Happy Easter!

This has been a whirlwind weekend, what with Jack's birthday yesterday and Easter today. I swear I feel like I haven't slept for days.

First of all, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! Ours was the kind of quiet wonderful I love--there was just enough chaos to make things interesting but not enough to make me stress. Perfect.

(The pictures are cross posted with the boys' blog.)

The boys' Easter baskets

Checking out their baskets this morning

They loved their books, matchbox cars, and Octonauts toys the Easter Bunny left. Sh.awn was pretty excited about his chocolate eggs, too. (Ja.son and Jack - not so much. Somehow they were not blessed? cursed with my chocolate loving genes.)

It was raining outside, so we had an indoor Easter egg hunt with the basket of eggs the Easter Bunny left. (The Easter Bunny doesn't hide them, he leaves a basket of eggs for us to hide later in the day.)

Easter egg hunt! Ja.son was a egg hunting madman!

Jack focused all of his energy on two eggs, which he
promptly destroyed with his teeth. Ha! He's loving his yellow egg here.
 

Sh.awn loved opening his eggs to see what was inside.
Whoa! I found three dollars!

 After a short nap, we headed over to my mom's house for Easter dinner.

Daddy and Jack playing before we ate.
Jack is in a full on "I love daddy" phase.
It really is sweet to see them together.

Shawn, on the other hand, is in a full on "I want ONLY mommy"
phase which is completely sweet and totally maddening at the same time.
I'm sorry, but daddy can wipe your butt, too, kid.

My mom also gave the boys Easter baskets filled with goodies. (It was funny how close the baskets she created was to the ones I created. I think it would be wise to talk about what we're adding to baskets next year.)

Ja.son playing with his Easter toys.

We headed home and the boys fell quickly to sleep. That gave Is.aac and I a chance to finally have some quiet time ourselves. I think it was the first moment of downtime we've had since Thursday night.

Look how happy we are!

All in all, this was a pretty fantastic day (and weekend!) for us. :)

I hope you had a very Happy Easter!

Almost Two!

In just under two hours, our little big guy will be TWO! We're so glad he's ours!

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

It fascinates me to see him moving along the world the way he does. I swear sometimes he even seems to defy gravity. He thinks about what he wants to do and then goes...just like that. It's mind boggling.

More than that, it's pretty damn amazing to me.

I don't think watching him explore is ever going to get old.

He loved playing with the lemon tree.
He can even reach the low ones!

 

 

Three more sleeps until the big TWO for our big one.

Homesick

Welcome
Home
Mom & Dad

I burst into tears when I saw the sign on the door as we walked up our front steps. "Welcome Home Mom & Dad," five of the most meaningful and longed for words of my life. Oh how I had waited for this moment. Finally, I was given the chance to bring one of my babies home from the hospital. I was so excited for the chance to actually parent my own child.

I can only describe that moment, holding Sh.awn in my arms, as feeling like I was almost there. When we walked through the door with Ja.son ten days later, my world was complete. We were all home. Together.

We had worked so hard to get me pregnant. We had tried so hard to keep me pregnant. We had watched hopelessly while our boys raged their own fights for their lives. All of that time I missed home--that place where I felt safe, protected, and calm. I hadn't had those feelings for months. I was home, but I wasn't really home until the boys were there with us.

I was homesick without ever going anywhere.

This sign, which like the one on the front door was placed by my mom that day, still hangs on our garage door after all of this time. I've seen it every day for a little over 5 years. Every day it still makes me catch my breath and remember just how lucky we are to be together.

~~~

My mom told me much later that she had put the signs up several times before but had to rush over at the last minute to remove them when the boys were not discharged as expected. She's pretty amazing, if I do say so myself.

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Thanks to Ellen for this week's writing prompt, and to Tracey for inspiring me to write. :)

Friday Night Leftovers

It seems I have myself another night owl in the family. Jack is in there right now happily singing, laughing, and PLAYING a full 45 minutes hour and ten minutes after I put him in bed. He's also taken his pants off twice three times. Actually, I know he's just taken off his pants off again because he is doing his happy song. (Yep. He did take them off.) The boy definitely likes his naked time. Sigh.

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Speaking of the boy, he turns 2 in nine days. I'm hyperventilating here. It's going too fast!

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I swear this week was the week that would not end. By Tuesday afternoon I was exhausted. That is never a good sign. It didn't get any better from there.

My new boss just might drive me to drink, and that's saying something considering I don't drink.

~~~

I read in the newspaper that the principal of the school my boys are (hopefully) attending was put on paid leave for the rest of the year because of...get this...Bullying. This doesn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies about sending the big boys off to school in the fall. :(

~~~

I am planning on playing hookie from work on Thursday. Two girlfriends of mine and I are going to head to someplace fun for the afternoon. I. Can't. Wait!

~~~

Stop by Danifred's for more Leftovers.

Therapy Fatigued

My boys have been in therapy for five years now. Do I think it has been worth our energy and time? In some ways. Maybe? Do I think that the gains made by the boys over those years would have been made otherwise without going to therapy? I'm torn. Physical therapy is beneficial. Occupational therapy is...frustrating. I think I do more targeted work on their fine motor skills than their therapists do. So why do we continue to do it? Sigh. I guess it is because I can't really say if it is or isn't truly helping them. 

What I can say is that I have a strong love/hate relationship with it.

I can also say that we've all officially hit the wall.

My spring vacation starts on the 29th. I have cancelled all therapy appointments during the two weeks I'll be off, so we can just be.

I am almost giddy with the excitement about us having this time off. Although I'll admit to feeling a whole lot of guilt about it, too. The boys are looking forward to doing fun things with mommy and staying up late to watch Bubble Guppies. (It's the little things that make them happy. lol) The excitement is enough to tell me that this is the right move and will be good for us.

PAIL Theme of the Month: High Standards (Edited)

This post is in response to PAIL's monthly theme on High Standards.

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How has infertility affected you as a parent now?

Sometimes I wonder which one has affected me more as a parent -- the length of time it took us to finally have our children or the prematurity. My guess is that while there are some lingering confidence issues from the infertility (it's hard to have confidence in your ability as a woman when you can't do something that is so very womanly), it is the trauma of the prematurity that has had the most impact on how I parent.

Did having more time to think and plan (due to infertility) make you a more ‘researched’ parent? If so, do you feel it has paid off?

Before the boys were born, I had actually done very little as far as research on parenting. I researched how to actually get pregnant relentlessly. Once I got pregnant, I read one baby book. I was so early when things went south on the pregnancy, and researching parenting during that time seemed too confident about the what the outcome would be. After the boys were born, I was given a book on parenting a premature baby (of which I read one chapter and cried so hard I had to put it down). My focus of the research I did while they were in the hospital centered on medical procedures. When the boys came home, I became the google queen on all things to do with prematurity/medical implications of their condition/therapy.

I will admit to succumbing to an informational overload about two years in, or right about when they were diagnosed with CP, and have relaxed some about constant research. Now I just do what I call a "problem" search. If I have a question on what I can do to solve a problem, I look it up.

Even with all that research, I still have no idea what I am doing. I've come to realize that none of us know what we are doing and every child is different even if someone did know. What works for them very likely won't work for us. And that's okay.

Do you feel the time you spent trying to become a parent means you should know more than the ‘average’ parent?

Believe it or not, this is not an area I beat myself up over. (As you could tell from the above answer.) We all do the best we can. Just because it took us longer to establish our family doesn't mean I should know more than everyone else.

Do you hold yourself up to a higher standard? What specific parenting standards do you have for yourself? (Are they about feeding, sleep, education, etc.)

Yes about certain things.

I very desperately want to do a good job and enjoy parenting my trio. When it takes years to finally reach what you've longed for, it feels downright ungrateful to not at least enjoy it.

The problem is that my kids are like all other kids. They push my buttons. They are not always well behaved. They challenge me and my parenting skills. They wake me up all night. They are kids.

I don't always respond to their behavior in the "best" way. I sometimes yell. I get frustrated. I go hide in the bathroom on occasion, so I can catch my breath. At those moments I don't enjoy parenting...

and I feel an immense amount of guilt over my weakness to be a better parent in those moments.

I love my boys with everything I've got, and dude, I don't think anyone can honestly say she enjoys when her child starts screaming and tantruming for who knows what at what always seems like the most inopportune time.

Still, it's hard to not feel like I should love every single second I've been blessed to have these boys in my life. I'm pretty sure these feelings are directly related to our battle with infertility.

Edited to add - You guys get that I do enjoy parenting my boys, right? I love being their mom and I love being with them -- 99.5% of the day. Yes, that 0.5% of the time can be challenging and rough and make me want to scream, but I still wouldn't trade my life or my kids for anything. I definitely don't want it to sound like I don't really like being a mom. Nothing is farther from the truth!

Is trying to be ‘succesful’ at parenting one of the ways you cope with having struggled with infertility?

I'm not sure my wanting to be "successful" at parenting has as much to do with my coping with our struggle with infertility as it does with me wanting to do everything in my power to give my boys the tools they need to be the best people they can be. I want them to see me try to do my best at being their mom, admit when I make mistakes, and apply the lessons I've learned as I go.