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.

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.

Wherever You Are

Board books and I do not get along very well and it's entirely my fault. Perhaps it says something about me more than anything else, but I tend to find the abbreviated stories in most of them to be pretty watered down. Others are too congested with pictures of objects filling every tiny little space, leaving no white space whatsoever.

They're cluttered and nonsensical.

In the 9 years I've been a parent, there have been a very select few that I like.

And only two that I love.

One of these two precious books was a gift for our baby from my husband's baby sister. The book is titled Wherever You Are my love will find you. It's written by Nancy Tillman.

I've never cried reading a board book and I certainly wouldn't have guessed that such a benign looking book would leave me sobbing as I attempted to read it to my 11 week old don't-want-to-stop-crying baby last night.

The book opens with the line, "I wanted you more than you ever will know, so I sent love to follow wherever you go." I should have known with that opening line that my emotions would surface quickly, but I was still caught off guard.

The rhyming continues as I, the reader, told my daughter just how many feats my love can accomplish. With each new way that I told her how my love will find her, my emotions bubbled up until tears were flowing freely down my face.

In many ways, it felt like I was bearing testimony of my love for my daughter to her. The words, though not mine, rung with truth and I know she's young, but she was absolutely paying attention to me. Her crying turned to a whimper then to a quiet, wide-eyed calm and she tried to make sense of what was going on.

Through my tears I kept reading until the very last line, a phrase I've held close to my heart since childhood, "you're never alone".

The drawings are simple and elegant, easy for a young baby to focus on with animals and nature scenes that match the poetry. They were just what I love to see in a children's book.

So if you need a good cry, or a simple gift to share with another, here is a good place to start . . .

And thank you, sweet S, for such a wonderful gift.

Harder than it Ought to Be

I have spent several weeks trying to put my feelings and thoughts into words, continually unsatisfied with the result.

You see, I should be one of the happiest women around, but I have found my own happiness being tempered by the pain I feel for my friends.  In the last year and a half, I have begun discussing my battle with infertility publicly.  From tweets, to memes, to facebook status updates . . . anything to let others know they are not alone.

Infertility is a painful journey and not new just to modern families.  Ancient mythology from the Aztecs to the Vodou contain tales of Gods and Goddesses of fertility and you can find stories about Sarah, Hannah, Rachel, and Elizabeth in the Bible . . .  but it has only been recently that couples have begun to really talk publicly about the pain that comes with the battle.

In the course of sharing, I have had over a dozen friends, people I know in real life, share their stories with me.  Much to my surprise, some of these friends were men.  These men are loving husbands who are fighting the battle with their wives and feeling the agony that comes with infertility.  Their pain touched me more than I could have ever expected and I admire their courage to talk about it as well as how dedicated to their spouses they are.

It is you, the brave and broken men and women who have continually been in my thoughts and so often in my prayers.  I say broken because anyone who has been through infertility feels broken.  And betrayed.  But we are brave because we continue on inspite of the pain.  We keep fighting until the battle can no longer be fought, whether it is due to age, finances, or choosing a path we hadn't intended.

My husband and I appear to be done fighting that battle.  It is not because we can no longer fight, it is not because of finances, and it isn't because our path or goal has changed; t is because we are expecting what we believe will be our last child.

With each breath I take, I hope and pray for the safety of my own baby.

I pray that he or she will grow strong.

I pray that the medications I am on will prevent the losses I've experienced in the past.

I pray that those friends who have shared their pain will find healing of their own, whether the healing comes from a viable pregnancy of their own or through finding another path that brings them peace.

I pray that the battle I have fought can give me the strength to help others when they have no strength left.

My battle with infertility has been my Eleven Years Battle.  My body is not healed, but I have limped across the battlefield and found that I've survived.

What is a Rainbow Baby?

I have often referred to my second daughter as my rainbow baby.

Earlier today I came across this definition and loved it because it conveys what a rainbow baby is:

"Rainbow Babies" is the understanding that the beauty of a 
rainbow does not negate the ravages of the storm.  When a 
rainbow appears, it doesn't mean the storm never happened
or that the family is not still dealing with its aftermath.
What it means is that something beautiful and full of light
has appeared in the midst of the darkness and clouds.  Storm
clouds may still hover, but the rainbow provides a
counterbalance of color, energy, and hope.