A message from heaven

Fall especially reminds me of Luke.  Since he was my first pregnancy, my experience with morning sickness and other early pregnancy symptoms are still vivid in my memory and they took place in the fall.  The smell of ripening tomatoes on the counter, the chill in the air, apple picking and back to school all bring me back to when he was here with me.  I still have a hard time eating tomatoes, and it's not so much the taste as it is the smell.  There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about him and wonder how his personality would have unfolded and what types of things he would have done to drive me crazy and melt my heart.  I wonder how he would interact with Lucy and Emma.

The other day as I was tucking Lucy into bed for the night she had me retell the story of before she was born.  I told her again of how Luke visited me in a dream one night as she was growing in my tummy.  In that dream, Luke told me that I was going to have a healthy baby girl named Lucy.  She interrupted me in the story and asked, "Lukey called you on your phone, mom?"  I told her I wish, but that people can't call you on the phone when they are in heaven.  Instead, they can visit us in our dreams to tell us things.  But geez, how great would that be if we could just dial up heaven?

Last week Lucy picked out the story Puff the Magic Dragon from her bookshelf to read before bed.  I had never read it to her before, but I had read it to Luke, and I had completely forgotten about it until I started reading it to Lucy and the words choked up in my throat.  I read to Luke often when I was pregnant with him - I had lots of free time then, since I didn't have any other kids to chase around!  Will even took a picture of me reading this exact book to Luke.  Based on the date of the picture, I am estimating that I was 33 weeks here - two weeks before we lost Luke.  It hurts to see the happiness and hope on my face.  Little did we know how short our time was with Luke, and how much a simple story would mean to me over three and a half years later.

Luke continues to show us his presence in subtle ways.  Last month I enlarged a photo of our family from Emma's baptism to hang in our bedroom.  This picture held special significance, as it is part of the tradition we started in front of the stained glass window at our church where Luke was laid out in front of at his funeral.  At Lucy's baptism we made sure to get a picture of the three of us in front of the window as a way to include Luke's memory in the day.  With Emma's baptism, we continued the tradition.  It became an obsession for me to make sure we got a picture in front of that window before the baptism so I wouldn't have to worry about it during the ceremony.  Things did not go smoothly however, and our camera's memory card was full and we didn't have a backup.  My dad tried taking it with his camera but accidentally hit a button that changed a setting and he couldn't get it to work.  Finally, the priest came over to us and asked us to go sit down so he could get started.  Reluctantly, we sat down but I couldn't keep my mind off trying to get that picture.  As soon as the baptism was over, we went back and tried the picture again.  My dad had figured out his camera and took a couple of pictures.  I didn't think about it again until I ordered one of the photos in a 5x7.  As I was hanging it up in our bedroom, my eyes locked in on a fifth person in the picture.  There in the stained glass window, perfectly positioned between us was a little boy looking at Will.

Now I know why we couldn't get the photo on the first try.  We weren't standing in the right spot!  I like to believe that Luke is showing us that although we can't see him, or call him up on the phone, that he is still very much present with us, every day.  We love you Lukey!

Emma's 5 Months!

Emma is a week into her fifth month, and I am just getting a chance to sit down and type up this post.  With Will back at work, my free moments are even fewer and farther between than before.  There are definitely more times than not where I feel like I am having an outer body experience, watching and listening to the craziness unfold around me.  I call it my Happy Place, where I am able to watch myself simultaneously yell "Lucy Anne!" as she squirts a juice box all over the floor, grab the pot off the burner as the oatmeal is burning and bounce Emma up and down on my hip while holding the pacifier in her mouth and chanting "it's okay Emma, it's okay..."  In this Happy Place, I am amazed that people all around the world and from the beginning of time have had more than one child.  Really, this fact alone is enough to create awe and wonder in me.  Maybe I'm crazy, or maybe my Happy Place is the last place I can go before I really do hit Crazy Town, but it's like I have to remove myself from the chaos around me so that I can see the humor in it.  Will claims at times like this that I get a distant, glassy look in my eye, and that I do not hear a word he is saying.  The fact of the matter is - I hear him, I am just unable to respond because, well, I am in my Happy Place!  

With that being said, this seems like it has been a crazy month.  Emma has new frustrations about being stuck in one place and I think this has added to our household's stress.  She isn't content anymore to sit in her bouncer or lay on her play mat while I get stuff done.  Trying to go anywhere in the mornings is like trying to round up a three ring circus that speaks a different language than you do.  It is a good morning if we have all eaten breakfast by 9:30 a.m., and an even better morning if I have showered before breakfast too.  It is the best morning ever if I've slipped in a workout on the elliptical and remembered to put on face moisturizer and deodorant after my shower.  The brochure on Motherhood was definitely lacking some very important details when I signed up for this gig!  But the craziest part about my experience with Motherhood so far, is that I wouldn't go back to my days of free time for the world.  I love being Luke, Lucy and Emma's mom and the truly awe inspiring thing is that even with all the chaos, I still find moments throughout the day to have a different outer body experience - when I look at my two beautiful girls who are happy and content (for the moment) and think, wow, how did I get so lucky to be their mom?  Then I remind myself to soak it in, as in the next minute or so, someone will be crying and the craziness will start all over again.

Emma continues to get stronger and doesn't understand that she is still unable to move on her own.  Most times when we hold her now, she will throw her body towards the ground or an object that looks interesting, full expecting to be able to propel her body without our support.  When she realizes she cannot in fact walk, crawl or support herself for more than a minute on her own she gets frustrated and starts crying.  Poor girl - one of these days she will be able to do all of these things, but until then, it is as if she is trapped inside a body that just doesn't do what her mind is telling it to do.  Here Emma is below trying to crawl and getting mad.

Emma sits on her own now, which does help her frustration a little bit.  She can also easily roll from her tummy to her back this month too, which somewhat helps her move to what she wants.

Because of her uncanny ability to throw her body in the direction she wants to go, we are wondering if her days in the bouncer are limited.  As we were getting ready to sit down to dinner the other night, we found Emma helping herself to the mustard.  Maybe she will like mustard as much as Lucy.

I continue to fall deeper in love with this little girl, and as I mentioned earlier, cannot imagine my life without her in it.  She is such a joy to be around when all her needs have been met!  Here she is below, getting her need for attention met as we went for a walk downtown a couple of weeks ago.

 She rarely stays long in the expensive double stroller we invested in.  It kind of makes me a bit regretful to think what we spent on this stroller when 80% of the time only one child is in it.  But on the occasions both girls are content to sit in it, it does make for some glorious walks!  Lately, Lucy lets Emma play with her toes which does buy us some time.

 Speaking of Lucy and Emma.  The other day we were packing the kids up in the car when Lucy kept ranting "Where's my sticker?" over and over again.  I told her in so many words or less, "For the love of God - get in your car seat and stop ping-ponging around the backseat of the car!"  Finally, she settled down and got in her car seat.  No sooner was the car backed out of the garage when Emma started seriously choking.  I jumped out, opened Emma's door, got her out of her car seat and thumped her on the back.  She recovered quickly, but I never did find out what caused her to choke like that.  Until the next day when I was changing Emma's diaper.  There, slightly larger than a quarter was a completely intact sticker of a fairy.  I called Lucy in and showed her the contents of the diaper.  Her response?  "My sticker!"  I had to swat her hand away as she reached for it.  How that sticker made it through completely intact can only be the working of a fairy - or as we are now calling it, the poop fairy.  We then had a nice little chat about what we can and cannot feed to Emma.

Up until this past month, we have been swaddling Emma with her arms wrapped up and putting her to sleep on her back.  The other day she woke up crying which was unlike her.  She usually wakes up and happily chats to herself for a couple of minutes before the crying begins.  So I ran upstairs to her room and found her face smashed into her pacifier laying on her stomach.  She must have rolled over and then was unable to roll back as she didn't have use of her arms being wrapped up like a burrito.  The fact that she was able to roll from her back to her stomach without the use of her arms to begin with was surprising, but for fear of night time suffocation, we have been swaddling her with arms free now.  She hasn't been sleeping as good because her arms sometimes startle her awake, but at least I don't have to worry about her suffocating.  The good news is that she is able to put her pacifier back in her mouth when it falls out, now that her arms are free so that evens out the startling I guess.

The above picture documents a moment in time of Motherhood where I think to myself, "All is right with the world, and it's good to be a mom!"

Emma's 4 Month Photo Shoot

As promised, here are some of the pictures from Emma's 4 month photo shoot last month.  I'm beginning to think that Lucy has a secret wish for these photos to not go public, since she stuffed something in my CD drive, and also spilled a glass of water on the CD.  As you can see, I found a CD drive that works and the disc miraculously dried out and still works too.

So, here is our little Emma.  She definitely was more interested in eating her dress than smiling for the camera which made it super easy to pick our favorite pictures.

I like to think that in the below picture, she is granting each of us one wish.

My Grandma

As a lot of you know by now, my grandma passed away last week.  Since then I have been slowly processing that she is no longer here on earth with us.  I've been wanting to do a post on her, but frankly it has been too hard until now for me to even put into words what I am feeling.  There is still a lot of shock.  To me, my grandma had too much fight in her to ever die.  She was one of the most real people I have ever known.  How can someone so real ever die?  She could tell you off in one sentence and then tell you a dirty joke in the next.  If she didn't like you, she didn't hide it.  If she thought the world of you, she let you know - not caring that other people were in the room.  Comments like, "you are my most beautiful granddaughter (not talking about me)" to "your husband is so good looking" (talking about me).  She would repeatedly tell Will that if he was only 50 years older, or she was 50 years younger that I would have to fight her for him.  When saying goodbye or hello to her, she would ask Will, "Aren't you going to kiss me on the lips?" after Will respectfully kissed her on the cheek.  She was extremely smart and had an amazing memory.  She had tricks that she used to remember everyone's name and even birthday.  She would make a game out of it, and you knew she liked you if she gave you a nickname.  Whenever we would visit her, she would greet Lucy by saying, "Loooooooo-Seeeeeee" in a sing-song voice.  I will never forget it, and I will remind Lucy of it as she grows bigger and the memories of my grandma begin to fade from her mind.

Speaking of Lucy and my grandma.  Lucy always called her "Mama's grandma" instead of great grandma and they had a special bond.  My grandma's nursing home was a half mile south of our house, so we got to visit her a lot the last two years.  These were special visits, as Lucy would always bring something for my grandma, whether it is a book she wanted to read to her, a picture she drew or a toy she wanted to show her.  The three of us would sing songs, and Lucy would cuddle my grandma on her lap in her wheelchair or in her hospital bed.  My grandma ate these visits up.  She would tell anyone who would listen how Lucy was the smartest girl she has ever known.  This would embarrass me sometimes, but I knew it was just my grandma's way of showing how much she loves Lucy.  After all, everyone needs someone who believes in them that much.  Lucy had a special place in my grandma's heart, as she was her first great-granddaughter.  Amazingly, this past year as my grandma began to steadily decline, she became the great-grandma of four more girls - Emma, Kate, Ellen and a baby girl due any day now.  When I asked her in her last couple of days what she thought about all these girls she responded with, "Oh Boy!"  I just wish my grandma had had the chance to get to know each of them like she got to know Lucy.  She did get to meet Emma fortunately, but never got to know her.  I told my grandma repeatedly though that Emma has her eyes, and that brings me some comfort to know that my grandma lives on not just in memories but in the physical traits of her family as well.  I also think Lucy has inherited some of her spit-fire personality.  Maybe that is why my grandma took to Lucy so well - she recognized the likeness.

When we were first dealing with the news of my grandma's passing, Will and I weren't sure to what level we should involve Lucy in the funeral.  After talking to several friends and family, we decided that Lucy belonged with her family and needed to be a part of my grandma's goodbye.  Lucy was with me, Will and Emma when we said goodbye to my grandma the day before she died and so we decided that it would be important for Lucy to see the next steps involved in my grandma's journey to heaven.  Heaven is a regular topic at our house already, what with her big brother being there but Lucy wasn't here when Luke died and was buried, nor for the toughest part of our journey through grief.  Will and I struggled to find words to explain to her what was going on.  We decided to be as brief as possible in our explanations and let her questions show us what she needed to know.  When I got the phone call from my mom that my grandma had passed away, Lucy watched me intently and even brought me a kleenex.  After I hung up the phone I explained to Lucy that grandma had gone to heaven and that I miss her so much.  Later that day Lucy started running around the house yelling, "Where are you mama's grandma?" and then kept looking out the front door saying, "I can't see her mama, I can't see her."  Then she would come to me and tell me, "Heaven is far away mama, we can't see it."  At the funeral home Lucy was very curious about my grandma laying out in the casket.  She called it "Mama's Grandma's crib" and would tell people to go and kneel in front of it, sometimes leading them by the hand to the kneeler.  She even lined up kleenex across the railing of the kneeler so they would be handy when someone needed one.  She also kept asking me to touch my grandma and so I would with Lucy watching.  The following day, during the funeral mass Lucy kept saying in a sad voice, "Where is mama's grandma?  Where is she mama?"

I was especially nervous about the burial at the cemetery.  We go there often as a family with Lucy to visit Luke's grave and were very careful to never say that he was actually buried in the ground there, but that instead we were going to spend time with his memory.  I knew we would have some explaining to do when she witnessed my grandma's casket being lowered into the ground as my grandparents plots are right next to Luke's grave.  She never did ask any questions, but happily skipped around during the burial and tossed flowers onto my grandma's casket once it was lowered into the ground.  I stood on Luke's headstone for this part, and it brought me great comfort knowing that my grandma was with Luke in heaven now, and probably already telling everyone else up there that Luke was the smartest boy there.

Grieving while seeing the world through a two year old's eyes has been very interesting.  This is uncharted water for me, even though I had thought I was a seasoned veteran at grieving since losing Luke.  It is interesting to me that losing someone brings with it it's own unique grieving process and it is like learning a new language each time.

Throughout the goodbyes last week I thoroughly enjoyed the time I got to spend with my aunts, uncles and cousins.  Each of them had a different perspective and memories of my grandma and I got to hear stories and learn things I had never heard before.  I was in awe as my grandma's immediate family huddled around my grandma while they closed her casket for the last time and we solemnly followed her into the church.  It struck me as amazing that a single woman (along with my grandpa who passed away 8 years ago) was responsible for all of us gathered together that day as family - her five children, their spouses, sixteen grandchildren and six great grandchildren.  And how the underlying feeling present in the room was love.  My aunt and uncle and two cousins sat in front of us in church.  My aunt rubbed my uncle's back during the service and my cousin wrapped his arm around his crying little sister.  Beside me was my cousin who had gone to work super early that morning so that he could take time off for the funeral and sit next to his mom.  Behind me was my aunt, uncle and their four kids and significant others - all sitting together as a solid wall of support.  At the very front was my parents, my mom's parents, my aunt and my siblings - all shoulder to shoulder and supporting each other.  I am proud of my family and I have to believe that my grandma's love for us is what got us all here today - able to smile through our tears and remember her for who she really was - the perfect blend of sweet and sour as my brother Joe so eloquently put.  She was by no means perfect, but we loved her just as she was.  She has taught me that to be genuine is one of the greatest traits we can offer, and to not worry about whether or not people will like you.  My grandma never asked us to take her as she was, but we did, and I am glad.

The End of Summer with Lucy

Summer is about over, and Will is back to work.  What a summer it has been.  We've been up north to visit longtime friends of ours at their family cottage, to Toledo to visit Will's brother, to the zoo several times, countless walks, park trips and library time.  We have played and eaten outside, swam and gone for bike rides.  We've picked gallons of strawberries, raspberries and black caps.  We've welcomed Lucy and Emma's first cousin Ellen into the family, been to birthday and graduation parties, a family reunion and sadly, my grandma's funeral.  We have spent wonderful time with family and friends and created memories that will last a lifetime.  But mostly, we have learned how to be an earthly family of four.  I feel like we are finally adjusted to life with two living children, and I can even say that Lucy has also adjusted to her shifted universe.

Don't get me wrong, there are still moments and even full days where I wonder what God was thinking when he only gave mothers two arms and the inability to be in multiple places at once.  Or why, oh why, do the girls seem to always work against each other when it comes to sleep?  One is always waking the other one up.  BUT... things have definitely gotten easier.  Please don't think for one second that things are EASY at our house by any means, however they are easier than at the start of the summer.  A big part of this is that Lucy is finally getting some good sleep.  This past month Will and I decided that something had to be done to help Lucy sleep.  First we took her to the pediatrician's office and had a head to toe check up to make sure there weren't any physical issues keeping her from getting a good night's sleep.  It was here that our wonderful Nurse Practitioner told us that she believed Lucy was suffering from night terrors.  Relieved that nothing else was wrong, we did a ton of research on the causes and cures of night terrors and from there decided to try a three tier approach:  A sticker chart to encourage and positively enforce good sleep habits, a homeopathic remedy to relieve night terrors, and several visits to a cranial sacral clinic by our house.  I'm not sure which of the three actually did the trick, but it really doesn't matter to us.  What matters is that Lucy's night terrors have gone from 6 a night to 3 a week.  Lucy's mood has greatly improved and our happy go lucky girl is for the most part back (I say most part because she is still two after all!).  Below is Lucy next to her first completed sticker chart.  She will proudly tell you that her reward was an Elmo dining set.

Here is Lucy giving Emma some love and attention.

Now on to the famous things Lucy said and did this past month.  A lot of you have already heard the story of how Lucy decided to see if the CD player in Will's car worked like a Jukebox.  Unfortunately, putting coins into it only made Will have to take it to the dealership and have the entire dashboard of the car removed in order to get the CD player out to shake it upside down.  Forty-one cents fell out.  I have to give Lucy credit for putting one of each denomination into the slot - one quarter, dime, nickel and penny.  I'm guessing when the quarter didn't work, she methodically tested each other coin.  With that type of strategy, I'm thinking she will make a good scientist!  Will took Lucy to the dealership with him, so that she could see the consequence of her actions.  She was mortified, since Will's Uncle Fred is the parts manager there and got to hear the entire story.  A couple of days later after Lucy took her first good nap in months I was so excited when she woke up that I asked her who we should call to celebrate the good news with.  She immediately responded "Uncle Fred" which at the time I thought was quite odd.  I was thinking she would want to call one of her grandmas or a friend of hers.  Then it dawned on me that she wanted to redeem herself in his eyes after the CD player incident, so we called him up!

Lucy definitely has a fascination of seeing how 'slots' work.  Hence why the CD-Rom in my desktop isn't currently working (not sure what is jammed in there, but it is definitely jammed) and why I couldn't find my credit card for several days.  Every time I asked Lucy where my credit card was, she would respond with "It's hiding."  It made it very inconvenient for online shopping, but I did end up finding it when I saw Lucy put a Rewards Card into a slot in our elliptical machine.  Aha!  A screwdriver, a couple of screws removed, and some choice words with a little sweat, there was my credit card along with a CVS and a Panera rewards card.  Will still claims he did not set her up to this.  As you can see in the below picture, we have forgiven each exploratory experiment Lucy has done this month.

Yup, she is definitely exploring and experiment as to how things work.  In the below picture, she told me she wanted to be a Boppy when I asked what on earth she was doing.

Interestingly enough, it seems most of her 'projects' require little to no clothing.  A couple of weeks ago we visited Will's brother in Toledo.  His dog Captain Steve was shedding a lot, so Uncle Tim kept using a lint roller on his shirt.  Apparently this made an impression on Lucy, as I found her the other day with a lint roller and when I asked her what she was doing she responded, "Just like Uncle Tim, mama, I doing it just like Uncle Tim!" 

Lucy has also developed a fascination and love for sandwich bags, or as she affectionately refers to them as "bagies."  She stores a wide array of things in them as you can see below.

Here are some sayings from Lucy this past month:

-The most common phrase out of her mouth is "I need sum-thin."  This tends to drive Will and I slowly crazy as she rarely goes on to tell us what the 'sum-thin' is.  She just keeps repeating it over and over again in a whiny voice.

-The other day when I asked why she kept taking her shirt off, she replied with "Moanie spit up on it mom."

-If Will or I do something Lucy likes, she tells us "Good Job!"

-We have several rules in the car.  Two of them are no spitting, and keep your shoes on.  If I'm sitting in the passenger seat, Lucy can see me from her carseat.  Without thinking about it, sometimes my sandals slip off.  Lucy catches this immediately, and reprimands me by saying "Mom!  Shoes stay on in the car!  Put your shoes on or you won't be able to walk when we get there!"  Even better, one time after Will sneezed she yelled "DAD!  No spittin' in the car!  You spit in the sink when you brush your teeth.  That's it!"

-When Will and I are trying to make a choice between options, Lucy will butt in with "I say we get ice cream."

-And my favorite thing Lucy now says is, "I smell sum-thin stinky, mama!  I think it's a stunk!"  a.k.a. skunk.