Running and Lunch

Brizzy had her jog-a-thon at school.  She was petrified to ask people for money, but was excited about collecting it.    When it came time to run, it was a hot day outside, but she was all business.  She hardly stopped running for 20 minutes and ended up doing 20 laps (2 miles).  Its so fun to see her enjoy running.  And so fun to be able to be a part of her school stuff. I feel really blessed to have such a flexible work schedule so I can do stuff like that with her.

Here she is with her BFF Blair.  Love these cute girls.

So tired after, I tried to make some shade for her.

We have been working on having more consistent chores.  She has one chore that lasts all week and then she draws a "special job" on Saturday.  Something that usually requires help from mom and dad.  Well this Saturday her special job was to make us lunch but she wanted to do it on her own.

She has been a little pill since Kindergarten has started but she has sweet moments.  

I love when she tries to be helpful and grown up.  You can see how proud she is of herself.

Baby love

I am a little obsessed with my baby girl.  I'm not afraid to admit it.  I can't stop staring at her and giving her kisses, that is, when she isn't puking.  She loves to give open mouth druely kisses with her tongue.  They're the best.  And sometimes I forget that not everyone appreciates them.  I constantly have baby barf all over me, and pumping is a very annoying chore.  But its so worth it to have this little girl with me.  

We are still figuring out her tummy issues and when she poops we like to throw a party.  Sometimes she cries so loud it makes me sick to my stomach.  But I sometimes will think about what it was like to hold Holland after she died.  I remember just holding her and wanting her to come back to life.  It was very obvious that she was dead because she looked very different, but even still, I just wished I could freeze a moment of her looking at me, or snorting or crying.  Anything.  So when I have hard, frustrating moments with Wembley, I try to remember that, and remember how one day I would give anything to hear her baby scream (scream is probably more accurate than cry really :) ).  I love my feisty, pukey baby girl.  

Clean Bandit

I have a really cool friend Megan that loves music perhaps more than I do.  She is always up for stuff and loves going to concerts.  She took me to see Little Daylight and Clean Bandit at the Doug Fir Lounge last week.  I think its safe to say that it was the most random group of people that I have ever seen at a concert.  My favorite was watching drunk 60 year old men hitting on a 20 something year old dude that was there on a date.  Megan - thanks for taking me out on the town.  You make me feel like I'm still in my twenties :)

PapaNona

We only moved 2.5 miles away but we are about 10 minutes closer to my parents house and we have been seeing more of them.  It has been so fun to see them a lot.  My Mom watches the girls every Thursday afternoon for a few hours while I work and Papa of course is always trying to get his grandkid fix.  Our neighbors know them pretty well, and I've even had a few people in my ward who had told me how impressed they are with my Dad.  He changes diapers, cleans up puke, all of it.  My girls have some awesome grandparents.

Reno

Our good friends the Nelsons came and visited us from Reno.  It was a lot of kids, but a lot of fun.  I hadn't seen their twin babies since they were newborns, and now they're pretty much toddlers.  And Briz was in heaven having Jaron here.  

We went to the zoo one afternoon and discovered the lorikeets.  They were crazy.  One jumped on my back and I was trying to not freak out.

We also visited the crocodiles.  Right before I took this picture, I was reading about how crocodiles hunted their food.  They would slowly creep up to the edge of the water, and turn their mouth horizontal to trap food and then snap sideways quickly.  Right after Jaron and Briz put their faces up to the glass, this crocodile slowly turned around, swam towards the edge and got himself in hunting position.  I was freaking out!  It was really creepy looking.  Briz and Jaron thought it was cool.  

We fit three carseats all next to each other.  We felt pretty proud of ourselves.

I think Julia and I just need to live with each other and collaboratively take care of the kids together.  It was so fun having her around.  When they left I was so sad that my house felt so quiet :(  Move back, and bring your boat with you :)

Late Summer

We have had a gorgeous year with our weather.  I was slightly bitter about it because I was incapacitated for most of it.  But the last month has been so fun, and I have loved it.  We took advantage the day before my birthday and went to Dougan falls with some friends, a swimming hole with some waterfalls.

Swimming holes aren't extremely easy with babies, but we make it work.

                                       

I love getting to sit in the back on the rare occasion and watch these two interact.  Briz is so finally to have someone back here with her to bug!  She is my little helper, always putting Wembley's binky in for me and trying to console her.  Briz also likes to pile stuff up on the carseat and when she's really tired, take a nap.  I often hear Briz complaining that Wembley is kicking her head when she's trying to nap.

And as always, I get to witness the attitude.

On another lovely evening, we went and played tennis.  Wembley was being camera shy.

Brizzy is improving in her tennis game.  Even though she cries when she doesn't hit it over and we have to tell her a million times its okay when she doesn't feel like she's "done her best," its fun to watch her get better and want to be a part of our games.

Football

Brizzy started her first season of soccer this year.  She continually told me before the season started that soccer is her least favorite sport so I wasn't expecting much, but she started out pretty strong.  2 goals in the first game.  It's gone a little bit downhill from there.  She had some negative experiences with a very large female kindergartner that tackled her a few times, and she has since gotten sort of scared.  Nick and I have to work really hard on keeping our mouths shut and trying to cheer positive things.  She is already so competitive and so hard on herself that we try not to make it too much worse.

We have a bit of a loud cheering section already with Papa and Nona coming to most games. She is a lucky girl to have them so close.

Wembley is a big fan of the games and spends a lot of the time drooling to show her enthusiasm.

He She

Sometimes I like to dress Wembley up as a boy and pretend I have one.   I kind of think she looks like a boy without a bow in her hair, and Wembley could be a boy name . . . 

Also, look at all of that sass already.  Just in the expression I feel like I can predict the next 18 years of my life.

Ballet

I have put Briz in a few ballet classes at the rec center but I felt a little torn because I felt like she needed something a bit more challenging than taking Ballet I again.  I had heard about this pretty cheap dance studio a while ago but had forgotten until some people in my ward reminded me of it.  Miss Heidi's dance has been one of my best decisions in the last few months.

Other than Brizzy wanting to practice her dancing to the nutcracker in all of her spare time, I have loved watching Briz have a blast going to dance.  She adores Miss Heidi and has some cute little friends in the class.  Best part is we carpool and so I only take her once every three weeks.

Scary Day

*** I wrote this post a couple weeks ago and am just now publishing it.

I can't sleep.  It's 1 a.m. and I took a Tylenol PM at 9 p.m. hoping to be passed out by 10 p.m. but guess it's not strong enough.  It's a tough thing to be going through some trauma with a newborn, because I don't have a lot of wiggle room for behaving like the Zombie that I feel I am right now.

Monday afternoon was the scariest afternoon of my life.  I relived part of my biggest nightmare as a mom, part of a nightmare that I had already lived.  I put Wembley down for her afternoon nap.  She had been fussy and spitting up a lot and I felt conflicted about putting her down because I knew I would have to wake her up in 30 minutes to go pick up Briz from the bus anyways, but she hadn't napped well that day and I knew she needed sleep.  I swaddled her in her baby sleep sack, layed her down in her crib, put her binky in her mouth, left the door open and walked downstairs to respond to an email and get my broccoli out of the microwave.  I have a breathing monitor and a video monitor.  I sync the breathing monitor up to an app on my iphone, but my phone kept dying all morning, so I thought that I would just work for a bit while I had the video monitor on.  My ipad for my video monitor was upstairs in my room, so I thought to myself, "I'll go get it in a few minutes."  Let me preface this with saying that I have worked really really hard on not being too anxious with Wembley.  The first week I was home was really rough for me.  I had a few panic moments where I woke up thinking she maybe died in her sleep.  I knew that I would experience this and I figured I would worry more than necessary.  So I have tried extremely hard to challenge this anxiety over and over again, reassuring myself that at the very least, there is no way that it could happen twice.  Normally I carry my ipad or phone around with me and watch it like a hawk everywhere I go.  But I was obviously starting to feel a bit less worried and a bit more confident the fact that I had no monitor on for five minutes.  Anyways, I go downstairs.  She cried for about 5 minutes, which is normal and what I do to get her to sleep.  She stopped crying after 5 minutes, perfect, got herself to sleep.  But I got my broccoli out of the microwave had the distinct thought to go check on her.  This is nothing new, I get this thought probably at least every other day, and generally I just assume that it's not some special prompting, but my own worrying.  Either way, I have learned that it's worth it to respond to it because then I have no doubts or questions if something did happen.  So I go up to check on her.  I look in the crib and see that she is face down and her head is sort of wiggling a little bit.  I pick her up, not really knowing that she wasn't breathing, and when I see her, I am startled.  Her face was blue, she looked horrible.  She was dripping in sweat, and I go into panic mode.  She immediately coughed and cried a bit and then started spitting up some.  My first instinct was to turn her over, and start patting her back.  I didn't even know if she was choking, I just did it.  I pick her up once I can see that she is breathing, and I just say over and and over again in a panicked sob, "Not again not again not again!  Don't die Don't die Don't die."  She was breathing but she looked like she was on the cusp of death to me.  I thought somehow I could just will her to live.  Once I could see she was obviously breathing, I didn't know what to do.  I took her downstairs, got down on the floor, and had the thought that I should call 911.  I called, and was stupidly embarrassed at how I sounded.  Between the shaking and the sobbing I couldn't get words out.  I remember the operator asking me my address and I felt like it was impossible to say the whole thing.  During that time, I saw that Wembley's color was returning a bit, she now just looked extremely pale and she had labored breathing and was just limp; her eyes kept rolling back.  I kept telling the operator that I didn't want her to pass out, and she just kept telling me the ambulance was almost there.  The ambulance got there, and took her and started doing tests.  I had text Nick by this time demanding him to call me since he was in a meeting and didn't answer his phone. First thing I told him was that Wembley was alive and okay, because I knew when he heard my voice that that would be his biggest fear.  I then tried to summarize what happened.  The ambulance tried to talk to me, and then a neighbor brought Briz home from the bus and to the front door.  Nick called me back wanting to know more on his tortuous drive.  Briz ran upstairs into her room, slammed the door and hid under the covers.  And the ambulance asked me a lot of questions about her.  They kept telling me she looked great, and I just broke down and in broken shaky cries said, "My last daughter died of SIDS."  They all sighed and felt sad.  They sat with me for a while and I wasn't convinced she was okay.  I kept asking if she had any damage from lack of oxygen.  They said she looked great, that I could always call them back.  They told me to call my pediatrician and to watch her closely for the next few hours.  I called him right after they left. I spoke with the receptionist and didn't know how to explain my reason for calling.  They got me to the nurse and she told me to go straight to Doernbecher up at OHSU.  Nick got home right after and we headed up there.  Wembley was having a really hard time staying awake, but again, was just limp.  No crying, no expression, just eyes trying to roll over and no movement in her body.  I sat next to her in the car, with my hand over her chest to make sure she was breathing.  She fell asleep.  When we got to the hospital, she woke up and immediately started acting like herself.

When we got to the ER, they were wonderful.  They took us immediately back and ran an EKG on her.  She was so great.  She smiled and talked to all of the nurses and doctors.  She was loving the attention.  Then after a couple hours a doctor came in, said everything looked great but that they wanted to keep us overnight to run some tests and to monitor her.  I was surprised but extremely relieved.  It was so sad having her hooked up to all of the monitors (which are constantly going off) and in this big oversized hospital crib.  But she was so amazing.  She hardly cried and just seemed to love all of the new faces.  I got asked a lot of questions about what happened and about Holland, and that was hard.  I felt like in so many ways I was reliving the other scariest day of my life.  I felt so much guilt and also anger towards a lot of the doctors that were teaching me about the SIDS prevention tactics.  I wanted to scream, you idiots I already know all of this!!!  The one thing that ended up helping was meeting with the speech pathologist.  He did a radiology test to see how she swallows. You could see the major acid reflux happening and then the aspiration.  He gave me gel stuff to add to her bottles to make them more thick and easier for her to breathe and swallow.  Then they put her on some more heavy duty acid reflux medication to help control the constant vomit.  They believe what happened is that she aspirated on her spit up, rolled over and couldn't gain control over herself to move.  So one of the big things to help prevent this from ever happening again is to control the spit up and aspiration.  It has already been a huge difference in helping her eat better.  And that helps me feel slightly less worried.

I am now left with very similar PTSD symptoms I experienced after Holland died.  I can recognize some of the same symptoms: the numbing I feel, overwhelmed at the slightest task, inability to sleep, and of course, the panic attacks.  Sometimes my mind has a hard time distinguishing the difference between finding Holland and finding Wembley.  But I find myself just holding and kissing my sweet, beautiful girl as much as possible.  I'm not sure I can handle an experience like that again.  My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest, and now my mind is reeling.  But for now, I am simply trying to savor the fact that Wembley is alive and continue to show gratitude to the Lord for prompting me to find her.

Kindergarten

Most of the summer I was feeling really reluctant for Briz to start kindergarten.  I knew she was very very ready for it, but it sort of made me sad to think about her growing up.  Fast foward a week before school and kindergarten could not soon enough!  She was constantly bugging me to entertain her.  She would wake up in the morning and say, "Who am I playing with today Mom?  What are we doing today?"  I would respond with something like, "You're playing with so and so, and then we have to go to the grocery store and then the library."  And she would inevitably respond with, "That's it!"  This girl wanted constant entertainment.

We got stuck with afternoon kindergarten, which I was not too excited with.  Strike one for public schools.  The advantage is that is leaves us a lot of time in the morning to go to doctors appts.  I took Briz to her five year check up on the first day of school and she got her shots.  She was very nervous but did great.  She held me hands with tears in her eyes and tried to force a brave smile.  The doctor made me feel like a horrible mom for giving her shots on the first day of school, but I didn't want to wait another two months to try to get in!

The front of Brizzy's school.  I was getting there and was feeling like the worst mom ever.  Turns out it didn't matter at all.

Here she is with her teacher who is definitely older than she looks.  Briz LOVES her.  She makes her artwork at least once a week. 

Briz at her table.

Me with my cute girls.  I wish I could brag about making such cute kids but they don't look like me, so can't really do that.

Briz LOVES riding the school bus.  The first day she could not wipe the huge grin off of her face.  And every day since she continues to bounce onto the bus with a big smile, feeling so proud of herself for being such a big kid.

Strike two for public schools occurred on the second day of school/first time riding the bus whens she got on the wrong bus coming home.  Apparently no one bothered to check her bus tag.  Luckily her mom's friend called me so I was able to meet Briz back at her school.  She was fine but I was very mad and had to be a scary, angry mom just the second day of school.  

But other than that, so far so good.  Its weird to be a mom with a kid in school!