Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms (any kind of moms) out there!

It's going to be a quiet day in the Mac household today.  I figure we got enough adventure yesterday that today we are going to take it easy.

Speaking of yesterday's adventures... Well, the day started off much as usual.  Daddy Mac headed off to work, the kiddos and I got up.  I settled Miss Sunshine into her booster seat with some yogurt for breakfast and started working on the sink full of dirty dishes I had in the kitchen.  My goal for the day was to get the house nice and clean before Daddy Mac got home from work.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  Ten minutes in to my cleaning day, I stabbed myself with a very sharp knife.  On the back of my hand right on top of my first knuckle.  Slid it in from the tip back about three quarters of an inch.  After staring stupidly at it for a minute, I ran it under some water and then applied pressure.  I had Monster Boy call Daddy Mac and tell him to come home to take me to the ER.  At this point, the only person in the house who is dressed is Monster Boy.  So I call my grandmother and ask her if she can come sit with the kids so they don't have to go with us to the ER.  Then I attempt to dress myself while my hand is still bleeding.  Managed to pull on shorts and a t-shirt.  I have not showered or anything.  Daddy Mac gets home and I have him get Miss Sunshine dressed and help me brush my hair.  I did mention I am right handed and I, of course, stabbed my right hand, didn't I?  My grandmother arrives and off we go... My biggest fear a this point is that I have hit a tendon with that darn knife.  After sitting in the ER for nearly two hours, they call me back, check it out, declare the tendon safe, toss a couple of stitches in there and send me on my way in roughly fifteen minutes.

So now I have to keep it clean and dry, and no swimming, which is less than ideal considering I leave for Florida in three days!  Such is life, I suppose.

Obviously today I am taking it easy - I'm still in quite a bit of pain (stitches really are painful - this is my first ever foray into the world of stitches despite two c-sections) from the cut and my tetanus shot - so I plan to pack for my trip and otherwise be lazy.  Lot of laundry needs to get done - I'm hopeful that maybe Daddy Mac will just pack it all up and head to the laundromat with it while Miss Sunshine naps... we shall see!

Flying by...

Where does the time keep going? It seems like I just wrote my last blog post yesterday, and turns out it's been NINE days. Sheesh.

Things have been trucking along as usual here. I have started working more days at my job, while Monster Boy is at school. It's nice in one respect, because it means I am home at night for dinner so we can all sit down as a family. But it is surely wreaking havoc on Miss Sunshine's schedule. I generally work 9-2, and Monster Boy has to be picked up from school at 3:15. Which generally means that there is no time for nap for Miss Sunshine. By the time we get home from picking Monster Boy up, she is on her second (or third, who knows!) wind and not in the mood to nap. I try to compensate for this by putting her to bed early those nights, but I know it isn't enough. However, we only have a few more weeks of school to get through and then we will be able to better handle it because we won't have to go pick Monster Boy up - I will just transition her to a later nap time. She usually falls asleep in the car on the way home, so I know she would sleep then, the problem is that I have to wake her up thirty minutes after we get home in order to go pick him up from school. Which is where that next wind comes in - she gets a bit of a catnap and it's enough to energize her into not napping again that afternoon. So hopefully we can get that resolved soon.

Miss Sunshine is also developing quite the personality. Daddy Mac was sure that Monster Boy was the most stubborn child on the face of the earth, but I am confident Miss Sunshine has him beat. Poor Daddy Mac, he has no idea what he is in for. She is getting quite lippy. On the one hand, we are obviously thrilled with the take off in her speech lately. On the other hand, it's is NOT so thrilling that one of her major strides is some serious sass and backtalk. The other day, she informed me "I am SERIOUS, Mom". It took me forever to figure out what she was saying to me, and when I did all I could do was laugh. Apparently, we tell her we are serious a bit too much! I have also gotten "Hold ON, Mom", "Do you understand me?" and "I don't think so" out of her. SIGH. The next two years are going to be awfully long, I have a feeling. Thankfully, she is a bit slower to hit the "terrible two's" than her brother was - he was there at 18 months. However, anyone with an older child knows that the only people who call them "Terrible Two's" are people who have never had a three year old. Can I just fast-forward over 2012, pretty please?

Some Thoughts.

Easter is always a time of reflection for me.

I don't necessarily consider myself an overly religious person. I am Catholic, I was raised Catholic. I have my beliefs and I try to live true to them, regardless of what others may think. But I don't go around talking about God or Jesus or being saved. I've never been an in your face kind of christian. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. Far from it. I'm simply saying - it isn't me. I know how I feel, I discuss this with my husband, with my family, but with random strangers on the internet? I don't feel a need to bring it up. You believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and we can all be happy never knowing what the other person thinks.

But this time of year, I find myself delving deeper into my beliefs. Being honored that the one being *I* believe created this entire world, and everything and everyone in it, gave up the single most important thing to HIM so that WE could all be saved. My respect for that sacrifice has only increased since becoming a parent. Because never in a million years can I imagine being okay with giving up my only son, no matter who it might benefit. But then, that is what makes me human, after all. The selfishness. I strive to be selfless for my children, for my family, for myself, but let us face facts here: nobody, aside from Jesus, is truly selfless. It's a flaw, granted, but it is the flaw that makes us human. That and free will - and I firmly believe that selfishness arises from free will. A byproduct of it, if you will.

But at Easter, as I contemplate HOW much God must love us all to have willingly given up his child - so that we imperfect beings could continue to live, to love, to fight, to fail. Well, will we ever REALLY be able to thank him enough? I mean, really. If you are a parent, as a parent, can you fathom the sacrifice he made for us? First, to send Jesus forth from heaven into the human world, to watch him grow and teach, and become this perfect being, to suffer and to hurt and then ultimately to die? All for the sake of someone else? I can't. My heart aches to the point of physical pain at merely the THOUGHT of something happening to either of my children. But to know, from the day they are conceived, that ultimately you will have to watch them die? A slow, horrible, painful death, at the hands of others? Oh my.

This is the sacrifice that God made for us. How can we be anything but honored by it?

Live life with no regrets...

I've been thinking a lot lately. Dwelling, really. Thinking about decisions I've made, choices we've had, and where they have led me and also my family in our lives.

I've heard people talk of regrets before. One thing I refuse to do is live my life with regret. I cannot change the decisions I have already made, wish away my past, or the impact those decisions might have on my future. And honestly, I don't want to.

Without those decisions, I would not be the person that I am today. And while I am always an imperfect work-in-progress, I kind of like who I am today. I wouldn't want to be anyone else. To wish away something would make me someone different, and I would never want that. It would change who I was married to, who my children are, who I am. And since I love all these things, I will not live life with regret.

We can only make the best decisions we know how with the information we have at the time. Before we were married, I owned my own home. When we became engaged, we made the decision to sell my house. It was smaller, had only one bathroom, no basement. It was a good starter home, and was a great place for me to begin my journey of motherhood with Monster Boy. But with plans to expand our family, it was no longer fitting to our needs. We could have made it work, although it would have been tight. But, we made the decision instead to sell our home and purchase a larger one. Nothing crazy, just something a little bigger, a little better suited to our future needs. We carefully considered our budget, and what we could afford reasonably without straining our finances, and we bought our "perfect" home. Little did we know that within 18 months, we would both be laid off, have an infant and a small child to care for, a infant who required multiple surgeries and extensive doctor care. How could we have known these things? Had we known what would happen, I have no doubt we would have remained in the smaller home, with the smaller house payment. But we did not. And I cannot regret that. The home we have now, it is OUR home. The home we chose together, not the one I chose on my own. The home we are raising our children in, the home that we love. It has been a struggle, during our journey the past two years, that I will not deny. But we cannot change the choice that we made, and we would not want to. It may be a small example, but it is one that so clearly defines the reason why I will not live with regret.

After all, it is such a wasted emotion. For even if you regret, you can do nothing to change it. I honestly feel you should focus instead on the way you want to live your life going forward, for that you do have the power to change. Regret dwells on the past, and the past is what it is. We can choose to dwell in it, or we can choose to take it for the lesson it is and move on with our life. I choose to move on. What do you choose to do?

Things just keep moving.

I cried, like a big baby, last week. Monster Boy lost his very first tooth! Which would be reason enough for me to cry, since I'm emotional like that. But, he lost it at school so I didn't even get to see it! I managed to hold in the tears until after he went to bed that night, but then I cried. And Daddy Mac just looked at me like I was crazy and shook his head in consternation. I didn't care. My baby boy is growing up and I am SO not ready for it.

This morning Miss Sunshine had another speech therapy visit. It is time to rewrite our IFSP (Individual Family Services Plan). The speech therapist has been so impressed with her speech development that we didn't even include that as part of our desired progress this time! She wants to continue her therapies simply because she does qualify for them due to her cleft, although we are only going to do therapy every other month at this point. She doesn't see the need for more, and is thinking that when the time comes to release her from Early Intervention's care when she turns three, that the school system will phase her out. Here, after the age of three, the schools actually handle their therapies. Miss Sunshine may still qualify for services because of her cleft (she actually doesn't meet any of the developmental guidelines for therapies, so if it wasn't for her cleft she wouldn't qualify for services at all) but we don't feel they will be necessary at that point. I will have Daddy Mac discuss this with our cleft team at Shriner's when he takes her there in June for her team visit, but I feel they will say the same thing - her speech development is appropriate for her age at this point, and while we are seeing some nasal emissions, they are not significant, and not something that we feel therapy will help. It will either resolve on it's own as she gets bigger, or require additional surgery around the age of four... So, for now, we just play the waiting game.

Miss Sunshine is also showing signs of being ready to potty train. On the one hand I am excited by this, as it means no more changing diapers. On the other hand, I'm not ready for this. One, she's my baby. I'm not ready for her to be a big girl yet. Two, I cloth diaper (as I know I've mentioned before) and I love it. And I love all my diapers. And I don't want to put them up in to storage. Silly, I know. But for now, we are waiting. She will tell us she needs to go potty, and then as soon as we set foot in the bathroom, tell us "All done!" before we've even made it near the toilet. We have successfully gotten her to go a few times, both on her potty chair and on a big toilet, but I don't want to rush things. We made that mistake with Monster Boy and potty training him was a nightmare. I don't want to go through that again, so for now, we just play it by ear. I'm starting to make some training pants (I will not use disposable training pants, I think they are counter productive and a large part of the reason why it took so long to train Monster Boy) for her, and plan to start really working on the potty with her when I return from Florida in May.

Yes, I get to go on a kid-free vacation in May! I will be going to see my sister in Miami, and I can't wait. A week with no demands on my time. I plan to do a lot of laying around in the sun reading books and just relaxing. I know I will miss my kids horribly, but this is the first time in nearly seven years that I will get to go on a vacation with no kids and nothing to do. And anyone who has traveled with small children knows that you can call it a vacation, but with kids there, it is anything but. So now I get a REAL vacation. I am so ready!

Hear the Rain

Hear the Rain

A cadence.

Tip.

Tap.

Tink.

Rivulets

running in streams

down the window panes.

Drops

hitting the roof

like a snare drum.

A slow,

steady rhythm

beating softly in time.

A song of something new.

Hear the rain.

Spring

It's finally springtime here in the Heartland. Finally. We are still having several quite chilly days here and there, but it looks like spring has finally made it's arrival.

This afternoon, we will start our seeds for our seedlings for our new garden. We are doing seedlings indoors for several reason - one, the weather here is still quite unpredictable and there is a good chance we will have at least one more hard freeze before growing season really hits and I don't want to lose plants. Two, I will do a much better job at remembering to water the plants if they are right in my face each day! And three, we still haven't actually determined WHERE we are going to put said garden. I'm hoping to get my dad and stepmom over sometime this week for their advice - they have much greener thumbs, and considerably more experience, than we do in regards to this and while I know where I would like to put the garden, I don't know that it's actually the best location for it. And then we have to rent a tiller and till up the land, frame it, put in our soil, put up some chicken wire to keep the dog out, and so on... but it will be well worth it in the end, or so I hope.