April 2021

Since my last post, life hit me and my family hard.  At first I was still hopeful that I could play catch up on my blog posts, but as life kept getting more challenging, I started falling so far behind on my posts that I contemplated just retiring this blog altogether.  It has been survival mode for quite some time for me and perhaps it is a good sign that I am able to finally sit here at the end of January, 2022, and begin to reflect on all that my family and I have been through this past year.  The struggle isn't over yet, but I feel like I am at the end of my endurance.  I need to find ways to focus on the joys in my life as I shore myself up for the next challenges.  This blog has always been a way for me to digest what life threw at me, and to remind me of all of the blessings in my life.  I started it when I learned that my pregnancy with Luke was filled with uncertainties and bad news.  The blog helped me then, and I'm hoping it helps me now too.  I've missed writing it.  So here I am.  I wish that I could write about the month of April, 2021 with fresh memories and in the moment recaps, but alas, that ship has sailed.  I will do my best to document the photos, and have my kids fill in any details I may have forgotten.  

Here are four of my reasons to keep going, and to process with writing the last year.

I feel sadness that my babies kept growing, even while Will and I were in survival mode, and I feel like I missed savoring it.  I can't believe how much they have all grown, and I hope moving forward to find ways to be more present each day.  What I am learning from survival mode though, is you really do the best you can - there is no other choice.  And we have survived so far, so that is not nothing.  Here are Will and I below, enjoying the bounty of our suburban farm.  Our first asparagus harvest of the season, and an expert grilled sandwich chef.  It always amazes me how much we are able to cook and produce in our relatively small kitchen.  I am always grateful to the two guys who flipped our house for opting for a ceramic cooktop stove and a wide granite ledge before the sink starts.  We utilize every each of that extra space.

In true spring style, some days we were able to explore outside in a light jacket, and other days we had to put on full winter gear.  Shortly after the bottom, lefthand photo of Violet was taken we realized that Violet is very allergic to dandelions!  Who knew!  

April is such a busy month of holidays for us.  We kicked off the holidays with Easter, and dyed our eggs the day before the holiday.

Several eggs got damaged during the boiling process, so we tried to turn the boo-boos into integrated art.  If that isn't a metaphor for a well-lived life, I don't know what is!

We spent Easter just the six of us due to COVID numbers and it was so nice to have nothing to do but relax with the kids all day.

Opal ate her weight in chocolate, Emma and Violet enjoyed building the little Lego sets from their baskets, and Lucy and I tried our hand at some spring-themed macrame kits we had bought earlier in the week.

I love when the weather is actually nice on Easter and we can truly revel in the lovely spring day as the kids search for eggs.

The girls insisted on wearing their nicest spring outfits and all five of us girls wore our floral crowns too.

Next up on the holiday list in April was Emma's 10th birthday.  This year Will and I got each of the three oldest girls their own desk for their birthday.  This was her main present from Will and I, but fortunately the sisters filled in the present gaps with thoughtful and well-picked gifts of their own.

Emma loved the Harry Potter bead art that Opal got her, and spent the afternoon making art that J.K. Rowling would have approved of.  We took a lovely walk to the river and spent a golden hour tossing rocks into the stream and building rafts to see how far they would go.

We had a movie night, complete with appetizer type food in front of the TV while we watched Harriet the Spy.  We had just finished reading the book, so Emma was excited that this lined up with her birthday.  And, if it wasn't for Emma remembering this when I asked her tonight, I would have had no memory of the movie we watched.  

Next up was Lucy's 12th birthday, and she was excited to have her desk revealed as well.  Sisters filled in with great gifts and I think it's safe to say that with three sisters each, they will never have to worry about a lack of presents at holidays.  They do an excellent job picking out exactly what their sisters would love.  I know there is some serious whispering and promising and bold sister-requesting around gift-giving, but for the most part, the presents are still a surprise to them.

Friends of ours surprised Lucy on her birthday with giant balloons that ended up providing some hilarious entertainment when the wind took the balloons on an erratic journey through our yard.  We caught them though, but not without me almost peeing my pants from the laughter.  They gave all three spring birthday sisters a beautiful succulent planter to share as well.

At twelve I am noticing a new level of maturity in Lucy that makes me proud and wistful all at the same time.  She doesn't play with her sisters nearly as much as she used to, but instead prefers solitary art or craft projects and of course, lots of reading.  She still averages a book a day and the books keep getting thicker.

My parents came by for an outside birthday visit this past month, as did my sister who surprised all of the girls with custom sewn doll dresses for their American Girl dolls.  My sister has her own side hustle where she makes exquisite doll dresses - what an amazing aunt for young girls to have!  We also received a box of birthday gifts from our friends in Chicago, which is a great way of keeping the long distance relationship alive for our kids.  Finally, in the bottom, right hand photo below, we met up with my cousin and her two daughters for a delightful day at the park where I swear there was fairy dust and sunshine on us the entire time.  Even almost a year later, that day is crystal clear in my memory.  It was the first time we had seen them since the pandemic started, and it was so good to be together.

Spring weather had us seeing our friends again, but we still had plenty of time indoors with just us.  My mama heart was full when I came across my four girls playing the game of Life together.  It is rare these days when all four sisters play together - and peacefully at that - and so I had to take a photo to document it.  In the top, right hand photo below are the doll outfits my sister sewed for the girls birthdays.  In the bottom right hand photo below, Violet is putting on a play for me.  She may have Will's sense of humor, which is both awe-inspiring and scary.  The bottom two photos on the left were taken by Lucy with a filter added to them and I thought they captured the sweet innocence of my two youngest gals.

We plugged along with school, which is always hard in a month with three major holidays.  Lucy got a kick out of her vocabulary word for the week: quarantine.  I'm sure when the book was published a few years ago, they thought this was a word that kids wouldn't know otherwise, but in 2021 it is a word even known by my three year old.  In the bottom, left hand photo below we are eating a picnic dinner at our church after attending an outdoor church service.  We had not been to church at this point in over a year, and Opal was in awe of the congregation's united responses to prayers and the community singing.  Opal is being impacted by this pandemic more than anyone else in our family.  We have yet to discover all of the ways her world view has been affected.

I continued to make progress on my new business, Wildflower Moon.  This past month the products really started coming together.  

I spent too much time on Facebook Marketplace looking for chairs to go with the girls new desks this past month.  I finally found a set of four matching chairs and knew they were the ones for us.  I had them painted by the same woman who refinished the girls desks for me, and Will and I tackled the reupholstery.

This past month we came down with fevers that lasted for 10 days, coupled with severe exhaustion.  The only person who didn't have a fever was Lucy.  I came down with the fever first, and immediately quarantined in my room.  This was hard on the family, and one of the reasons we have been so careful to not get COVID.  Violet is considered higher risk with her inability to sweat and her respiratory track that is affected by ectodermal dysplasia.  On day three of my quarantine, Will came down with a fever and by that afternoon, three out of the four kids (including Violet) had fevers too.  It was scary to know that the germ went through the house, but also a relief to no longer have to be away from my kids.  Opal was having such a hard time and it was breaking my heart that she couldn't understand why I couldn't be with her.  She just kept saying, "I HATE COVID!"  I think we can all relate to that.  Strangely enough though, we took multiple COVID tests - both rapid and PCR - and spaced them out throughout the 10 days of fever and never once did any of us test positive for COVID.  We treated it as COVID, but we never lost taste or smell.  I ended up having an antibody test a few weeks later and that came back negative too.

During our illness, Violet started complaining of a sore rib.  When I inspected her rib, I noticed that it was protruding more than the others.  We never had a cough, so I began to worry what it could mean.  We took her to the pediatrician once we were fever free and were promptly sent for x-rays.  After the regular x-rays were taken, we were called that afternoon due to an abnormality found and sent straight away to a bigger hospital specializing in pediatrics.  This was very scary, and we had a few days of wait time before we knew what was going on.  

Come to find out, Violet has extra cartilage in the rib that was protruding, and the rib is forked at the end.  Who knows what caused it to become sore, as the doctors are certain she has had it all of her life and that it is benign.  The sweet relief of getting this news is inexplainable, and Violet seemed unfazed by all of it.  And to just go to show that God's hand was with us during this time, the doctor who reviewed Violet's final x-ray told us that his wife has the exact same forked rib, and there are no side effects to it other than sometimes a seat belt rubbing it the wrong way.  What are the odds of a first hand experience like that, to help put me at ease and Violet to feel less alone.  I am so proud of the way Violet handles her challenges, and I am so very very grateful that her rib protrusion is just another detail that makes her unique. 

There was a lot packed into the month of April, and writing this post was like riding a bike after time away.  We are off and running now, and I can already feel the processing relief and the gratitude reinforcement from writing this post.  Onwards!