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  . . .