SLP Evaluation, Finally!

Tuesday evening the phone rang at about 8:30. It was a woman I've decided to name "Miss Nervous," or MN for short, and she said she wanted to come to our home Friday to evaluate Willie for speech therapy services. I pretended I was not me and tried to take a message because Hell's Kitchen was on, and nothing short of one of the children hemorrhaging or loss of limb interrupts Hell's Kitchen! Yes we've been waiting for this call since April, but it's Hell's Kitchen for crying out loud! I thought there would be no harm in getting off the phone and settling in for some quality TV with The Beloved with Jack in our laps and calling MN back first thing in the morning. But my attempt at brevity didn't work.

MN wanted to ask questions. Lots of questions. Despite claiming ignorance and repeatedly saying "His mom will have to give you that information," over and over again, I still missed an entire segment between commercials. Dang it! She just didn't get it. She kept saying she really wanted to get some of this "vital information" before she saw William. And I'm only writing about all of this part because it didn't get any better from there! During that phone call, having repeatedly said the real me would probably want to call her back, I heard about her plans to be out of the office (where she was calling from) by about 10:15 and her hopes to drive through the dairy and get the gym by 11:00 when they lock the side doors, because she didn't want to park in front. Calling her back at ten would have been perfect. The 2-hour Hell's Kitchen would be over, we were planning the tape the 2-hour Deadliest Catch (Rest in peace, Phil Harris) and the episode of Rescue Me coming on at ten is always repeated at eleven so I could catch up on what ever I missed. No go! MN insisted that the fake me not interrupt the real me to call her back. Oy!

The next day, Wednesday, before noon, the real me called MN back. She'd given my alter ego her home phone, office phone and cell phone numbers for the real me to call at my convenience. A-hem. When I opened my cell phone to call her, there were three voice mails and six missed calls. All from her. Oh. Boy!

I left a message for her, assuring her that the time of Friday at noon that she and my alter ego had discussed was just fine, and if she had any question, please do call me back. She did call back, but despite plying my alter ego with a million questions, she had none for the real me. All that "vital information" was apparently no longer vital. I asked her three times if she had questions for me and she said, "No. Not really." We spent more time going over simple directions on how to get to our house than we did talking about William. In all honesty, I would have had a much easier time explaining to either of my Oldest Littles (You know, the ones with ASD???) how to get from there to here. Seriously. It was that time consuming!

So Friday morning I was up and at 'em to get the house straightened up and to vacuum and mop the floors. I timed Willie's bottles out and started him earlier than he would have liked to make sure that the SLP would be here for his feeding and I even squished up some avocado so she could see how well he was doing with that particular texture. MN called at about 10:30 to say that she had to go to a meeting close to our home, but she wasn't sure how to get here from the meeting. Eeeesh. Okay, I have to tell you firstly, we live in a town where the people who named things like streets were very short on imagination. If you are traveling East to West you will be traveling on a street numbered 10th, 20th, 30th, etc, all separated by exactly one mile. Secondly, streets between them are quite creatively named, 11th, 15th, 23rd, 33rd, etc, depending on which larger streets they fall between. You get it. If you are travelling North to South, you will be on a lettered street. As in the Alphabet. The English Alphabet. And thirdly, the streets all fall in order. Like the alphabet. Again spaced one mile apart, going North to South. You will not find Avenue G squished between Avenues R and S. It's simple. But explaining to MN was not going to be simple, despite the fact that now she was coming from the front end of the alphabet to pretty much the front end of the alphabet separated by 2 letters and 2.8 miles, not the next town over. It matters not that our streets are on the most basic and simplistic layout possible. It still took monumental effort on my part to not scream in pain and gnash my teeth while I explained once again how to get to our house.

And noon came and she didn't. At 12:20 I dialed her many numbers. At 12:40, she called me. She'd been held up an and IEP (in summer?) she was sorry, could she come now, and could she repeat these directions to me one more time? Holy smokes. What I'd told her before was simple, but based on what she repeated back to me, she would have sooner hit Alaska via Oregon and Canada before she'd wind up at our house. So again with the directions...turn left heading East on the same street you're already on. Go up .8 miles, to ##th E, there's a huge sign, and turn right. Go exactly 2 miles to E Avenue # with another huge sign, and turn right. Go 1/2 mile to ##th E and turn left. You're now in our neighborhood, the only housing tract in sight! Turn right at every first street you come to, #-4, G***wood, and #-3 and you are there. Right there. There are only three houses. We're in the middle one. Should this take her about, oh say, 20 minutes to get there? No. It should take about five minutes. And no, I won't go stand out in the yard in case she gets lost. (Really? Can nothing be simple? This is the person I am about to trust to properly assess my infant's needs? Can I get a What The Fudge?)

So she finally arrives. The first thing out of her mouth, seeing me feeding Will his bottle, was, "Oh. I thought you were going to wait to feed him while I was here." I said rather pleasantly, "Well, that was well over an hour ago." "Oh," she says, "I got lost getting here." Please just shoot me now! And the next thing she said was "Oh. Then this must be William." Not a question. A statement. She was dead serious. Like she was looking at a bug under glass. Um...yes? Or is Will one of the other babies we've got stashed in various places?

So let's get on with it. Yes, she was a bonafide SLP. No, she had not studied any particular program or theory. Yes, she had worked with many Down syndrome kids (I'm keeping score now!) and there wasn't any proven method that worked for everyone. (Duh!) She thought Will's birth weight of less than six pounds was "a good healthy weight" (Ch-ching!) and I said that he was actually small because he was almost a month early. To which she said, "Then he wasn't a good weight at all then." Are you confused? I certainly was. So, when she thought he was full term, less than six pounds was good, but finding out he was early, less than six pounds was now...bad? (Ch-ching!) She wanted to know what size clothing he was wearing. 3-6 months. Oh, so that's good. (Ch-ching! Ch-ching!) Really? For an 8 month old baby? Cue the Twilight Zone music, please.

While William ate she asked questions and I answered to the best of my ability with her convoluted history taking. All in all it was exhausting. We started with What does he eat? 8 ounces of Prosobee, every three hours. Formula or breast milk? Formula. Prosobee. My milk supply dried up after 4 months. You might try a lactation consultant. Really, after 4 months do you think I can regain lactation? (Ch-ching!) I explained extensively what I'd done for over a month to regain my supply, all to no avail. Well, there might be something a lactation specialist can tell you to help. (Ch-ching!) So that's formula? (Ch-ching!) Yes I say, thickened formula. Thickened with what? Simply Thick. What is that? (Ch-ching!) I show her the package. You don't use Thick It? No. We use Simply Thick. How did you arrive at how much to add? I followed the package instructions, one packet to each 4 ounces. Why each 4 ounces? It's on the package. (Ch-ching!) There ensued a ridiculous question and discussion about why I was using a fast flow nipple instead of a slow flow with the hole cut larger. I found it very frustrating and said finally, because it was a STUPID question, "It's only nectar thick, it isn't honey thick. Well, have you fed him honey? Good golly I could not believe what I was hearing. I said emphatically, "No. Babies under two years old do not have the bacterial flora in their digestive tracts to prevent them from getting botulism from the honey." Oh. From there we discussed why I started thickening his formula, his progressively worsening wet congested cough while eating, his aspiration pneumonia, the doctors repeated refusal to order a swallow study starting at 4 months, the other doctor we saw who refused a swallow study at 6 months, his hospitalization, etc. She said So that's why you're holding him in that position to eat? (Ch-ching!) So then I moved on to feeding positions, after feeding care, etc and I finished that line of thought about the difficulties Dr ES from her own agency was having getting the study ordered. At least six times I had to explain Will's weak neck muscles, poor core strength and poor head control to her (Ch-ching!) and she finally said I really don't understand why he has such poor head control. I said it quite often comes along with hypomyotonia or poor muscle strength with Down syndrome. "Really!" she said. (Ch-ching!) At one point I wanted to ask if she'd really had experience "with Down syndrome kids" but the better questions would have been, Do you have experience with babies? Do you know what they are? Have you actually ever, in fact, seen one? Touched one? Can you identify one? Here in this room?

She was pleasant enough, but all questions were prefaced with a disapproving facial expression and a tone of disbelief in each sentence. At one point she asked "Why didn't you ever request a swallow study from his doctor?" Just kill me now, please. Big sigh.

Will got to the point where he was contentedly full enough to stop drinking his bottle and still interested enough to start on the squished avocado. There ensued another loopy conversation about feeding equipment. "Do you have a high chair for him?" I said no, that he couldn't use one yet. Oh? Why not? I explained again about the head flop. The poor neck and core muscle strength. I showed her the Bumbo I'd modified and explained that he'd outgrown the straps and it was just easier to now hold him in my lap. She wanted me to show her how it was too small. No, you're just going to have to take my word for it. Will is going to get cranky if I delay his meal any longer.

I got Will all propped in my arms to start the avocado. As I gave him each spoonful I expected some feedback on the feeding technique. Nothing. So I filled the empty space with explaining that I was putting the spoon in sideways, not scraping the food off the spoon against his gums, pressing the spoon onto his tongue, etc. You know, the stuff I expected her to instruct me on. When she finally looked up from her notes it was to express nearly hysterical alarm. "There's a chunk! A chunk! On the spoon! You just put it in his mouth!" And she lept up to hover in our faces, apparently waiting for Will to choke and turn blue. Right on cue, Sweet William raspberried her with his mouthful of squished avocado! I knew this kid was smart! Despite the fact that Will had eaten nearly half the serving already, she went on a diatribe about how his avocado should be smooth with no chunks, not even tiny ones, and wouldn't I like to mash this a little more, maybe add some formula to it maybe, make it thinner perhaps? She wanted his food the consistency of pea soup. Really? Has she ever seen the particle size in pea soup? She singled out a tiny "chunk" the size of an asterisk and said that it could pose a life threatening circumstance for William. Like I said, shoot me now! Right now! I honestly had to restrain myself from telling her that I was getting the idea that I knew more than she did. Instead I explained that babies and children with Down syndrome quite often have Sensory Processing Disorders and that as long as Will wasn't displaying any aversion to having a little texture in his mouth, I wasn't going to encourage him to develop any. Then she needed me to explain SPD with texture aversion. Then she asked, "And how do you know about this, what is it? Sensory Processing Disorder?" So I pointed to The Girlie and The Middle Little, respectively saying "Sensory Avoider, Sensory Seeker." She wanted to know how those terms were arrived at. I said that they both have ASD, didn't pause to find out if she knew what that was, and moved right along with, "But we're not here to assess them. We're here to assess Will." Again, Oy!

Once Will finished his avocado, I let him finish his bottle. Now MN expressed concern that it took him 40 minutes to finish eating. I said that I'd interrupted him to answer the door for her, get her settled, and he'd eaten by spoon for awhile. Well have you ever tried feeding him his formula from a spoon? No, I said. What would be the point in that? And I waited for an answer, but there was none forthcoming. It would be labor intensive to feed his bottle food with a spoon. I just thought that you might have tried it. (Ch-ching!) It's just an alternative way.

So on to the next thing. She'd brought yogurt. Had I ever fed him yogurt? I said I was sure he's lactose intolerant, but I had given him pea sized tastes a few times. At the "pea sized" description, she wrinkled her nose and said "Oh," but didn't seem phased by the lactose intolerance. She pulled out two yogurts from home out of a bag. Strawberry and plain. She said she'd thought she had vanilla, but it was plain. I picked up one of the containers. It was warm. I said so. Oh, well I had that meeting. I said I didn't think he'd like plain, and babies aren't given strawberries before a year. Oh? Why not? It's a big allergen. We have peach in the fridge. Let's try that. And again with the near hysteria about the chunks!

A tablespoon of peach yogurt later, MN was concerned about how thin the yogurt was. Is your refrigerator working properly? Yes, actually, it is. And the mental reservation, what about the warm yogurt you wanted to feed him? But I said nothing. MN now had the spoon in her hand and was attempting to feed William. He wasn't having it. He wouldn't open his mouth. She kept bopping the spoon against his chin, I guess trying to coax him to open his mouth. He wasn't having it. After about fifteen tries he finally opened his mouth to laugh at her and she darted the spoon in and out so quickly that I'd thought she'd been bitten! Will thought this was a game! He spit out the yogurt and opened his mouth, and again with the darting spoon! Was she afraid she would touch him? Three more times with the spitting, the mouth opening, the darting spoon. I finally said he'd probably had enough and took the yogurt and spoon away.

There was more nonsensical stupidity, a lot more. These were sadly, just the highlights. Eventually she started her paperwork and then handed a copy to me. I asked what her recommendations were going to be. She asked what I wanted. I said that babies getting ST twice per week seemed to benefit the most. So, she wrote down her recommendation for twice weekly! Would she be our ST? Oh, no. No. Much head shaking I don't do that. More head shaking. No. I don't do the actual therapy. Well dang. That sure explained a lot!

And then she wanted directions back to her office. Oh. My. Gosh!

So there it is. Now we wait for the actual ST who will be providing each session to contact us. Heather from the Autism Response Team was here with The Olders for this entire exchange. No sooner had I seen MN to the door and turned around, she was frantically ringing the doorbell and trying the door! Heather called out, "It's her phone! She forgot her phone!" And Heather thrust it into my hands. I opened the door and gave the panic stricken woman her phone! "Oh thank God!" she exclaimed, seeing her phone! I got back to the kitchen where Heather was and we both burst into laughter. "What did she think? What? Had we all magically disappeared in those two seconds the door was closed and she'd never see her phone again?" I said I didn't know and that I hoped we'd never have to see her again! For the next hour and a half Heather and I recounted the strangeness of just about every thing the woman had said. It was really very, very odd.

Heaven Got Another Angel...

Kristen went to Heaven yesterday on July 20th. Please pray for her wonderful family. This beautiful girl battled much in her short years, and her angel wings are sorely earned. Perhaps you can send some kind words of love and support to her family.

Junior Blind of America

The Junior Blind of America, JBA, is the former Foundation for the Junior Blind. I have been on the phone for the greater part of the day, chasing down referrals for Jack, getting the run around, being referred here and there, transferred, disconnected, misinformed and jerked around since about ten am. I am off the phone now because every one is now, of course, closed. It's after 5 pm here.

And I babble because I'm still a little scared skinny that Jack is to start getting services from the JBA. The JBA! The call to Barbara, of the JBA, was the only call I made today where I wasn't jerked, yanked and bs'd til my hair turned blue. Barbara was super helpful, had tons of information, and was a truly delightful person to speak with! She told me how to request services from our RC, and Kim, our RC SC got back to me within the hour with an authorization! Yeah Barbara and Kim!

Okay so the reason I am wiggy about this is multi fold. First of all, it's The Junior Blind. As in BLIND, for crying out loud! And secondly, I still don't know just how bad Jack's visual impairment is because that referral to Dr B at the big children's hospital got cancelled by our health plan when they decided to send us somewhere else. Catherine over at Hang on Little Tomato had a bad experience with him, so it's just as well. I've had it up to here ( * ) with rotten doctors. This one sounded like an asshat. My words, not hers. And that referral, or lack thereof, is just one of the reasons I've been on the phone all danged day! If I have the stamina, and you have the fortitude to read it, I'll go into the other million phone calls. So even though I know what Jack's visual impairment is, I still don't know how severe it is. Or if it is debilitating. Or if it can be treated and to what degree of success. Is he going to go blind eventually? That idea is a bigger nightmare than I am equipped to face.

And now it looks like we're heading off to the ER. Jack went from 98.9 to 103.3 in thirty minutes...

Post script: we're home after five hours in the ER. Two ear infections. Poor Babyhead! Now that his fever is down, he is my happy smiling little Goobler Elf once again!

Milestones or Millstones

Okay. So I knew there would be delays. I knew that. Jack may not walk until he's well past 2 years old. He may not speak before then. He may not crawl until he's a year old. I knew all of this and told The Dear Daddy and The Olders all about it while I was pregnant with Jack. I knew. I was prepared. But does it still have to suck so much???

Little Nella who is 10 weeks younger than Jack, for crying out loud, is already sitting up. Briefly. And really, so is Jack. Very briefly. But Nella is sitting up long enough that her Mommy, Kelle, managed to get pictures of her doing it. (No offense Kelle. I love your family and I read your blog as soon as you post. It's my pick-me-up!)

So far, Jack is pretty much just like any other baby. Except that he sleeps through the night and I can always get a smile out of him just by getting into his line of sight! But then come the comparisons. And while I know I am not supposed to compare Jack to my other babies, how do I not? My Olders were sitting up pretty much by six months. They both crawled everywhere by nine months. Jack has been rolling everywhere long before they did, but I'm pretty sure that while The Girlie and The Middle Little both took off walking on their first birthdays, Jack will likely...still be prone.

Okay. Time to slap some perspective into myself. Jack is trying really, really hard to crawl. He's got the motions down. He's got the head lift. He gets his knees under himself. He gets the darling little diapered butt so high into the air. He gets his elbows underneath himself and lifts. And he's very exuberant about all of it. Just not all at once. He's still too weak to get it all going at the same time. So...maybe he will crawl by his first birthday. That seems like a more realistic goal. He's got four months. But it's not Jack on the clock. It's me. Yeah. Me. Sad, huh?

On the other hand, I don't want to ever say "Jack can't..." I think the more grievous error would be to set the bar too low. I have expectations of My Olders. I have them of Jack. And they are much the same. The degree to which each individual child succeeds will be measured by how high they set their own bars. I've said to my kids since they were tiny that they would graduate high school and go to college. Not sure how we're going to pay for that yet, but I digress. I can see The Girlie announcing that she will not go the college route, much more than I can envision it for Jack or The Middle Little. I'm seriously considering making both of The Olders go to nursing school. If they go right out of high school, get finished and discover that they don't like it, they will have degrees that they can bounce from into other areas, and at the very least, an income they can support themselves on. They will be young enough to fund higher education for themselves in some area they do want to pursue.

But what do I want Jack to be? I don't know. I'll have to see what his interests are. When he decides what to be when he grows up, he will let us know. The Girlie wants to be either a veterinarian or a "Massager person." I don't know how that will pan out. She lacks the discipline to study for veterinarian school (And The Beloved and I lack the funding!) and as a masseuse she could make a bunch of money. Maybe she will marry well and adopt all the babies "Who have no one else to love them," as she has often said she will do. The Middle Little I can see being an amazing graphic artist. Or a rock star. Or a computer wizard. I've seen his mind at work and he is more like my dearly departed Youngest Older Brother than I want to admit. That boy will build the better mousetrap. Reinvent the safety pin. Sell you something you don't need at three times the price it's worth, all the while making you feel great about it! My challenge with him will always be teaching him to do the right thing, not the easiest. With a child with autism, just how the heck do you teach that the right way is not always (or even often) the most expedient or effective way? It boggles me.

Anyway, the point is...what? That I'm a little blue that Jack isn't leaping over barriers and breaking records? He's just a baby. This is my problem, not his. Right now he is quite successful at being a baby. He charms me. And he charms his bad little self! He's gotten quite the attitude as of late. He is no longer content to let out a few yips to show his discontent. He still gives the warning yips and then moves right along to the all out howl. That's progress, isn't it? And the sweet little baby coos and vocalizations? He still does that. He's doing it right now in fact, in a supported sit over my left arm and atop my left thigh while I type one handed and simultaneously balance, counter balance and plain out reposition him every twenty seconds while he does bending and stretching acrobatics trying to leap to a bruised noggin on the tile floor. I'm trying to get him to burp. He's holding out! Time to lay him on the floor...

Okay, so I laid him on the floor to play and he promptly flipped over onto his tummy. And then. He pivoted! He pivoted! Twice! To get the toys in front of him! I wish I had it on video, because I was only able to tell his PT and OT that I thought he may have pivoted once, about an inch.

Okay...so back to the cooing and sweet vocalizations. He has another thing he loves to do. For about 30 minutes several times a day, I recline my rocker and sit Jack on my chest in a supported sit while I gently rock back and forth and tip him to and fro. This is building core strength and it's easier on my body than sitting on the tile-over-cement-slab-floor-covered-by-a-thin-carpet to balance him atop a giant ball. Jack loves this game of balancing and pays intent attention to my mouth while I make a variety of sounds. I firmly believe that the maneuvers he does with his tongue during this time is the reason he is able to close his mouth and keep his tongue inside much more than just a month ago. This is how he learned to make raspberries on purpose and I swear on all that is chocolate, every time his Daddy picks him up, he raspberries his Dad and spits in his eyes! He doesn't do this to anyone else. Just his Daddy!

And still I have not gotten to the thing he now loves to do. While sitting on my chest, he moves his mouth and tongue around and tries very hard to mimic my sounds. Eventually he starts yelling. Yes, yelling. And that becomes the new game. I give up trying to make sounds for him and start yelling back at him. He smiles. Then he takes a big deep breath and lets loose with all that he has. He leans forward, gets his arms rigid out to his sides, gets all red and scrunched up in the face and by the end of his breath, he's making short little staccato bursts of "Ah! Ah! Ah!" to squeeze every last sound out. And then he sits up, giggles, and then raises his eyebrows as if to say, "Whatcha got to top that? Bring it!" And then it's my turn to "yell" at him while he giggles and wiggles, all the while trying and succeeding to balance inside the protective circle of my hands.

So I guess I've typed myself out of my pity party. And as my dear baby boy is now asleep, cuddled so sweetly in my arm while I once again type one handed, I look down into his angel face, kiss his brow, and in my heart I go to my knees and thank my God for sending me this boy. This one.

He is not a millstone about my neck. He is all that is good and pure.

Green Stuff

Last night I fed Will some mooshed up avocado...and he loved it!
Unfortunately, my camera man, aka The Girlie, had no better luck capturing his smiles than I usually do. There were lots and lots of smiles! Of course we had to have another go at it this morning. Would he like it as much today? I'll let you be the judge...






This last one is my hands down favorite!

It Was Supposed to be a Car...

Long, long before The Littles were sparkles in our eyes or in the case the The Girlie, screaming with colic in the night. All night. Every night. For months on end...there was this ring I'd lusted after for years. Years people! Years and years. And one day while I was wandering the mall with a girlfriend, there was The Ring in the window at Kevin Jewelers. It was 70% off. Seventy percent! It was within reach! And reach it, I did. I went into the shop where my good friend Craig worked. Craig sold us the very first ring The Beloved ever purchased for me. And Craig has been both a professional and personal friend ever since. We just hit it off. Craig recognized the feverish pulse, the rapid breathing, the crazed look in my eye...and took his sweet time getting it out of the case so I could try it on. And it was all over once I had it on my finger. I had to have it.

This was back in the days before everyone had cell phones. In those days, the dark ages of technology, everyone had pagers. So after Craig convinced me that I could not wear it home, that he'd keep it safe for me, I went home to frantically page The Beloved and sit on top of the phone until he called me back. And when he called back, I explained very excitedly just exactly what I wanted to spend my new car fund on and precisely why I should and that this opportunity would not come around again.

And he balked. The ring was over 5K. We had no where near that amount in our new car fund. But it's 70% off! That left just roughly over $1,650.00, which was also no where near what we had in our new car fund. Ah...but the clincher. Craig knew how badly I wanted that ring. He had it in his pocket as we were speaking so no one could buy it. And for us, he'd give up his commission so I could have it. And then the kiss of death. The Beloved says to me, "Well, you really do need a different car. It's taken us how long to save this money? I don't know. You decide. It's your call." Great. I hate it when he pulls out the Responsibility Card. Dang.

And then he called back an hour later and said it was okay with him if I bought the ring instead of a car. Oh Yeah! He said it!

Like most pieces of cherished family jewelery, there's a story with this one. I'll try to do it justice. I called Craig and raced out of the house to head back to the mall. He said there was a woman this morning looking at the same ring. He hoped I'd get there before her. When I arrived, there was a short older woman with a heavy accent, badly dyed hair and jagged orange lip stick frantically yelling at a jeweler. "It was right here! One hour ago! It was here! Now it is not!" Tapping on the glass with an acrylic nail, then banging on it with a fist. "You tell me it has not been sold! Where is it? It is my ring! I want that ring! It is mine! I picked it out. One hour ago! I come back with my husband to buy the ring! It is gone! Where is my ring!" Craig eyeballed me over to a corner, pulled the price tag off the ring and slipped it onto my index finger. "Cover that up!"

The paperwork was finally done and the frantic lady had left. I kid you not, just as I was slipping it off my finger to have it sized, she came back! She had an entourage with her this time. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grown children. There were at least eight more people. And as she spotted the ring, she actually grabbed my wrist and made a grab for the ring. Craig beat her to it, slipping the ring off my finger so fast that I wasn't sure he had it until he winked at me and disappeared. "Where did it go? Where is my ring? Where is it?" The lady is still gripping my wrist (she was strong!) and bending over looking every where in jerking movements to see if the ring had fallen on the floor and nearly pulling me over the display counter when she lunged over it to see if the ring had flown behind it when she'd made her mad grab.

Finally Craig came back and joined the manager and another sales person in trying to calm the lady who is still yelling and is now looking daggers at me. Oh dear. She was yelling in broken English, yelling at her husband and her entourage in her native tongue, insisting, "It was here just one hour ago! One hour! How you sell it away from me?" Craig finally spoke up and said that the ring had been in his pocket for almost three hours. It hadn't been in the case one hour ago. He'd sold it after she left without putting a down payment on it almost four hours ago. He was sorry, but the ring was gone. Could he interest her in anything else? The lady clamped her mouth shut, stabbed one more dagger in the region close to my heart and stomped off. Looking back, I think I would have been much less gracious than she'd been in that situation. Poor lady. I hope she found something more wonderful instead.

And years later, my diamond and sapphire ring has become my Mother's Ring. Not only because my own Mother was born in September and I still miss her every day that I breath, but The Girlie was born in April, the month I lost my Mother ten years prior, and her birth stone is diamonds. My Middle Little was born in September and his birth stone is sapphires. A very special and dear ring to me, for two very special and precious children, and one healing wound in my heart. The Girlie. The Middle Little. My Mother.

And there is another ring very dear to me as well. For two other very special and precious children. When I was able to think again without my heart breaking, I ventured out to my favorite jeweler to buy something small to remember Hannah. Craig wasn't there that day and I had to deal with a sales person who just wouldn't leave me to my privacy! Hannah was due on December 6th. But I didn't like December's birth stone and we'd known all along that she would be taken at least two weeks early in November. I'd hoped that she would be born on my Youngest Oldest Brother's birthday, who is now resting beside my Mother and also died in April. But I didn't like November's birth stone either. Borrowing from a niece who also doesn't like November's yellow topaz, I chose a light blue topaz. And I found a perfect little diamond and blue topaz ring. Diamonds for the sparkle she no doubt would have been, blue topaz for what should have been her birth month.

It fit perfectly. I wouldn't have to leave it there for sizing. The sales person just couldn't leave me alone about why it had to be blue topaz and diamonds and why I had to take it with me. Why I needed to take it with me and not leave it there. While we were finalizing the transaction, he said, "Come on, you have to tell me why this special ring is so important to you but doesn't put a smile on your face..." A single tear was followed by many when I finally said, "It's to remember our baby girl that we lost." He finally shut up!

I hadn't worn that ring or any other in all the bloated months that I was pregnant with Jack. I was lucky to be able to squeeze into panties! But I'd thought about Hannah's ring all those months, just praying that Jack would stay inside until November could come and he could be safely born. There are such parallels. Both Jack and Hannah's due dates were December 6th. The Middle Little missed my Mother's birth date by eleven days. Jack missed my Brother's birth date by eleven days. The Two Olders birthdays are exactly 101 days before and after Christmas. I'll have to figure out if Jack is 101 days from any event. Another time perhaps.

The Jack and Hannah ring is back on my finger now. Another special Mother's Ring and birth stone ring for two very special babies, and yet another healing wound in my heart. Hannah. Jack. My Brother.

I hope in years to come that these two pieces will become family heirlooms. They already are in my heart. I hope that both of these pieces get handed down from generation to generation and their stories and significance with them. That they will also hold legacies of such immense love for the bearer of each piece.

Maybe I should have tittled this post The Heart of the Ocean!

He Finally Said It

So The Beloved The Buttface, says to me this morning, "It's about time he's sleeping in his own bed." I ask who? He gives me the look. So I say that he is sleeping in his own bed. He says, "His own bed in his own room. You know, that room down the hall. The one you call 'The Nursery?' That room. You remember the one." So I skip a few beats and say, "When he's sitting up. He's safe in the cradle until he's sitting up." The Beloved Butthead started to protest but I left the room with my hands over my ears, singing "Lalalalalala...I can't hear you! Lalalalala!" So there! In all honesty, The Olders weren't ousted until they were able to sit up. Why should Jack be any different? After all, we agreed that we would raise him exactly the same...SO THERE!

Ummmmm...?

This is what the Daddy was up to while the Mommy napped.

8 Months Old!

Clearly I was having a Clark W. Griswold moment while I took these pictures. There are about 85 of them. Jack was a good sport...don't worry, I only posted about 30 of them! I'll let you decide whether or not I did Clark proud...





















Oh that bow used to be so big!




And I thought it was hard to hide his "parts" when he was 5 weeks old!






Rockin' the bow!



He seems to have it out for that bow...I'm just sayin'.

Wonders Never Cease!

I'd gotten up early to feed Jack and once he was burped and happy I snuggled back into bed with The Beloved. I woke hours later to an empty bed and an empty cradle. So I turned over and went back to sleep! All too soon The Beloved was shaking me gently and saying, "Time to wake up. That baby in there is hungry and wants you to feed him! I tried but he doesn't think I'm doing it right." So I got my sleepy self up and while my feet were getting acquainted with the floor, he said something amazing and I nearly dropped to my knees! "I changed him." What? He changed his diaper??? "No, I changed the baby. We have a better one now. One that's not full of poop!" I recovered from my shock and wandered out to a nearly naked Jack, doing his "Uuuummm, uuuummm, uuuummm" sound that he makes when he's hungry, while The Beloved detailed the atrocities found in the toxic diaper. "That baby! Right there. He's the one that made that diaper bomb!" He went on and on about the size, the odor, the texture, even the shape! "It was like a pancake. It was all flat and pasty and stuck to his butt and all smeared up his back and it smelled B-A-D! It was all stuck to his parts and as soon as I got the thing open he started googling and kicking and getting it all over the place!" Nearly half way through Jack's bottle, The Beloved stopped for breath and I asked, "What did you do with the diaper?" He said he put it in the 'diaper thing.'

Eventually I took a trip down the hall to the nursery. Having heard that the poop was smeared up his back, I expected a mess in the nursery and a poopy sleeper that needed soaking in a pre-wash. There was the sleeper, on the changing table, all laid out and open, just as The Beloved had left it when he lifted Jack out of it. And it was pristine. No poop globs, smears, streaks. Nothing. So I got suspicious and curious about this 'monster diaper.' Dare I pull it out of the Diaper Genie? I've stuffed massively poopy diapers into that thing and it's a real trick to get the diaper shoved down in there without pulling out an arm smeared with the stuff you were trying to get rid of in the first place. Dare I dig it out? Turns out that I didn't have to. The Beloved had opened the lid and set the diaper in it. In the top. Where it still sat. Because the Diaper Genie doesn't magically suck the offending diaper down into it's depths to be magically disposed of and never to be seen again! So I pulled it out. And the poop was a pasty pancake all right. And about the size you'd get if you rolled a walnut to a thickness of 3/8's of an inch. Oh wait. That is the size of a walnut. But as I returned the living room where The Dear Daddy was burping a happy Jack, I said nothing. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. I'm just happy that he finally changed a diaper, and still surprised that he started with a poopy one. And it was lovely that he let me sleep! "I tried to feed him so you could sleep a little longer but he kept fussing and I think he was looking for you. He missed you." Sweet!

Post Script: On Tuesday, The Beloved not only changed a pee diaper, he volunteered to change a another poopy!

Rolling Rolling Rolling

Look at that height!
Carpet surfing!
I know his face isn't showing, but look how high and proud he's holding his head!Ooooveeeer......he goes!

Playing With Daddy

"Again, Daddy!"