One of my kids (guess who) had been expected to attend summer school because he has academic needs & is not at grade level...plus he is quirky as hell. Does whatever he wants to do! So, they recommended at his current elementary school that he attend an extended school year (free) summer school. I took him on the first day, walked him to his teacher, got attitude the whole way for doing that & he still smiled and hugged me good bye. He was ready for anything & he was open to it. When I picked him up he was upset, two teachers were manhandling him for leaving the line and looking for my car. I didn't like what I heard the more I asked him about it. I didn't like the atmosphere, it just seemed like babysitting a lot of kids with IEP's so I never brought him back. He does have to work with us to catch up, but no more summer school! I love when I find I still have the strength to protect my son from situations that would just kill his spirit. I'm sure many other parents will find the program wonderful & their kids will probably thrive there, but that was not the place for us!!

I have had some fantastic summers as a stay at home mom, filled with sunshine, meeting friends at the pool, dinners al fresco & all that jazz :) We have also had some hellish summers, most notably 2002 & 2008. In 2008 all of the kids had whooping cough & I had a kidney stone drama that lasted from June through December. The only good thing about that summer was the unexpected addition of Ramsay to the family. Otherwise I can't think of a single good memory! So...this summer I am aiming high, to have adventures in ordinary places & give my boys lots of good memories. One of them wants to pray the rosary every day, another one wants to be read to; books about the Founding fathers are his favorite. The other 3 are content to just see neighborhood kids & play outside. The littlest just wants to nurse & cuddle.

This Friday I have my first lithotripsy procedure where I will have a few bigger (but still small, thankfully! blasted & I am nervous but very excited. If it goes well, I will be living in significantly less fear than usual! If it really does go well, I will throw a party! I will try to document as many days of fun & not so fun outings as I can!

Fun times at Burke Lake

The kids rode the little train through the woods, my awesome mom was there & so were our cousins. It was actually one of our more successful outings but you wouldn't think so from these pictures. I even handled a complicated cell phone number porting drama while pacing the forest floor & keeping toddler Ram in line!

My 2 oldest started aikido this week. It was cool to sign them up for something they could do together, but at their own pace. One of the boys, the one formerly known as The Creature!, got way more attention from the teacher than the other one.

On the wall were lots of articles about aikido & one had a great lesson in it about the importance of not being a planner, or getting too attached to our plans. We are much more likely to see ourselves as failures or to spend energy blaming others for thwarting our plans when they go awry. Instead, if we just appreciate where we are & the lessons in it , it benefits our development much more than a plan working out the way we wanted it to. This can be applied to daily life with a new baby (or any age kid!), birth not ending up how we wanted it to, a vacation from hell etc. etc, anything that didn't work out how we hoped it would. When the kids are in class I am going to keep studying the articles. So far I like the whole approach of aikido & I hope the boys like it.

I had another kidney stone drama. 3 days (non-consecutive) in the hospital. Its a weird & creepy health problem to have, but there are worse things. The sad truth is I still have a bunch in the kidneys, but this time I have decent doctors, who are smart & know women & kidney stones too, awesome! As their patient I will never have to wait & explain my history, I just get sent straight to dilaudid land where I will live until its out.

Dilaudid is the drug in the movie drugstore cowboy, that Matt Dillon's character & his wife robbed drugstores for, its 50 x stronger than morphine. It is really a nightmare the week after, especially if you've had the misfortune of spending days on IV dilaudid. The next few days are really bad. At first you are elated that the stone is out, then everything seems vaguely challenging, then it all seems impossible & your will to live is just sapped by the narcotics. Finally, you slowly re-emerge, digging deep to get your mojo back. Music helps. a loving husband & really cute kids helps too. Man drugs suck, but its a necessary evil. I did avoid surgery & for that I'm super thankful, and I did every urine/blood test I was asked to do, so now I wait & see why I have this problem & get ready to end this process!

http://www.stayathomemomologues.com/
A powerful blog post on why routine circumcision of newborn boys defies all logic.

I used to wish I had an easier life, but today I am grateful for every challenging minute.

"Grief is a teacher. It tells us that we are not alone; that we are interconnected; that what connects us also breaks our hearts — which is as it should be. Most people who allow themselves to grieve fully develop an increased sense of gratitude for their own lives. That’s the alchemy: from grief to gratitude. None of us wants to go through these experiences, but they do bring us these gifts." Barbara Platek

Rafael Vicente!!

The night I wrote the last post, the 9th of Jan, I went into labor and had my little guy in the morning by C section. It was smooth & peaceful, although I didn't have the dr I planned it with, the one who delivered the last 2 babies, it was still good overall. Pics of Rafa's first days ...

I got this quote from this blog, http://a-mom-is-born.blogspot.com/2009/02/precipitous-labor.html
"I am left with the sense that I didn't so much give birth as I did give way to birth, and I am feeling far more humbled by nature than I am empowered or heroic."

She had her baby in a little more than an hour & was shocked by the intensity. So many birth stories, esp. home births are about women feeling "empowered" by their births. I like that she admits its humbling rather than empowering every time. As someone who had a challenging birth, then a horrific birth, followed by 3 very peaceful & beautiful C sections I came to birth already empowered. I didn't expect anything fulfilling from birth, I just wanted it to go smoothly, I wanted to be heard & I wanted to be able to do it again if possible.

The whole "trust birth" movement really rubs me the wrong way. I just attended the VBAC trial of a dear friend and I felt, more than ever, that birth is really luck. If you believe in it so heavily and it goes awry, then what? Did you not trust birth enough? Trusting birth is like having a kidney stone and trusting your ureters to get the stone out without surgery. Or trusting your digestive system to always work. Birth, like everything in nature, is bigger than us & doesn't always care about us. I am completely at peace with getting my babies here anyway I can & I am humbled by meeting my newborn no matter how he got here. However it works out, I am not in control & its the only birth he'll have.

Positives

My little fun OB visit companion!




I have an antibody that lurks when Im pregnant & for the last 2 pregnancies it completely stayed out of the way. I just found out my number is right where they start monitoring more closely, with this, my 4th isoimmunized pregnancy. I am going t focus on the positives here, so far baby boy(what else? ;) looks good & is big, strong & active.
I am 30 weeks, which is much less scary than 20 weeks if baby needed to come out early!
I expected this 2 babies ago & was very lucky, so I am OK with extra monitoring.
I get to see him often, I see an OB one week & then the MFM/perinatalogist the next, all the way to the end, which God willing will be at least 37 weeks!

Back in April, things were busy, very busy, but OK. We were at birthday parties every weekend, Joaqueeny was playing soccer, my oldest played an instrument, basketball & did Cub Scouts. The Creature was making it through Kindergarten, pt 2. The little guy was growing fast & cute & darling husband and I were healthy & happy.

Then, the night before the littlest guy's birthday party, Joaqueeny breaks his arm. It was a simple break that healed well & he has only good memories of the experience, but it was no fun to be back in the ER again. The birthday party was pretty spectacular, great food & drink, a moonbounce, a magician. It was a little too good though, neighbor kids were running in & out whenever they wanted & causing mayhem with nobody watching them, adult neighbors were starting fights with party guests, it all went downhill from there. In the future, back to basics, small & meaningful parties, with people that care.

In May, my oldest boy got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. He was so unbelievably sick the week before he was diagnosed that I was terrified it could be something much worse than type 1. When we told him what he had, we wanted to do it right, we wanted to present it in a way where he would be as OK with it as he could be. He was not only OK then, thanks to an amazing hospital team & an awesome endocrinologist team, he has been completely OK ever since. He has such a great attitude that its contagious,he does all of his shots & glucose checks. He can go anywhere & do anything, even without us, as long as he carries his kit that hooks onto his belt. I wish could have been 1/10th as awesome of a kid (when I was a kid!) as he is now.

At the end of that first week after his diagnosis, I learned I was expecting Number 6!
So, its been absolutely eventful & I haven't even mentioned all of the testing for school that we did for the Creature for this year (so far so good for him!) and the swim team that the oldest swam on all summer, every single day! I have a lot of challenges but still feel blessed to be here to face them & learn from my unique bunch of boys!

Its been such a challenging evening! I have lost my patience more than once & used language I am really trying not to use anymore. Too many hard things have happened to mothers I know. And then I went to one of my favorite blogs, Enjoying the Small Things, & I saw this quote,

"But, here's the thing. Once you become a parent...once you start feeling a little funny and you buy that pregnancy test...once you see a pink plus sign...once you know it's not just you anymore...well, you automatically carry around, for the rest of your life, an increased likelihood. To have your heart broken. And it's a constant fear that we struggle to put to rest.

And we can choose to be afraid or we can choose to live.

And I choose to live. "

love it.

My friend Anne came to visit from Seattle, she was in town for a scientific conference because she is a very smart scientist, and she spent 2 nights with us. This is spring for us, outside, eating on the deck & exploring parks when we can. The boys loved her & it was fun to see someone as an adult that I had so much fun with as a teenager. We must have passed a million notes to each other back in the day! We used to explore DC together and watched tons of independent films and saw plenty of shows. We got good at finding the band after concerts and waiting by their tourbus. We discovered the Red Hot Chili Peppers were not very nice people, they probably are now :) I think of how bratty I could be back then & how unfriendly & I'm glad life knocked some compassion and cheer into me! Thanks Anne for stopping by, one day we'll get to you!

Cutest thing around town!!

My Ramsay at a Leader day for us breastfeeding helping ladies. He plays well with others!