad heart are troubled.

            Oh, waken and save, I pray!

            Torrents of sin and of anguish

            Sweep o’er my sinking soul,

            And I perish! I perish! dear Master.

            Oh, hasten and take control!

                 

So that’s exactly what I did. Through some good old fashioned therapy and hours in prayer and study, I let the Savior show me a glimpse of my divine worth. I let him take the rudder while the winds around me blew and when the storms started to calm, I stayed by His side.

Fast forward 16 years to June of 2014. As my daycare children all slept, I was swept away in an acute tidal wave of grief over the loss of our son. It had been less than 3 months since his stillbirth and I was already pregnant with Eliza. That day I was angry and frustrated and I felt very alone. I desperately wanted to know how my son’s existence would work as far as eternal families go. I had been feeling his life within me for over 3 months before his death and I knew he was gone because of the void left behind when his life, his presence, was no longer with me.

According to the law as well as church policy, children are only considered as having lived if they take a breath outside the womb and Jackson never had that chance.
Was that short time in my womb his only chance at life on earth?
Will he be born to a different family because he didn’t take a breath in the body we had provided for him?
Could he have another chance with our family if we ever had another boy?
I had so many questions and no answers.

As my grief overcame me that afternoon, I knelt near my bed, sobbing so hard I feared I would be sick all over the floor and I prayed.

 Hard and as silently as I could manage

 For comfort

 for peace

 for answers regarding the spirit of our stillborn son. I told my Heavenly Father that nobody around me understood what I was going through. I had lost my only son and I was hurting. And as clear as if it had been said out load I felt the words, “I know. I lost my Only Son, too”.

With those simple words, I no longer felt alone. I quickly saw the parallels between Jackson’s death and the Savior’s.
Without the loss of our son, I would never have found the doctor that helped me bring Eliza to our family. He died so that she could live.

I still didn’t have answers to any of my questions after that prayer (still don’t), but for now, that doesn’t hurt me anymore.

I had come unto Christ, on bended knee, and he healed me. I will bear the grief of losing him for as long as I can see, but like a scar, it no longer hurts the way it did before.

My scripture study and regular prayer have kept me on a path towards my Savior so that when the larger trials have come, He has been ready to help me carry my burdens.

Some time ago I came across a short cartoon narrated by a doctorate of social work. In the cartoon, she demonstrates the differences between sympathy and empathy.

Imagine you have fallen down a hole. It’s dark, you’re cold, you’re overwhelmed, and you don’t know the way out. Sympathy is someone standing at the top of the hole saying, “Whew, that’s tough. At least you have a sandwich.” Empathy, on the other hand, climbs down a ladder, listens, makes an emotional connection to something painful in her life, and says, “I’m sorry. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

Empathy from another helps you feel better, but it doesn’t get you out of the hole. Christ goes beyond empathy.  He doesn’t just come down the ladder to give you a hug and let you know you’re aren’t alone.  When our Savior says, “Come unto me” it is an invitation, an invitation for us to follow him because he knows the way out of that dark, cold hole and he knows the way up and into His light. But you have to trust him and then follow him, even when the way is long and rocky.

Earlier this week I asked my 9 year old daughter if she knew what it meant to “Come unto Christ.”

She said, “No?”

So in keeping with my tradition, I wrote a letter to her in my mind that night. It’s been 5 days and my memory is fuzzy, but it went something like this:

My Dear Kathryn,

When I asked you if you know what “Come Unto Christ” meant, you said you didn’t know and I felt like a failure as a mother.  It seems like such a simple thing to talk about, even if it sometimes feels hard to do.
To “Come unto Christ” is an invitation God has given to you. You have two choices: you can accept it or you can ignore it.

Unlike an invitation to a birthday party, this invitation never expires but if you ignore it, you may have a hard time finding it again.

“Come unto Christ” means sharing the things that cause you pain with him so that he can heal them.

“Come unto Christ” means following the example he set of loving those around you and forgiving others.

To “Come unto Christ” means taking a deep breath when you are overwhelmed and letting the Savior help you get through your problem.

To “Come unto Christ” means that you want to be like him.

If you feel lost, hungry, weary beyond understanding .  .  . If you simply don’t know what to do. Come unto Christ.

To do these things, you will need to continue to study your scriptures. Learn the stories while you are young so that as you grow up, you can study what they mean and find new guidance and comfort in the words you have become familiar with.

You will also need to pray. Don’t just try and get it over and done with, but spend time thinking about what you want to say and then listening and feeling the response. It is unlikely that you’ll hear an audible voice answering your prayers, but you’ll feel the words and they will change you.

To “Come unto Christ” means to live a life different from most of your friends as you follow the commandments.

To “Come unto Christ” means listening to the prophet and apostles and then praying to know if the counsel they are giving is true.

To “Come unto Christ” is to live a life full of joy as you make use of the atonement and lay your burdens at His feet.

I testify that I know my Savior lives. I know this is His church, and the only way to eternal salvation is through Him. So whether life is going well or trials are keeping you down, come unto Christ. He is the only way to eternal life, so I'm not going anywhere.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Journal

Over the last few months, I have begun to refer to Cognita Spirare as my online journal and, given the change of direction it has taken over time, that's probably a more apt thing to call whatever it is that I do here.

Dash's first Halloween has now come and gone. We attended the Udvar Hazy Air and Scare again this year and loved every minute of it!

We also attended a few other events that gave the girls the excuse to put on her their costumes.

Cedar Lane Harvest Festival

Nursing while passing out candy

Ward Chili Cookoff

There have been a few firsts in this household just since Saturday and most of them involve our Spitfire.
Late last week she discovered that her front bottom teeth were loose.

 I assumed incorrectly that she'd be like her big sister and it would be weeks before her tooth came out.
This is the last picture of her with all her baby teeth intact.

She complained that it was hurting as church ended on Sunday so I took a quick look. It was incredibly loose and I knew it was coming out that night! She let me take one attempt with a paper towel, just gripping it, but that didn't work. Next up was to tie a knot around it with dental floss. On the first little tug her tooth went flying.
She was a little upset because it hurt a bit and was bleeding, but fascination over the gap quickly took over!

It may be sheer coincidence that The Reader lost a tooth that morning, but it was a fun coincidence!

The tooth fairy had double duty at our house that night! We do $5 for the first tooth and $1 for each tooth thereafter. I had $8 in my wallet so everything was great, right?

Except that I had forgotten that I had given Reader the cash for her school lunch account on Friday. Whoops! That realization at 3am resulted in a quiet but frantic treasure hunt through the house for change. I managed to scrounge up just enough for the tooth fairy to leave  the promised funds. Spitfire was excited to see so many coins and that made me feel a little better.

The next change occurred the very next day. It was decided that with such nice weather, overcast but pleasant temperatures, we'd hike up the hill and let the girls get their hair cut. Spitfire went from this:

To this: 

She loves it because it doesn't tangle. We left the house 5 minutes early this morning for the bus because I didn't have to brush her hair and put it up. It was really nice!

Spitfire and Reader both finished their school fundraiser last week as well. This year they had a Fun Run and gathered donations for each lap they ran. Spitfire ran more laps than any other female kindergartener!

On the much-less-exciting list, I met with Dr. H yesterday. I am pretty sure I ovulated last Wednesday. I had all the secondary signs Sunday-Tuesday and my opk was almost positive Wednesday. I think it was catching the tail end of my surge since it got progressively lighter over the next 24 hours. I started lovenox shots Friday using some that I still had laying around. Dr. H wrote out a prescription for more as well as for progesterone, which I started last night using the last 2 suppositories I had left from Dash.

I will take a pregnancy test early next week and then again next Wednesday. If they're negative, as I expect them to be, then I'll stop the progesterone and wait until at least early April before we do anything ttc related again. This is our one shot month for now because of the schedule we have for late summer and all of fall. I simply can't risk being pregnant and due for delivery during that time.

Our chances are less than slim, but better than zilch, so I'll take it. This is probably one of the only cycles where I have a definite "Thy Will, O Lord, be done" feeling. I'm really okay with however this turns out. When our ttc window opens up again in April-ish, that attitude will likely change. I'll be 36 by then and as far back as I can find, no woman in my family on either side has ever had a child beyond the age of 34.

When I was 32 I was already struggling with diminished ovarian reserve, so my biological clock is running very short. Dr. H did say that if more than a few months pass, she recommended that we go back to Shady Grove to talk about using some meds again to help with ovulation. It was nice to see that she was understanding and didn't want to see me waiting months and months to seek treatment.

I feel good about all of it. I'm not exactly optimistic about this one cycle, but hey, what can you do? I was not about to stop nursing my baby to make my period show up again. Nursing her means more to me than having another baby. She deserves everything I have to give to her here and now and we worked through far too much to "set her aside" for another and doing anything more than I've done would feel just like that.

9 Months Old

My adorable Dash turned 9 months old last week. Time sure keeps flying fast!
She has 4 teeth now and is eating a wide variety of foods.
Today was her well baby visit and the stats are in!
Dash weighs an even 22 pounds and that puts her in the 90th percentile by age.
She still gets a vast majority of her calories from my breastmilk with less than 100 calories a day coming from table foods.
Her head circumference measured 18 inches, which is also 90th percentile.
If Dash was sized like the Reader, her height would be about 95th percentile. Nope! At a mere 28 inches tall, that puts Dash in the 50th percentile for height. She is average height just like my Spitfire.
My adorable, chunky Dash is 98th percentile for her weight-for-length though. Ha ha ha ha! Soooo chubby!

One Small Conference Thought

This weekend was General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a weekend filled with counsel given by the prophet and apostles of the church. During one talk (sermon), the topic was motherhood. The following meme was created:

It is a beautiful thought, one that I have felt and seen in action with mothers I know. When I heard it again this weekend, an experience came to mind from last year. I spent hours crying after we lost our son, even while pregnant several months later with our daughter. At one point, as I was sobbing so hard I had run to the bathroom in hear of vomiting, I mentally screamed to my Heavenly Father that nobody understood what I was going through. I was alone and in pain. I had lost my only son and although I was pregnant again, why did Jackson have to sacrifice his life for me to have Dash?

Then as clear as day I could feel the words, "I know. I sacrificed my son so that you might live."

My Heavenly Father knows the pain I went through.He knows. The crying changed as my heart was filled with love and an understanding so deep it seared my soul. For one brief moment, my Heavenly Father was crying with me, giving me strength as I saw beyond my pain and had a glimpse of what being a Heavenly Mother is like.

Eight Months

Time is flying way too fast and I know that I say that too often!

Dash is now 8 months old and continuing to grow like a weed. She barely fits into the size 12 month t-shirts and definitely needs size 18m pants and onesies.

Dash developed a weird spot on her arm in August. It started as a pimple thing and I thought it was a bug bite. It grew, scabbed over and peeled, then healed up as if nothing had ever been there. About 2 weeks later, a similar spot showed up on her tummy.

There are now several spots so I’m going to be taking her into the doctor early this week, hoping that she knows what is going on.

Spitfire has completed 4 weeks of kindergarten now and is having a wonderful time! Her favorite part of the day is when she comes home and gets to share the jokes her teacher tells them while they wait for the bus.

“What is black and white and red all over?” – A zebra with a sunburn

“What do you call witches that share a bedroom?” –Broomates!

“What are skeletons afraid of?” –dogs!

Her reading continues to progress, too. Each day we spend a few minutes going through a set of site word flashcards and she is enjoying those, although she seems to remember the longer words such as “pretty” and “ride” better than “the” and “and”.  As a teacher and a mom, watching her get a word is so much fun!

Reader is having a fabulous time in school, too. Her teacher is flying through the material faster than expected and that is keeping my daughter from being bored. She recently scored a 94% on her math test and a 100% on her Virginia Studies test.

Oh, and Spitfire got the first Citizen of the Month award! She is so very excited to have been picked and it really makes me wish that I could see what she’s like in class each day.

My efforts to continue family scripture study have continued and we’re succeeding most nights. We’re somewhere around 5 nights a week, I believe.

Tonight we were reading in Alma 27 and the topic of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis came up and Spitfire asked if they were the people who had buried their swords and laid down to die. I was surprised that she had remembered not only their name, but also something that set them apart from other scripture stories we have read. She also asked how everyone knew they were dead if they all laid down together.

That question was a little harder to field, not wanting to go into the gory details, but I admit that it was surprising to me that she was paying close enough attention to recognize what was going on. She generally sits on the floor, flying Toothless around in her arms.

But she’s listening!

Multiple times this week I have wanted to talk to Mom. The anniversary of the death of one of our little girls is tomorrow, although we didn’t have confirmation until the next day. It has been 3 years since we lost her; 3 years since I sank into an emotional pit I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to escape. The PTSD has resolved itself with some significant help from my Heavenly Father and with Dash as well as learning my triggers and how to manage them as best as possible.

 I wonder what Mom would have told me during the years of pain and my inability to control some of my responses.

I wonder if she, beyond the veil, knew Dash before her birth.

I wonder how often she comes to comfort me in my sleep and how often she comforts Dash, too.

I caught Dash staring intently at the photo of Mom that sits on the shelf in her room. It seemed as if Dash was having silent communication with my mother and I didn’t want to interrupt whatever Dash was experiencing. The presence of another in her room was palpable even before I realized that she was looking and then nest to the photo.

Dash is a peaceful child. I hear comments from family and friends often regarding how happy and calm she is. She is happy and content day in and day out, with the rare exception when she's overly tired or hungry, but those are quite rare.

I said before she was born that she was my calm after the storm. She is a true rainbow baby; our miracle after devastation.

With that knowledge comes the fear that one of my children will be taken from me before they reach old age. As I thought about that fear earlier this week after reading a news article about a baby killed in a car accident, I began to think about the adults in my life who lost children at various ages.

My grandfather and grandmother lost their youngest son when he was 18 years old. My husband’s aunt lost her son before his first birthday. My great-grandmother lost her daughter 7 days after birth. My maternal grandparents lost multiple children in the second trimester of pregnancy. My aunt lost her son while he was in his twenties.

Losing a child happens more often than I think most people realize. I have heard (and even said) that a mother should never have to bury her child but thousands of years of history says otherwise.  I am not alone. Life is fragile so I do what I can to treasure even the mundane moments. I try each day to appreciate what I have in my life and thank my Heavenly Father for each of my daughters.

New Year, New Routine

Earlier this week I had that special moment many mothers have where they put their child on the bus for the first time to send them off to kindergarten.
Had it not been for an adorable 2 year old who was screaming, "I want my Adam*!!" as her brother climbed on the bus, I would have been in tears.
My middle child has been my soft spot as I mentioned a few days ago. She looked so grown up getting on the bus with an air of confidence to rival any experienced bus rider. It's only the first of many times she will leave the nest and I will cry and celebrate each one.
We hit a milestone this week with her, too. The milestone has been several years in the making and one that we're really excited about.
My Spitfire has learned how to read!
She is still in the early stages, but she can now confidently sound out words and is beginning to recognize a few by sight. She wants to read each night. Just six short months ago she was uninterested in sitting down to listen to us read a book, much less to try and connect sounds to form words.

With the start of school-for-2 comes a new routine for our entire family. It is taking extra effort to get Spitfire to bed on-time and the Reader (my oldest) still wants to stay up and read as long as it is light enough to do so. The sun is setting earlier each day, so this hasn't been too much of a problem.
Sleep is something I value quite highly! My husband and I developed the habit of putting Reader to sleep around 7pm each night when she was a baby and we have stuck as closely to that as possible, with each school year pushing back her bedtime by about 15 minutes.
Spitfire and Reader share a bedroom, so having them go to bed at the same time would be ideal, it just isn't practical since a 9 year old really doesn't need as much sleep as a 5 year old. If you want to read studies and recommendations on pediatric sleep needs, take a look here and here.
We're currently 0-4 for getting Spitfire to bed at her designated 7pm bedtime, but one of those losses was getting her to bed at 6:30, so that counts for something I suppose.
Perhaps tonight we'll hit the 7pm bull's eye?
One new thing we added to our routine this summer is scripture reading. Some nights we only have time for a couple of minutes and other nights we've spent half an hour reading together. On the abbreviated nights, we have turned to listening to the scriptures now that our mobile devices have the audio file so readily available. Since Spitfire is still quite young and the vocabulary isn't what she's used to hearing, we stop frequently to explain a little of what is being read. Last night I knew that Spitfire needed to go to bed early so we listened during dinner. It was peaceful, something I needed after having a rather difficult day with work.
It was a desire of both my parents and my husband's parents to have regular family scripture study but neither couple managed to make it a family priority while their children were young. I am hoping that even though Spitfire is still young, and Dash is pretty much oblivious, we can make this a pattern in our lives. For now, the younger children aren't getting much out of the scriptures themselves but they will learn that regular scripture study is important to us and the hope is that it will become important to them, too.
Most evenings I finish work around 5:15, which means I have 105 minutes to feed my children, have them get into their pajamas with their teeth brushed, get their clothes laid out for the next day and lunches or snacks made, and then spend a few minutes reading together. It isn't much time! I need to find a better way of getting meals done quickly since my time is so limited. I know the crock pot should be my friend, but even getting that put together during my day hasn't been easy.
The sleep thing seriously makes me wish my little girls didn't have to catch the bus a full hour and a half before the high school starts. The teen biological sleep clock studies drive me nuts. Teenagers can adjust their sleep times--just ask any Latter-day Saint high schooler who has had seminary at 6am. Can my 5 year old do that? No, because we simply don't have enough time in the evening to put her to bed any sooner.
And we don't even do extra curricular sports!! When I think about the number of families in our community who have their elementary school kids in soccer, baseball, football, dance, and art classes, it makes my head spin. I am half convinced that many of the discipline problems at school could be curbed if the younger students were able to get another hour of sleep each night. I know the impact on my own children and those in my care is significant.
Here are a few pictures from the first day of school that I wanted to share.
My little babies are growing up!

Last day of School, June 2015

First day of School August 2015

The Reader, 4th Grade

The Spitfire, Kindergarten

Hey, Wait for Mom!

Is Spitfire somewhere in line?

Yup, she's there. The 32nd student on the bus from our stop.

Half Day Kindergarten means greeting the Reader at the end of her day.

Dash is now 7 months and counting. 

*name changed for privacy

Whew! A Month to Remember

August is almost over. I made it through Jackson's due date anniversary with minimal crying and maximum loves and snuggles from Dash. My husband has been gone for most of the month for work so I've been experiencing my first jaunt into solo parenting.
It's not as tough as I thought!
It helped that I was incredibly busy at work. At the start of the month I had 2 new families with a combined 3 children sign contracts for care in my home. In addition, I watched another baby on a temporary basis for a week and a half.
Talk about busy! It was great though. I do much better on a busy schedule than when I have time to putz around the house. Having a full load encourages me to plan better meals and activities and we've had a blast reincorporating singing time into the routine.
All 3 of my new clients and their parents are a delight to work with and that has been really refreshing. Starting care for a new family has always been one of those things that makes me nervous, wondering whether we'll get along long-term and wanting to make sure that I take as good of care as I am capable of, to help the children thrive as they develop their fine and gross motor skills, communication, and general social interactions. Being a parent can be hard but I feel the weight of those lessons more acutely with the children I care for during the week. Those children aren't mine and I don't want to "screw them up!"
So far, so good! The new children are fitting in beautifully with my existing clients and I am really excited to get into a solid routine when school starts next week.
My middle child (I still want to call her my baby!) starts kindergarten next week.
Where has time gone?
Think about it. . . When we moved into our home, she was under a year old and not quite walking. She has been my daily companion for 5 amazing years, helping me with work things when I needed a little helper, playing with the children regardless of age, and just a general ray of sunshine with a touch of spitfire thrown in.
Or a lot of fire! That girl has personality in spades!
It's more than that though. She was only 15 months old when I suffered our 3rd loss. She was still nursing and I'll be the first to admit that I held her closer and nursed her more often for the next few months.
She nursed through the death of my mother, too. We only made it a few more weeks before I was touched out and couldn't handle breastfeeding her anymore, but she still snuggled with me each afternoon before naptime.
She watched me through losing our little girl later that year, too, and kept me smiling month after month when we couldn't seem to get pregnant again. On those days when I had all the babies sleeping and I had time to think about where I was in life, and the uncontrollable sobbing would hit, she was the one who was home to come and give me a hug and hold me tight if she was awake.
I don't think she remembers most of those grueling months where I constantly battled my grief and anger, but I will always remember the look in her eyes as she saw me crying and how much I could tell she wanted to make everything better.
She was the stitches that held my bleeding heart together until my wounds could heal.
And they have. Dash provided the remainder of the healing and I am so very grateful that I have another five years to go before I send her off to school.
I'm happy. I'm busy. I'm dedicated to the children I care for. I'm in love with my precious little girls.
I'm happy and it feels so good!
Both of my older 2 children have been assigned to the teachers we were hoping for and they each have a good friend in their class. It's going to be an amazing year.
But I just might cry when Spitfire gets on the bus next week . .
Dash is continuing to grow and I just want time to slow down a little. Please?!?!?
I know her cloth diapers add a little length to her torso and it's clear she's inherited my long body but even though she's just turned 7 months old, I can't fit her into anything unless it's 18 months. The snaps simply don't fit without an extender. She's like this chubby little ball of dimples and rolls with spastic hair and the easiest disposition of any baby I have cared for.
Her grandfather cared for her last night for a couple of hours so I could help my mother-in-law set up her classroom and he commented on how quiet and happy she was the whole time.
And she really is like that all the time. She makes a little whine/grunt noise when she's hungry or tired, but she almost never lets out a full cry as most babies tend to do.
Her excitement when she sees her food is pretty fun, too. It doesn't matter whether the food is coming from my body or her little feeder, she makes a gasping, hyperventilating, excited noise before she digs in.
In the case of nursing, she literally digs in! I've never had a pincher before but she tries to grab fistfulls of my flesh and since that doesn't really work she pinches to try and hold on while simultaneously pushing away with her arms.
It feels a little like trying to nurse an octopus. I found myself wondering aloud this morning how something with only 2 arms and 2 legs could possibly wiggle so much. 1-2-3-4. Nope, only 4 limbs, not 8.
Dash is so rolly-polly that I'm having harder time with getting her cloth diapers to fit. Some of my absolute favorites are getting too tight around her tummy.  They all claim to fit to 35 pounds and I'm thinking "How??" They seem fine when she is laying down, but since she prefers to sit they dig in and she has some serious muffin top going on! I realize she'll slim down once she's crawling and then walking, but in the meantime I am just grateful that she doesn't complain that her diaper is a little snug!
In a few short weeks the weather will cool down during the day (our nights are already cooling) and it'll be time for pants or leg warmers. I can't remember what sizes I have in storage so it will be fun looking through the older girls' clothes. Doing so always brings back a slew of memories. . .
Wait, did I just hint that I'm ready for fall?
How did that happen?? I don't like cold weather! I promise I don't!
And yet I find myself excited for sweatpants, soups, and zippered hoodies . . .
I must be getting old.

World Breastfeeding Week Daily Action

This week is World Breastfeeding Week and the topic for today has been breastfeeding and work.

Although the day is mostly over, I want to take a moment to talk about my experiences with breastfeeding and working. For each of my 3 living children, the experience has been different.

My first child was born a week after school got out. I was a high school math teacher at the time and chose to use summer break as my recovery period, without taking any sort of maternity leave. I didn’t have an insurance policy that would pay me for my time off, and taking 12 weeks of unpaid leave would have been seriously detrimental to our financial situation.

My baby was 52 days old when I returned to work. We had barely figured out nursing after a summer full of cracked and sometimes bleeding nipples, a case of thrush, and persistent low supply. I supplemented a few times, but seemed to manage to keep up barely. I had only enough milk to get through the next day for daycare.

My daughter slept through the night for the first time the night that I prepared to return to work. I pumped and felt immensely grateful for the extra few ounces. That middle-of-the-night pumping session was the first of a consistent pattern until I had to wean my daughter for medical reasons when she was 8 months old.

As a school teacher, leaving my class to express milk wasn’t an option and my state has no laws that protect a mother’s need to pump. I felt lucky to have a principal who was a mother who had breastfed her babies and she arranged for me to use a conference room in a building across campus that had a lock. It took a full week to find that room, and my persistent asking before a location was found. My own room wasn't an option because the department printer was there. 

A few times another teacher or aide would walk in to the conference room even though it was locked (how many keys were there?!?), but it was rare and I think it was far more embarrassing for them than it was for me.  I pumped during my planning period, which turned out to be the second block of the day or roughly 3 hours since I had nursed my baby.

Initially I pumped at the start of my planning period and again near the end of lunch, which was about 2 hours later. It wasn’t ideal, but it gave me enough milk to feed my baby and my body adapted fairly well. By the time she was about 6 months old, I would just pump once during the day but since I still had the night pumping, there was enough milk for my daycare provider to feed her.

With my second baby, I didn’t start work until a week before her first birthday. I opened my in-home daycare, a business I had been doing since my first baby was 14 months old. The daycare was on hiatus for a year while we lived with family but 48 hours after moving into our own home, I had clients in my care. Because she was a year old, I rarely nursed her during the day except to put her down for her naps. We were both too busy to sit and enjoy a leisurely session in the rocking chair.

I almost never pumped with my second unless I knew I was headed out of the house on an errand and thought she might want milk while we were gone. I wasn’t comfortable nursing out in the open unless I had a cover but even then everything felt awkward.  

Sometimes while I was trying to nurse her to sleep, a child would wake up on the main level of my home and I had to unlatch her and place her in her crib and let her put herself to sleep. That meant she cried, but I knew she was safe there while I attended to the care of another child.

I started working just 11 days after my 3^rd baby was born. We were still very much in the throws of cracked nipples and learning to latch properly. She had been born with lip and tongue ties and her suck pattern was painful. However, taking off additional time wasn’t an option so we worked our way through it.

Dash is now 6 months old. We’ve done a much better job of nursing on demand and I no longer worry about nursing in public. If my baby wants to eat while we are out, I feed her: anytime, anywhere. In my home, work actually prevents me from nursing her as often as she might like. Over a year before her birth, I moved my rocking chair to the playroom so that I could hold, rock, and soothe other babies. This has given me an easy way to nurse Dash while still keeping careful watch and interacting with the children I care for. However, I can’t jump up and catch a toddler as she loses her balance or wipe away tears (or boogers) without first putting Dash down if she is nursing.

It is a balance and one that will continue to ebb and flow as Dash grows older and the needs of the children I care for change. The safety of every child in my home matters and sometimes that means that my own child needs to wait a little longer than I’d like before she can nurse.

The more interesting aspect of working and nursing is my parental interactions. Currently, all of my clients either were breastfed or are currently breastfeeding. It isn’t at all awkward to have a mom come in and have me walking around holding Dash as she’s latched on, but it feels quite odd to me to do that with the dads! So if a father arrives, either to drop off or pick up his child, I remain in my seat while I nurse the baby. The 24 feet between my chair and the front door seems very long when trying to talk to a dad about his child’s day, but for the last 6 months, that is how things have been done.

My working and breastfeeding experiences aren’t typical because of the kind of work I do. However, it is still a balancing act and one that every working mom has to figure out on their own.

Random Thought

All this time and I still inhale sharply when someone says, "It's a boy!"

Lyme Disease and an Unexpected Apology

For anyone who lives in our area and doesn't live under the proverbial rock, it is well known that Lyme disease is nasty business. I have 3 friends who tested positive for it this year and can add an immediate family member to the list. Although s/he hasn't been tested yet, there was a definite bull's eye rash, the tell-tale sign, last night and the doctor agreed to treat for Lyme.

For those who are less familiar, Lyme disease is usually transmitted by the bite of a tick infected with a spirochete known as Borrelia burgdorferi. This little bugger can be vicious and is known to ruin people's lives by ruining their health. You can read more here.

My daughters' pediatrician refuses to treat for Lyme without a positive test or symptoms of the disease. My own doctor indicated that anyone who doesn't treat for Lyme, particularly after multiple bites, is playing russian roulette with their health.

After gorgeous hike about 11 days ago, we removed roughly 20 ticks from our persons, some of which were already biting and a few that were still roaming.

That's a lot of ticks!

With that in mind, and knowing that borrelia burgdorferi has been found in breastmilk (segments, not the full spirochete), my doctor wanted me on a 3 week course of a breastfeeding-safe antibiotic.

I took our 9 year old to Patient First for a rash on her hands and took the time to bring up the tick-bite issue and he, too, wanted to put her on a 10 day course of antibiotics, sighting that by catching the disease early enough, a shorter course should be sufficient. I hope he's right, but I can't find any studies that indicate that one way or another.

With a full bull's eye rash on another person, 3 of the 5 of us are on antibiotics. I am trying to find a new pediatrician that will treat the remaining bitten daughter, but I'm not having much luck.

During my search, I spoke to a nurse at a local practice earlier today who insisted that it takes at least 24 hours for a tick to transmit disease and I explained that wasn't true, as bull's eye positive family member had the tick for at most 4 hours. I was frustrated but ended the call as politely as I could manage.

Imagine my surprise when I listened to a voicemail a couple hours later from the nurse, apologizing for giving me incorrect medical information. Our conversation had triggered a desire in her to reinvestigate Lyme and she discovered that my information was correct and hers was not, so she apologized. I have never had a medical professional admit a mistake and it felt really good for a couple reasons. The first is that I know how hard it is to say "I was wrong" and I admire anyone who does it. The second was that it felt good to know that my information was correct. It's not often that I can claim to know more than a medical professional, but I definitely knew more this time.

I feel mildly vindicated. These nurses keep telling me I'm nuts for wanting to treat Lyme without symptoms, but that apology (and my own doctor and the doctor at Patient First) helped me realize that it really is important to work with a medical practice that stays current on their standards of care, particularly in an area where something is as common as Lyme is here in Northern Virginia.

The hunt for a new pediatrician isn't over yet, but I feel like I'm making progress and that is all I can ask for, I guess.

Beyond the Beard

My dear Dash is continuing to hit milestones and yesterday she experienced something she found mildly tragic: her father shaved off his beard!
My husband has had a short, neat beard since December 2010, when our middle child was just 5 months old. He recently succeeded in achieving some health goals he'd set for himself and decided he wanted to know what he looked like without the beard.
So he shaved it off. I love his beard and always have, so it was a shock to see his naked face again after so many years!
Dash was not impressed. For the first few hours she refused to look him in the eye. She let him hold her, but didn't want to make eye contact at all. This morning the beard shadow is starting to show and she spent half an hour playing with him while I cooked breakfast. By the end of the half hour, she was laughing and smiling at her daddy again!
Within 48 hours, his beard will be back to it's super-short length that he sometimes goes with but we have a couple of photos of him all naked faced.
My husband comes from some seriously awesome genes and his family ages incredibly well. His parents are in their 60s but could easily pass for being a full decade younger than they are. Each of his sisters look younger than their actual ages, too. (I got get-old-early genes, so I hope our girls get their looks from their dad and not me!) With his beard, I have never thought that he looked like he was over 32, although that birthday came and went years ago. Without the beard?
Even younger.
And with his improved health, he could pull off the Mr. Clean look if he wanted, complete with fitted white shirt and a wicked wink!
I love that man of mine. Beard or no beard.
Dash? She wants the beard.
Middle child? She wants the beard.
Oldest child? She wants the shaved face.
"His beard tickles and scratches, Mom."
Why yes it does, and I love it. *grin*

On a completely separate note, Dash and I have a short session with a professional photographer this evening as part of a Normalize Breastfeeding campaign. I'll put on a comfy pair of jeans and some sort of shirt and we'll head to a park we came across a week and a half ago while getting repairs done on our van. It'll be casual and quick, but a lot of fun.
I have taken countless pictures of myself breastfeeding my middle child years ago and my baby since her birth but haven't posted more than one or two online, simply because I worry some about being judged for "exposing" myself.
While my mother visited me after the birth of my second daughter, I commented once that I wished I could take pictures of my babies while they were nursing. At the time, my little nursling was just a couple weeks old and that was 5 years ago.
In response, Mom told me that she always wished she had pictures of her nursing her babies, too. It was one of the few regrets in parenting that she ever expressed to me and one that has stuck with me. I may never frame a nursing picture, but I have one small one of my oldest that she can keep when she leaves the home and a few of my middle child if I can hunt them down. Dash will have more, and she'll get to keep some of them if she wants, also.
The photographer is keeping the rights to all the photos and they may get shared publicly. This is a huge step for me and it isn't one that I just decided to do on a whim. I'm not the only one in these photos; Dash is in them, too.
This is a springboard of photos to come. Brelfies, if you want to use the new term (picture of oneself nursing a child), will be posted online more by me in the coming years.
One step at a time first  . . .

Milestones (Or Things that Happen in the Blink of an Eye)

Today is the last day of school for my 3rd grader. The year has been quite an adventure! On the first day of school, I was pregnant. For lack of a better description, that's pretty normal for me. Of the 4 "first day of school" days that my oldest has experienced, I have been pregnant for 3 of them.
This is the first time, however, that I got to take my baby with me to the bus stop on the last day of school!

One week until K turns 9 and 13 days until C turns 5.

It has been a month of milestones for our little family. My oldest informed me last month that she couldn't see the board from her desk, so a quick trip to the eye doctor and a few weeks later Viola! Glasses. Complete with BYU blue frames and a salmon colored case that she will eventually learn not to pinch her fingers with when she closes it.

Today was also the last school day where my middle daughter is not a student.  At the end of August, she'll start kindergarten. She's never attended preschool or any other formal educational program, but she is making quite a bit of progress in her reading. She can now sound out many words and is beginning to spell phonetically on her artwork.

We celebrated both of their birthdays with local family a few days ago. My middle one had her very first birthday in this home, just 11 days after we moved in.

K's 5th birthday and one week before C turned 1

Time sometimes feels like it's flying by. The same holds true with Dash. On Friday, my husband and I took a walk along the W&OD Trail near our home. It was a hot, muggy day but the morning wasn't too gross so we managed 5 miles with the double stroller, carrying both of our younger daughters while the oldest was in school.

After we finished, we left straight for Costco, forgetting that I didn't have my Ergo carrier with me or the single stroller. Either Dash was going to have to be held or we could try buckling her into the cart.

The cart won. She was such a happy camper up there, too!

The milestones didn't stop there. On Sunday she was doing her usual "wake-up the second you put me down" routine and I was trying rather unsuccessfully to let her cry. When the cry changed urgency, I went in and found her on her stomach with her face smashed against the side of the crib.

*This is why you don't use crib bumpers. My daughter could have suffocated in that position if there had been a padded bumper in her crib!*

She's 4 months old, which is right on the normal "roll-over" curve but I figured it was probably a fluke.

This morning I put her on her back in the middle of the crib as usual. When she later woke up, this is what I found: 

Her face wasn't crammed into the front of the crib, but she still did some sort of magical rolling over and scooting to get there.  She was pretty pleased with herself, too!

That's the tail end of a smile.

Now What?

You may have noticed a little thing in her crib that I've written about before.

BINKY!

That was my last ditch effort to help fix her latch. This pacifier is made by Munchkin and is called LATCH and although she only sucks on it for a few seconds at a time, she is trying to figure out how to keep it in her mouth and that effort is paying off for both of us. In order to keep it in, she has to make sure that she doesn't lose suction and she's taking that skill and applying it to nursing. My milk blister, which has been there since February, is slowly healing. More importantly to me, it is no longer painful. She's nursing quite comfortably all the time now, even when she is losing suction.

The exception is when she decides to yank on me. That doesn't feel comfortable at all!! Dash also likes to push away from me with her arm, even as she's eating ravenously. I'm not entirely sure why, so I find myself holding her hand out of the way to keep her still.

If you compare the Costco picture with the crib pictures, you might detect a bit of a difference, or maybe you won't. Dash also got quite a haircut on Sunday. Her hair is finally thinning where she's rubbing it on her sheets and as it has grown, it's lopsided. I took some time while nursing her and gave her a trim along everything, but especially the ears.

Hair on the ears drives me bonkers!

In a couple short hours, I will have a 4th grader, a kindergartener, and a semi-mobile baby. Please Time, slow down a little!